황수경.  수녀복 벗(기)기: 로버트 그린의 베이컨 수사와 번게이 수사에 나타나는 수녀의 극적 활용.
        (Su-kyung Hwang.  Divesting Nuns: Theatrical Use of a Nun in Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay)

Abstract

 This essay explores the “reformed” representations of nuns on the early modern English stages, that is, at a time when no convents or nuns left in England since the Monastic Dissolution of 1539. By closely analyzing Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, the essay discusses what stage nuns represented, why they were still utilized, and what theatrical effects they created on post-Reformation English stages, along with the inevitable limitations and self-contradictions of female characters played by boy actors. Margaret, the heroine of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, corresponds to all the positive qualities in the Protestant ideal of femininity. A symbol of pastoral Englishness, Margaret is aware of the threat of her beauty to masculinity and male society, and finally breaks the oath of celibacy to choose married life, which was considered more sacred than convent life in Protestant society. As she confesses her “frailty” and takes off her nun’s attire on stage, she conforms to Protestant mysogynistic perspective on female “frailty” that cannot endure any spiritual duty. Her divestment on stage, furthermore, exposes her “frail” body concealed under the nun’s costume. Through her subsequent adoption and dismissal of nun’s habit, Margaret’s theatrical presence is made more sexually dangerous than the stage whores cladding in Catholic vestments that represent sexual promiscuity.


Key Words
Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Catholic Vestment, Nun, Reformation