Abstract

 황수경  Hwang, Su-kyung  Anti-Theatrical Costume: Catholic Vestments and Post-Reformation Visual Rhetoric in Doctor Faustus   127 ~ 146  Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Volume 25 No. 2 (2017)

This essay discusses the ideological development from anti-Catholicism to anti-theatricalism, while examining the representation of Catholic vestments in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Based on the fact that religious garments were transferred from church to theater throughout the Reformation, this study explores cultural meanings produced and manipulated on stage with this particular theatrical property. Dr. Faustus repeats anti-Catholic rhetoric, assigns religious vestments to corrupt Catholic priests in Rome, a hideous-looking devil, Mephistopheles, and a faithless former divinity scholar, Faustus. By representing different characters in religious vestments, the play highlights the theatricality of the garments adopted by different characters for disguising purposes. On the Elizabethan stage, post-Reformation theatrical convention of the disguised evil priest was been inherited, developed, and contributed to the ideological convergence of anti-Catholicism and anti-theatricalism in the late sixteenth century.

Keywords

Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe, Catholic Vestment, Anti-Theatricalism, Anti-Catholicism