Stage, cathedral, wagon, street: The grounds of belief in Shakespeare and Renaissance performance

This dissertation expands what counts as belief in historical performance. It explores how belief sounded, looked, and felt to audiences in Renaissance England. To this extent, my dissertation suggests a radical reorientation of the study of drama and religion. Most scholars study performed religion primarily in terms of how it was "represented" on stage: signified by certain verbal and visual images and decoded, in effect, by audiences. This approach has produced insightful material histories of religion but is limited both by its focus on allusion---re-presentation---and because it recognizes belief primarily where it can be corroborated by comparison to more conventional sites of religion, such as the church and established religious texts. I argue that belief existed at more basic experiential levels, in the perceptual habits of audiences, in the environmental "grounds" of the performance venue, and in what are often considered the mundane and marginal aspects of the playgoing experience---such as ambient distractions, acoustics, dramaturgical transparency, and even admission fees. The result is a depiction of communal belief that collaborated with its performative media. In essence, by studying the phenomenal conditions of historical performance through its props, spaces, and bodies, I am expanding belief beyond the confines of religion and into activities that were fundamental to attending a performance in Renaissance England.