While this is a brilliant book, it’s not quite the one its subtitle leads the reader to expect. “The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age” seems to suggest a history of the making and reception of the English Prayer Book, starting with its creation by Thomas Cranmer in 1549, and going up to, say, its temporary suppression in the mid-17th century by Oliver Cromwell’s parliamentarians. In fact, Daniel Swift — who teaches at Skidmore College — has produced a subtle and illuminating study of how Shakespeare’s plays reflect and reconfigure the Prayer Book’s language and theological tensions.
The result is a distinctly scholarly work, but one written with impressive stylishness. Perhaps it’s not by accident that Swift’s biographical note also describes him as a literary journalist. If you have any interest at all in Shakespeare, especially “Macbeth,” or in the beautiful Anglican liturgy, you’re in for a dazzling, if sometimes demanding, intellectual adventure.
(Oxford Univ.) - HANDOUT IMAGE: \"Shakespeare's Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age\" by Daniel Swift (Oxford Univ.) (contact: Coleen Hatrick,
First off, Swift reminds us that “The Book of Common Prayer” was never a static work. Though first published as a compendium of the Anglican rituals of morning prayer, baptism, marriage, Communion and the burial of the dead, it constantly underwent alteration. It was “the devotional centerpiece of an age that was passionately religious, and its fluidity is the sign of its cultural centrality.” In 1603, for instance, the Hampton Court Conference, held under the aegis of the new King James, reconsidered remnants of Catholic ritual still embedded in the text. The more austere Puritans objected to anything hinting at a sacrament other than baptism and Communion. As Swift writes, the Prayer Book embraces “a history of passionately contested revision and of manic sensitivity to a verb or a turn of phrase.”
It is also, as everyone should know, a treasury of memorable prose-poetry, especially in its earlier iterations. “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live. . . . Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways, like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.”
However, the Prayer Book is also a kind of theatrical work, detailing the interactions of minister, congregation and God during moments of high drama. In fact, as Swift says, “The prayer book struggled, throughout this period, with its twin and rival, the commercial theater. Plays were the other great common work of the age, both written collaboratively and performed before crowds. It was against the theater that the Book of Common Prayer sought to define itself.”
From here, Swift argues that Renaissance drama was “troublingly liturgical,” even though playwrights were prohibited from reproducing precisely the language of the Prayer Book, lest there be any hint of mockery. But a genius like Shakespeare might still imbue his works with repeated words or situations that would call to mind their sacerdotal origins. Swift dissects, for example, the use of the word “walk” in “Macbeth,” rich with multiple scriptural echoes of walking in the ways of the Lord.
These books offer keen insights into leadership and management challenges, which on a day-to-day basis can bring their own dramas, twisting plot lines and, in this city, political intrigue.
This commenter is a Washington Post contributor. Post contributors aren’t staff, but may write articles or columns. In some cases, contributors are sources or experts quoted in a story.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
To pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
.JPG)
Loading...
Comments