Shadow and Substance

“This ambitious book not only bridges early English drama studies and theological history but offers a model for crossing the periodization borders of medieval and early modern. Jay Zysk seems very much in command as he negotiates notoriously difficult primary texts and complex semiotic theory with a level of detail that is as lucid as it is exacting. This is a compelling book, and it is written with verve, learning, and conviction.”—Gail McMurray Gibson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emerita of English and Humanities, Davidson College

"Shadow and Substance makes a convincing case that the issues of the Eucharist controversies are echoed in medieval and early modern drama and that we should not underestimate the importance of religion to these plays. Zysk’s interpretive model leads, chapter after chapter, to original and resonant analyses of the plays in question. The clarity and comprehensiveness of these chapters will make them especially attractive to a variety of interested students and scholars. The scholarship is truly impressive." —Kent Cartwright, University of Maryland

"Religious reformation is for Jay Zysk 'not a fixed epistemological shift' but rather 'a constellation of diverse theological and semiotic positions asserted and interpreted over time.' This well-written book asks for a reading of early English drama that is not dogmatic in choosing one side or the other, and readers should find its arguments worth pondering as issues of critical interpretation." —David Bevington, emeritus, University of Chicago

"Across a broad range of resources, this book explicates enduring intersections of linguistic signs and dramatic texts with human and sacred bodies, thereby demonstrating the enormous, if not always immediately evident, influence of Eucharistic semiotics on medieval and early modern creative expression. Zysk’s learned and imaginatively conceived study of dramatic sacramental theology poses new, indeed essential, frames of reference for thinking about early English theater, religion, and literary history." —Theresa Coletti, University of Maryland

“In performing what essentially amounts to synchronic criticism, this book sustains a welcome re-periodization of English drama across the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. More broadly, Zysk provides a non-diachronic model for other scholars whose work sits on either end of the Middle Ages as well as for studies on topics, such as sexuality, race, and performance, that defy the normal junctures of received periodization.” —The Medieval Review,

"Zysk’s insightful and well-structured approach studies Christ’s Eucharistic body as a semiotic goldmine from which differing religious and philosophical interpretations influence the writing and performances of late medieval and early modern English drama. His clearly written original argument reveals how the semiotics of the bread and wine, word and flesh of the sacrament, are given surprising new contexts in each play." —Parergon

“Drawing on an impressive range of theological and dramatic writings, this deeply researched and elegantly written book thereby offers a new model both for the reading of medieval and early modern drama and for thinking about the periodization of literary history.” —Early Theatre

“By traversing the medieval-Renaissance divide, Zysk’s work synthesizes and extends important work on the Eucharist that limits itself to pre- or post-Reformation contexts.” —Renaissance Quarterly

“The book’s incisive accounts of eucharistic debates, practices and reception history alongside its insightful semiotic analysis would easily open into conversation with constructive theologies of liturgy and sacrament.” —Worship