Browsing by Author "Lenthe, Victor"

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    Antonio’s sad flesh
    (British Shakespeare Association, 2022-08-18) Lenthe, Victor
    This article examines different meanings attached to the adjective ‘sad’ in the 1590s in order to reinterpret the sexual politics of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The play’s title character Antonio famously proclaims that he performs ‘a sad [part]’ on the world’s ‘stage’. Critics have related this apparent declaration of melancholy to Antonio’s love for Bassanio and the heartbreak he may experience when the latter marries Portia. However, by examining the word's largely forgotten physiological meanings, I show that ‘sad’ was also a non-judgmental term for a man who lacks interest in procreation. Antonio’s embrace of this label has implications both for the play’s sexual politics and for its representation of putatively non-generative market economics.
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    Richard Haydocke’s inventions and Jacobean religious neutrality
    (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) Lenthe, Victor
    This article examines documents surrounding King James’s 1605 interrogation of Richard Haydocke, a Puritan famous for giving sermons in his sleep. I show that the king wanted to hold Haydocke responsible for statements that were subversive but also rumored to be divinely inspired, and that he therefore developed an intriguing rationale for considering revealed knowledge as a human invention. My findings contribute to scholarship on Stuart political thought by documenting an instance in which James commits himself to a constructivist conception of culture unusual for a divine right theorist. By documenting an early modern attempt to theorize the regulation of religiously motivated political speech, they also contribute to a history of concerns associated today with debates about the limits both of secularism and of postsecularism.
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    Shakespeare's Ill Will and the style of consensus
    (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) Lenthe, Victor
    This article shows that Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night dramatizes a body of Elizabethan political theory that responded to the challenges of Puritanism by inquiring into the meaning and value of consensus. In doing so, it establishes debates about Puritanism--including their theatrical representation--as part of the history of consensus politics, a term today associated with Jürgen Habermas and his followers, who believe a government's legitimacy derives from the collective consent of the governed. I show that Puritans made similarly structured arguments about Church government, and that Shakespeare's critique of their style reflects an overlooked theoretical contribution with contemporary resonance.