Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama

Protestantism espoused a degree of individualism that nurtured masculinity, but dismissed magic as Papist superstition, says McAdam (English, U. of Lethbridge), yet both are present, and in each other's arms, in some of the period's most characteristic cultural productions. He explores why and how through specific examples, giving pride of place to Shakespeare, of course. His topics include sex and magic in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Puritan magic in Doctor Faustus, ambiguous magic in Shakespeare's first and second tetralogies, Macbeth and the Jacobean witchcraft plays, magic as emasculation in George Chapman and Ben Jonson, and the magician's garden in The Tempest and Comus. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ian McAdam is professor of English at the University of Lethbridge. His first book, The Irony of Identity, was the second-place winner of the Roma Gill Award of the Marlowe Society of America in 1999–2000.