The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare

The crises of faith that fractured Reformation Europe also caused crises of individual and collective identity. Structures of feeling as well as structures of belief were transformed; there was a reformation of social emotions as well as a Reformation of faith. As Steven Mullaney shows in  The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare , Elizabethan popular drama played a significant role in confronting the uncertainties and unresolved traumas of Elizabethan Protestant England. Shake