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Wager's Drama of Conscience, Convention, and State Constitution

2007; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 47; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/sel.2007.0018

1522-9270

Ineke Murakami,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

William Wager, the mid-sixteenth century moral dramatist, is typically dismissed as a Protestant propagandist, but I argue that his deployment of literary and performance conventions veils a critique of the emerging capitalist state and its middling Protestant officials. Attacking ambition in The Longer Thou Livest, the More Fool Thou Art and Enough is As Good As a Feast, Wager calls for a turn to conscience. Through allusions to the Guernsey martyrdom, and his promotion of a casuistic weighing of things indifferent, he negotiates his own problematic contribution to the system and the dangers of writing polemical plays.