Converts, Apostates, and Hermits

The book explores the dynamics between gender and religious conversion in the early modern English theatre. The analysis of three early modern plays - William Shakespeare''s The Most Excellent Historie of The Merchant of Venice, Philip Massinger''s The Renegado, and Margaret Cavendish''s The Religious - reveals the complexity of early modern notions of gender when facing religious conversion. Of considerable interest are the insight of an early modern female writer on the topic of conversion and the power negotiations between the constructs of early modern masculinity and femininity.