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Japan Dramas and Shakespeare at St. Omers English Jesuit College
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2021
Abstract
This essay examines how Catholics at the English Jesuit College at Saint-Omer reflected on Japanese religious politics during the 1620s and 1630s, both through translated mission reports and drama. This analysis expands scholars’ view of English encounters with Japan; it also decenters predominantly Eurocentric approaches to early modern Jesuit education and theater. The essay concludes with a discussion of Shakespeare and George Wilkins's “Pericles,” a quarto playbook of which was possessed by St. Omers and which, through the generic elements of romance it shared with the Japan material, provided further opportunities for the college's Catholics to consider transcontinental religious politics.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by the Renaissance Society of America
Footnotes
I would like to thank Kathryn Vomero Santos and Mary Learner for reading earlier drafts of this work, and also Colin Macdonald, Jeffrey D. Castle, and RQ 's two anonymous readers for their helpful and constructive suggestions. Much of the research and writing for this essay took place at the Huntington Library and the Newberry Library, and I am very grateful to both institutions’ staff. All spelling, italics, and punctuation in quotations appear in the originals.
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