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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0002-7980-6981

Date Available

5-2-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

English

Faculty

Emily Shortslef

Faculty

Matthew Giancarlo

Abstract

At the beginning of William Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, England’s most widely read book, after the Bible, was Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days, commonly known as John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Foxe’s martyrological literature, along with the inherently theatrical nature of martyrdom itself, helped the lives and deaths of Reformation martyrs to assume a prominent place in England’s literary consciousness. Shakespeare was not immune to their influential presence, and though overt representations of martyrdom were too controversial for the popular stage, he did enrich his plays by endowing certain characters—through imagery, allusive diction, intertextuality, and other literary techniques—with martyrial resonance. Early modern martyrdom was also implicated in the dynamics of human difference and personal transformation: agonistic encounters between persecutors and victims were marked by difference, and martyrdom was understood, from both a theological and a historical perspective, as producing and bearing witness to transformation. In this dissertation, I argue that when Shakespeare explores difference as a site of violent conflicts that lead to personal transformation, he draws upon theatrical, historical, and psychological energies circulating in martyrdom and the martyrial agon.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.117

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