The effect of Calvinism on European literary culture was powerful and long-lasting, creating a highly mobile, dynamic, transnational community of writers, publishers, translators, and readers. Many of these readers of Calvin had an interest in the stage. After all, the Institutes of the Christian Religion was translated into English in 1561 by Thomas Norton, coauthor of the blank verse, political tragedy Gorboduc. Calvin’s ideas and imagery were appropriated by English and Dutch playwrights from across the confessional spectrum. This chapter argues that there is a distinctiveness to this literature, often itself the product of the experience of religious war, persecution, and exile: a militant, combative providentialism, combined with a pronounced dualism, often shading over into apocalypticism; a preoccupation with, and fear of, the dangers of idolatry; and an inclination to a rigorous, frequently punishing, form of religious introspection and self-examination.
