ABSTRACT

In Renaissance England, a heated controversy over the morality and legitimacy of drama was fueled by Puritan extremists, who condemned drama for its creating dynamized verbal pictures, whose powerful impact on the audience the most alert of them did not fail to highlight. This essay will investigate the theoretical framework of the controversy, by showing how Puritans’ criticism specifically condemned the latter’s visual nature. It will focus on one of the least studied controversies, the one between the theologian John Rainolds and the jurist Alberico Gentili, which broke out in Oxford at the beginning of the 1590s. Particularly, this chapter will show how, in Commentatio ad legem III Codicis de professoribus et medicis (1593), Gentili highlighted that it was precisely thanks to its dynamized verbal pictures that drama was proving to be a perfect means to educate the audience, and not something to be condemned indiscriminately.