ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals Shakespeare may well have sympathized with the position of English Catholics after the Reformation, Greenblatt saw analogies in Edgar and Gloucester with the position of the Catholic exorcists attacked by Harsnett, and the chapter extends by include John Darrell and George More. Brownlow argues that Harsnett and his party acted in good faith, and that Darrell and More are not treated 'so very harshly', especially when compared with other religious dissidents such as Catholics. As well as King Lear, two of Shakespeare's comedies, The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, refer explicitly and at some length to exorcism. Darrell must have been aware of the connections made between his own practices and downfall and those of the Catholic exorcists whose words ended up in King Lear, even if he rejected completely. In 1990 Winfried Schleiner recognized Darrell's dispossessions in Malvolio's plight at the end of Twelfth Night.
