ABSTRACT
Early modern representations of hypocrisy on stage significantly reify the general anxiety about the often ambiguous and deceitful behaviour displayed by some clergymen of the time. Despite the many representations of hypocritical Puritans on stage, it is in the specific charge against the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church that the elusiveness of the term 'hypocrisy' recurs – unsurprisingly – with its most powerful material, religious, and cultural resonances. In the Pardoner's lucid self-evaluation, hypocrisy is associated with wittiness, the adoption of a refined language, and an ability to deceive others through a carefully 'targeted' representation of the self. In contemporary plays, however, the "props of virtue" complicate the discourse of hypocrisy when internalised in the mask of the ecclesiastic – a popular disguise for rulers or revengers on the London stages. Together with representations of the evil of hypocrisy and the means for achieving hypocrisy, comes suspicion of all identities.
