ABSTRACT
Christopher Goodman's complaint that local 'papists' found in the pageants a forum in which to meet and organize suggests that the experience of rehearsing and performing helped religious conservatives reaffirm and nurture their faith. Several recent developments in the historiography of Elizabethan religion are particularly relevant to the current discussion. First of all, scholars today see far greater continuity with the medieval past in late sixteenth-century religion than previously assumed. Second, that continuity is most manifest in 'popular religion', a collection of disparate, often contradictory, beliefs, practices, and feelings experienced by the masses of English subjects. Finally, while denominational labels are useful tools for exploring religious identity and experience, current scholarship is much more attuned to the rhetoricity of such terms, the extent to which their meanings vary according to their users, change over time, and serve partisan purposes.
