ABSTRACT
The Crisis of the 1590s also sparked a significant increase in books and sermons denouncing atheism. But to what precisely they refer is unclear. While there are many accusations of atheism, and many claims that atheism was alarmingly popular, there is little to no first-hand evidence. This chapter suggests that the early modern stage constituted a previously unsuspected vector for spreading atheism, as evidenced by a trio of connected plays that make atheism a central element of the plot: both parts Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Robert Greene’s Selimus, and Shakespeare’s King Lear. Each treats atheism differently. Tamburlaine is less about the existence of the gods and more concerned with undermining the traditional assumption that God, or the gods, punish vice. But Marlowe tempers his atheism with a view of the universe as encouraging and rewarding aspiration. Perhaps because Greene wrote Sleimus when the Crisis of the 1590s was in full swing, his play is more nihilistic than Marlowe’s. Greene’s Selimus embodies the Elizabethan nightmare of a ruler unbounded by judgment after death. Shakespeare takes atheism in a different direction: in King Lear, we see enacted, literally, the falsity of religion and, at the same time, how religion is a necessary lie, a precursor to Ibsen’s “life illusion.”
