Reformed Ventriloquism: The Shepheardes Calender and the Craft of Commentary

Abstract

This essay reads the strange performance of E. K. in The Shepheardes Calender as a commentary on the authority of the humanist edition and a gloss on the uncertain standing of the gloss in post-Reformation England. My claim is that E. K.’s practice should be read not only in relation to literary antecedents but also in relation to the scriptural tradition of glossing. More specifically, I read E. K.’s glossing practice in relation to the different editions of the Geneva Bible produced in the 1570s. Turning to the Geneva Bibles helps illuminate the role that the material text and its interpretive apparatus played in both the institutionalization of Reformed doctrine and the inevitable doubt that emerges when one has multiple and competing glosses on scripture. And it helps illustrate the ways in which E. K.’s strange exegetical dance asks his readers to consider the vexed issues of interpretation and consensus in early modern England.

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