Crisis of Communion: Eucharistic Representations in Shakespeare's History Cycle

Abstract:Eucharistic language and imagery are the connective tissue that unites William Shakespeare's history tetralogies into a coherent whole. Together, they depict England's communal crisis—civil war—as a crisis of Communion; eucharistic sacrilege collapses a sacramental ontology, which in turn breaks mechanisms of atonement, fragments society, and corrupts signification. Appropriately, Richmond effectuates England's communal regeneration by restoring this sacramental ontology through real, sincere eucharistic participation at the conclusion of Richard III. This reading challenges interpretations that hold that the second tetralogy unravels the providentialist conclusion of the first, or which treat the plays as discrete episodes.