Richard C. McCoy. Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in the English Reformation.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. xxvi + 218 pp. index. illus. $29.50. ISBN: 0-231-12616-6.

During the past decade, the fields of literary criticism and history have been merging, as evidenced by authors such as Colette Winn, Albert Rabil, Diana Robin, and Colleen Seguin. The road has, at times, been bumpy, with historians challenging that the literary analysis has been too thoroughly divorced from the context. In his new text, Richard McCoy, professor of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, bridges that gap, bringing a rich, contextual picture to the works of four early modern English writers: John Skelton, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell. The unifying theme is sacred kingship, as it waxed and waned with the political turmoil of the English Reformation (or reformations, as in this case the revolving religious climate was certainly indicative of the atmosphere described by Christopher Haigh).

McCoy's title references the changing nature of kingship related to succession as he takes the reader from Henry VIII's accession through the Glorious Revolution. Despite the fact that four of the five chapters are devoted to the English writers, the dominant theme of this text is historical change, skillfully introduced with a chapter devoted to Henry's effect on religion, a change indicated in McCoy's choice of title, "Real Presence to Royal Presence." He begins his discussion by outlining the concepts of the real presence and transubstantiation, along with their significance to the early modern Englishman. Protestant attacks and Henry's assumption of supremacy both altered this religious framework. With this newly created power, the Tudor monarchy in many ways took over the holiness of the host, upholding older notions of sacred kingship to such an extent that the "royal presence became an animating and redemptive real presence, binding ruler and ruled together in a communion stronger than any proffered by an alien papal power" (15). A royal cult continued through the reign of Elizabeth. The equation of a real presence in the person of the monarch and transubstantiation forms another thread running throughout the text.

Sacredness of the monarch in various guises is critical to McCoy's thesis. How that sacredness manifests itself, and what happens to a nation when that sacredness is overturned, as with Charles I, points to the dependence of early modern England on the cult of monarchy, and thus to its vulnerability during transitions of power. Each of McCoy's writers approaches monarchy from a different standpoint, with Skelton representing the best of the defenders of absolutism and sacred kingship, even criticizing Wolsey for his arrogant domination of the king and the church. Shakespeare, however, is more complicated, as he straddles the gap between Elizabeth and James. Even though McCoy only deals with Hamlet in this chapter, his emphasis on the closet scene demonstrates Hamlet's fascination with the conjoined nature of his father's physical body and his spirit, which also points to James I's doctrine of the king's two bodies and its reliance on sacredness. McCoy asserts that Charles I's conflation of the real and royal presence through ceremony was even greater than his father's, and that regicide made Charles "a more compelling presence in death than he had ever been in life" (101). For Milton, this veneration of the dead king represented an idolatrous worship of a dangerously absolutist system. Milton resisted the attraction of sacred kingship to the end, advocating republican rule as he asserted that an alteration of state such as that represented by the Commonwealth held far more legitimacy and profundity than those caused by the death of a king. In the final chapter, McCoy, through a recounting of the many unusual succession scenarios from the Restoration through the coming of the Hanovers, reveals how sacred kingship disintegrated by the end of the eighteenth century into sentiment and humanity. Marvell recognized these changes, exposing through satire the vulnerability and pathos of monarchy.

McCoy ends his text with an account of the civil idolatry of modern-day England as exemplified by the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. Although divine right rule is gone, the adoration and almost sacred devotion shown toward Diana demonstrate that the person of a royal can still produce a profound social impact. His analogy linking the lives of Charles and Diana to those of George and Caroline may, however, be stretching the point too far. Alterations of State is well-written and researched, yet there may be too much historical background for those expecting a literary criticism text. The historical material on the front end of each chapter is so extensive that the naming of the chapters for writers seems arbitrary at times, but McCoy weaves the history and literature into a whole, thus making this text a valuable tool for the scholar of early modern studies. The work is also highly accessible, as he thoroughly explains concepts and characters, making it a good choice for upper-level and graduate students.

LAURA MUSSELWHITE

Floyd College, Rome, GA