From Voltaire's Quakers to John Boyle's Methodists: Religious Dispute, Bardolatry, and ‘Patriot Enthusiasm’

Abstract

Through the prism of Voltaire's letters on the Quakers (1733) and John Boyle's riposte in his preface to Father Brumoy's The Greek Theatre (1759), some Shakespeare criticism of the period is shown to have drawn on issues of religious controversy, in this case, Methodist enthusiasm, to formulate some of the principal tenets of fledgling bardolatry. Further, as one strand within ‘patriot enthusiasm’, by instituting a national congregation of admirers, the surrogate faith of bardolatry achieved in part the comprehension ruled out by the Toleration Act (1689), while its irrationality sheltered the supernatural on its eviction from rationalized religion.