In his anti-prelatical tracts of 1641-2 Milton had charged the established church with hypocrisy evident primarily in their ceremonial image, and in particular, their liturgical clothing. My intention in this paper is to highlight ways Milton’s writings against the formal ceremonies of the church exhibit an anxiety about performance and the role of its witnesses similar to the anxiety expressed by anti-theatrical writers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.  Anti-theatrical writers and Milton accused plays and the church respectively of hypocritical behaviour that transformed the audience or congregation from active participants to inert witnesses. Dress formed a significant part of the discourse employed against duplicity. My argument is that by looking at the performance of hypocrisy as revealed by antitheatricalists and Milton and by paying attention to the models of selfhood such performance made available, we can begin to think of audiences not as witnesses but as performers too.

—Naya Tsentourou, University of Manchester

http://opencuny.org/transformingidentities/2012/10/06/will-of-wit-or-wills-wit/