Glenn Clark is an associate professor in the department of english, theatre, film & media at the U of M. Clark’s research focuses on late-medieval through 17th-century English drama, with particular attention to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. According to him, early modern drama offers a detailed record of how people in Shakespeare’s time understood conflict, responsibility and emotional life.
Clark’s current book project examines the relationship between post-reformation English clergy and Shakespearean-era drama. He said he is drawn to how plays from this period depict emotional conflicts that characters struggle to express. Clark said these tensions reflect those faced by clergy in early-modern England, who often felt deep responsibility for their congregations alongside frustration or anger.
These clerical tensions take the form of what he described as “proto-dramas.” Clergy regularly navigated emotionally charged interactions with parishioners, balancing moral authority, compassion and personal doubt. Playwrights adapted these relational patterns and transferred them into dramatic form, Clark explained. Importantly, these moments are often given to characters who are not clergy at all. Figures such as Hamlet engage in dialogue and self-reflection that echo clerical speech, allowing playwrights to deepen the psychological realism of their characters while maintaining audience engagement.
One of Clark’s key research contributions is his argument that this dynamic complicates how scholars categorize early modern drama. The plays resist being labelled strictly religious or secular. By embedding clerical modes of interaction into non-clerical characters, playwrights blurred those boundaries, creating works that draw from religious culture without being confined to it.
Clark explored these ideas further in his upcoming article, “Clergy,” to be published in the Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion. In the piece, he investigated why clerical figures have received relatively little attention in Shakespeare studies. He traced this oversight to 20th-century theories of self-discipline and governance, developed by thinkers such as Max Weber, Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault.
Clark argued while these theorists emphasized secular systems of control, they also relied on models shaped by clerical authority, often imagining clerical interactions in strikingly dramatic terms. According to him, their work inadvertently offered a framework for understanding the importance of clergy to early modern drama.
Alongside this project, Clark is developing a research program that brings social psychology into dialogue with Shakespearean-era theatre. In a recent article on Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, he examined how what social psychologists call the “see-saw effect” appears in 17th-century comedy. This effect describes patterns of interpersonal influence, where characters alternately gain and lose power in social interactions. Clark argued that early-modern playwrights carefully observed these dynamics and used them to generate suspense and realism on stage, reflecting experiences familiar to their audiences.
Clark has also begun connecting early modern drama to contemporary political frameworks. In a recent article on The Tempest, he drew on Indigenous activism and decolonizing theory, particularly the concept of land-based resurgence. He argued that the character of Caliban anticipated the pain of deterritorialization while also expressing hope through continued attachment to land and memory. Unlike other characters who redirect loyalty toward authority figures, Caliban insists on loving the land itself, a stance Clark observed as resonating with Indigenous perspectives on land and identity.
While Clark remained cautious about imposing modern ideas on historical texts, he challenged what he called narrow forms of “presentism” that dismiss the relevance of the past. He argued that historical literature can illuminate contemporary conditions, just as encounters between different modern cultures can deepen understanding. When older works resonate with present-day experiences, Clark sees an opportunity to learn more about both eras.
He believes that early modern drama, especially tragedy, allows audiences to recognize emotional contradictions within characters and societies.
Clark wants us to know he “certainly believe[s] it is important to teach students and readers about the complexities of history and historical art and literature.” He added, “This is my own foundational perspective.”