Blood Running Down 
Helen Cooper
- The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theatre in Early Modern England by Michael O'Connell
In 1644, the Puritan cleric John Shaw journeyed up to Westmorland to instruct the local people, who, he had been told, were sadly lacking in knowledge of the Bible. The need was confirmed when he interrogated an old man whose long life in the wake of the Reformation seemed to have left him entirely ignorant of all matters theological and ecclesiastical. When pressed as to whether he knew anything about salvation through Jesus Christ, the old man eventually recalled that he had once seen a play ‘where there was a man on a tree, and blood ran down’.
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Helen Cooper is a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge and the author of The English Romance in Time.
Other articles by this contributor:
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