Being Elizabethan : understanding Shakespeare's neighbors / Norman Jones.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Idealized lives : speak nothing but good of the dead -- Divine social and political orders -- Roles -- Taming the natural child : preparations for living -- Seeing the world anew -- Reimagining England's past -- Living under divine providence -- Personal virtue -- Moral economies -- Creating the godly state -- A generation of hearers -- Elizabethan lives lived.

"This book has been in gestation since 1972. When I began studying history professionally, I had a question on my mind: I wanted to understand the relationship between belief and behavior. My lab was the Reformation, in which people openly talked about what they believed and formally altered those beliefs, marking the beginning of early modern culture. Since I began, my work has explored various approaches to this question, and this work is a synthesis of my varied inquests into Elizabethan society"-- Provided by publisher.