Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England

Faunt’s intense language of affection and loyalty can be explained as the convergence of these strands. As we will see, the imperatives of both modes combined to produce a language of considerable emotional expressiveness, and, for Faunt, a consoling space that mitigated his religious despair. The letters that survive from this period constitute, in fact, an early form of spiritual journal or autobiography—exercises in practical divinity in epistolary mode a decade before such habits have been held typical.