Religion Around Shakespeare

Religion Around Shakespeare PDF Author: Peter Iver Kaufman
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271069589
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
For years scholars and others have been trying to out Shakespeare as an ardent Calvinist, a crypto-Catholic, a Puritan-baiter, a secularist, or a devotee of some hybrid faith. In Religion Around Shakespeare, Peter Kaufman sets aside such speculation in favor of considering the historical and religious context surrounding his work. Employing extensive archival research, he aims to assist literary historians who probe the religious discourses, characters, and events that seem to have found places in Shakespeare’s plays and to aid general readers or playgoers developing an interest in the plays’ and playwright’s religious contexts: Catholic, conformist, and reformist. Kaufman argues that sermons preached around Shakespeare and conflicts that left their marks on literature, law, municipal chronicles, and vestry minutes enlivened the world in which (and with which) he worked and can enrich our understanding of the playwright and his plays.

Religion Around Shakespeare

Religion Around Shakespeare PDF Author: Peter Iver Kaufman
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271069589
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
For years scholars and others have been trying to out Shakespeare as an ardent Calvinist, a crypto-Catholic, a Puritan-baiter, a secularist, or a devotee of some hybrid faith. In Religion Around Shakespeare, Peter Kaufman sets aside such speculation in favor of considering the historical and religious context surrounding his work. Employing extensive archival research, he aims to assist literary historians who probe the religious discourses, characters, and events that seem to have found places in Shakespeare’s plays and to aid general readers or playgoers developing an interest in the plays’ and playwright’s religious contexts: Catholic, conformist, and reformist. Kaufman argues that sermons preached around Shakespeare and conflicts that left their marks on literature, law, municipal chronicles, and vestry minutes enlivened the world in which (and with which) he worked and can enrich our understanding of the playwright and his plays.

A Will to Believe

A Will to Believe PDF Author: David Scott Kastan
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191004294
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
On 19 December 1601, John Croke, then Speaker of the House of Commons, addressed his colleagues: "If a question should be asked, What is the first and chief thing in a Commonwealth to be regarded? I should say, religion. If, What is the second? I should say, religion. If, What the third? I should still say, religion." But if religion was recognized as the "chief thing in a Commonwealth," we have been less certain what it does in Shakespeare's plays. Written and performed in a culture in which religion was indeed inescapable, the plays have usually been seen either as evidence of Shakespeare's own disinterested secularism or, more recently, as coded signposts to his own sectarian commitments. Based upon the inaugural series of the Oxford-Wells Shakespeare Lectures in 2008, A Will to Believe offers a thoughtful, surprising, and often moving consideration of how religion actually functions in them: not as keys to Shakespeare's own faith but as remarkably sensitive registers of the various ways in which religion charged the world in which he lived. The book shows what we know and can't know about Shakespeare's own beliefs, and demonstrates, in a series of wonderfully alert and agile readings, how the often fraught and vertiginous religious environment of Post-Reformation England gets refracted by the lens of Shakespeare's imagination.

Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare's Festive World

Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare's Festive World PDF Author: Phebe Jensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521506395
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
A study of the relationship between traditional festive pastimes, including Midsummer pageants and dancing, and Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare's Christianity

Shakespeare's Christianity PDF Author: E. Beatrice Batson
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 1932792368
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores the influences of Catholicism and Protestantism in a trio of Shakespeare's tragedies: Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Bypassing the discussion of Shakespeare's personal religious beliefs, Batson instead focuses on distinct footprints left by Catholic and Protestant traditions that underlie and inform Shakespeare's artistic genius.

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion PDF Author: Hannibal Hamlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107172594
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Get Book Here

Book Description
A wide-ranging yet accessible investigation into the importance of religion in Shakespeare's works, from a team of eminent international scholars.

Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England

Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England PDF Author: Dennis Taylor
Publisher: Studies in Religion and Litera
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Get Book Here

Book Description
The question of Shakespeare's Catholic contexts has occupied many scholars in recent years and this study brings together 16 original essays examining Shakespeare's work in the light of revisionist scholarship, from monastic life in 'Measure for Measure' to Puritanism in 'Hamlet'.

Religion in the Age of Shakespeare

Religion in the Age of Shakespeare PDF Author: Christopher Baker
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shakespeare's plays were the product of his culture and reflect the daily life of Elizabethans. This book examines the religious background of his works and helps students use his plays to understand religion in Elizabethan England. The initial chapters survey the role of religion in Shakespeare's world. The volume then looks at religion in his plays and how productions from different periods have addressed the religious issues of his drama. A chapter then overviews criticism on Shakespeare and religion, while a selection of primary documents illuminates his religious milieu. Students often find the Elizabethan world fascinating yet challenging. The same can be said of Shakespeare's plays, which reflect the daily life and concerns of Elizabethan England and grew out of his milieu. Written for students, this book illuminates the religious life of Elizabethan England, promotes a greater understanding of Shakespeare's plays, and uses Shakespeare's works to examine Early Modern religious culture. The volume begins with a quick overview of the origins of Elizabethan religious traditions, followed by a more detailed consideration of the chief religious beliefs and concerns of Shakespeare's world. It then discusses the role of religion in Shakespeare's plays. This is followed by a look at how various productions have interpreted his religious concerns. A review of criticism on Shakespeare and religion follows, along with a selection of primary documents related to religion in his world. A glossary defines key terms and concepts, and a bibliography cites print and electronic resources for further study. Literature students will welcome this book as a guide to Shakespeare's plays, while history students will value it for using his plays to examine religion in the Early Modern era.

Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine

Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine PDF Author: Roland Mushat Frye
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400878934
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
Combining scholarship with grace, the author shows in this study that Shakespeare's works are pervasively secular, that he was concerned with the dramatization of universally human situations within a temporal and this-worldly arena, and that he was familiar with and used theological materials as only one of many natural and available sources. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Secret Shakespeare

Secret Shakespeare PDF Author: Richard Wilson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 152618415X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shakespeare's Catholic context was the most important literary discovery of the last century. No biography of the Bard is now complete without chapters on the paranoia and persecution in which he was educated, or the treason which engulfed his family. Whether to suffer outrageous fortune or take up arms in suicidal resistance was, as Hamlet says, 'the question' that fired Shakespeare's stage. In 'Secret Shakespeare' Richard Wilson asks why the dramatist remained so enigmatic about his own beliefs, and so silent on the atrocities he survived. Shakespeare constructed a drama not of discovery, like his rivals, but of darkness, deferral, evasion and disguise, where, for all his hopes of a 'golden time' of future toleration, 'What's to come' is always unsure. Whether or not 'He died a papist', it is because we can never 'pluck out the heart' of his mystery that Shakespeare's plays retain their unique potential to resist. This is a fascinating work, which will be essential reading for all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.

Shakespeare's God

Shakespeare's God PDF Author: Ivor Morris
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415353243
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 504

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 1972. Shakespeare's God investigates whether a religious interpretation of Shakespeare's tragedies is possible. The study places Christianity's commentary on the human condition side by side with what tragedy reveals about it. This pattern is identified using the writings of Christian thinkers from Augustine to the present day. The pattern in the chief phenomena of literary tragedy is also traced