Overview

Christian Shakespeare? The question was put to each contributor to this collection of essays. They received no further guidance about how to understand the question nor how to shape their responses. No particular theoretical approach, no shared definition of the question was required or encouraged. Rather, they were free to join, in whatever way they thought useful, the extensive discourse about the impact that the Christian faith and the religious controversies of Shakespeare's time had on his poems and plays. The range of responses points not only to openness of Shakespeare's work to interpretation, but to the seriousness with which the writers reflected on the question and to their careful and sensitive reading of the poems and plays. The heterogeneity of Shakespeare's world is reflected in the heterogeneity of the essays, each an individual response to the complex question they engage. In the end, what the plays and poems reveal about Shakespeare's Christianity remains unclear, and that lack of clarity has also contributed to the variety of responses in the collection. All the essays recognize, to some degree or another, that the tension in Shakespeare's world between old and new, medieval and early modern, Catholic and Protestant, brought uncertainty (and in some cases anxiety) to the minds and hearts of Shakespeare's contemporaries. But what Shakespeare himself believed, how he responded in his work to the religious turmoil of his time remains uncertain. For some of the contributors Shakespeare's plays are inescapably indeterminate (even evasive) and open to a multiplicity of possible readings. For others, Shakespeare takes a stand and, through the careful patterning of his plays, speaks more or less unambiguously to the religious and political issues of his time. Together the essays reflect the varied ways in which the question of Shakespeare's Christianity might be answered.

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Reviews

Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark is an extraordinarily perceptive and courageous book, perceptive for the thoughtful and wide variety of responses it offers to a question both perennial and neglected, courageous for having addressed that question itself, the nature and extent of Shakespeare's religious commitments.In six sections, the authors consider not only Shakespeare's religious indebtedness to Catholic and Protestant teachings and traditions, but also how these traditions informed his attitudes towards issues like death and politics, earlier Christian drama and private prayer, and also how they may have informed his own thinking and even his own spirituality, as they found expression, both directly and indirectly, throughout his canon. [...]. Throughout, the book remains inquiring, thoughtful, and, as needs to be skeptical. John C. Hirsh Georgetown University Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark , aptly titled, presents an engaging variety of essays that capture the predominately open-ended, enigmatic nature of Shakespeare's works. In the Preface, Michael Scott and Michael Collins reveal their own open-mindedness regarding the topic: The question was put to each of the contributors who received no further guidance about how they were to understand the question nor how they were to shape their responses (p. 5). Such freedom for expression and exploration in current scholarly conversation is enviable. For example, Michael Scott does not view Shakespeare as a Christian polemicist, but authors who might are represented in this volume. As a result, this collection of fourteen essays presents refreshingly diverse perspectives on the impact that the Christian faith (Catholic and Protestant) and the religious controversies of the era had on the poems and plays of Shakespeare. In a succinctly lucid Preface, the authors provide a road map for the organization of this volume and its contents. Michael Scott's Introduction responds admirably to four significant questions about Shakespeare's Christianity and the influence of such belief in the works. Especially helpful for the reader is Scott's summary of the importance of medieval drama (morality plays and mystery cycles) for understanding the dramatic soil in which Shakespeare's plays take root. Shakespeare wrote plays, not sermons; he wrote poetic drama, not autobiography. Therefore, we cannot know for certain what Shakespeare the man definitively believed, and during this period of religious debate and division, individuals could change their views, as did Shakespeare's friend and rival Ben Jonson. However, Shakespeare did write for an ostensibly Christian audience that represented every level of society from the lowest to the highest (only the Queen did not come to the public playhouse). Given the eclectic nature of that audience, Shakespeare could employ both Catholic and Protestant elements for his own specifically 'dramatic' purposes. I applaud the authors' use of the question mark because it aligns with Shakespeare's own preference in his art for tantalizing his audiences with questions, conundrums, perplexities, and paradoxes. Indeed, in Hamlet's advice to the players, he cautions the clowns not to speak more than is set down for them because, in the distraction of provoked laughter, the audience may miss some necessary 'question' of the play to be then considered (3.2.42-43; my italics). Scott and Collins reward the reader with wide-ranging essays that imaginatively interrogate how and why Shakespeare's plays and poems work within a culture of Christianity at the crossroads in English history, illuminating his era as well as ours. Dr. Joan M. Holmer Georgetown University

Author Information

Michael Scott is Fellow and Senior Dean at Blackfriars Hall Oxford. He is the author of books on Shakespeare, Elizabethan / Jacobean and Twentieth Century Theatre, including 'John's Marston's Plays: Theme, Structure and Performance'; 'Renaissance Drama and a Modern Audience'; 'Shakespeare and the Modern Dramatist'; 'Shakespeare's Tragedies: All that Matters'; 'Shakespeare's Comedies: All that Matters'; 'Shakespeare: A Complete Introduction'. He was founding and general editor of 'The Text and Performance' series and of 'The Critics Debate' series. He is also co-editor of the 'Casebook on Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming'. With Deborah Cartmell, he co-edited 'Talking Shakespeare: Shakespeare into the Millennium'. He was on the editorial board, which relaunched 'Critical Survey' for O.U.P. He has lectured on Shakespeare in many countries around the world including India, China, U.S.A. as well as in the U.K., where he has given public lectures for the R.S.C. and the National Theatre. He also writes fiction under the name of Michael Kerr Scott. Michael J. Collins is Teaching Professor of English and Dean Emeritus at Georgetown University. He is editor of 'Reading What's There: Essays on Shakespeare in Honor of Stephen Booth' (2014); 'Shakespeare's Sweet Thunder: Essays on the Early Comedies' (1997); and, with Francis J Ambrosio, 'Text and Teaching: The Search for Human Excellence' (1991). He has published essays on teaching Shakespeare and Shakespeare in performance in 'Shakespeare Quarterly', 'Shakespeare Yearbook', and 'Critical Survey' among other publications. He regularly reviews productions of Shakespeare for 'Shakespeare Bulletin'. He has been a member of the faculty on courses for secondary school teachers at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington and Shakespeare's Globe in London.

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