Shakespeare and Religion: Capricious and Concealed Faith in Three Tragicomic Plays

Abstract

This thesis undertakes a consideration of three of Shakespeare’s tragicomic plays through an assessment of the playwright’s engagement with the ongoing processes of the post- Reformation period. Through a circumspect but nonetheless dynamic approach to unpredictable and fluctuating faiths, I argue, Shakespeare deepens his dramatic, poetic, metaphysical and ethical sonorities, seeing the divisions between sacred and secular, past and present, fiction and reality as under continual interrogation. This thesis seeks to further elucidate our appreciation of the these plays through recognition of the dominant position of religion and the Reformation in early seventeenth century culture, even as it can be hidden from our perspective(s). It intends to sharpen the literary apparatus of the historicist approach, relocating the discussion back to the literary eminence of dramas that nonetheless mirror and make their historical time. Drawing upon a diversity of instances from an assortment of literary and religious sources, the methodological approach implemented by this dissertation occasions the treatment of Shakespeare’s dramas as religiously responsive texts, fertile in theological, political and social import, sceptically raising questions but judiciously circumventing comfortable or direct answers. The introductory chapter argues that the critical ‘religious turn’ in Shakespearean and early modern studies has correctly sought to place texts within their historical framework, with a view to revitalising the relevant confessional concerns of the period, yet all too often they have done so at the expense of employing such contextualisation to the service of these works as imaginative literary creations. The second chapter surveys the critical history of the tragicomic plays from their first performances to the present, in order to see the need for an intellectual equilibrium between the extremities of interpretations. The third chapter assesses the theological, ecclesiastical and theatrical axes of the pre- and post-Reformation era, in particular considering the engagement between church and playhouse. The next chapters explore how three particular Shakespearean tragicomedies engage with the problems and curiosities raised in the post-Reformation period. My interpretations locate the comprehensive trajectory of religious thought in these plays, first by examining the temporal religious concerns of Pericles, then by looking at Shakespeare’s treatment of eschatology and religious politics in The Winter’s Tale, and finally by contemplating the resonance of religious upheavals on authority and jurisdiction in The Tempest.