SHAKESPEARE SCHOLARS’ PREFERENCE FOR SECULAR EXPLANATIONS OVER BIBLICAL/RELIGIOUS ONES

Some may wonder: Why haven’t more scholars associated Elizabethan melancholy like that of Hamlet with “The Dark Night of the Soul” instead of with Robert Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy”?

Burton’s work (1621) came two decades after Shakespeare is thought to have revised the Ur-Hamlet, and was more unique to the time than ancient mysticism. While Spanish author John of the Cross wrote “The Dark Night of the Soul” in 1577-9, it was a Roman Catholic work, as was its 14th Century English predecessor, “The Cloud of Unknowing.”

England after Shakespeare wanted to develop its own national identity and claim the Bard for the English Church. A few have long claimed Shakespeare was secretly Catholic, but this was always disputed.

Some English authors popularized anti-Catholic ideas that monks and nuns were sexually promiscuous and that confessor priests had sex with women parishioners, cuckolding husbands. This may have helped rationalize Henry VIII's dissolution of monasteries after the fact: Perhaps imagining that all or most monks and nuns were perversely sinful made it easier by demonizing and stereotyping the opposition?



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[Originally posted around the week of 12/10/18
on LinkedIn]
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Links to a description of my book project:
On LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eJGBtqV
On this blog: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/05/hamlets-bible-my-book-project-im.html
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#Shakespeare #Bible #Hamlet #Literature #LiteraryCriticism #Drama #Theatre #EarlyModern #religion #Renaissance #EnglishLiterature