A FEW IMPORTANT BOOKS ON SHAKESPEARE, RELIGION, AND THE BIBLE

A FEW IMPORTANT BOOKS ON SHAKESPEARE, RELIGION, AND THE BIBLE

Attempts to catalogue biblical allusions in Shakespeare in the last century and a half , more often than not, have been focused on the words of the Word, seeking mostly names and key phrases and words from the Bible, and sometimes official homilies, in the playwright’s work. Others have mentioned paraphrased references, and still others, what some call plot echoes. 

This is especially true of efforts by Charles Wordsworth (1864) Thomas Carter (1905), Richmond Noble (1935) and Naseeb Shaheen (1999). Bishop Wordsworth’s book, Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible…, was published only a few years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859) and tried to argue that Shakespeare was evangelizing and catechizing with his use of scripture. 

Peter Milward Biblical Influences in Shakespeare's Great Tragedies in 1987, but did not follow it with other play genres. Milward notes that Horatio, presenting himself as “your servant ever” to Hamlet, and Hamlet responding that he would “change those names” with Horatio, basically paraphrases how Jesus in the gospels flips the roles of servant and master. The passage in the play does not name Jesus, or “disciples,” or washing feet, but the echo of trading places is clearly there. 

Other key works include William Burgess’s The Bible in Shakespeare: A Study of the Relation of the Works of William Shakespeare to the Bible (1903). Burgess finds an echo of Job and friends in Hamlet and friends, but strangely, retracts this idea after suggesting it.

Shaheen is still considered by many to be the standard, but it has been followed more recently by Hannibal Hamlin’s The Bible in Shakespeare (2013), which is more in essays and chapters than it is a catalog, following the format of Burgess more than Shaheen. Hamlin includes a helpful chapter on the history of the study of the Bible and Shakespeare. 

Hamlin is critical of the idea of “plot echo” because “echo” is an inexact metaphor for what is really involved, a good point (but I think the term can still be helpful). 

MORE IMPORTANT WORKS ON SHAKESPERE AND RELIGION/BIBLE:

Hamlet as Minister and Scourge - Fredson Bowers (1989)

The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity - Debora Shuger (1994) 

Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder - T.G. Bishop (1996) 

The Biblical Presence in Shakespeare, Milton, and Blake - Harold Fisch (1999)

Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden - Catherine Belsey (1999)

Shakespeare and the Bible - Steven Marx (2000)

Hamlet in Purgatory - Stephen Greenblatt (2001)

Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness: Its Play and Tolerance - Maurice Hunt (2004)

Secret Shakespeare - Richard Wilson (2004)

Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England - Jeffrey Knapp (2004)

Shakespeare's Hybrid Faith - Jean-Christophe Mayer (2006) 

Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England - Timothy Rosendale (2007)

Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness - Sarah Beckwith (2011)

Shakespeare’s Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age - Daniel Swift (2012)

The Bible in Shakespeare - Hannibal Hamlin (2013)

The Body in Mystery: The Political Theology of the Corpus Mysticum in the Literature of Reformation England - Jennifer Rust (2014)

A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion - David Scott Kastan (2014)

Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation - Nicholas Terpstra (2015) 

Unsettled Toleration: Religious Difference on the Shakespearean Stage - Brian Walsh (2016) *

The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare - by Mary Jo Kietzman (2018)

Enacting the Bible in medieval and early modern drama - eds. Eva von Contzen, Chanita Goodblatt (2020)

See also Hamlin, Hannibal, Part I, Chapter 2, “A Critical History of the Bible in Shakespeare,” (43-76) The Bible in Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, 2013. Hamlin’s chapter on the history of the study in The Bible in Shakespeare.