Gatekeeping and Religious Turns in Shakespeare Scholarship (Part 8: Religious Bias in Shakespeare Scholarship)
If we are to believe Roland Frye (1963) [1], what was later called “The Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Studies” [2] may actually have been more of a *return* to religion on renewed terms, after a turning away that was aided in part by Frye and a bit of Protestant gatekeeping. Frye writes, “In the train of [G. Wilson] Knight’s influence, we have had and continue to have a great wave of supposedly theological analyses of Shakespeare: again and again we are informed of the discovery of some new Christ-figure or Christ-allusion in the plays, or we are advised as to the eternal destiny in a future life of Shakespeare’s stage characters, or we are introduced to some doctrine which serves as a theological structure upon which an entire plays is built.” (5) At least at that time, Frye believed there was too much “supposedly theological analyses of Shakespeare,” marked by sloppy or ill-supported religious claims, and poorly thought out theology, often for not being Protestant enou...