Shakespeare as Religion & as a Weapon
This week I pull together various sources that may seem unrelated. A Facebook forum member * posted a link to a good essay in the Hudson Review that (somewhat tangential to its main topic, but not entirely) contained a number of references to Shakespeare as a kind of religion . This prompted me to think a bit more about my own work on Biblical allusions in Hamlet in the larger context of literary studies, specialists in the field, nationalism, and all of that within the context of religious reforms and reformation. On the topic of Shakespeare as religion, the essay quoted Arthur Murphy, Voltaire, and David Garrick: Here’s Brooke Allen, in Hudson Review , “The Shakespeareans,” referencing English playwright Arthur Murphy: “There had been a gradual elevation of Shakespeare from just one among several popular Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights to the one and only national treasure: ‘a kind of established religion in poetry,’ as the playwright Arthur Murphy was already describin...