Literary Studies

"Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark" is an extraordinarily perceptive and courageous book, perceptive for the thoughtful and wide variety of responses it offers to a question both perennial and neglected, courageous for having addressed that question itself, the nature and extent of Shakespeare's religious commitments.In six sections, the authors consider not only Shakespeare's religious indebtedness to Catholic and Protestant teachings and traditions, but also how these traditions informed his attitudes towards issues like death and politics, earlier Christian drama and private prayer, and also how they may have informed his own thinking and even his own spirituality, as they found expression, both directly and indirectly, throughout his canon. [...]. Throughout, the book remains inquiring, thoughtful, and, as needs to be skeptical.  

John C. Hirsh

Georgetown University

"Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark", aptly titled, presents an engaging variety of essays that capture the predominately open-ended, enigmatic nature of Shakespeare's works. In the Preface, Michael Scott and Michael Collins reveal their own open-mindedness regarding the topic: "The question was put to each of the contributors" who "received no further guidance about how they were to understand the question nor how they were to shape their responses" (p. 5). Such freedom for expression and exploration in current scholarly conversation is enviable. For example, Michael Scott does not view Shakespeare as a Christian polemicist, but authors who might are represented in this volume. As a result, this collection of fourteen essays presents refreshingly diverse perspectives on the impact that the Christian faith (Catholic and Protestant) and the religious controversies of the era had on the poems and plays of Shakespeare. In a succinctly lucid Preface, the authors provide a road map for the organization of this volume and its contents. Michael Scott's Introduction responds admirably to four significant questions about Shakespeare's Christianity and the influence of such belief in the works. Especially helpful for the reader is Scott's summary of the importance of medieval drama (morality plays and mystery cycles) for understanding the dramatic soil in which Shakespeare's plays take root.

Shakespeare wrote plays, not sermons; he wrote poetic drama, not autobiography. Therefore, we cannot know for certain what Shakespeare the man definitively believed, and during this period of religious debate and division, individuals could change their views, as did Shakespeare's friend and rival Ben Jonson. However, Shakespeare did write for an ostensibly Christian audience that represented every level of society from the lowest to the highest (only the Queen did not come to the public playhouse). Given the eclectic nature of that audience, Shakespeare could employ both Catholic and Protestant elements for his own specifically 'dramatic' purposes. 

I applaud the authors' use of the question mark because it aligns with Shakespeare's own preference in his art for tantalizing his audiences with questions, conundrums, perplexities, and paradoxes. Indeed, in Hamlet's advice to the players, he cautions the clowns not to speak more than is set down for them because, in the distraction of provoked laughter, the audience may miss "some necessary 'question' of the play to be then considered" (3.2.42-43; my italics). Scott and Collins reward the reader with wide-ranging essays that imaginatively interrogate how and why Shakespeare's plays and poems work within a culture of Christianity at the crossroads in English history, illuminating his era as well as ours.  

Dr. Joan M. Holmer

Georgetown University