Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to BeBuilding on current scholarly interest in the religious dimensions of the play, this study shows how Shakespeare uses Hamlet to comment on the Calvinistic Protestantism predominant around 1600. By considering the play's inner workings against the religious ideas of its time, John Curran explores how Shakespeare portrays in this work a completely deterministic universe in the Calvinist mode, and, Curran argues, exposes the disturbing aspects of Calvinism. By rendering a Catholic Prince Hamlet caught in a Protestant world which consistently denies him his aspirations for a noble life, Shakespeare is able in this play, his most theologically engaged, to delineate the differences between the two belief systems, but also to demonstrate the consequences of replacing the old religion so completely with the new. |
From inside the book
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... Papists, and Playgoers in Post Reformation England (New Haven:Yale University Press,2002), 389–91;Jennifer Rust, “Wittenberg and Melancholic Allegory:The Reformation and itsDiscontents in Hamlet,” in Shakespeare andthe Cultureof ...
... Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and ConfessionalPolemic inEarly Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), 100–118; Crockett, Paradox, 44–49; Norman Jones, The English Reformation: Religion andCultural Adaptation (Oxford ...
... Papist and aProtestant (London, 1582), fols.47–48; William Perkins, Assertion: A Papist Cannot Go Beyond a Reprobate,647–52. 15 The obvious figure calledto mindhere is Richard Hooker, whose anti Calvinismis concealed in obscurity ...
... papists tried to “makethe partsof acontradiction to be bothtrue atthe same time”—which were impossible evento God.23 Willetis especially instructive onthis point, forin hisattackon Catholic sophistry he affirms that notbeing is sheer ...
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Contents
TheLoss of Contingency 2TheBe the Eucharist and the Logic of Protestantism | |
4The Theater of Merit 5 Chastity andthe Strumpet Fortune 6 The BeProtestantism and Silence | |
Index | |
Other editions - View all
Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be John E. Curran Jr Limited preview - 2016 |
Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be John E. Curran Jr Limited preview - 2016 |
Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to be John E. Curran Limited preview - 2007 |