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. |
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Page 13
... speaks concisely the irrevocable truth of his lot : " Che sera , sera " ( I.i.48 ) . This is Hamlet's irrevocable truth as well . There is no stopping or softening or altering what is to be . But while Dr. Faustus does speak to the ...
... speaks concisely the irrevocable truth of his lot : " Che sera , sera " ( I.i.48 ) . This is Hamlet's irrevocable truth as well . There is no stopping or softening or altering what is to be . But while Dr. Faustus does speak to the ...
Page 30
Not to be John E. Curran. magnanimous , but also because it speaks to the soul's freedom : " Liberty is having a mind that rises superior to injury ... that separates itself from all external things . " 35 Hamlet here echoes many of ...
Not to be John E. Curran. magnanimous , but also because it speaks to the soul's freedom : " Liberty is having a mind that rises superior to injury ... that separates itself from all external things . " 35 Hamlet here echoes many of ...
Page 145
... speaks of " hire and salary " not because it is to him an ignoble concept ; on the contrary , it is among the most noble concepts of all , and his need to dignify it comes through here in his refusal to devalue it by wrongful execution ...
... speaks of " hire and salary " not because it is to him an ignoble concept ; on the contrary , it is among the most noble concepts of all , and his need to dignify it comes through here in his refusal to devalue it by wrongful execution ...
Contents
The Be the Eucharist and the Logic of Protestantism | 18 |
Purgatory and the Value of Time | 65 |
The Theater of Merit | 103 |
Copyright | |
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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 |
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