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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... feelings unheard by the world. ... They want to tell them and not to tell them; they wish to tell them to one who is strong enough to hear them and yet not too strong to despise them” (Newman, Position of Catholics in England, VIII.7) ...
... feelings unheard by the world. ... They want to tell them and not to tell them; they wish to tell them to one who is strong enough to hear them and yet not too strong to despise them” (Newman, Position of Catholics in England, VIII.7) ...
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... laments not his father's appalling death or his uncle's outrageous crime, but the insensitivity of a singing gravedigger—he lacks feeling for his occupation, while Hamlet voices the pathos of the common lot and indistinction.
... laments not his father's appalling death or his uncle's outrageous crime, but the insensitivity of a singing gravedigger—he lacks feeling for his occupation, while Hamlet voices the pathos of the common lot and indistinction.
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... feels most imprisoned, in the ship's hold. Suddenly he defenestrates—“Up from my cabin,/My sea-gown scarf'd about me”—and things begin to happen. “Our indiscretion sometime[s] serves us well/When our deep plots do pall.” But maybe he ...
... feels most imprisoned, in the ship's hold. Suddenly he defenestrates—“Up from my cabin,/My sea-gown scarf'd about me”—and things begin to happen. “Our indiscretion sometime[s] serves us well/When our deep plots do pall.” But maybe he ...
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... feeling ultimately began with my final years as an undergraduate at William and Mary, where, as part of a burgeoning fascination with Renaissance literature, I gained from Professor Fehrenbach and Professor Savage the beginnings of an ...
... feeling ultimately began with my final years as an undergraduate at William and Mary, where, as part of a burgeoning fascination with Renaissance literature, I gained from Professor Fehrenbach and Professor Savage the beginnings of an ...
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... feelings about what is going on in Hamlet. I see Hamlet as a Catholic-minded person trying futilely to apply his world view to a deterministic Protestant universe which he at last embraces, and I see Hamlet as thereby registering ...
... feelings about what is going on in Hamlet. I see Hamlet as a Catholic-minded person trying futilely to apply his world view to a deterministic Protestant universe which he at last embraces, and I see Hamlet as thereby registering ...
Contents
Purgatory and the Value of Time | |
The Theater of Merit | |
Chastity and the Strumpet Fortune | |
The Be Protestantism and Silence | |
Bibliography | |
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 Limited preview - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
action actor Arthur Dent audience Becon Calvin Calvinistic Catholic Catholicism Christ’s Christian Clarendon Press Claudius Claudius’s common revenger concept conscience contingency dead death display doctrine Drama dream Early Modern England empty overstatement English Recusant Literature English Renaissance example father feeling fols Fortune’s Fulke Gertrude Ghost grief Hamlet Hamlet Studies happen heaven Hecuba Horatio human idea improvisation John John of Salisbury killing King Laertes logic Mark Thornton marriage means merely merit meritorious mother nature never one’s Ophelia Oxford University Press papists Parker Society person’s Peter play play’s Polonius possible prayer Princeton University Princeton University Press Protestant Protestantism Purgatory Reformation repentance Richard role Routledge scene seems sense sexual Shakespeare Quarterly Shakespeare’s Tragic Shakespearean Tragedy soliloquy soul speech strumpet Fortune suicide theater metaphor things Thomas Thomas Becon thoughts trans true truth whore whoredom William William Perkins William Tyndale Yale University Yale University Press York