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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... man receives it with the provision that he knows he must give it back to nature. He will give thanks to God and nature and will always be ready to die, nor will he fear death, since fear of the inevitable is vain; and he will see ...
... man receives it with the provision that he knows he must give it back to nature. He will give thanks to God and nature and will always be ready to die, nor will he fear death, since fear of the inevitable is vain; and he will see ...
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... man trapped in a medieval Morality; it demands we re-apply it to a Renaissance man thrown into a Reformation arena. The curious and experimental Doctor, a skeptical Renaissance scholar, dies in a medieval tragedy of humiliated pride ...
... man trapped in a medieval Morality; it demands we re-apply it to a Renaissance man thrown into a Reformation arena. The curious and experimental Doctor, a skeptical Renaissance scholar, dies in a medieval tragedy of humiliated pride ...
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... man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker? Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly: How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust ...
... man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker? Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly: How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust ...
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... man Luther quaking in his boots. What could he do? Virtually nothing, Curran's Calvinists reply. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” Hamlet exclaims at the outset—would they could! If Hamlet reflects psychological and religious ...
... man Luther quaking in his boots. What could he do? Virtually nothing, Curran's Calvinists reply. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” Hamlet exclaims at the outset—would they could! If Hamlet reflects psychological and religious ...
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... Man for what he is, a body of offenses demanding expiation. Claudius' poison works changes finally issuing in Hamlet's coroner's report on diseased souls. The messy estate left by the father drives the son to renewed urgencies about ...
... Man for what he is, a body of offenses demanding expiation. Claudius' poison works changes finally issuing in Hamlet's coroner's report on diseased souls. The messy estate left by the father drives the son to renewed urgencies about ...
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