Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation - by Dennis Taylor (Hardcover)

About the Book

Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation explores how Shakespeare responded in drama to the historical trauma of the Elizabethan Reformation. Shakespeare creatively engaged Catholic, Protestant, and secular points of view, and suggested new and interesting syntheses in play...

Book Synopsis

Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation explores how Shakespeare responded in drama to the historical trauma of the Elizabethan Reformation. Shakespeare creatively engaged Catholic, Protestant, and secular points of view, and suggested new and interesting syntheses in play after play, thus providing models for today's ecumenical dialogues.

Review Quotes

A magisterial study of Shakespeare's plays, adept and inclusive, in their navigation through the various currents, Catholic, Protestant, and secular of the English Reformation. A rich and indispensable landmark.

Dennis Taylor has written a large and intricate work of exploration, synthesis, redefinition, and reinterpretation that is essential reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare's relation to the religious, a-religious, and irreligious currents of his time--and beyond his time. Written in a lively and engaging style, the book is learned but unpretentious. It is often acute but never precious, has ambitions but acknowledges limitations, offers close readings as well as speculations about large "historical forces." It will be controversial, but certainly a challenge to complacent thinking about issues that deserve the best that scholarship can do for them.

Dennis Taylor is that rare gem among scholars, a first-rate historicist whose work illuminates Shakespeare's greatness as a literary artist. At the same time, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation: Literary Negotiation of Religious Difference is a paragon of scholarly dialogue. Not everyone will agree with Taylor's meticulous placement of Shakespeare's Catholic and Protestant accents, but no honest scholar will come away empty-handed.

Taylor shows how religious contention operates in Shakespeare's career up to Hamlet. He does not engage in scholarly gymnastics but opens the discussion up to curious learners. Taylor writes from a Roman Catholic perspective but is not dogmatic or insistent--indeed, he is quite restrained when comparing Shakespeare to Robert Southwell. The true achievement of this book is its percipience about particulars, especially comparisons. Taylor's reading of Hamlet sees the end of the Catholic order as the trauma behind the play's sense of loss yet recognizes that, in the world of Elsinore's court, Catholicism is "discarded and out of date" (p. 384). Accessible, expansive, and scrupulous, this book is a major achievement. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

About the Author

Dennis Taylor is professor emeritus of English and former chair of the English Department at Boston College.