ABSTRACT
The subject of Shakespeare and religion can be investigated from either historical or transhistorical points of view. In the first case, one can study specific intellectual, cultural, or socio-political contexts within which Shakespearean drama was or is situated. In the second, one can treat Shakespeare as a religious or, in some cases, a secular or non-religious thinker engaging either universal religious or general ethical questions that resonate in any period. In recent years, there have been three basic approaches. The first is that of such scholars as Stephen Greenblatt (1988, 2001) and Louis Montrose (1996), who accept the “secularization thesis” (Sommerville 1992) and argue that Shakespeare converted religious into secular dramatic material, appropriating what Greenblatt (2001: 253–54) calls the “charisma” of traditional Christianity for aesthetic ends. The second is that of historicist scholars who situate the thematic material, and, sometimes, the dramatist’s own supposed beliefs in the complex context of early modern English religious change and conflicts. The third is that of scholar-critics who treat the playwright as a significant ethical and religious thinker whose insights can be expressed in post-modern philosophical and theological vocabularies.
