The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of Interpretation in Reformation England

Thomas Fulton · Kristen Poole

2018. g. apr. · Cambridge University Press

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The Bible was everywhere in Shakespeare's England. Through sermons, catechisms, treatises, artwork, literature and, of course, biblical reading itself, the stories and language of the Bible pervaded popular and elite culture. In recent years, scholars have demonstrated how thoroughly biblical allusions saturate Shakespearean plays. But Shakespeare's audiences were not simply well versed in the Bible's content - they were also steeped in the practices and methods of biblical interpretation. Reformation and counter-reformation debate focused not just on the biblical text, but - crucially - on how to read the text. The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage is the first volume to integrate the study of Shakespeare's plays with the vital history of Reformation practices of biblical interpretation. Bringing together the foremost international scholars in the field of 'Shakespeare and the Bible', these essays explore Shakespeare's engagement with scriptural interpretation in the tragedies, histories, comedies, and romances.

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Thomas Fulton is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is the author of Historical Milton: Manuscript, Print, and Political Culture in Revolutionary England ( 2010), and co-editor, with Ann Baynes Coiro, of Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton (Cambridge, 2012).

Kristen Poole is the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of English Renaissance Literature at the University of Delaware. She is the author of Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000) and Supernatural Environments in Shakespeare's England: Spaces of Demonism, Divinity, and Drama (Cambridge, 2011).