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The first volume to consider how the context of early modern biblical interpretation shaped Shakespeare's plays.
List of contents
Introduction: 'popular hermeneutics in Shakespeare's London' Thomas Fulton and Kristen Poole; Part I. Europe, England: Contextualising Shakespeare's Bible: 1. The Bible in transition in the age of Shakespeare: a European perspective Bruce Gordon; 2. The trouble with translation: paratexts and England's bestselling New Testament Aaron T. Pratt; Part II. Stagings: Reformation Reading Practices in the Theater: 3. John 6, Measure for Measure, and the complexities of the literal sense Jay Zysk; 4. Words of diverse significations: Hamlet's puns, amphibology, and allegorical hermeneutics Kristen Poole; 5. England's Jerusalem in Shakespeare's Henriad Beatrice Groves; 6. Discontented harmonies: words against words in Pomfret Castle Tom Bishop; Part III. Interplay: Biblican Forms and Other Genres: 7. Titus Andronicus and the rhetoric of lamentation Adrian Streete; 8. The acts of Pericles: Shakespeare's biblical romance Hannibal Hamlin; 9. Finding Pygmalion in the Bible: notes on the unity of The Winter's Tale Richard Strier; Part IV. Enactment: Hermeneutics and the Social: 10. Shylock in the lion's den: enacting exegesis in Merchant of Venice Shaina Trapedo; 11. Maimed rites and whirling words in Hamlet Jesse M. Lander; 12. Political theology on the pulpit and the Shakespearean stage Thomas Fulton; Afterword Julia Reinhard Lupton.
About the author
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).
Summary
Shakespeare's audience was not simply well-versed in the Bible's content - they were also informed in biblical exegesis, modes of interpretation such as typology and harmonizing, and on the polemics of literal versus figurative reading. This is the first volume to consider how this interpretive knowledge shaped Shakespeare's plays.
