The Faith of William Shakespeare

By Graham Holderness

William Shakespeare stills stands head and shoulders above any other author in the English language, a position that is unlikely ever to change. Yet it is often said that we know very little about him - and that applies as much to what he believed as it does to the rest of his biography. Or does it? In this authoritative new study, Graham Holderness takes us through the context of Shakespeare's life, times of religious and political turmoil, and looks at what we do know of Shakespeare the Anglican. But then he goes beyond that, and mines the plays themselves, not just for the words of the characters, but for the concepts, themes and language which Shakespeare was himself steeped in - the language of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Considering particularly such plays as Richard ll, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest and The Winter's Tale, Holderness shows how the ideas of Catholicism come up against those of Luther and Calvin; how Christianity was woven deep into Shakespeare's psyche, and how he brought it again and again to his art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Books
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9780745968926

Graham Holderness

Graham Holderness is the author of numerous books on literary criticism, theory, and scholarship, as well as fiction, poetry, and drama. His most recent works include The Faith of William Shakespeare (Lion Books, 2016), Tales from Shakespeare: Creative Collisions (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Re-writing Jesus: Christ in 20th Century Fiction and Film (Bloomsbury, 2014), and the historical fantasy novel Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare, Vampire Hunter (Top Hat Books, 2015).