Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592 - 1604(Oxford English Monographs)

Texts and Traditions explores Shakespeare's thoroughgoing engagement with the religious culture of his time. In the wake of the recent resurgence of interest in Shakespeare's Catholicism, Groves eschews a reductively biographical approach and considers instead the ways in which Shakespeare's borrowing from both the visual culture of Catholicism and the linguistic wealth of the Protestant English Bible enriched his drama. Through close readings of a number of plays - Romeo and Juliet, King John, 1 Henry IV, Henry V ,and Measure for Measure - Groves unearths and explains previously unrecognised allusions to the Bible, the Church's liturgy, and to the mystery plays performed in England in Shakespeare's boyhood. Texts and Traditions provides new evidence of the way in which Shakespeare exploited his audience's cultural memory and biblical knowledge in order to enrich his ostensibly secular drama and argues that we need to unravel the interpretative possibilities of these religious nuances in order fully to grasp the implications of his plays.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: Drama and the Word: The Bible on the early modern stage 2: Shakespeare's incarnational aesthetic: The mystery plays and Catholicism 3: Comedic form and paschal motif in the first and second quartos of Romeo and Juliet 4: 'I am not he shall buyld the Lord a house': Religious imagery and the succession to the English throne in King John 5: : 'Covering discretion with a coat of folly': The redemptive self-fashioning of Hal 6: 'Usurp the beggary he was never born to': Measure for Measure and the questioning of divine kingship Conclusion

About the Author :
Beatrice Groves is the Junior Research Fellow in Humanities at Wolfson College, Oxford.

Review :
Groves writes with clarity and argues with lucidity; her analysis avoids unnecessary jargon or dense prose. In this spirit, using a judicious argument and obvious learning, Groves does indeed produce a laudable piece of scholarship and makes a meritorious contribution to this growing body of scholarship. Paul J. Voss, RES learned and judicious Andrew Hadfield, Times Literary Supplement [A] very graceful and profoundly important book...a great book...I urge everyone with an interest in early modern Britain to read it. Martin Henig [a] fascinating book Contemporary Review The book, densely footnoted, offers a renewed sense of Shakespeare's engagement with the religious culture of his time. Church Times