Hamlet's Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies
Peter Lake
Abstract
This incisive book reveals how in Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, Shakespeare worked through a range of Tudor anxieties, including concerns about the nature of justice, resistance, and salvation. In both Hamlet and Titus, the princes are faced with successions forged under questionable circumstances and they each have a choice: whether or not to resort to political violence. The unfolding action, the book argues, is best understood in terms of contemporary debates about the legitimacy of resistance and the relation between religion and politics. Relating the plays to their broader political and p ... More
This incisive book reveals how in Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, Shakespeare worked through a range of Tudor anxieties, including concerns about the nature of justice, resistance, and salvation. In both Hamlet and Titus, the princes are faced with successions forged under questionable circumstances and they each have a choice: whether or not to resort to political violence. The unfolding action, the book argues, is best understood in terms of contemporary debates about the legitimacy of resistance and the relation between religion and politics. Relating the plays to their broader political and polemical contexts, Lake sheds light on the nature of revenge, resistance, and religion in post-Reformation England.
Keywords:
Shakespeare,
Queen Elizabeth,
religious conflict,
Titus Andronicus,
Hamlet,
post-Reformation England,
revenge,
resistance,
religion
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300247817 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: January 2021 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300247817.001.0001 |
