Shakespeare's Religious Language: A DictionaryReligious issues and religious discourse were vastly important in the sixteenth and seventeenth century and religious language is key to an understanding of Shakespeare's plays and poems. This dictionary discusses just over 1000 words and names in Shakespeare's works that have some religious denotation or connotation. Its unique word-by-word approach allows equal consideration of the full religious nuance of each of these words, from 'abbess' to 'zeal'. It also gradually reveals the persistence, the variety, and the sophistication of Shakespeare's religious usage. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 87
... refers to unnamed departed spirits , while ' holy Abram ' ( MV 1.3.72 ) , ' holy Paul ' ( R3 1.3.45 ) or ' God's holy Mother ' ( R3 1.3.305 ) all refer to particular biblical persons of unusual importance or sanctity . ' Holy confession ...
... refers more than once to the bloody tyrant who slaughtered the innocent children of Israel ( WIV 2.1.20 ; ANT 1.2.28-9 ; 3.3.3 ) . ' The wives of Jewry ' also refers , sympathetically , to the Jewish mothers of the innocents whom Herod ...
... refers to ' Cain's jaw - bone , that did the first murder ' ( HAM 5.1.77 ) , and Claudius refers to this same biblical event when he says that his ' offense ' ' hath the primal eldest curse upon't , / A brother's murther ' ( HAM 3.3.37 ...