Believing in Shakespeare: Studies in Longing by Claire McEachern (review)

This is a thoughtful and extremely well-researched book on a topic—Shakespeare and religion—that can be slippery, especially when authors adopt sectarian or partisan views, or put forward sensational "evidence" of Shakespeare's leanings toward one religion or the other. Claire McEachern's study avoids these pitfalls and, in the spirit of more recent books on the subject, looks at how faith and belief are woven into the dramatic fabric and how they affect our relationship to the plays and involve us in them.

This is not to say that she does not occasionally, if cautiously, take sides. She clearly favors a Calvinist interpretation of the plays, mostly because "the soteriological question is the most arresting one of Reformation religious controversy" (38). In other words, whether one was going to be saved by God or not was a haunting question, one that tested faith and belief and, more generally, maintained a sense of expectation, suspense, and engagement. From this point of view, it is easy to see how fruitful links with drama can be established. Creating her own sense of suspense, McEachern does not delve directly into the plays. Instead, she offers first a thorough and intelligent review of the critical literature on Shakespeare and religion and examines the so-called "turn to religion" in the field from the 1990s onward (13 and ff.). Throughout, she remains aware of and responsive to potential objections to her main argument, which is the connection between "soteriological thought" and "Shakespeare's dramaturgy" (79). This is possibly why she devotes almost half of her book to laying the confessional ground and to questions of theology. Her command of the latter subject is truly daunting. While it remains at all times deeply informative, this part of the book is no doubt the most demanding for the general and even the specialized reader. The picture she paints of the confessional literature and debates of the time is nevertheless highly illuminating. How far Shakespeare was actually immersed in that literature is more debatable and will probably remain an open question, despite the author's feeling that "there is perhaps a sense that Shakespeare is trying to make use of some of his outside reading here" (81). Likewise, some questions of method could have been more fully addressed in this part. McEachern points out that "what links plays and soteriology is a shared telos of inquiry in which peripeteiea and denouement figure prominently," and that "a playgoer is introduced to a problem in search of a solution" (84). This is surely true, but one might wonder whether the question of appropriation, which varies considerably from one person to the other, should not be considered here. Reception is notoriously unpredictable and the way a playgoer appropriates a "telos of inquiry" may vary substantially, even if it is "shared" (84). A partial answer is given a few pages later when McEachern remarks astutely that "our knowledge position in a Shakespeare play is a work-in-progress" (101).

Even though there are sporadic allusions to Shakespeare's works in the preceding pages, the study of the plays proper begins almost halfway into the book (128). It is well worth the wait, as McEachern offers innovative and engaging readings of a range of plays, including Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Richard II, King John, King Lear, and The Tempest. Among the many insights these pages offer is this acute comment on Shakespeare's dramatic style, particularly in his history plays. McEachern concludes, "The result is a kind of pause or slowing of the motion during which Shakespeare creates the sense of a possible fork in the path of history: the space of belief" (198). In the same vein, one can cite her remarkable analysis of the pace of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies: "Part of the problem of King Lear is that it begins again and again, which is one reason watching it can seem never ending" (245). As the second...