Faith in Shakespeare

by Richard C. McCoy

Overview

Speculation about Shakespeare's own religious beliefs and responses to the Reformation have dominated discussions of faith in the playwright's work for decades. As a result, we often lose sight of what's truly important-the plays themselves. By focusing on those plays in several succinct, fluently written chapters, Richard McCoy reminds us of the spell-binding power inherent in works like Othello, As You Like It, and The Winter's Tale and shows why they continue to cause audiences to gladly exercise what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the "willing suspension of disbelief." Faith in Shakespeare ruminates on what it means to believe in the Bard's plays, exploring how their plots can be both preposterous and gripping, and how their characters seem more substantial and enduring than the people surrounding us in the theater. Informed by Coleridge's "poetic faith," the book discusses what this concept shares with religious faith and how it departs from recent historicist approaches to the dramatist's work. Faith in Shakespeare concentrates more on text than context, finding the afterlife of Shakespeare's language more vivid and engaging than theological controversies. The book confirms its convictions in literature's intrinsic powers by exploring the causes for our paradoxical belief in theater's potent but manifest illusions. Plays that ask their audience to "awake your faith" or "believe then, if you please" ultimately enable us to "mind true things by what their mockeries be." Rather than faith in God or the supernatural, McCoy argues that faith in Shakespeare is sustained and explained only by the complex, subtle, and entirely human power of poetic eloquence and dramatic performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190217594
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/16/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Richard C. McCoy is Professor of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. He is the author of Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in the English Reformation; The Rites of Knighthood: Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry; and Sir Philip Sidney: Rebellion in Arcadia.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Faith in Shakespeare Chapter 2: The Comedy of Errors and Illusion's Blessed Power Chapter 3: As You Like It and Believing If You Please Chapter 4: Othello and the Stakes of Tragedy Chapter 5: The Winter's Tale and the Recovery of Faith Epilogue: Theater's Potent Art Notes

Editorial Reviews

"In this excellent, illuminating, and at times moving book, McCoy unfolds his idea of 'poetic faith.' ... The book is a pleasure to read, is quite short, and makes its case with care and commitment. It offers a refreshing way of looking again at the question of belief in Shakespeare. By reducing the influence of religious division, and focusing instead on the need humans have to believe in worldly things, in art and one another, it suggests many opportunities to appreciate the rich entanglement of acting and life that is such a hallmark of Shakespeare's work. Its readings of Shakespeare are sensitive but also pointed, and they weave together into an engaging and satisfying whole." —Modern Philology

"Richard McCoy has written an eloquent brief for theatrical faith as the central experience in Shakespeare's theatrical art. This faith is neither divine nor fraudulent; it eschews both metaphysics and cynicism. Instead it embraces what Coleridge famously called a 'willing suspension of disbelief,' a suspension McCoy celebrates as precious human achievement." —Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

"In this humane and accessible book, Richard McCoy leaves behind unanswerable debates about Shakespeare's own theology to concentrate instead on the plays' strong insistence on the restorative powers of theatrical illusion. With masterful readings of several plays, McCoy eloquently reminds us why we care about Shakespeare." —Gail Kern Paster, Director Emerita, the Folger Shakespeare Library

"Worked out over a succession of encounters, detailed and personal, Faith in Shakespeare presents an account of how the Bard tests—ingeniously, advisedly, and repeatedly—our capacity to abide in that middle state between complacent realism and radical doubt; how that testing engenders faith in the play, and the playwright; and how the repeated rediscovery of our ability to invest ourselves in the fate of his characters, in spite of everything, might be grounds for faith in ourselves." —Jeff Dolven, author of Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance

"Richard C. McCoy's new book on faith in Shakespeare proposes neither the darkness of social criticism nor sectarian religious claims. For McCoy, the mutually dependent labors of Shakespeare's extraordinary writing and the active poetic faith of auditors and readers yields an enduring harvest of healing wonder at not only the huge costs but also the immense worth of 'human love amidst all its painful flaws.'" —Frank Whigham, author of Seizures of the Will in Early Modern English Drama

"Richard McCoy wrestles with one of the great mysteries of Shakespeare's art: how do the plays manage to compel belief, even in a skeptical age like our own? The result is a profound and illuminating study, one that will prove invaluable to playgoers, actors, and readers eager to understand how the plays work their magic." —James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

"Recommended." —CHOICE

"Lively and cool, McCoy, for each of his principal texts, guides the readers through important recent critical controversies and then makes his own case. His notes, voluminous and lucid, could serve as an excellent annotated bibliography of scholarship worth reading."—Shakespeare Quarterly

From the Publisher