Conclusions Part 1

I’m wrapping up my study of Covenantal Shakespeare. Here are five things I’ve learned.

1. I have a pattern for assessing Shakespeare’s plays: worldview (theme), religious and political context, symbols, a critical survey, and source study.
2. The covenant’s five points are all connected. Though I wrote about transcendence and Julius Caesar, I could have easily written about the play and ethics. I wrote about King Lear and succession, but that play is also about transcendence.
3. The Bible’s symbolic furniture (e.g., heavens, rocks, angels) repeatedly appears in Shakespeare’s work. In general, one symbol dominates (e.g., animals in Lear or the heavens in Hamlet). If I had to reassign the plays to different parts of the covenant, I would start with the play’s dominant symbols.
4. The tragedies move from grace to wrath and criticize specific covenant-breaking behaviors.
5. Shakespeare alters the source texts for Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear to make his thematic point clearer.