Syncretistic Religion in Shakespeare's Late Romances

“Behold, and Say ‘Tis Well”: The Redemptive Moment in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

“…(Waage 1980: 77) It is a critical commonplace that Shakespearean romance is informed by a curious blend of both Christian and Neoplatonic thought. But while the specifically Christian elements of the resurrection scene have been subject to considerable recent debate -notably by such critics as Ruth Vanita (2000), Phebe Jensen (2004), and Maurice Hunt (2003Hunt ( , 2008Hunt ( , 2011 -and Hermione herself has been very liberally imagined as an amalgam of "wife, mother, Mary, and Christ … all represented in a single character" (Benkert 2015: 47), the Neoplatonic aspects of the plays, while habitually alluded to, more often than not by a passing reference to Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 The Book of the Courtier, remain largely ill-defined, superficially understood, and in need of further consideration. William Engel, in an interesting investigation of kinetic emblems and memory images in The Winter's Tale, concludes that "Shakespeare superimposes onto Hermione a series of mythopoetic associations and quasi-religious tendencies … by virtue of … the latent theurgic energies activated in the performance of the statue scene" (Engel 2013: 86), an assessment that is apt but associated only with the image of Hermes Psychopompos and Christian martyrs.…”

Japan Dramas and Shakespeare at St. Omers English Jesuit College

“…Finkelstein points out how Pericles nonetheless articulates elements of Protestant ideology. Remarking on Pericles 's “religious syncretism” across Catholicism and Protestantism are Hunt, 2011, 65–70; B. Walsh. Werth, 80–96, suggests the play's Protestant discourse of martyrdom repurposes Catholic saint's lives.…”

“… 130 On Eastern Christian adoration for the Virgin Mary as a context for Thaisa's character, see Tartamella, 495–99; focusing on the pagan and procreative connotations of Ephesian Diana is Bicks, 206–08; locating the play's Diana within a picture of Catholic and Protestant religious syncretism is Hunt, 2011, 68–70. On the way complex attention to Diana decenters readings of the play focused on the male protagonist, see also Gossett, 117–20.…”