Scholars have probed Shakespeare’s plays for centuries, hoping to seize a look into the Bard’s soul, to determine if he was a man of faith. The latest academic to take this journey, or at least to write a book about it, is David Kastan, a Yale University English professor who concludes in A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion that the plays are not keys to Shakespeare’s own faith, but rather register the ways religion changed his world.
“One thing we know nothing about is what Shakespeare believed,” he told an audience of about 130 gathered in early March in Manhattan. “We know lots of what he said. He lived in a culture where religion just saturated the culture. Religion is the way culture expressed its fundamental values for Shakespeare.”
The discussion was presented by the Pearl Theatre Company, one of New York’s most respected off-Broadway companies, and the Shakespeare Society, whose artistic director, Michael Sexton, moderated the 90-minute onstage talk at the theater.