The Gospel According to Shakespeare

Shakespeare read the New Testament closely, Piero Boitani argues, and wrote something like a testament of his own, carrying the good news of the Gospels into human terms on the stage. In Hamlet and King Lear, faith, salvation and peace are only glimpsed from far off. In the late romances, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, forgiveness, resurrection and epiphany are staged openly, if often at a slant.

First published in Italian in 2009 and awarded the De Sanctis Prize, this slim study now appears in English for the first time. It builds on Boitani's earlier work on the Bible and its rewritings, yet it is written for curious general readers as well as scholars. It suits anyone who has felt the strange grace of Hermione's statue or Prospero's farewell and wondered where it came from.