Peter Kaufman, in his new and enlightening book Religion Around Shakespeare, seeks to offer a new way of understanding the link between Shakespeare and religion. Since the evidence of this link from historical documents and Shakespeare's plays is speculative, this book asserts that perhaps the most useful way to forge ahead is simply to try to understand the religion around Shakespeare. By the end of work, Kaufman lays out the standards of his work's success: “But if our understanding of the religion around [Shakespeare], of those around him who were staking and agitating, has been improved by what my book reveals about late Tudor and early Stuart attitudes toward religious leadership, religious personality, and religious community, its job is done” (199). By this standard and the standard of any reader looking for a window into the history of religious strife and conflict around Shakespeare, this book is a great success and will be welcomed by literary historians of the Renaissance, those interested in deepening their knowledge of the factions of Jacobethan Reformation culture and of the legacy of John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury during much of Shakespeare's early life and career and an important focus of Kaufman's work.

By beginning the book with the assertion that he is “not a literary historian,” Kaufman establishes early that he will not be following in the path, exemplified in the work of Stephen Greenblatt, Richard Wilson, Alison Shell and others, of trying to interpret religious resonance or even allegiances found in Shakespeare's work. “Circumstance is my subject,” Kaufman declares (1). These circumstances make for fascinating reading. Beginning in the initial chapter “Religion Around” with a section on the religious climate at the moment Elizabeth took the throne, discussions of succession lead quickly to the controversy over sermons and sermonizing in England. Sacramentality versus the word comes to divide the conformists and reformists while both fear the lingering presence of Catholics. Kaufman's discussion of the disputes between the reformists and their sermons and the conformists and their episcopal structure is a highlight of the book and useful for scholars working on any aspect of the religious climate of Jacobethan England. Also enlightening is the clear depiction of the fragility of the English project of protestant reform where the hierarchical structures of the conformists must always be put in balance with varying levels of repression towards the puritans, reformists, and Catholics. As James VI and I takes the throne, everyone hopes for a reset button that will benefit their side (the Catholics' chance famously dashed with Guy Fawkes), but as Whitgift survives just barely into Jacobean age, Kaufman shows us the fragile dominance of the conformist church and its episcopal structure holds on. The fight against religious extremism and the search for moderation in the English church also receives ample attention in this chapter.

The second chapter “Around Shakespeare” brings Kaufman's subject closer to Shakespeare. Admitting that “retrieving the religion around Shakespeare . . . would be easier if it were not so difficult to locate him,” Kaufman offers what is known and what can responsibly gleaned about the religious life around Shakespeare in Stratford and London. The question of Shakespeare's potential Catholic influences and surroundings is dealt with in great detail responsibly avoiding any conclusions about what Shakespeare may have believed opening up the possibility that Shakespeare “was welcomed into Catholic circles yet was confessionally unaligned when he left Stratford for London” (59). In London, studies of William Perkins and William Crashaw offer a vision of the Reformist religious culture of London which Shakespeare may have certainly observed and mocked in his own plays. Further discussions of the Essex Rebellion and the building of the Globe Theater lead ultimately to the conclusion, well known by Shakespeareans, that Shakespeare seems to have “stayed above the fray” in both local politics and religion (86).

Kaufman then offers the reader an “Interlude,” before plunging into discussions of “Religious Authority,” “Religious Personality,” and “Religious Community,” reminding the reader that his book will not comment on Shakespeare's own piety. Offering a sort of consolation to the reader, he argues that in “taking various parts of the plays' pastoralia as specimens of the anxieties and ambivalences that punctuated the piety, protests, and religious polemic around Shakespeare is worthwhile, and it is tantamount to treating them as historical evidence for the late Tudor and early Stuart . . . attitudes toward religious leadership . . . , personality . . . and religious community” (88). The discussions which follow are useful in their history but at times, if a reader were to view his critical moves ungenerously, approach the kind of arguments he wants to avoid, though his interpretative caveats are frequent and responsibly offered. Still, his readings of key scenes in Measure for Measure, King John, and Coriolanus are revelatory and offer cautious and careful readings.

Though Kaufman's text at time can seem, in its thematic organization, to wander a bit unrestrainedly through the religious climate of the Jacobethan era, those looking for new clarification on what is known about the religious culture in Stratford, Southwark, and London will find an essential text here. Though many recent treatments of Shakespeare and Religion have come out in recent years, this book stands out from many published before it in its insistence on the distance between the historical remnants of Jacobethan religious culture and the beliefs that Shakespeare himself may or may not have held. This responsible approach can serve as an adequate warning to literary scholars eager to peer into the window of Shakespeare's soul while at the same time leaving the same literary scholar with so much more raw material to work with in considering the theological and sectarian entanglements of the play. If that seems a bit against the spirit of the book, it is one of many useful charms in a very useful text. This book is the first in the “Religion Around” series by Pennsylvania State University Press, edited by Kaufman, and this opening volume is an inspired and exciting start.