Last Things in Shakespeare

From inside dust jacket flap. In contrast to the dominant interpretation of Shakespeare as a Renaissance humanist, Harry Morris stresses the playwright's medieval heritage. Reading the plays in light of medieval Christian theology, particularly its eschatology, Morris shows that Shakespeare lived and wrote as an inheritor of a 1,000-year-old Christian world view. This medieval vision has as its central concerns death, judgment, heaven, and hell. With these concerns as his framework Morris analyzes Shakespeare's four major tragedies-"Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth"-as well as "Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Henry" plays, and "As You Like It." An appendix includes a survey of the "memento-mori" lyric along with its special application to "Hamlet". The readings are supported through references to other eschatological works of the period, particularly pictorial art and medieval iconography.