Fiddes’s theological breadth and openness are a breath of the freshest of air, bracing, and giving new life. The book is very engagingly written and thoroughly absorbing throughout. It deserves to garner a wide readership among lovers and scholars of Shakespeare and theologians who wish to think with, and through, art, drama, liturgy, poetry.

An eminent theologian, Paul Fiddes does not just add to our shelves another book on Shakespeare and religion, and he sensibly avoids Shakespeare’s own faith. The startling question he poses is what reading Shakespeare’s plays can do for contemporary theology. Rather a lot, as it turns out. But the depth of Fiddes’s knowledge of literary criticism and theory is also startling. Anyone interested in Shakespeare really will want this book on their shelf.

A really original study of the religious hinterland of Shakespeare's drama, this book brings together a wealth of literary and theological learning with a deep attentiveness to the text of the plays and an unusual sensitivity to their resonances.

A richly informed, ambitious book. . . . If religion and literature is experiencing a certain kind of reformulation, away from theology and toward philosophy and cultural criticism, this book is evidence that the parent, how-ever ghostly, is calling from the wings. It may risk churlishness to wish that this extraordinarily learned, exceptionally genial theologian might have more overtly advocated that he can discover more in Shakespeare than philosophy or cultural studies alone can dream.

[A] significant contribution to Shakespeare studies and to theology…It is not only an exemplary book on how to read literature in light of religion and/or theology, but also on how to develop theology from literature…[A] profoundly worthwhile book that proposes, with much-appreciated accessible prose and clarity of explanation, a method worth applying to other authors.