Building on current scholarly interest in the religious dimensions of the play, this study shows how Shakespeare uses Hamlet to comment on the Calvinistic Protestantism predominant around 1600. By considering the play's inner workings against the religious ideas of its time, John Curran explores how Shakespeare portrays in this work a completely deterministic universe in the Calvinist mode, and, Curran argues, exposes the disturbing aspects of Calvinism while mourning the loss of Catholic notions of contingency.

John E. Curran Jr is Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, USA. He is also the author of Roman Invasions: The British History, Protestant Anti-Romanism, and The Historical Imagination in England, 1530-1660.

Chapter 1 Bad Dreams; Chapter 2 The Be, the Eucharist, and the Logic of Protestantism; Chapter 3 Purgatory and the Value of Time; Chapter 4 The Theater of Merit; Chapter 5 Chastity and the Strumpet Fortune; Chapter 6 The Be, Protestantism, and Silence;