Shakespeare’s Pericles and Psalm 39

Abstract

Most theological attention to Shakespeare’s late plays treats their religious dimension as a marker of transcendence or otherworldliness. Here, instead, I suggest that Shakespeare is tracing the emotional stages of loss through his use of the funeral psalm 39 (with more than a hint of the Passion psalm 22) in his portrayal of Pericles’ final reconciliation. This is a conversation with a liturgical text which would have been highly audible to early modern playgoers. The parallels with these psalms have not been remarked upon before in literary criticism or in theological literature.