Abstract
I argue that the Shakespeare of Hamlet was influenced by the debate between Erasmus and Luther on the question of free will. I approach this debate as a record of the tensions within Christian humanism and as a “conceptual source text” for Hamlet. I detect the debate’s resonances in the play’s thematic investigation of the will, as well as in how the playwright yokes together the conflicting worlds of literature and theology, humanism and reform. I hold that while Shakespeare deploys Erasmian strategies of ambiguity and silence with respect to the highest mysteries, he also assimilates Luther’s suspicion of the pretensions of consciousness.
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