Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness

Sarah Beckwith's sensitive study starts from the Reformation's subsuming of religion under politics, particularly in its abolition of the sacrament of penance. . . . Suggesting that, for early modern audiences, the theater replaced the Eucharist as a universally shared experience, she imagines a therapeutic effect in the present as well. -Lois Potter, SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 (Spring 2012)

Beckwith presents a learned and penetrating study of the grammar of forgiveness in Shakespeare's late, post-tragic (p. 2) plays: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest. . . . With deep philosophical insights and a convincing mastery of history, Beckwith traces in the late Shakespeare the reinvention of a post-sacramental theatre. --Davide Crosara, Memoria di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies (April 2014)

Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness is a permanent and elegant work, and I could not be more grateful for it, nor, if I may say, more confirmed and inspired by it. -Stanley Cavell, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Emeritus, Harvard University

Sarah Beckwith brings to her rich study of Shakespeare's late plays both a deep knowledge of late medieval and Reformation religious culture and a clear and subtle sense of the philosophical issues at stake. Her book needs to be well and widely read, as it offers important insights into what Shakespeare was up to in these last, often elusive works. -Tom Bishop, University of Auckland

Sarah Beckwith brilliantly engages both speech-act theory and historical accounts of the sacrament of penance in order to explore the secular magic of human forgiveness in Shakespeare(1)s late plays. One leaves this moving book not just with a transformed sense of these miraculous plays but also with a deepened awareness of the possibility and necessity of forgiveness. -Michael Schoenfeldt, John R. Knott, Jr., Professor of English and Chair, Department of English Language & Literature, University of Michigan

In Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness, Sarah Beckwith explores Shakespeare's profound shift in emphasis from vengeance to virtue (as Prospero would have it) as he moved from writing the great tragedies to his late romances. She also defines the grammar this shift represents: the virtual formulas, ritual echoes, and cultural significations resulting from centuries of Roman Catholic sacramental uses of penance. -John C. Coldeway, University of Washington