The most influential treatments of Shakespeare`s Sonnets have ignored the impact of theology on his poetics, examining instead the poet`s “secular” emphasis on psychology and subjectivity. Reading Shakespeare`s Will offers the first systematic account of the theology behind the poetry. Investigating the poetic stakes of Christianity`s efforts to assimilate Jewish scripture, the book reads Shakespeare through the history of Christian allegory.

To “read Shakespeare`s will,” Freinkel argues, is to read his bequest to and from a literary history saturated by religious doctrine. Freinkel thus challenges the common equation of subjectivity with secularity, and defines Shakespeare`s poetic voice in theological rather than psychoanalytic terms. Tracing from Augustine to Luther the religious legacy that informs Shakespeare`s work, Freinkel suggests that we cannot properly understand his poetry without recognizing it as a response to Luther`s Reformation. Delving into the valences and repercussions of this response, Reading Shakespeare`s Will charts the notion of a “theology of figure” that helped to shape the themes, tropes, and formal structures of Renaissance literature and thought.