Calvin, Shakespeare, and Suspense

Abstract

Calvin and Shakespeare both share an interest in the work of suspense; in the former case, as a feature of anticipating salvation (or not); in the latter, as a narrative function of a play’s conclusion. The mediation of Calvinist soteriology in England through the experimentalist thought of William Perkins links Shakespeare to Calvin, in a shared project of anticipating the future, an anticipation informed both by older providentialist models of probability (in which an ending simply confirms a prior pattern) and emergent models of statistical probability (in which the possibility of reversal of prior patterns exists). After an exploration of the logic of ending in Puritan deathbed accounts of Katherine Stubbes, the chapter concludes with a survey of the interplay of urgency and assurance in some of Shakespeare’s endings, those of King Lear and The Tempest in particular.