The progressive and glorious bastard.(Philip the Bastard in 'The Life and Death of King John')(Critical essay)

One rote habit of contemporary Renaissance scholars is to seem to find anti-religious ideas in Shakespeare and call them progressive and good, and Shakespeare a proto-modern who embraces them. Shakespeare is presumed to be more interested in these abstract ideas than in the human relationships his plays dramatize. This is boring, because, unlike Shakespeare's characters and their relationships, which are colorful and various, the moral or religious or political or social arguments such critics suppose Shakespeare to be making are always the same. Here's a brief summary. Interiority, subjectivity, and secularism are good, and Shakespeare likes them. Conventional religiosity, upholding of …