Phase 2--Annotated Bibliography

      So far, my research has consisted of looking online and in the library to decide which of Shakespeare’s plays have themes of Christian oppression. So far, I’ve decided to use Hamlet (looking at internal prejudice of different Christian sects in the play and how it relates to Mormon prejudice today) and The Merchant of Venice (looking at how Christians treated non-Christians unfairly in Shakespeare’s day in trade, the legal system, etc. and how we do the same thing today with Muslims). I’ve been thinking about looking at Othello, too, but I haven’t done much research on the topic yet, so I will see if it is relevant to my topic soon.

      My working thesis statement goes something like this:  Christians have oppressed those who have different beliefs than they do for millennia, which is clearly apparent when one analyzes Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice; this oppression still continues today in comparable ways. (Obviously, this is very rough, but it’s basically what I’m going for.)

• Adelman, Janet. Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in “The Merchant of Venice.” Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 226-256. Print.
• This section of this book examines the Merchant of Venice. This plat looks at the distinction between Christians as usurers and Jews as merchants, and the roles both of these groups play in larger society. This is relative to my topic because it looks at the deeper reasons for the religious conflict between Jews and Christians. I found this book on Amazon when I did a Google search on my topic, and then I looked it up in the library.
• Agajanian, Shaakeh. "The Problem of Hamlet: A Christian Existential Analysis." Religion in Life 46 (1997): 213-224. Web.
• This article examines Christianity in Hamlet, mainly the fact that Hamlet appears to have Protestant beliefs but his father has Catholic beliefs, which creates a kind of distance and mistrust between them.  This article relates to my topic because it looks at Christians oppressing other Christians, showing that their prejudice affects Christianity within as well as out. I found this article in a search on the BYU library’s Shakespeare database.
• Arbery, Glenn Cannon. "Women, Christianity, and the Stage in Four Shakespearean Comedies." Dissertation Abstracts International 43 (1982-83): 1-157. Web.
• This article examines Christianity in The Merchant of Venice, along with three other plays. It discusses the inequalities in the legal system between Christians and non-Christians. This relates to my topic because I’m looking at three different types of Christian oppression, and this is one of them. I found it in the results of a search I did in the World Shakespeare Bibliography Online.
• Batson, Beatrice. Shakespeare's Christianity: The Protestant and Catholic Poetics of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006. 1-178. Print.
• This article looks at Hamlet and how the Christian issues in the play may have come from Shakespeare’s own religious beliefs. This relates to my topic because it raises the problems that come from having different religious beliefs, which is something Shakespeare himself may have suffered himself. I found this book when a library assistant in the Humanities Reference section referred it to me.