The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare

The theo-political idea of covenant—a sacred binding agreement—formalizes relationships and inaugurates politics in the Hebrew Bible, and it was the most significant revolutionary idea to come out of the Protestant Reformation.  Central to sixteenth-century theology, covenant became the cornerstone of the seventeenth-century English Commonweath, evidenced by  Parliament’s passage of the Protestation Oath in 1641 which was the “first national covenant against popery and arbitrary govern