Shakespeare's Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan/The Unheard Prayer: Religious Toleration in Shakespeare's Drama

[...]the active negotiations that took place in 1603 were the culmination of decades of debate between more conservative and non-conformist Puritan groups, and Swift makes a strong case for Shakespeare's familiarity with, and interest in the controversies over the rites of burial, baptism, and communion (these, along with the marriage ceremony, are Swift's primary focus in the liturgy). Sterrett's conception of prayer-at least until he arrives at Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, where there is, as he rightly notes, evidence of divine presence-is largely Durkheimian (or, as he would have it, Levinasian): that is, it is largely social. Since the majority of prayers Sterrett considers go unanswered by the divine, he is really interested in their human implications, their status as utterances overheard by the audiences either on- or offstage.