AC Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy, first published in 1904, had a very considerable influence over Shakespeare criticism for much of the twentieth century. In this work, Bradley readjusted the Aristotelian definition of tragedy to comply with the moral sense of a Christian world. According to Bradley, the tragic feeling of drama no longer came from a world compelled to overcome error, as in the drama of the ancients, but rather evil.

We remain confronted with the inexplicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appearance, of a world travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together with glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-torture and self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy.  - A.C.Bradley. Shakespearean Tragedy, Meridian, New York, 1955. p. 40.

The shift of the source of wrongs of the world of a drama from error to evil marked the development of a "religious" drama reborn in the middle ages, and reaching its culmination in the works of Shakespeare during the late Renaissance. Several influential critics of the twentieth century approached Hamlet as a profoundly religious drama. Central to their view of the play is the progress of the conflict of good and evil. Interestingly enough, two such critics, H.D.F. Kitto (in Form and Meaning in Drama) and Francis Furgusson (in The Idea of a Theater) start from a classical viewpoint based on Sophocles and Aristotle. They begin by comparing the circumstances at the beginning of Hamlet to those at the start of Oedipus Rex. The Thebes of the Sopholces play suffers from a seven-year history of plague, pestilence and barrenness. In Hamlet's Elsinore, they also see a rottenness which poisons the society of the drama. In a Christian era, this pestilence becomes a manifestation of evil.

When the conflict is consolidated to terms of good and evil, there is little room for moral relativism, and most writers who tend toward a religious interpretation of the play are uncomfortable with it. Terms such as "good" and "evil" need to imply an absolute order if they are to mean anything.

"There is nothing either good or bad," says Hamlet, "but thinking makes it so." Why he says it is an open question... Hamlet knows well enough what is bad: fratricide is bad, incest and adultery are bad. It is curious, however, how easily he moves from the particular to the general when the subject is evil. He openly admires Horatio, but Horatio's fine qualities teach him nothing about the nature of man. And yet if his apparent moral relativism does not ring completely true, it does not ring completely false, either. Still, I would be happier if Claudius had said those words, or even Polonius.  - Alan Isler. The Prince of West End Avenue, Penguin, New York. 1996. p 220.

Religious interpretations tread a narrow line. If they touch on universal truths, they should be absolute. It they are absolute, they risk becoming intolerant and subject not to logical argument, but to faith.