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This study clarifies the definition and connotation of the word “nothing,” first in Richard II, and later in Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. Previously scholars limited the term’s meaning to material losses—such as honor, wealth, or sanity; or they argue that objective and universal truths are “nothing.” I demonstrate, rather, that Shakespeare’s “nothing” points primarily to the unseen and immaterial corruption of mortal sin in the soul, and only secondarily to the external evil of material corruption. Underlying this moral vision is an Augustinian metaphysics, one that views creation as a Great Chain of Being extending from God’s absolute allness to the first nothing that preceded creation. Between these two extremes stands fallen man who, by original sin, exists as a mixture of being and non-being. The more man sins, the more he tends toward that first nothing, undoing his creation by degrees. To reveal these assumptions, I read Shakespeare’s tragedies in the context of Augustine’s privation theory of sin and the doctrine of creation from nothing—as outlined in the City of God, The Confessions, his sermons, and “On the Morals of the Manichaeans.” To align Augustine’s notions more directly to Shakespeare’s rhetoric, I review colloquial expressions of sin’s nothingness in popular works contemporary to Shakespeare, especially pseudo-Augustinian prayer manuals and Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. Then, tracing the word nothing and privative metaphors in Shakespeare’s tragedies, I show how they recollect the unseen, privative character of pride and man’s ex nihilo origins. As the root of all sin, pride illusively presents its non-existence as an outward nobility, fooling the sinner into relying on his own origins in non-being instead of God’s allness. To overcome this illusion, the sinner must become aware of his interior privations and his utter dependence upon God: his need for divine aid turns him toward humility, love, and repentance. Thus, for Richard, and later Hamlet and Lear, the debasing adversity of a just fall becomes an ironic opportunity for mercy. For unrepentant villains like Macbeth, the destructive effects of sin—death and damnation—are also providential, since they guarantee justice.