THE CATHOLIC REFERENCES AND CONTEXT OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS

THE CATHOLIC REFERENCES AND CONTEXT OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS

Shakespeare died 23 April 1616

        Anonymous artist 1840, "A Procession of Shakespeare's Characters".(1)

Claire Asquith, in her study of Shakespeare’s works, (1) was alerted to the subtext of his plays when she was in communist Russia as the wife of the British Ambassador during the Cold War. On attending the performance of a play by Chekov, at a time when she had been reading about the history of the Reformation in England, she witnessed the subtleties of the coded language used by the Russian actors in a manner that conveyed one message to the audience, while concealing it under the guise of normality to the watching KGB. Her book provides an interesting analysis of a rather complicated double language that she imputes to Shakespeare in his plays. The reformation, as recognised by Asquith, was a time of persecution for all Catholics in England under a totalitarian regime which, of necessity, resulted in a double life, secrecy and coded language on their part.

Professors Mutschmann and Wentersdorf, in their discussion of Shakespeare’s years in London draw attention to his quiet evasion of the laws requiring adherence to the Anglican church, stating that “[h]e was a constant witness to the house searches, arrests, fines, imprisonment and execution of Catholics, both laymen and priests. He was already determined not to share the fate of his father: political proscription, social and economic harassment.” (2)

What becomes apparent is that Shakespeare was recognised as Catholic in his own time, and, indeed, aroused ire in his lampooning of protestant heroes such as Sir John Oldcastle (Falstaff) to the extent that Father Robert Parsons’ defence of Shakespeare’s portrayal of Sir John Oldcastle in Henry VI was angrily dismissed by the protestant historian John Speed in 1611 as “the papist and his poet”.

However, Shakespeare was also a canny and sophisticated survivor – one who knew when and how much to keep his mouth shut and when and in what manner, to speak. He evaded the recusancy fines which were levelled for non-attendance at Anglican service, even though his name is not once recorded at any Anglican church, supposedly because he lived with a Huguenot family – who, unlike Catholics, were not forced to attend Anglican service under threat of crippling fines and loss of employment.

Moreover, the very profession of which he was a master – the theatre- served him some protection, being a milieu of Catholics, the culture of which drew upon a long tradition of Catholic mystery plays and one which was so detested by puritans than some anonymity operated in regard to, at least subtle or ambiguous allusions to the political, religious or cultural issues of the time.

Wood saw the repression and distaste for the theatre by the protestant powers as a moral repugnance, saying:

“The Puritans viewed such fripperies as stage and street theatre with distaste. For them, actors were schoolmasters of vice and provocations to corruption. Many wanted to ban plays altogether – the censorship did come but after Shakespeare.” (3)

Asquith however, saw political expedience in the repression of theatre by the Puritans, observing that the protestant powers had attempted to employ their own propagandists, including Marlowe and Kyd, but that “this was rather unsuccessful”. According to Asquith, Marlowe, as a double-agent employed by Sir Francis Walsingham as a spy to dob in Catholics, wrote propaganda plays full of crude digs at Catholicism. However, she observes:

“But Marlow turned out to be a writer of extraordinary calibre. Aware that such a line was unpopular with audiences, and in particular with the intellectual circles he aspired to, he took to undercutting his primary political message with a second subversive one…Marlow ultimately made the same mistake as Spenser. In Edward II the corrupt advisers bore a perilously close resemblance to Elizabeth’s political advisers, William and Robert Cecil. Marlowe was no doubt relying on Cecil’s powerful enemies to protect him. But the evidence is that in spite of his dazzling brilliance-or perhaps because of it- they mistrusted Marlowe. He died, murdered by intelligence agents in 1593 at the age of twenty-nine. (4)

Asquith stated: “Given the unreliability of their own propagandists and the ease with which dissidents were using code to evade censorship, the clear solution for the regime was to ban drama altogether. By 1581 it very nearly succeeded, drafting a series of laws that achieved total suppression of local community drama. The 400 year old Corpus Christi plays ceased: Shakespeare’s was the last generation of English children to witness them.” (5)

It is clear that Shakespeare mixed with those sympathetic to his religious outlook and obtained the protection of the powerful – the Catholic Earl of Southampton was his patron and, it seems that he remained within close circles of Catholic sympathy in London. His friend and colleague, Ben Jonson was a Catholic convert. Such atomisation is comparable to the survival tactics of dissidents in communist dictatorships, as illustrated by Rod Dreher, where the dissidents were compelled to “throw off the chains of solitude and find the freedom that awaits us in fellowship. The testimony of anti-communist dissidents is clear: Only in solidarity with others can we find the spiritual and communal strength to resist.” (7)

The weapons of denial of history, employment of propaganda and enforced mental and vocal conformity employed by the Tudor regime were countermanded by Shakespeare’s enlivening of the sentiments of those who had been rendered silent and invisible.

Shakespeare’s sensibilities as to the pillage at the hands of Henry VIII and the religious repression were expressed in Sonnet LXXIII:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

GK Chesterton stated quite matter-of-factly that Shakespeare was formed by his Catholic faith, observing:

“Shakespeare is possessed through and through with the feeling which is the first and finest idea of Catholicism: that truth exists whether we like it or not, and that it is for us to accommodate ourselves to it.” Milton, on the other hand, writes to “justify the ways of God to men… Milton’s religion was Milton’s religion, and ......Shakespeare’s religion was not Shakespeare’s.”(7A)

POLITICAL COMMENT:

Shakespeare’s Catholic perspective on history and his public expression of it, in the context of the political climate of the Elizabethan state, was subversive, but subtle:

The first example is his handling of the issue of the divorce of Henry VIII, in respect of which adherence to the narrative was conflated, in the Elizabethan climate, with loyalty to the Crown and patriotism. Deviation from the narrative was to take a risky position, signifying a stance by which religion could be confected with disloyalty, treason and betrayal.

The petition by Henry to the Pope for divorce from Katherine of Aragon had provided, as its basis, annulment on the grounds of offending the rules of the Church against consanguinity by reason of marrying his brother’s wife, a matter which had been cleared by the Church prior to his marriage. In Henry VIII, Act II, Shakespeare has the King’s Chamberlain present the motives for the King desiring divorce as the official narrative:

“It seems the marriage with his brother’s wife

Has crept too near his conscience.”

-only to be subject to Suffolk’s witty, but very Catholic, riposte:

“No, his conscience has crept too near another lady.”

It is difficult for those raised on the protestant version of Queen Elizabeth’s reign to appreciate the risk taken by Shakespeare in countering the official version of history – something alluded to by Clare Asquith in her comparison with the Russian cultural resistance manifested by subtle theatrical ruses. Shakespeare portrays Katherine of Aragon with great sympathy, making her a heroic and dignified figure, in complete contrast with what would have been seen as a loyal and reliably patriotic view.

In 1568 Dr Allen founded the seminary at Douai in Flanders. From 1579 to 1593 the college was in Rheims. These seminaries sent back an ever increasing number of priests to minister in secret to the faithful, including Edmond Campion, (executed in 1584), Robert Debdale, (Shakespeare’s school contemporary, executed in 1586), and Robert Southwell, (Shakespeare’s kinsman, executed in 1595). In the Taming of the Shrew, written in 1590, Shakespeare has Lucentio present Baptista as “this young scholar, one that hath long been studying at Rheims, so cunning in Greek, Latin and other languages” (Act II, I, 79-81).

Further reference was made in Love’s Labour’s Lost, in which De Groot observes that:

“Obscure Catholic expression is that found in the lines which Berowne, in Love’s Labour’s Lost, speaks to himself when he discovers that Longaville has fallen in love with Maria and believes himself to be the first to have committed perjury:

I could put thee in comfort: not by two that I know:

Thou mak’st the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,

The shape of love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity.

( Act IV, iii, 52-54).

De Groot quotes CH Herford, in his edition on the works of Shakespeare, who remarked that “a ‘corner cap’ is the ‘biretta or three-cornered cap of the Catholic priest. The shape of this suggests the triangle formed by the timbers of the gallows- the Tyburn of love, at which the ‘perjurers’ have hung up their innocence.’” Tyburn was, of course, the place of execution of many of the priests and those who harboured them.

Wilson draws attention to the incongruity of The Comedy of Errors, based on Plautus, with some significant deviations: situated in Imperial (pagan) Rome, dealing with exorcisms, (abhorred by puritans as popery), where Aegon’s intended place of execution is set by Shakespeare close to an abbey being used as a (Catholic, of course) convent, a location illustrated by Shakespeare as:

Come this way to the melancholy vale

The place of death and sorry execution

Behind the ditches of the abbey here.”

(Comedy of Errors Act V. i.120).

The significance of this allusion is difficult for a modern reader to grasp. For, as Wilson points out, “James Burbage’s theatre at Shoreditch was hard by the old Shoreditch priory that had formerly been a convent for nuns. Furthermore, in October 1588, there was the gruesome public execution of a Catholic priest William Hartley, who was put to death specifically for conducting exorcisms within the puritan Starchie family. So was Shakespeare making a very topical allusion, although for safety setting his play into times well past?” (9) To state those lines in the very place where desecration of the old priory had taken place, close to the execution site of Catholic priests, would have been a powerful, yet ambiguous and completely deniable, statement.

And consider the Abbess Emilia- (an Abbess in Imperial Rome??!), “although a small role, it provides the crux of the play. For like a deus ex machina it is only when she comes into the action at the last moment that the accumulation of pain and confusion suddenly dissolves (like a fairy godmother) and harmony is restored. The important element is that as his vehicle Shakespeare has moved far from Plautus to make her a nun, indeed an abbess, one of that breed whom Henry VIII and his bully boys had sought to remove from the scene and whom the other writers of Shakespeare’s time continued to vilify. Emilia conveys real spiritual authority and her sympathetic approach to an apparent case of possession is in contrast to [other protestant authors].” (10)

Wilson’s comment on Titus Andronicus was that it was disparaged by the critics to the extent that Edward Ravenscroft refused to attribute it to Shakespeare at all: “tis the most incorrect and indigested in all his works: it seems rather a heap of rubbish than a structure.” (11) Despite Ravenscroft’s views, it was wildly popular and seemed to strike a chord with the public.

The play is set in Imperial Rome where the war lord, Titus Andronicus, is about to bury his son slain in the war against the Goths. Shakespeare uses the vehicle of Rome, perhaps to distance the message, while drawing an analogy with the morality required of mercy, thus harking back to Elizabeth’s treatment of Mary and the Catholic martyrs, conveyed with brilliantly engineered dramatic force. The play drew on the Catholic Mystery plays, employing their robust theatricality.

Significantly, Shakespeare introduced elements such as the challenge for succession – a subject of major contention in Elizabethan times and one on which courtiers were forbidden to speak. The Tudor regime was tenuous and had been won by Henry VII by battle. The claim of Henry VII, (and thereby Henry VIII and Elizabeth I), to the throne was weak - in fact, it was the weakest claim since William the Conqueror. He was, in reality, technically barred from the throne by reason of illegitimacy in his ancestry. Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the question of succession was forbidden to be spoken of or discussed, to the extent that one courtier, the Duke of Suffolk, was sent to the Tower for doodling his family’s crest – a sign to Henry VIII that he had pretensions to claiming a right of succession. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I legislated against any challenge to their claim to the Crown.

Shakespeare’s play, King John, markedly differs from the protestant writers of his time, who portrayed King John as an earlier version of Henry VIII, no doubt in an effort to bestow some provenance upon Henry’s claims and to confer patriotic, rather than venal, motives in regard to the separation from Rome.

In complete contrast to the most popular protestant version, which had King John heroically opposing the pope of his day and the papal legate as a sinister character, together with unchaste and ribald monks and nuns, Shakespeare’s King John is not a hero but a bad king, degenerating into a feverish madness. His papal legate, however, is a dignified international statesman who gives sound advice. And Shakespeare does not have unsavoury scenes with monks and nuns. (12)

The play, however, operates at another level, in “presenting a mirror image of the reign of Elizabeth – for example, he presents King John’s right to rule as mere ‘strong possession” – a view unjustified in regards to King John, who had good title. (13).

Elizabeth I, however, was regarded by Catholics in precisely such terms - that is, that her power was derived by “strong possession”, not only because of the weak Tudor claim to title in comparison to other claimants, but, more importantly, because she was viewed in Catholic eyes as illegitimate and thereby completely disentitled to the throne. In the cultural climate of the times, a portrayal by Shakespeare alluding to ‘mere strong possession’ on the part of King John, while able to be disclaimed by reason of its historical setting, was, nevertheless, quite able to be immediately understood by the (Catholic or fellow traveller) audience. All the same, it was a fine line and comment on this level of politics was extremely brave. Thus, when King John attempts to reassure his mother on the strength of their position in the face of French opposition by declaring:

"Our strong possession and our right for us,"

Elinor replies:

"Your strong possession much more than your right,

Or else it must go wrong with you and me:

So much my conscience whispers in your ear,

Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear."

(King John, I, i, 39-43).

Shakespeare presents the barons' rebellion against King John in a manner strikingly reminiscent of the Northern Earls’ Rebellion against Elizabeth. He has King John repudiate Papal Legate Pandulph with precisely the sentiments of Article 37 of the Protestant 39 Articles which Elizabeth approved in 1563:

Tell him [the pope] this tale, and from the mouth of England

And thus much more, that no Italian priest

Shall tithe or toll our dominions,

But as we, under heaven, are supreme head

So under him that great supremacy

Where we do reign, we will alone uphold.”

Wilson observes that: “Perhaps most interesting of all however is how Shakespeare, having equated John with Elizabeth, identifies John’s hapless royal victim- Prince Arthur - with Elizabeth’s equally ill-fated royal victim: Mary Queen of Scots. Thus when Shakespeare alludes to a will barring Arthur from the English throne, this seems to have little to do with the historic King John and rather more with Elizabeth’s father King Henry VIII’s will barring Mary Queen of Scots from the English throne.

And when in King John, Shakespeare has John order Hubert secretly to murder Arthur, then go into a pantomime of pretended rage when he thinks (wrongly) that the deed has been carried out, this seems to point very squarely to Elizabeth to the way Elizabeth notoriously put the blame on her secretary William Davidson for implementing Mary Queen of Scot’s execution (even to the extent of having him put on trial and fined). And her disingenuous claim that she was unaware that her cousin, a royal with a strong claim to the English throne, had been executed."

De Groot comments: "What Shakespeare intended the audience to think of John's title is shown by the words of the Bastard as he watches the English nobles bear the body of Prince Arthur off the stage:

'How easy dost thou take all England up!

From forth this morsel of dead royalty,

The life, the right and truth of all this realm

Is fled to heaven; and England now is left

To tug and scamble and to part by the teeth

The unow'd interest of proud swelling state.'

(King John, Act I, iii, 142-147). (14)

Wilson points to a connection, (in regards to its sentiment), between this passage and an epitaph in Latin, which had been anonymously written on the wall of Petersborough Cathedral, and which reflected the Catholic view of Mary Queen of Scots, after her execution and subsequent interment in a vault there:

'With the sacred ashes of this blessed Mary, know that the majesty of all kings and princes lieth here, violated and prostrate'.” (15)

Shakespeare's reference to the 'tug and scamble and to part by the teeth the unow'd interest of proud swelling state," however,(in my view), goes further than a commentary on Mary Stuart as the rightful claimant to the throne, for the Elizabethan state was defined by the machinations of William and Robert Cecil, (Lord Burghley), Sir Francis Walsingham and the genius of complete, all-encompassing state-craft, a factor, it seems, that was not missed by Shakespeare.

RIDICULING PROTESTANTISM

Not only did Shakespeare’s political characterisations not conform to the image imposed by the regime, in fact, reinforcing Catholic views on key historical personages, but he relentlessly lampooned key protestant figures, emphasising and delineating their characters by the use of the protestant authoritarian use of scripture and its attendant virtue-signalling - red flags to a Catholic audience. His counter-cultural stance was significant, being at a time when propaganda had been employed, a spy network instituted and countless people executed and imprisoned in the objective of the complete eradication of the old faith and the investiture of the new, state church with the gravitas required to be secure.

Malvolio in Twelfth Night is based upon William Knollys, 1st Earl of Banbury. The vain pompous steward of Olivia’s household, he is displayed as a Puritan who despises all manner of fun yet behaves foolishly. Shakespeare ridicules him mercilessly, referencing Knolly’s, (real life), infatuation with a woman young enough to be his daughter and accompanying the buffoonery with the following lines:

Maria: Marry sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.

Andrew: O, if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog!

Toby: What, for being a puritan? Thy exquisite reason, dear knight?

Andrew: I have no exquisite reason for’t, but I have reason good enough.

Maria: The devil a puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser; an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swaths; the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him. And on that vice will my revenge find notable cause to work.” (16)

Act 2, scene 3.

Shakespeare has Malvolio manipulated (by his vanity) to believe Olivia is in love with him and to wear yellow stockings, cross-gartered (that is, with the garters crossing around his knees), when Olivia, in fact hates the colour yellow and cross garters, and, as a result, thinks he is mad. (17)

In Henry VI, “the corpulent figure of the sinful, cowardly Sir John Falstaff must be regarded as an intentional caricature of the puritan, “not merely because he was originally given the name of the Wycliffite, Sir John Oldcastle, executed in the reign of Henry V (Shakespeare was obliged through protestant objections to alter the name!), but chiefly because of his moral or rather immoral outlook on life. “ (18) Sir John Oldcastle was held up as a puritan hero; to ridicule him so openly was to court animosity and to play a dangerous game.

Bowden commented: “With this well-known power of irony, could he have chosen a more efficacious method of exposing the abuse of the new “Gospel method” than by making it the favourite weapon of canting fools knaves and hypocrites?” (19)

De Groot observed “it is not enough to say that dignified and respected characters also quote Scripture. The dignified characters use scriptural truth in a way which integrates truth with human experience and throws light upon it. This is the way in which Catholics would also quite properly use scriptural truth. The fact remains that Shakespeare does satirise the authoritarian approach to the Bible. Since that approach is so often adopted by Protestants, there is some ground for believing that he is mocking Protestantism generally.”(20)

Shakespeare is shown to express his antipathy to the Protestant use of the Bible in two ways. First, in the Merchant of Venice, he makes direct expression of his sentiments in the words of such characters as Antonio, who, reflecting upon Shylock’s clever citation of the story of Jacob and Laban says:

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul, producing holy witness,

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

And, in the Merchant of Venice, Bassanio, commenting on the outward show of things, says:

In religion,

What damned error, but some sober brow

Will bless it and approve with a text,

Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? (21)

A witty reference to the protestant clergy is the name bestowed by him on the protestant vicar in As you Like It - "Mar-text", a reference that would not have been missed by his audience, the Protestant doctrine of 'sola scriptura', having initiated a literal interpretation of Scripture, unadorned by tradition, nuance or allegory.

The Comedy of Errors has humour that would have confirmed a puritan’s worst nightmares regarding the traditions of the Mystery plays, Catholicism generally and the theatre in particular. Dialogue between Dromio and Antipholus has bawdy, irreverent, word-play harking back to the Mystery plays and reminiscent of Chaucer:

“Dromio: I have but lean luck in the match, and yet she is a wondrous fat marriage.

Antipholus: How dost thou mean a “fat marriage”?

Dromio: Marry, sir, she’s the kitchen wench, and all grease, and I know not what use to put to her but to make a lamp of her and run her by her own light. I warrant her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter. If she lives till Doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world.

Antipholus: What complexion is she of?

Dromio: Swart like a shoe, but her face is nothing like so clean kept. For why? She sweats. A man may go overshoes in the grime of it.

Antipholus: That’s a fault that water will mend.

Dromio: No sir, ‘tis in grain; Noah’s flood could not do it.

Antipholus: What’s her name?

Dromio: Nell sir, but her name and three quarters-that’s an ell and three quarters- will not measure her from hip to hip.

Antipholus: Then she bears some breadth?

Dromio: No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip. She is spherical, like a globe. I could find out countries in her.

Antipholus: In what part of her body stands Ireland?

Dromio: Marry sir, in her buttocks, I found it out by the bogs.

Antipholus: Where Scotland?

Dromio: I found it by the barreness; hard in the palm of the hand.

Antipholus: Where France?

Dromio: In her forehead, armed and reverted, making war against her heir.

…………

Antipholus: Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?

Dromio: O, sir, I did not look so low….”

(Act III, sc ii).

DOCTRINAL REFERENCE

Shakespeare revealed in his various characterisations an intimate familiarity with the Catholic sacraments, as well as a deep understanding of Catholic doctrine. Sacraments such as extreme unction, marriage, as well as the more complex subtleties such as trothplight, were accurately represented according to Catholic dogma and custom prevailing at the time. For present purposes, it suffices to illustrate Shakespeare’s position by reference to the Catholic doctrine on purgatory and the sacrament of confession-both of these positions representing defining points of differentiation with Protestant dogma.

The Catholic doctrine of Purgatory was rejected not only by the puritans but also the more doctrinally moderate protestant state church, Purgatory having been expressly rejected by the Anglican Articles of Religion,(Art XXII) (22).

His portrayals of the the ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father in purgatory and the terrible consequences of death without having made the necessary preparation and reparation for his sins, in the context of the times, were an unambiguous, (but again, eminently deniable), assertion of the Catholic faith against the stridency of those views imposed by the Protestant regime and their adherents:

I am thy father’s spirit;

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burn’d and purged away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood.

(Hamlet I.5.9)

His description of the ‘purgative’ nature of purgatory is one that is strictly in accordance with Catholic tenets. The words of Hamlet’s father ‘Unhousel’d, (without having received the holy sacrament of communion – housel being a consecrated host), disappointed, unanel’d’ –a reference to the Sacrament of Extreme Unction and is a technical term – indicating knowledge to an intimate degree on Shakespeare’s part. (23)

De Groot comments on the Queen’s description of the death of Ophelia:

Her clothes spread wide,

And mermaid-like they bore her up,

Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds”

(Hamlet IV, vii, 176-78).

“The word ‘lauds’ occurs only in the Quarto edition of 1605 – presumably excised from later editions in which the word ‘tunes’ was substituted. As Wilson remarks ‘modern editors ..have sacrificed a beautiful reading. Some of the beauty lies in the reminiscent quality of the word, a quality stirring up memories of the Old Faith. “ (24)

His express embrace and his intimate understanding of the practice of the Sacrament of confession in numerous references amounts to a complete rejection of the protestant position on the absolution of sin by the mediation of the priest.-Two examples being:

How hast thou the heart,

Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,

A sin absolver, and my friend profess’d,

To mangle me with that word ‘banish’d’?

Romeo to Friar Laurence, Act iii.3.47.

And when Juliet goes to Friar Laurence for help, and unexpectedly meets Paris, who inquires of her:

Come you to make a confession of this father?

iv.i.22

Juliet replies:

To answer that, I should confess to you,

iv.1.23

- revealing a wittily expressed but practical knowledge on the part of Shakespeare of the inviolability of the confessional seal.

TREATMENT OF CATHOLIC CLERGY AND RELIGIOUS

Shakespeare’s treatment of Catholic religious is in marked contrast to his ridicule of puritans. Perhaps the best illustration, out of many sympathetic characters, is Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, who appears first in his cell ready to gather herbs at first light. His portrayal described by Ken Colston, “[a]s a representative of the Church, [to be] so exemplary, and so thoroughly Catholic, that it is surprising that an ambitious playwright would risk offending Protestant sensibilities, the most extreme of which, such as Philip Stubbs, railed against the theatre itself as an occasion of sin, and called for its closure; or Anthony Munday, who hissed, “The chapel of Satan, I mean the theatre.”(25)

“Friar Laurence creates the thematic focus of the play, musing on theological paradoxes, relating tragedy to divine power, where a grace so fills the world that evil can be wrought out of good and good out of evil.

“For this alliance may so happy prove

To turn your household’s rancour to pure love.”

(Act 2.3.91-92).

“The thesis present in his musings on the nature of evil and good foreshadow the sincere but imprudent love of the protagonists in a valid but clandestine marriage leading to their deaths from which reconciliation between the two warring families is effected.

Friar Laurence’s wisdom recognises man’s fallen nature, as well as a possible reference to the contest between God and the Crown and the irrational vicious religious divide perpetrated at the time so that, despite the grace that gives the medicinal herbs healing power, “poison hath residence” (2.3.24):

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs-grace and rude will;

And where the worser is predominant,

Full son the canker eats up that plant.”

(2.3.27-30) (26)

Interestingly, the family of Shakespeare’s patron was the Montague family, a renowned Catholic family who were destined to suffer for their faith.

Professors Mutschmann and Wentersdorf commented that; “This favourable and fond portrayal of a friar, written at a time when the monastic orders were suppressed and mocked at, is, in itself, a most important indication of Shakespeare’s sympathies with these Roman Catholic institutions. (27)

At the priest’s friary, Romeo begins to speak of his love but prevaricates so much that the good old man interrupts him with kind wisdom:

Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;

Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

Romeo and Juliet Act ii.3.55

(Shrift being confession –shriving being confession with its attendant absolution - for example, Shrove Tuesday).

For Shakespeare a priest is-

A divine, a ghostly confessor,

A sin-absolver

(Romeo and Juliet iii.3.48).

And his duty, as a father confessor is, to ‘cleanse the bosom’ of the penitent.

(A Winter’s Tale Act i.2.238)

According to protestant dogma man does not need any priestly mediation between God and himself. Shakespeare's description completely cuts against the protestant portrayal of clergy. He makes his characters state eloquently the Catholic view that the mediation of the priest is absolutely necessary…For him, as for his Prince John of Lancaster, an ordained priest is

The imagin’d voice of God Himself,

The very opener and intelligencer

Between the grace, and the sanctities of heaven,

And our dull workings.

(2 Henry IV, iv.2.19).

“Shakespeare ridicules protestant curates, the pompous Sir Nathaniel in Love’s Labor’s Lost and the silly Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In As You Like It, Jacques rejects the significantly named Protestant curate Sir Oliver Martext and directs the lovers to a church and a priest: “And will you, being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush like a beggar? Get you to church, and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is.” (28)

Robert Miola indicated the key doctrinal subscription underlying Shakespeare's work, the doctrine of free will, as follows:

"One fundamental theological principle, the freedom of the will, enables Catholic drama and constitutes a major bequest to Shakespearean tragedy. Rejecting the theology of predestination and the Calvinist dichotomy between the reprobate and the elect, Shakespeare gives his tragic heroes agonized soliloquies that, among other things, illustrate the dynamics of their thinking and their freedom. Those who fall—Macbeth and Othello, for example—confront dark influences in the witches and Iago, but they make their own decisions. Macbeth weighs his options, ‘If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly—‘ and decides to jump the life to come. Later he contemplates his fateful choice, the first-person pronouns relentlessly emphasizing personal responsibility for his sin:

For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind;

For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered,

Put rancors in the vessel of my peace

Only for them, and mine eternal jewel

Given to the common enemy of man.

The wages of sin is damnation, and Macbeth is a terrifying study in damnation, freely chosen. Othello, too, comes to his decision in agonized soliloquy. And he, too, describes himself as one who lost a precious jewel, ‘One whose hand, / Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe.’ Othello imagines his soul hurled from heaven, snatched by fiends in hell: ‘Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulfur! / Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!’ Such spectacles arouse a pity and terror unavailable to believers in ­predestination."(30)

Dale Arlquist described Chesterton's comment on Macbeth:

"Chesterton says that Macbeth is the supreme Christian Tragedy; as opposed to Oedipus, which is the supreme Pagan Tragedy: “It is the whole point about Oedipus that he does not know what he is doing. And it is the whole point about Macbeth that he does know what he is doing. It is not a tragedy of Fate but a tragedy of Freewill.”

(1) Clare Asquith, “Shadowplay, the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare”, Public Affairs, New York, 2005.

(2) H. Mutschamnn and K. Wentersdorf, “Shakespeare and Catholicism”, Sheed and Ward, New York, 1952, at p. 384.

(3) Michael Wood, “In Search of Shakespeare”, BBC, 2003, at p. 59.

(4) Asquith, ibid., at p. 25.

(5) Ibid.

(6) Mutschmann, ibid., at p. 384.

(7) Rod Dreher, “Live not by Lies,” Sentinel, 2020, at p. 181.

(7A) Dale Ahlquist, “Lecture 85: Chesterton on Shakespeare, Chesterton’s writings on the Bard”; Chesterton.org

(9) Ian Wilson, “Shakespeare, the Evidence”, St Martin’s Griffin, New York, 1993, at pp. 89-91.

(10) Ibid.

(11) Opcit., at p. 85.

(12) Wilson, opcit., at p. 94.

(13) Ibid.

(14) De Groot, opcit, at pp. 185-186;Wilson, opcit., at p. 95.

(15) Ibid., at p. 84.

(16) Act II scene III.

(17) Act II, Scene V.

(18) Mutschmann, ibid. at p. 345.

(19) Quoted by John Henry De Groot, “The Shakespeares and the Old Faith”, Books for Libraries Press, New York, (1946), at p. 168.

(20) Opcit, at p. 168.

(21) De Groot, ibid., at pp. 168-169; Act III, ii, 77-80.

(22) Mutschmann, ibid., at p. 244.

(23) De Groot, opcit., at p. 171.

(24) Ibid.

(25) Ken Colston, “Shakespeare and the Franciscan Order”, July 10, 2014, Homiletic and Pastoral Review.

(26) Ibid.

(27) Mutschamnn, opcit, at pp. 271-272.

(28) Mutschmann, opcit, at p. 11.

(29) Robert Miola, "Shakespeare's Religion", First Things, May 2008.

(30) Ibid.

(31) Dale Arlquist, opcit.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.