During my recent visit to Saskatoon in Canada for the “Rebuilding Catholic Culture” conference I had the great pleasure of meeting Fr. Jeffrey Stephaniuk. I’m posting his comments on the Catholic Shakespeare:
 
Dear Joseph,
Thank you for writing your books on William Shakespeare. I have just read “Through Shakespeare’s Eyes” and it has given me a boost of confidence as a Catholic priest! (such as the value of praying for the dead.)

There are some lines that I hope to use in articles that I write in defense of pre-natal life, or against what you call in utero infanticide. For example, Portia’s insights are applicable as criticism against those who use law and religion to defend abortion: “In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt / But, being season’d with a gracious voice, / obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error but some sober brow / Will bless it, and approve it with a text, / Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?”

When you describe the “readiness is all” attitude of Hamlet, that for me is a great reminder of needing to be in a state of grace when we die, whenever that may come. The “nunnery” passage will now be for me not the usual abstinence meaning, but also the idea of Hamlet telling Ophelia to go do penance in sorrow for spying on him. 

When I was introduced to Canon Law in seminary, there was one canon on marriage that made me think of the play, Hamlet, and now I know why, because Shakespeare was familiar with, and defended, Catholic doctrine. That canon reads: “A person who, with the intention of celebrating marriage with a certain person, brings about the death of that person’s spouse or his or her own spouse, invalidly attempts this marriage.” In his way, then, Shakespeare was defending marriage, just as St. Thomas Moore had done with his life.

I had taken a course on Shakespeare at the University of Saskatchewan in 1986 and I was wondering why I missed all this ….
Thank you again.
Fr Jeffrey Stephaniuk