As is becoming customary, Father Peter Milward has offered his extensive reflections on the contents of the latest issue.

It is always a joy and honour to receive Father Milward’s feedback, but especially so in the case of the latest issue, which is on a Shakespearean theme. As many visitors to this site will no doubt be aware, Father Milward is arguably the greatest living authority on the Catholic Shakespeare. His views are, therefore, charged with gravitas. They are not, however, infallible and I find myself disagreeing with some of his criticisms. I find his dismissal of Jennifer Pierce’s article a little harsh and I am more in agreement with Carol Jones’ understanding of Hamlet than I am with Father Milward’s. I offer my comments, in my book Through Shakespeare’s Eyes (pp. 114-115), on T. S. Eliot’s contention that Hamlet was a “failure” as a riposte to Father Milward’s position. Eliot, who is a far better poet than he is a critic, is wrong about Hamlet, which, far from being a failure, is Shakespeare’s greatest play. I agree with Jones, and with C. S. Lewis, that “Hamlet must be viewed within the overall action to comprehend his motives”, and disagree with Milward and Eliot. For a fuller understanding of my position vis à vis Hamlet, please see chapters 13-21 of Through Shakespeare’s Eyes.

Apart from these few important differences of opinion, I am, as usual, in substantial agreement with most of what Father Milward has to say. Here are his comments in full:

Reflections on StAR II.4: “Shakespeare and His Times”  SJ House, July 9, 2011

For Joe Pearce, from Peter Milward SJ

On the Editorial

There are two interesting contrasts drawn between Dante and Shakespeare, one by GK Chesterton in his chapter devoted to them in Chaucer, in which he also states his conviction that Shakespeare was a Catholic, and the other by T.S. Eliot in his essay on “Dante”, where he makes his famous mention of Shakespeare’s “inspissation”.  I also have devoted a chapter to “Dante and Shakespeare” in my book Makers of the West.

What I like about the editorial as a whole is the way you set Shakespeare and his “enigma” in the setting of his age, which Ben Jonson (himself then a recusant) described in his Poetaster (1601) as “a dangerous age”.  I am also an admirer of your penchant for alliteration, from the “allusive and elusive clues” to “the dogs of deception and deconstruction”.

On Shakespeare’s Fathers

If I had been interviewed, I would have chosen the series of fathers and daughters that runs through the last plays, from Lear and Cordelia, by way of Pericles and Marina, Cymbeline and Imogen, Leontes and Perdita, to Prospero and Miranda, as reflecting not only Shakespeare’s affection for his dear daughter Susanna, but also his recusant devotion to the Virgin Mary, Our Lady.

On St Edmund Campion

In calling Campion “a little-known martyr of the reign of Elizabeth I”, Fr Nichols is, I fear, betraying his lack of qualification as “a Dominican speaking in praise of a Jesuit”.  After all, there were no Dominicans among the English martyrs but many Jesuits, of whom by far the most famous is St Edmund Campion, excelled only by More and Fisher—even if it is a Jesuit who says so.  In this estimation of him I am sure of the support of no less an authority than Bishop Challoner (correct spelling).

On the other hand, I fully endorse Nichols’ rejection of John Bossy’s odious distaste for Campion’s “romanticism” and his association of it with modern terrorism (which is the even more odious comparison made by Richard Wilson in his book Secret Shakespeare. 2004).  Only, he is too ready to discern a link between Canterbury and Rome, as if the former Church of England can trace its heritage as far back as St Augustine of Canterbury, overlooking the Anglican schism inaugurated by Henry VIII in 1534 and continued by Elizabeth I in 1559, not to mention the translation of Bede’s History by Thomas Stapleton in 1565 as evidence against the Anglican John Jewel (who had rejected all popish corruptions from the time of “the monk Augustine”) of the continuity between the Anglo-Saxon Church of old and the present Church of Rome.

On the Orthodoxy of Hamlet

Here I am sorry for having to criticize Jennifer Pierce, but I find that in her article she does little more than rehash Chesterton’s essay on “The Orthodoxy of Hamlet” (from Lunacy and Letters, 1958).  In any case, I see the character of Hamlet (in my Meta-drama of Hamlet, 2003) as a typically muddle-headed young man, endowed as he is with a Lutheran formation at Wittenberg University, a Catholic recusant situation on his return to Denmark, and occasional lapses into a Puritan criticism of Claudius in his carousing and of the Clown in his singing while digging a grave.

On Hamlet and Contempt of the World

I find Carol Jones more enlightening in her comparisons between Hamlet and the medieval literature on “contempt of the world”, to which she might well have added the contemporary book by the Jesuit Fr Robert Persons popularly known as “The Book of Resolution”.  Only, she spoils her opening paragraph by calling Shakespeare “the premiere poet”, as if he was a woman, whereas “premier” would have been more suitable for a man.

I would also dispute her contention (for which she invokes the authority of CS Lewis) that “Hamlet must be viewed within the overall action to comprehend his motives”, whereas it is my contention (on the other authority of T.S. Eliot) that we can only understand him, whether as prince or as play, outside the action, whether on the stage or in the theatre.  One has to look beyond this one play to all the plays, or what Eliot calls “the pattern in his carpet”, and beyond the plays to their religious background.

On the other hand, and for this very reason, I wholly agree with her suggestion that Shakespeare was “sharing a subtext with his audience relevant to the crisis of conscience taking place in Elizabethan England”.  Only, she is mistaken in saying that everyone had to swear the Oath of Supremacy.  This was only incumbent on state officials and university graduates.

On One Great Landscape

I find the explanation of the grey heron in the Physiologus as symbolic of the contemplative life very convincing.  I myself have often watched the white heron in Japan standing motionless on one leg eyeing the water in a contemplative vein, till it suddenly leaps into action on spying a succulent fish.

I also agree with the author’s suggestion that “Bellini’s painting puts you and me in the same situation as the ass”…  Only I think that he is being too kind to us, considering the two Biblical references to Balaam’s ass and to that chosen by Jesus for his royal entry into Jerusalem, when he might have added the ass of the nativity.  The ass is indeed a noble animal, and though he may seem to be ignoring the divine presence “out there”, he shows his awareness by the pricking of his ears.

On All’s Well That Ends Well

I must hand it to Kevin O’Brien that I had never thought of the story of Judah and Tamar, and yet it is well thought.  Further, the play is one of many with the parable of the Prodigal Son in the background, including the contemporary tragedy of King Lear.  I would add that, considering the play as a whole, there are two basically Catholic themes associated with the heroine.  The first is that of miracle worker, reflecting the contemporary controversy over certain miracles worked through the intercession of Our Lady at her two shrines in Brabant of Montaigu and Halle, as witnessed in 1604 by the humanist Justus Lipsius, and opposed b
y the Anglicans who typically maintained that “the age of miracles had ceased”.  The second is that of pilgrim to the shrine of St James at Compostela, for which reason she is named Helena—not from Helen of Troy, but from St Helena the mother of Constantine, the pattern of all medieval pilgrims, who went on the first pilgrimage in search of the True Cross.  Only in her adventures I fail to see anything of the search for the Holy Grail.

As for Bertram reflecting “the new blood at the court of Elizabeth in Shakespeare’s day”, I believe this can be pin-pointed with more accuracy on Shakespeare’s former patron, the young and wilful Earl of Southampton, whom his friend the Earl of Essex had made Master of the Horse on his ill-fated Irish expedition.  At the time of this play, the earl had been released from imprisonment in the Tower by a grateful James I, but he was soon to recant his former profession of Catholicism.

On A Man For All Seasons

To say that the Oath of Supremacy of 1534 “disparaged the power of the Pope” is putting it mildly!  It curtly rejected the authority of the Pope in England.

It might also be noted that in the original play, as distinct from the movie, there is the character of the Common Man, as a kind of Prologue.  He comes forward at the end of Part I, with the distinctly uncomfortable remark (for any devout Anglican) that “Now you see how the Church of England came to be established.”  I myself was watching a performance of the play, seated between two such devout Anglicans, the director of the British Council and his deputy, and I could sense them squirming in their seats. No doubt this was very unecumenical—it took place (as far as I remember) in 1962-63.  And no doubt Fr Nichols would refrain from applause.

On Liturgical Reform

I whole-heartedly concur with everything said against Mgr Bugnini, whom I have always regarded as the evil genius behind the liturgical changes after Vatican II, but I would add that Pope Paul VI is also partly to blame for having trusted him as he did.