Scholars seem to agree that the only sonnet by William Shakespeare with a religious theme is Sonnet 146.  It is the only poem by Shakespeare in the original Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1940), as well as in The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1981).  R. S. Thomas included it in The Penguin Book of Religious Verse (1963), and he appears to be the odd man out by also including Sonnet 129.  Likewise, C. S. Lewis, in his volume of The Oxford History of English Literature (1954), observed that Sonnet 146 “is concerned with the tension between the temporal and the eternal and would be appropriate in the mouth of any Christian at any moment.”  However, the same could be said of Sonnet 108.

First, an open mind is in order.  If we encountered Sonnet 108 all by itself, with no attribution to cloud our critical faculties, there would be every reason to read it as a Christian poem.  Sonnet 108, between a topical poem about the Queen Elizabeth I (thus A. L. Rowse) and a personal poem wherein the beloved rose may well be the speaker’s (or the poet’s) wife, apparently follows no pattern or sequence.  Sonnet 108 therefore stands as a work with its own integrity and importance.

While there is strong textual and circumstantial evidence to argue convincingly for Shakespeare’s Catholicism, for our purposes here we can definitely say that whatever else he was, William Shakespeare was a Christian, baptized and buried in Holy Trinity church, Stratford.  How pious or devout he was between those two sacramental points is anyone’s guess.  All the same, in a pervasively Christian culture a man who retired from London back to his home parish in the shires may be reckoned to have been a committed believer.

In 1607, Shakespeare provided for a church funeral for his younger brother, Edmund, also an actor, and The Winter’s Tale (1609) deals not only with the perils of spousal jealousy, but also with the theme of death and resurrection.  Shakespeare’s plays are full of heartfelt prayers and dignified friars.  Moreover, whether Hamlet or Macbeth, his tragic heroes have lives frequently intersecting with the supernatural, and Shakespeare’s comedies, such as Measure for Measure, end with a moral, indeed, biblical, lecture.

There is no reason, of course, to read any of the Sonnets (or any of the plays) as autobiographical.  William Shakespeare was a complex and creative man, able to imagine himself into any number of characters and situations.  For example, is the real Shakespeare to be found in Julius Caesar or in Juliet?

Nevertheless, one can read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 108 objectively as a Christian devotional poem.  If we grant that Shakespeare was a believing, even a practicing, Christian, we would be surprised if in 154 sonnets there were only one with a religious subject.  We would be right to consider the possibility, even the probability, of others.

Commentators in recent years, though, have seen Sonnet 108 as a secular love poem, probably articulating same-sex desire.  Thus, critics from Peter Quennell (1963) to Robert Matz (2008) have tended to interpret the “sweet boy” in line five of Sonnet 108 as a young man, namely the Earl of Southampton, amorously thought of by the poet.  In the 1590s, when he wrote the Sonnets, Shakespeare was turning thirty, whereas Southampton was some ten years younger.

Their unequal ranks in society notwithstanding, Shakespeare could well have had some paternal or fraternal regard for that young earl, his noble patron.  After all, Shakespeare’s brother, Richard, was a year younger than Southampton; Shakespeare’s brother, Edmund, was six years younger.  Nothing requires the earl to be the “sweet boy” of Sonnet 108, any more than the “sweet boy” must refer either to one of Shakespeare’s kid brothers or to his own son, Hamnet, who died in 1596.

The true identity of the “sweet boy” emerges in the sestet.  The speaker, perhaps also the poet, talks of “eternal love” and having “hallowed thy fair name.”  For a Christian, there is only one eternal love, and it will be found in Heaven.  The Christian learns from Scripture that in Heaven there is no marriage, no need to worry about whose spouse is whose if there has been widowing and re-marrying (Mt 22:30).  All will be bound together in ecstatic love, adoring God.

Sonnet 108 is about someone wondering how to express anew a longstanding love.  “What new to speak, what now to register,” the speaker asks, “That I may express my love, or thy dear merit?”  Many a Christian poet has stood “tongue-tied” (a favorite phrase in the Sonnets), wondering how to express either love for the Lord or the Lord’s unspeakable worth.  Here that love is for a “sweet boy” whose “fair name” the speaker has long “hallowed.”  The speaker, alluding to the Lord’s Prayer, is concerned about “eternal love” in a place beyond “the dust and injury of age.”

A parallel to the religious character of Sonnet 108 appears in the shorter poems of a Jesuit martyr, Robert Southwell.  Three years older than Shakespeare, Southwell was arrested for treason in 1592 and executed in 1595.  Southwell was a distant cousin to Shakespeare, and Southwell’s shorter devotional verse shows similar imagery to that found in Sonnet 108.

In particular, Southwell’s poem “The Burning Babe,” despite grotesque images such a title may conjure, is about the Christ child, as are his poems “New Prince, New Pomp” and “Come to Your Heaven, You Heavenly Choirs!”  That last concludes, “If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy/Then flit not from this heavenly boy.”

Taken out of context, Southwell’s “heavenly boy” could seem as camp or homoerotic as Shakespeare’s “sweet boy” could be misread to be.  In context, however, Southwell’s words clearly refer to the baby Jesus, and a fresh and objective look at Shakespeare’s Sonnet 108 would point to the same subject.  Christianity permeating Shakespeare’s world, it could hardly be otherwise.

Of course, at a Christian interpretation of Sonnet 108 (or any other) secular critics will object, preferring to see the Bard as a modern agnostic.  Interest in Shakespeare has endured for four hundred years because, as a great Shakespearean actor, Maurice Evans (1901-1989), observed in his memoirs, each age finds in him “a responsive echo.”  Even four centuries from now, though, Christian readers may still hear an echo of another Christian voice.

Daniel J. Heisey, O. S. B, is a Benedictine monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he is known as Brother Bruno.  He teaches Church History at Saint Vincent Seminary.