Coming on the heels of Joseph’s recent post on Shakespeare and the controversy it has excited, allow me to share with Ink Desk readers an official press release …
THE CHRISTIAN SHAKESPEARE – PRESS RELEASE
June 6, 2012 – St. Louis, Missouri, USA
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The Theater of the Word Incorporated announces a new website devoted to the Christian elements in Shakespeare’s plays, http://www.christianshakespeare.com/ .
Kevin O’Brien, founder and artistic director of the Theater of the Word, sees a need for such a site. “As an actor and producer, it has become clear to me over the years that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of Shakespeare and his plays that is running rampant not only in literary criticism but also in live productions and in films,” O’Brien notes. “Audiences and readers are thereby robbed of experiencing the genius and beauty that can be found in the works of one of the world’s greatest writers.”
Joseph Pearce, an author and scholar whose works are at the forefront of the question of Shakespeare’s faith, concurs. “In the past, the lack of knowledge of the personhood of Shakespeare has enabled critics to treat him as a tabula rasa upon which they can write their own prejudiced agenda. For the proponents of ‘queer theory’ he becomes conveniently homosexual; for secular fundamentalists he is a proto-secularist, ahead of his time; for ‘post-Christian’ agnostics he becomes a prophet of post-modernity.”
And yet, as much recent scholarship has shown, documentary evidence indicates that Shakespeare was almost certainly a recusant Catholic, rebelling against the state-imposed religion of the totalitarian Elizabethan regime. “And the plays,” O’Brien observes, “are profoundly Christian – written from a perspective that sees the human drama played out on a stage with heaven above and hell below, with virtue and vice very real things, the commitment to one or the other producing, quite dramatically, the consequences of our actions.”
The site premieres with articles by a number of Shakespearian scholars worldwide, including Fr. Peter Milward of Japan, who was at the forefront of the Catholic Shakespeare movement as far back as the 1960’s; Dr. Colin Jory of Australia, who writes with clear and penetrating insight into the plays; and Thomas Merriam of England, who provides stunning “new scholarship” that demonstrates that Shakespeare was most likely the key author of the original text of “Sir Thomas More”, a play that’s never been attributed primarily to him – until now.
“Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Joseph Pearce and I also contribute a number of articles,” O’Brien says, “which range from scholarly works with footnotes to entertaining and light hearted pieces – all of which look at the great gap that’s grown between a clear understanding of Shakespeare and the deconstruction – or destruction – of him by the modern world.”
O’Brien is encouraging other scholars and writers to “join in the fun” by submitting articles.
How important will christianshakespeare.com be?
O’Brien replies: “We are defending Christian and secular culture against a devastating loss. This is a crucial front in the culture wars, for a clear understanding of the best of Western civilization – which must include Shakespeare – is indispensable to our education and to our humanity.”
For more information, visit http://www.christianshakespeare.com/ , write info@christianshakespeare.com , or call The Theater of the Word at 1-888-840-WORD.
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That site looks fantastic. It’s been bookmarked. Thanks a bunch.
Good-looking site, you clever boy!
Kevin O’Brien:
I congratulate you on the new website. I have visited it already, and it is clear that there will be much to ponder and enjoy. However, the press release above has two points in particular that I would like to query–these are questions that have also come to me recently while reading Joseph Pearce’s “Through Shakespeare’s Eyes”. (I have found this an interesting book with many suggestive readings, but seriously flawed by a theory of interpretation I consider demonstrably false.)
Firstly, the claim that Shakespeare was “almost certainly a recusant Catholic”. In reading similar comments in Pearce’s book, I was moved to dig up my old student biography of Shakespeare, by the respected, conservative scholar A.L.Rowse. In his biography Rowse makes the following claims of historical fact: 1) That the parish records of Stratford show that Shakespeare was baptised, married, and buried in the C of E. 2) That all his children were baptised in the C of E. 3) That he stood godfather to the child of a friend in the C of E. 4) That his works show great familiarity with the Bible in the English Protestant translations. 5) That Shakespeare’s will, unlike that of his father, is in the regular Protestant formula (“believing only through the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour”). Now all this doesn’t mean that Shakespeare couldn’t have had Catholic sympathies, or Catholic tendencies, or worked for the restoration of Catholicism in England. But “almost certainly a recusant”? I just don’t get it.
Secondly, about the “totalitarian Elizabethan regime”, another theme of Joseph Pearce’s book. No doubt this is true, but…In the interest of historical accuracy I think it should be pointed out that just before Elizabeth’s reign there was that of Catholic “Bloody Mary”. Now I do not doubt that the official Protestant history has greatly exaggerated her repressions for propaganda purposes. Nonetheless, when all exaggeration is taken away the fact remains that she burnt people for being Protestants. I am sure there is a Protestant blog which mirrors Joseph Pearce’s in recording the atrocities committed upon Protestants. Mary had of course to deal with a very difficult situation, and there were exculpating circumstances (as there were, much as I despise her, for Elizabeth: viz. plots by Catholics to assasinate her, and the Spanish Armada, an attempted invasion of England in the name of Catholicism). But according to Henri Daniel-Rops in his great history of the church, even Mary’s husband, Philip II of Spain, tried to restrain her repressions as being too extreme, unsuccessfully.
More generally, the picture that Joseph Pearce tries to paint of Catholics of these times as defenders of religious freedom and the rights of conscience seems to me a fantasy. Their Most Catholic Majesties of Spain, the Catholic super-power of the day, depite many virtues, were not exactly renowned for their religious tolerance. As Daniel-Rops again says, all sides during the wars of religion were equally fanatically intolerant. He notes that the position of the Catholic Church at this period was all too often that of “an appalling decretal of Innocent III which orders the withholding of medical attention from a sick man unless he consents to receive the sacraments, even if it involves the patient’s death”.
So while welcoming the new website “The Christian Shakespeare”, I do hope it does not become one-sided or overly partisan. It is not part of the teaching of the Church that Shakespeare was a Catholic, nor are we called upon to defend dodgy political decisions of past Catholics, Catholic rulers, or even Popes. These are matters for dispassioned, objective research, reaching balanced conclusions. The only real “Catholic interpretation of Shakespeare ” is the true one, since as Catholics our ultimate allegiance is to the God Who Is Truth.
Dear Andrew,
I’ll let Kevin or Joseph answer your detailed and objections, since they are more knowledgeable about this topic than I, but I’d like to point out three things: (1) Queen Mary. From 1532 until the present day, really, there was only one monarch’s response to England’s historical institutionalized anti-Catholicism. Regardless of the apparently endless mileage gained from that one response, it was VERY brief. Queen Mary, whose mysterious death marked the end of a reign that lasted less than five years, never instituted a single anti-Protestant law. She merely resumed England’s laws (not the Church’s, by the way) that had existed before her father’s denunciation of the Church and his subsequent usurpation and destruction of Church property. It’s hard to condemn that brief period as morally equivalent to centuries of long and often very gruesome wholesale persecution of Catholics.
(2) Recusancy. Only a very few of England’s Catholics were recusants. Recusancy was the refusal to obey the law that required all Englishmen to attend Church of England services. Those who refused were “recusants,” but most people simply obeyed the law–few could afford the heavy fines for not attending. As an actor, poet, and playwright, Shakespeare’s lack of attendance would have been discreetly overlooked; QEI was not consistent in enforcing this law among the players or poets or several known Catholics in her court who amused her–as long as they didn’t make a public show (recusancy) of refusing to obey the law.
(3) Marriages, baptisms, and all that. Well, of course, it was C of E. That was the only type of marriage, baptism, etc., that was legal.
To Dena Hunt:
Thank you for engaging me in discussion on these issues. I admit the weight of some of your points, but you will perhaps be dismayed to find that I am not without counter-arguments. For variety, I take your points in reverse order.
3) Yes, only marriages etc. in the C of E were legal, and attendance at C of E services was commanded by law. But “recusant” Catholics were precisely those who rebelled against such laws. As such, they frequently ran foul of the law, as did Ben Jonson when he was a Catholic, being fined for non-attendance at church. No such record of Shakespeare’s defiance exists. Nor did he choose to show such defiance when making his will, unlike his father.
I would be curious to know whether the aristocratic Catholics of the time celebrated their marriages in the C of E, it seems unlike them. It would also be interesting to know whether it was the practice of certified recusant Catholics to stand as godfather in the C of E. I also still don’t know how Biblical allusions in the plays of a recusant Catholic could reflect the phrasings of recent Protestant Bibles–recusant Catholics certainly didn’t read Protestant Bibles.
2)On QE1 permitting Shakespeare’s Catholicism: but Shakespeare was not a favourite of the queen. If I remember correctly, his one acknowledged patron, the Earl of Southampton, was not a strong supporter of the queen. Shakespeare’s works are notable for the absence of any celebrations of the myth of Gloriana. If he had been specially exempted from religious observance by the queen, I would think that such tributes would have been expected.
On the point of Shakespeare escaping attendance as an actor: but for the last part of his life, Shakespeare retired to Stratford. He was one of the richest, and certainly the most famous, members of that small community. His non-attendance at church would certainly have been noted, and indeed caused a scandal.
In summation, I still find that there is a good deal of solid evidence that Shakespeare conformed. The evidence against seems not as solid, raising possibilities rather than probabilities. Given this, I consider the claim that Shakespeare was “almost certainly a recusant” to be unwarranted.
As I said previously, to consider that Shakespeare conformed in externals does not bring any conclusions about his inner life. A good deal of solid evidence has been produced, mostly from the plays themselves, of Catholic sympathies and tendencies. Of course that Shakespeare conformed in the externals doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have had irreligious tendencies either, for which there is also a good deal of solid evidence in the plays. As a leading example of one who conformed but was completely irreligious we have QE1 herself.
1) I don’t think the fact that Mary was merely resuming old laws would have been much comfort to those she burnt at the stake. Clearly the old laws were religiously intolerant, and evil, as well. The people Mary executed were considered by Protestants to be religious matyrs just as we hold the ones Elizabeth executed to be matyrs–as witness Foxe’s Book of Matyrs.
About the “centuries of.. gruesome persecution”, I think this is an exaggeration. Of Ireland it is certainly true, but not England. Once the Catholics had been reduced to an insignificant minority, and it was clear that England wasn’t going to be Catholic again in the near future, the persecutions lessened.Though Catholics were cerainlty discriminated against, they weren’t killed so often. Still, Elizabeth undeniably did have more “kills” than her sister, since Mary died early. Just across the channel, however, the tally of murders was the other way round. The fate of the Huguenots in France demonstrates most clearly my point that all sides were equally intolerant. For the record of the massacres, executions, persecutions, exclusions against the minority Protestants in Catholic France mirrors the treatment of the minority Catholics in Protestant England.
And meanwhile, Catholic Spain was busy using force to produce religious uniformity–with actions like the expulsion of the Jews, the expulsion of the Moriscos, the Inquisition–successfully in Spain itself, but unsuccessfully in the Netherlands. The related Habsburg dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire simarly tried to produce religious uniformity by force, until it bled itself white–as did, of course their Protestant opponents.
In all this, there was no doubt as much politics as religion, on both sides. Also, serious religious differences within a state can be a serious problem. Americans are coming to understand that the idea of a “religiously neutral” state is a tricky one. Nevetheless, my point was and is that to pretend that Elizabeth and her fellow Protestant were intolerant religious persecutors while the Catholics of the time were all like Saint Thomas More, strictly observing the rights of conscience, is an unbalanced and so historically false account. It is just as false as the long-dominant Protestant view which gloated over the Inquisition and Bloody Mary while ignoring the murders carried out by Elizabeth.
Andrew,
No, I’m not dismayed. There’s nothing in your “counter-arguments” to contradict any of the points I made.
History is not a pro vs con argument. The consideration in history is accuracy, not “balance.”
Your comments are not answerable. Assumptive leaps can’t be addressed as though they were valid information rather than one’s opinion of that information. Nor can diversions (e.g., France, Netherlands, etc.) be used in an exposition of history as they are sometimes used in argumentation.
I’ll use an example to illustrate the difficulty: No one suggested that the millions of persecuted English Catholics were all reiterations of St. Thomas More. Your emphatic assertion that they were not is an attempt to argue against something no one said. One has to wonder what you’re trying to prove.
You’re completely free to dislike historical information and the logical conclusions that have to be drawn from it. But you must understand that your dislike does not constitute a burden on anyone to provide you with the “balance” you seem to need.
It’s not news to me that Shakespeare was probably a recusant Catholic. While researching my book, The Queen Must Die, I came across the fact that a cousin of Shakespeare’s mother Mary Arden, Edward Arden was executed for being involved in a plot to kill Elizabeth which was really initiated by his son-in-law who was himself inspired to undertake the assassination by reading some Catholic texts. I further discovered that there was the persecution of Catholics by Elizabeth and the constant threat of Catholic homes being invaded by so called “searchers,” who would ransack them for any Catholic relics. This could explain the lack of survival of any letters or journals written by Shakespeare.
One of the main themes of The Queen Must Die, is Shakespeare’s struggle with his religious identity and whether that identity allows him to commit murder.
Andrew, thank you for your (as usual) intelligent comments, and Dena for your (as usual) spirited defense.
I think, Andrew, if you read “The Quest for Shakespeare”, that you will see a better case for the Catholic Shakespeare than you currently see. And if you don’t have time for that just yet, then take a gander at some of the articles on http://www.christianshakespeare.com. Articles are arranged by topic, and currently there are nine on “Shakespeare the Catholic”.
It is always fascinating to me how people on the internet argue about headlines and press releases more than about content. I recently posted an article at the Distributist Review about (of all things) “Judge Judy and Distributism”, and it became clear to me after a while that the most vocal commenters in the combox had never watched a “Judge Judy” episode all the way through; but they nonetheless attacked her show, apparently based on impressions they’ve received from channel surfing and the word on the street.
Andrew, I’m not saying that you’re doing that, but I will say that the press release is not the website to which it refers.
To Kevin O’Brien:
I have certainly not read all the new “Shakespeare the Papist” books. Though I have suggested it to several people, no one has yet proved willing to pay me to sit around reading books about Shakespeare, so I must indeed get busy earning my daily bread. However, I am not quite in the dire situation you seem to fear. As I mentioned in my original comment, I have been reading “Through Shakespeare’s Eyes”, and have read most of it. This is a fairly substantial amount of material. Also, when sampling your new website, I read Peter Milward’s “The recusant Shakespeare”. The early part I found interesting, but he lost me rather when he began interpreting :To be or not to be” in terms of Shakespeare’s recusancy, for reasons I will outline presently.
As I said in my original comment, the queries I had related not just to the press release but to things that had occurred to me while reading “Through Shakespeare’s Eyes”. And to be frank, while they mightn’t reflect your position, I still think Joseph Pearce’s words in the press release reflect with his usual admirable clarity and vigour the positions he takes in the book. This is so with regard to his refrence to the “state-imposed religion of the totalitarian Elizabethan regime”. I found in the book that the undoubtedly horrible Elizabethan regime was inadequately placed in the context what was a pretty generally horribly intolerant age. This is the point I was trying to make with my references to Bloody Mary and Spain, and I see no reason to change it.
As to “almost certainly a recusant”, this is the position expounded in the book. Possibly you might think that I haven’t got yet to the appendix on “Shakespeare’s shocking Catholicism”. But since after all I bought the book as a result of a discussion on this issue, this was one of the first parts I read. I have read it twice, carefully. And as I said, I have also read Peter Milward’s article on this question. Both left me, I must admit, rather underwhelmed. Perhaps the publicity gave me too high expectations, but I was hoping for a “silver bullet” that established Shakespeare’s Catholicism once and for all–something like a fine for recusancy. What I got instead was speculations from minor historical finds in Joseph Pearce’s case–interesting but hardly compelling–and speculations from the plays by Peter Milward. And indeed, the positions of these two champions of the Catholic Shakespeare are contradictory. Peter Milward says that there is no certain proof of Shakespeare’s recusancy from outside the plays, and that we must look for internal evidence. Joseph Pearce says there is proof from outside the plays, and that this must guide our reading of the plays.
Perhaps my reservations could be cured by further reading. But I must admit I tend to think I have read too much about Shakespeare the man, not too little. As an undergraduate student in a secular university in modern but not post-modern times, I encountered a multitude of different versions of Shakespeare. There was Shakespeare the radical leftist, Shakespeare the radical rightist, a gay Shakespeare, a bisexual Shakespeare, Shakespeare the atheist, a C of E Shakespeare, Shakespeare the Nietzschean, etc, etc.. The proponents of these theories all had some little historical incident they extrapolated from, or some text they claimed to be a coded declaration of Shakespeare’s true history. After a time I noticed two things about these theories. Firstly–suprise, suprise!–the proponent of the atheist Shakespeare turned out to be an atheist, of the gay Shakespeare gay, of the Nietzscean Shakespeare a disciple of Nietzsche, etc. Secondly, they never convinced anybody of their different theories who didn’t already agree with their philosophies.
So perhaps I may be forgiven for lacking enthusiasm for investigating the coded message that is supposedly in the “To be or not ot be” speech, and so forth. Until and unless someone finds that silver bullet I would much rather continue to read “To be or not to be” as simply one of the most profound and moving meditations on our mortal existence ever composed by man. And that brings me to a further reason why I have yet to quite finish Joseph Pearce’s book. Following our recent discussion, I actually read “Macbeth” again, the first time for a number of years. I found it both even better than I remembered and, yes, more Christian. So you have after all inspired me to examine Shakespeare again, and to see better the Christian elements in the plays! “Hamlet” is next, and as I read the plays I will be sure to look up the comments on them on “The Christian Shakespeare”. I am sure it will be a great resource for me, and for students of Shakespeare of many different levels.
Andrew,
Just enjoy reading Shakespeare. What you believe (or not) about Shakespeare’s religion does not in the slightest diminish the incomparable pleasure of reading him.
I know it doesn’t matter, but I’ll mention it anyway. As a non-Christian, I read and taught Shakespeare for many years–and I knew, all the while, that he was Catholic. Nothing biographical told me that–just my knowledge of English history, and most of all, the plays themselves.
If you want to read him believing he was a Protestant, or an atheist, or whatever you want to believe, it won’t matter to your appreciation of him.
Dear Andrew,
Thank you again for your intelligent comment. You are clearly a fair-minded man searching for the truth, unlike many who argue on the internet!
I admit there is no “silver bullet” on Shakespeare’s Catholicism. I will say, however, that the historical documentary evidence is (in my opinion) stronger than the evidence from the plays. This is why it’s good to read “The Quest for Shakespeare”, and this is why (I think) Joseph wrote that book first, before “Through Shakespeare’s Eyes”. For, while uncovering no “silver bullet”, it becomes quite compelling, after looking at all the evidence Joseph compiles in that book, that Shakespeare was indeed a Catholic – maybe not a recusant Catholic, but indeed a Catholic.
And the main point you are making in your comment above, a point I whole-heartedly agree with, is that the plays are profoundly “Christian”. This is perhaps more important than the mystery of Shakespeare’s religion – for it is the plays we possess, not the man himself.
The problem has been that over the years the criticism of Shakespeare has turned a blind eye to the Christian meaning of the dramas and comedies. And the answer for anyone who hopes to understand these masterpieces is not to say, “Well, every critic has an agenda, and therefore all critical interpretations are wrong”; the answer is to say, “Agendas aside, what are really in these works and how do they speak to me?” In the same way that we are tempted to say, “Since religions contradict each other, they must all be wrong” instead of “Religions contradict each other, and they may all be wrong or one may be right, or some may be more right than others,” so we are tempted to shrug out shoulders and give up on any work of art or literature – instead of pressing on and finding out where the true meaning lies.
I don’t know if I’ve enabled comments on the Christian Shakespeare site. If I did so, can we continue a discussion like this over there? And may I quote from some of your comments? I would be honored to have you initiate a discussion at the new site. I think your objections are reasonable and the result of such combox debates could be quite fruitful.