I am currently teaching an on-line class on Romeo and Juliet for Homeschool Connections and received an e-mail from one of my students asking if there is a dialectical engagement with Elizabethan anti-Catholicism in the play. Here’s my response to the student:
The play reflects in its moral theme some of the poetry and writing of the Jesuit priest and martyr, St. Robert Southwell, most notably in his poem, “Lewd Love is Loss”. Southwell wrote of the difference between true love, i.e. caritas or charity, and the false love inspired by Venus or Eros, i.e. venereal or erotic “love”. This is Shakespeare’s primary theme in Romeo and Juliet, of course. In my book, “Shakespeare On Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence in Romeo and Juliet“, which will be published by Ignatius Press this autumn, there is a long appendix section on “The Jesuit Connection” in which Shakespeare’s creative debt to Southwell is explored.
I simply can’t help commenting here. Sir Robert Southwell and the Jesuits notwithstanding, it is this collision of eros and agape that constitutes the very history of England. In the early 16th century, eros was pitted against agape by Henry VIII. His victory became England’s history to this day.
In researching history for my novel Treason (which I devoutly hope will be published in my lifetime), and exploring my Catholic and Protestant characters, I found that the theme of this conflict became an inescapable monolith that demanded unqualified acknowledgement. Once that acknowledgement is made, literally *everything* comes into crystal-clear focus, including Southwell’s poetry and Shakespeare’s plays. When the novel was finished, I literally *discovered* its theme.
The apparent victory of eros required nothing more than an ego sufficiently monstrous to challenge agape. It never does, because divine love always loses any battle waged against it. The nature of divine love is the lamb’s. It has no defense. (Think Cordelia.) But battles are the stuff of history, events confined in time. Agape, however, is eternal. You may win all the battles you like–divine love has already won the war.
That faith, articulated or not, is at the core of every Catholic consciousness, and at the pitying heart of every one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. As the playwright lived within the history of his age, he wrote from that uniquely Catholic awareness that transcends history. History tells us facts; art tells us truth.