I was intrigued to read the discussion in Kevin’s post, “Winter’s Tale to Fairy Tale”, in which it was suggested that Shakespeare could not be a good Catholic because of his depiction of nihilism and despair in plays such as Macbeth and King Lear. Kevin’s response to these suggestions is very good and I hope that people will take the time to visit this post to read what he he has to say.
The key point that Kevin makes, and that I have sought to make in Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays and in the soon-to-be-published Shakespeare On Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence in Romeo & Juliet, is that it is necessary to draw the vital and crucial distinction between the voice of the playwright and the voices of his characters. The nihilistic rant of Macbeth at the end of the Scottish Play is not the voice of Shakespeare but the voice of a character who has been led to despair by his practice of machiavellian relativism. Macbeth’s descent from noble warrior to nihilistic desperado is Shakespeare’s judgement of where such nihilistic nonsense leads. Lear’s stripping of himself naked on the heath is the necessary “madness” that precedes the sanity of conversion. Hamlet’s asking of the right questions at the beginning of the play leads to his coming to the right answer, quoting from the Gospel, at the play’s end. Romeo’s spurning of the foolishness of chastity at the beginning of the play lays the foundations for the tragedy that follows.
Macbeth is not Shakespeare; Lear is not Shakespeare; Hamlet is not Shakespeare; Romeo is not Shakespeare. Shakespeare shows us these characters and their follies to show us the character and folly of sin and its disastrous consequences.
The Bard of Avon lived in dark and treacherous times, in which priests were put to tortuous slow death. It is not surprising, therefore, that his plays are full of dark and treacherous characters. As a Catholic he is showing us the ugliness of a life without Christ.
Joseph Pearce,
While deferring to your superior knowledge on the big issues here, I would like to make one point. You refer to Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech as a “nihilistic rant”, and this seems to me very wrong. Firstly, I think it would be a very poor actor who would “rant” the speech. All the performers I have seen have played it rather quiet and reflective, and this seems to be what the words require. The speech is full of complex imagery and subtle alliteration, not characteristics of rants.
Secondly, the speech has “entered our culture”, as they say, is known to people who know hardly any Shakespeare, because audiences and readers of different creeds, backgrounds and races over four centuries have judged it to be great poetry. I think they’re right, and I think I even have Kevin O’Brien with me on this one, since he refers to it as “gripping and stunning”, “great poetry of despair”. Now I can see how it would be simpler for the interpretation of “Macbeth” as Catholic play if the speech was just a rant. But that’s not what Shakespeare does. Instead he puts into the mouth of this evil tyrant, who is just about to get his well-deserved come-uppance, some of the best poetry he ever wrote. Any interpretation of the play, Catholic or otherwise, must attempt to account for this fact.
That’s exactly right. MacBeth is not a stand in for Shakespeare. They should think of the play as a morality play where the central character is one who succumbs to vice.
Andrew Lomas is making some interesting comments here and at my post on “The Winter’s Tale”. He seems to be saying that Shakespeare was probably not Catholic because he writes so well, and so compellingly, about sin – and catches so well the modern mood of despair. This implies, Andrew seems to be saying, that Shakespeare was other than Catholic.
I daresay that this notion of Catholic as meaning “limited” comes from the oversimplification of our faith we see about us in many Christians – especially the Puritan and the Prosperity Gospel heresies, the one teaching that anything of the body is contrary to faith, the other teaching that any suffering is contrary to the faith. Thus we find many who doubt Shakespeare’s Catholicism because of his bawdiness in the same way that Andrew doubts it because of his understanding of and depiction of despair.
The fact is that a Catholic vision is not only broad enough to encompass sin and nihilism and despair (as well as bawdiness and humor), but that it must. If Shakespeare depicted nihilism and despair only, Andrew would have a better point, but these things are always presented in a larger context, and in a context that shows them as the consequences of sin and of compromise with virtue, and as philosophical points of view which are belied by the plots and conclusions of the plays, as well as by the philosophies of other characters in the plays.
Also, Andrew, I’m certain Joseph was using “rant” as a kind shorthand. I imagine he would agree that the depiction of sin, suffering, nihilism and evil in the plays of Shakespeare are compelling and are masterful.
But look at the book of Job. Better yet, look at the Gospels.
The most compelling and stunningly told parts of all four Gospels are the accounts of the betrayal, suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is, like “tomorrow and tomorrow” – a transcendent moment that has the power to “enter the culture” and cut across time and space.
By comparison, the resurrection accounts, stylistically speaking, are rather unusual and strange. There is no poetic moment in the resurrection accounts to match the poetry of the passion (I’m speaking here only as a literary critic of the gospels). Are we to take from this the mistaken notion that the gospels are therefore endorsing existential abandonment because Christ’s moment of (apparent) abandonment is so unforgettable?
The fact is our Faith includes suffering and nihilism, which it must in order to overcome and redeem it. If God Himself could doubt Himself on the cross, then there’s no dark place where He will not go for us, and the best writers can likewise plumb the depths knowing that even in the darkest places a light can be found to shine.
Thanks, Andrew, for engaging us on this. And thanks as well for your comment over at my post where you show your open mindedness about the points we’re making.
Andrew, Perhaps I should not have employed the word “rant”, though beautiful poetry can certainly be ranted, every bit as much as it can alliterate etc. The world is full of examples of the greatest rhetorical skills being employed to rant.
It is of course a matter for the director of each new production of Macbeth to decide how these lines are to be delivered, whether as angst-ridden words of introspective nihilistic despair (the delivery that you evidently prefer) or as an insane rant against the world and its meaninglessness.
In any event, and most importantly, we seem, to agree that Macbeth’s words are not Shakespeare’s but are the consequence of the cautionary denouement of the plot. In short, Macbeth is wrong and Shakespeare is right to show us that he’s wrong. This is clearly in harmony with what one would expect from a Catholic poet.