Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare

Amazon ^ | May 10, 2005) | Clare Asquith

[american colleen]

Thanks for the post. I'm reading this book now. Clare Asquith was on "The World Over" about a month ago - great interiew, linked here if you are interested in listening to her (audio only). Scroll down to #6 for the exact program.

Eamon Duffy is considered one of the premier historians of that time in English history --- I highly recommend The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village and The Stripping of the Altars : Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580, Second Edition . Duffy researches from primary sources and details each and every source. Excellent books and an indispensible background resource for reading about the reformation period - much of the information has been lost for 500 years.

[VOA]

bump

[theFIRMbss]

>Emerson remarked that Shakespeare put things in his writings that even Shakespeare wasn't aware of

Yes. But if you read, say, Hamlet, it appears clear that religion shapes every little thing overtly and in sub-text. I got to thinking about this myself with Hamlet. Then I read through Will's book on MacBeth and the Gunpowder Plot and I realized that I knew so little about history I couldn't follow Shakespeare's many references. Shadowplay provides the historic background to his work in general.

[theFIRMbss]

>All of Shakespeare's works had to go under the censor's pen before being allowed on the stage, and if there were buzzwords with easily recognizable anti-Protestant implications then I do not think they would have leaped that hurdle

She introduces
the book by recounting how
she once watched a play

in the Soviet
Union. KGB were there,
but the actors were

able to invest
careful layers of meaning
into dialog

that made the spies smile,
yet, at the same time, also
provided meaning

directed against
the Soviets. Those same "tricks" --
those same kind of tricks --

she sees in Shakespeare,
driven by the same kinds of
censors and terror.

[theFIRMbss]

>And another article leading off with how she got her inspiration

Thanks for the links! (I
just summarized this before
seeing your hotlink.)

[theFIRMbss]

>Though slanted toward Catholics ...
>>I don't see any evidence of that

Read it carefully.
Examples of slanting are
legion. For instance,

Protestants who file
reports with the Crown are called
"spies" or "henchmen of

the King." Jesuits
who send detailed reports back
to Rome are simply

"missionaries." And
Asquith writes detailed, gruesome
accounts of torture

and death inflicted
on Catholics, however
Catholic terror

simply gets mentioned --
the St. Bartholomew's mess
gets one sentence and

Catholics in France
massacred Protestants by
the thousands in that.

Asquith isn't too
offensive in her bias,
but it is present.

[SpringheelJack]

She might do better introducing the odds that she was simply projecting. I'm also not much moved by her ability to see the "same" kind of "terror" in Shakespeare's England as there was under the KGB. This all seems like a big exercise in anachronism.

[SpringheelJack]

I was responding to your claim that Shakespeare was slanted towards Catholics. I don't care about Asquith.

[theFIRMbss]

>Though slanted toward Catholics (it seems Shakespeare was)
>>I don't see any evidence of that

I've thought of your post
all this time. It's taken me
this long to read through

Asquith's entire book.
Her position is, in fact,
that Shakespeare was so

engaged with dissent
and recusant Catholics
that all his plays read

as anti-Crown texts.
Some (Titus Andronicus)
only make sense read

as allegory.
(And her contention is that
Henry VIII was

a forgery by
Crown sycophant John Fletcher.
Shakespeare, she believes,

was so compromised
by his work and connections
that when "protection"

provided by Peers
evaporated, Shakespeare
was forced to retire

and, fearing his life,
keep silent about Fletcher.)
Asquith is wildy

erudite and knows
Shakespeare's time better than most
of us know today.

She is persuasive.
But her own bias against
the Reformation

as it was played out
in England makes me wonder
if her conclusions

are as rock solid
as her presentation seems.
If you know a lot

about Shakespeare then
I bet you will like this book.
It is a mind trip.

[SpringheelJack]

I'm sorry, but this bull about Shakespeare being scared to deny his hand in "Henry VIII" renders Asquith's credibility almost null. How could she know anyways? "Henry VIII" is just mentioned as a play in surviving records, with no mention of an author, until it is published as Shakespeare's in the First Folio in 1623. She's fashioned a dramatic story out of nothing. Calling Fletcher a "crown sycophant" is pretty retarded too. What is that based on? And this stuff about Shakespeare retiring in fear because he lost court "protection" is completely made up.

Furthermore, if you can't read the revenge play "Titus Andronicus" and come up with any reasonable response to it other than as a Catholic allegory you probably shouldn't be reading literature.

If these are the claims Asquith makes then she marks herself off as a complete nutcase.

[SunkenCiv]

ping?

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

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[Borges]

The plays are filled with sloppiness that suggests an actor not having the time to 'blot a line' not an Aristocrat idling away in his leisure. Take the clocks in 'Julius Caesar' or the reference to Aristotle in 'Troilus and Cressida'. Nothing about the court is all that specific in the plays that most Grammar school educated people didn't know at the time.