Posted on 10/30/2005 2:38:07 PM PST by theFIRMbss
In 16th century England many loyal subjects to the crown were asked to make a terrible choice: to follow their monarch or their God. The era was one of unprecedented authoritarianism: England, it seemed, had become a police state, fearful of threats from abroad and plotters at home. This age of terror was also the era of the greatest creative genius the world has ever known: William Shakespeare. How, then, could such a remarkable man born into such violently volatile times apparently make no comment about the state of England in his work?
He did. But it was hidden. Revealing Shakespeare's sophisticated version of a forgotten code developed by 16th-century dissidents, Clare Asquith shows how he was both a genius for all time and utterly a creature of his own era: a writer who was supported by dissident Catholic aristocrats, who agonized about the fate of England's spiritual and political life and who used the stage to attack and expose a regime which he believed had seized illegal control of the country he loved.
Shakespeare's plays offer an acute insight into the politics and personalities of his era. And Clare Asquith's decoding of them offers answers to several mysteries surrounding Shakespeare's own life, including most notably why he stopped writing while still at the height of his powers. An utterly compelling combination of literary detection and political revelation, Shadowplay is the definitive expose of how Shakespeare lived through and understood the agonies of his time, and what he had to say about them.
Clare Asquith has lectured on Shakespeare in England and Canada. Her article on The Phoenix and the Turtle was published in 2001 by the Times Literary Supplement, and her essay on Love's Labour's Lost appeared this year in Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England. She lives in London.
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.
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| 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. |
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.
Thanks for the links! (I
just summarized this before
seeing your hotlink.)
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.
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.
I was responding to your claim that Shakespeare was slanted towards Catholics. I don't care about Asquith.
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.
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.
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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.
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