Posted on 08/07/2008 7:37:07 PM PDT by annalex
Edward Achorn: Was the immortal Bard a Catholic?
01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 5, 2008
EDWARD ACHORN
FOR CENTURIES, people have been trying to form a coherent picture of the greatest writer in the English language. We have scattered pieces that do not always fit together, leading crackpots to seize on all kinds of theories about William Shakespeare — most notably, the preposterous idea that someone else wrote the plays and poems under his name.
But a new and stunning line of inquiry has gathered momentum in recent years. Academics have increasingly noted links between the Bard and the persecuted Roman Catholics of his times, when a (perhaps justly) paranoid Queen Elizabeth ran a kind of religious police state, hunting down and eliminating Catholics with the help of snitches and spies. (Her father, Henry VIII, separated England from the Catholic Church when the latter declined to approve of his rather complex marital relationships.) Though the evidence is circumstantial, it is striking, leading some to conclude that Shakespeare was indeed a believing Catholic who, for the sake of his career and his neck, kept that a secret.
A fascinating new book by Catholic scholar Joseph Pearce, The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome (Ignatius Press, $19.95), lays out the case.
Shakespeare came from Stratford in Warwickshire, a hotbed of Catholic non-conformity. His father John Shakespeare was identified in 1592 as a recusant, meaning a Catholic who refused to attend Protestant church services. William himself appears on no records attending Protestant services or registering with the Church of England — something he was required by law to do. His mother Mary Arden came from a family of fiercely loyal Catholics. His school teachers included at least two Roman Catholics.
William and Anne Hathaway’s wedding took place not in Stratford, oddly, but four miles away, at a church presided over by a man identified in 1586 as a Catholic priest.
A bricklayer working on the Shakespeare home in 1757 found a document hidden in the rafters, its wording copied from a pamphlet distributed by Edward Campion, a Catholic priest who was tortured and executed under Queen Elizabeth in 1581. The document seemed to be a promise by John Shakespeare to die in the faith, even if he was unable to obtain last rites from a priest.
Scholars note that, during the “lost” years after Shakespeare attended school, one “William Shakeshafte” worked at Hoghton Tower in Lancashire, a manor notorious for Catholic activity. (Among the priests who visited it was Campion.) Interestingly, the lord maintained a theater, with costumes and instruments for putting on plays. But was Shakespeare Shakeshafte? No one knows. We do know that Shakespeare’s own grandfather used that vari-ant of the name.
Shakespeare’s beloved daughter Susanna was identified as a Catholic recusant in 1606. In his waning years, William, who had rented all his life when away from Stratford, spent a load of money on a London building. It was said to be a hiding place for Catholic priests and a site for illegal masses, and some speculate that Shakespeare bought it to help the cause.
Mr. Pearce maintains he was a skeptic before he embarked on serious research. “Doing so, I became convinced that Shakespeare was indeed a Catholic . . . and that this fact has radical consequences with regard to the study of his works,” he writes.
Anthony Esolen, a noted professor of Renaissance English at Providence College, contends that Mr. Pearce’s case is “meticulous, reasonable, and convincing.” It also seems to square with Shakespeare’s works, which touch on themes of wisdom through suffering, and of trying to be faithful to one’s beliefs in the face of self-doubt and bitter persecution.
All this, of course, must seem anathema to academics who wish to embrace Shakespeare as the spokesman of secular modernity. The popular creed of our day is that godless Man is all, and that elites, using Machiavellian means to advance themselves, should have as much power as possible to work their superior will over less enlightened human beings. In the view of some, Shakespeare has nothing specific to say about morality or religion, other than to question the legitimacy of both.
Well, to be sure, one of Shakespeare’s strengths is his capacity for standing back, telling the tale, and refusing to club anyone over the head with his “moral.” Often, his “message” seems as elusive as the details of his life.
But my readings of Shakespeare lead me to believe he did hold very strong moral beliefs, among them that immense power poses a horrific danger, not least to the always flawed human being wielding it. Reading between the lines, I find a man who revered justice, detested bullies, and fully understood the sinfulness and frailty of his fellow men and women — yet loved and was amused by them all the same.
In Elizabethan England, those who promulgated the Catholic faith were branded traitors. They were dragged through the streets and hanged. While they were still alive, their tormentors cut them down, stripped them naked, sliced off their genitals, cut open their bellies, and pulled out and burned their intestines before their eyes. The heart came next. Then the body was quartered, and the severed head jammed on a stake.
His works remain universal. But that Shakespeare might have been a hidden Catholic lends undeniable piquancy to the themes of power, honor and strained loyalty running so strongly through his work.
Edward Achorn is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor (eachorn@projo.com).
LOL Complex doesn't begin to describe Henry's marriage(s). Certainly believable that Mr. Shakespeare was a Catholic...although, except for Measure for Measure, I don't see his beliefs showing that much.
I’ve long believed Shakespeare to have been a Catholic.
I saw an interview with Pearce on EWTN. He was most convincing, most convinced after pursuing his research for some time. He did not start out convinced.
Of course Shakespeare was Catholic! And Abraham Lincoln was gay and Jewish, too.
That’s what I heard too. There’s actually been a growing amount of evidence discovered and marshalled over the years.
Henry VIII broke with Rome when the pope wouldn't agree to his divorcing Catherine of Aragon, his first wife. The other five marriages happened after the break with Rome.
I recall reading, though I cannot now recall the source, that there was evidence Shakespeare’s father was a crypto-Catholic.
I question this statement by Achorn: “All this, of course, must seem anathema to academics who wish to embrace Shakespeare as the spokesman of secular modernity.”
The Renaissance (and modern humanism) began in Italy, among Catholics. I don’t see how if Shakespeare was Catholic that would have prevented him from being as secular as his C of E friends. I think in that regard there proably was little difference between the two religions in sixteenth century England.
Have you read any of the books out there about Shakespeare being Catholic? There are a number of them. Rather than just dismiss them, why not read one of them.
As Stephen Greenblatt wrote in his biography of Shakespeare, called Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare:
Shakespeare’s religious beliefs have excited heated debate among scholars. What is in little dispute is that some of Shakespeare’s family and acquaintances — including his schoolmasters — had connections to English Catholicism and to the missionaries sent secretly to England by the Catholic Church to bring that country back to the fold. Many of these missionaries, including the Jesuit scholar Edmund Campion, were arrested and executed by the authorities. There is also evidence — in the form of a Catholic religious testament found in the 18th century in a house that once belonged to the Shakespeare family — that Shakespeare’s father remained a Catholic during Shakespeare’s youth.
Claire Asquith, Shadowplay:
You’ve been getting your history from too many teflon-suited Rev. Billies.
There is nothing un-Catholic about Renaissance, which was, after all, deeply religious. Modern humanism was a parasitic philosophical movement that exploited the Renaisance for its own satanic ends.
I can see a connection between Shakespeare and Catholic Renaissance, but to connect him to the likes of Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot is a long stretch.
to connect him to the likes of Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot is a long stretch.
I didn’t.
I doubt the gay part. but I do know he was Jewish. After all he got shot in the Temple. Bada Bing! Thank you I’ll be appearing at Schmucky Schmucksteins on Tues. no cover 2 drink minimum.
I about fell off my exercise bike when the PBS movie: “In Search of Shakespeare” suggested as much.
I should clarify that the movie conclude one way or another but suggested it was possible. I had never heard this or the reasons why so it made quite an impression on me.
This was only talked about in passing but from the content I remember it was pretty likely that his father was in fact Catholic.
Another interesting thing from this DVD was a very brief appearance of Patrick Stewart aka Jean-Luc Picard as Hamlet.
http://www.shoppbs.org/sm-pbs-in-search-of-shakespeare-dvd—pi-1452173.html
“I should clarify that the movie conclude one way or another but suggested it was possible.” should be:
“I should clarify that the movie DID NOT conclude one way or another but suggested it was possible.”
All that aside, wasn’t that a well written article?
Edward DeVere, the Earl of Oxford, was a Catholic for much of his life, until he renounced his faith in front of Queen Liz.
Therefore, the REAL “Shakespeare” was an ex-Catholic.
This is the second time I have come across this notion. Really something to ponder. I had never really thought about it at all.
v, Stephen Greenbalatt bump!
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