Author Joseph Pearce has a new book out “The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome” which claims that Shakespeare was a Catholic.
Now there have been many theories about this over the years but Pearce seemingly attempts to put all the evidence that the Bard was a practicing Catholic in one package.
In an interview with Zenit, Pearce said, “In recent years, even secular scholars have been forced to address the mounting evidence that Shakespeare was a Catholic, though many remain in obstinate denial. The reason that Shakespeare’s Catholicism has been largely unknown is due to a combination of factors. First, Catholicism was illegal in Shakespeare’s time, which necessitated that all Catholics had to keep the practice of their faith a secret.”
A book by Peter Milward SJ “The Catholicism of Shakespeare’s Plays” concludes with a presentation of the historical evidence for Shakespeare’s own Catholicism, including evidence linking the poet with Catholic households in Lancashire, and possibly even with the Jesuit martyr St. Edmund Campion.
Then there is the teasing, late-seventeenth-century reference to Shakespeare by Richard Davies of Corpus Christi College. “He died a papist,” Davies jotted down about Shakespeare among some other Shakespearean memoranda.
Still, many insist that Shakespeare was a secular humanist because all smart people are secular humanists. Pearce said these critics “see only their own prejudices reflected in his plays. These misreadings are exposed by the weight of documented historical evidence that Shakespeare was a believing Catholic.”
Critic Germaine Greer dismisses the “Catholic” claim in her new book, “Shakespeare’s Wife,” as “modish brouhaha”? This, of course, is the academic version of putting your hands over your ears, running in place and screeching, “I can’t hear you.”
To critics who point to the fact that his plays were performed for the Queen as evidence that he was no Catholic, Pearce writes extensively about Shakespeare perhaps being considered a “safe” Catholic by Queen Elizabeth and King James. Pearce said that his talents may have made his Catholicism tolerable to the royalty.
This book is not, however, one of those critical analyses of Shakespeare’s plays where the Sun represents this or the tempest represents that. Pearce writes convincingly of real world “evidence that Shakespeare’s family were militantly and devoutly Catholic.” In fact, according to Pearce, Shakespeare’s mother’s family was one of the most notorious Catholic families in England, and several of Shakespeare’s cousins were executed for their involvement in so-called Catholic plots. Shakespeare’s father was fined for his Catholicism, as was Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna.
Hmmm. His mother and father were Catholic and his daughter was Catholic. Hmmm.
Pearce said that within the works themselves there is tons o’ Catholicism to be seen by the discerning eye.
The tension of this “tightrope,” in which Shakespeare tried to keep his balance between expressing his beliefs without finding himself condemned for them, is evident in the tortured tension in his plays. Although the Catholicism is in evidence, it is always expressed in a circumspect way, and this subtlety and circumspection is the reason for the plays being so often misread by secular critics. The Catholicism is certainly in the plays, however, and a true critical reading of the plays will discover the wealth of Catholic morality that is present.
Shakespeare’s religion would help explain so much about the man whose name was known throughout England but was actually known by few. Shakespeare moved around often, a fact which could be explained by his secret Catholicism. After Shakespeare’s death a contemporary wrote that Shakespeare was “the more to be admired [because] he was not a company keeper…wouldn’t be debauched, & if invited to writ; he was in paine.”
I just ordered the book. Now I have to hope I get to the mail before my wife. If she sees another book coming into our house I will be quoting Shakespeare often by saying “O Woe is me.”
July 9, 2008 at 10:58 am
Clare Asquith’s Shadowplay – The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of Wm. Shakespeare is, for my money, a better written explication of the same theme.
July 9, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I’ll check it out. But I may have to wait a week or so or my wife will be a real shrew.
July 9, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I just recieved it last week, and is in the cue for reading.
I too got the glower from the Mrs. when the now ubiquitous Amazon box shows up in the mailbox.
July 9, 2008 at 3:19 pm
At your suggestion, my wife and I just netflixed Henry V. Seemed Catholic to me!
July 9, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I heard Pearce being interviewed on Al Kresta’s show on the subject. I had no idea how strong the case was for him being Catholic was. I was aware of the Catholic elements in his plays, but the evidence of his family and the evidence concerning him specifically is quite strong. Especially that he never registered in the Anglican Church where he worked, even though it was required by law and the names of several of his actors are registered at this parish. Not only that he bought a house that was knon as a metting place for Catholics and specified that the previous owner be allowed to continue living there.
I find it funny also that in his will he favored the daughter who was a strong Catholic and paid the price for it over his Daughter who had gone into Protestantism after being married.
July 9, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Now, that’s funny. After listening to all the new-age revisionists, I thought Shakespear was a homosexual jew who fled the Spanish Inquisition. Now, if you had told me he was abused/persecuted as a child BY Catholic, then THAT I could believe. But I simply have a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of someone so intelligent and creative possibly being Catholic.
No, nice try. He must have been a hermaphrodite secular humanist from a Berber family.
July 9, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Here is Clare Asquith’s interview with GODSPY if anyone wants elaboration on Pearce’s thesis. Asquith’s historical setting of the plays and sonnets is deeper than Pearce’s good introduction, IMHO.
July 9, 2008 at 11:54 pm
i listened to the same Al Kresta interview and i got the impression that Pearce didn’t delve into Shakespeare’s work as a much as the biographic record of the man(which, contrary to what we’ve all been taught,is pretty extensive), whereas Asquith studied the works.
same argument just different points of view- IMHO
July 10, 2008 at 5:42 am
I Hamlet about the so-called Reformation? It deals with the consequences of usurping legitmate kingship. Hamlet has been studying in the hotbed of the protestant revolt, and early on in the play says ” Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt.” (a desire to eradicate the Real Presence?) Shakespeare couldn’t come right out and write a play about the catastrophe of national apostasy – so it is written into Hamlet – maybe. Kit,P.S. I haven’t read Mr. Pearce’s book yet, but I will look forward to it.
July 10, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Given Elizabeth I employed at her court three of England’s finest composers, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and Robert White, Catholics all, it seems likely she would have tolerated Shakespeare’s Catholicism as well.
July 11, 2008 at 1:11 am
…it seems likely (Elizabeth) would have tolerated Shakespeare’s Catholicism as well”
Asquith carefully parses the way Shakespeare used his plays to chronicle current events in such a way to flatter Elizabeth, courtiers, even the Cecils while connoting surreptitiously clear signals to his co-religionists of the “old faith” where his true allegiance lay.
Recusant composers like Byrd, Tallis, Dering and others found favor with this arts-loving queen.
She, according to Hilaire Belloc, was as much a victim/figurehead as were they, with the Cecils ruling behind the throne.
July 16, 2008 at 11:16 pm
English Catholics of the previous century (Waugh and Belloc, for example) had a need to buy into the Elizabeth as “Good Queen Bess” myth. Cecil had been peddling that disinformation to much of Catholic Europe. She was a liar, a mass murderer of Catholics, the feminist head of the Church of England, the New Isis etc. Sympathy for her makes a mockery of her legion of victims…I like Asquith better than Pearce. At least Asquith makes her case from the plays. Pearce seems to be reading into a biographical record which is nearly non-existent. We know next to nothing about the life of William Shakespeare. So the evidence, must come from the plays