William Shakespeare: Difference between revisions

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A number of scholarly works maintain that Shakespeare was Catholic, such as ''Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare'' by Clare Asquith.{{ref|Catholic}} Asquith maintains that Shakespeare lived in a society where there was substantial and widespread, yet quiet, resistance to the newly imposed faith and that Shakespeare was part of this resistance--his own works being the best evidence of his faith. Lady Magdalen Montague, a well known Catholic and a bulwark of English Catholicism was a prominent patron of the Bard, and even is found within his plays ''Romeo and Juliet, A Winter's Tale'' and ''Comedy of Errors''.

Asquith says the Bard would use terms such as "high" to refer to Catholic characters and "low" to refer to the Protestant - -referring to their altars, --and "light" or "fair" to refer to Catholic and "dark" to refer to Protestant -, a reference to certain clerical garb. Asquith detected in Shakespeare's work the use of a simple code used by the Jesuit underground in England which took the form of a mercantile terminology wherein priests were merchants and souls were jewels, the people pursuing them were creditors, and the Tyburn scaffold where the members of the underground died was called the place of much trading. The Jesuit underground used this code so their correspondences looked like innocuous commercial letters. Asquith says Shakespeare also used this code. She claims that, "Even the 'The Merchant of Venice' is a title which has deliberate resonance for those in the know." Asquith claims the use of the moon in Shakespeare references Elizabeth, as she adopted Diana or the moon goddess as her persona.

Asquith's claims include this section from ''Romeo and Juliet'':

:"Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

:Who is already sick and pale with grief,

:That thou her maid art far more fair than she:

:Be not her maid, since she is envious;

:Her vestal livery is but sick and green

:And none but fools do wear it; cast it off."

According to Asquisth, the fair sun is the "old faith". Green and white were the color of Elizabeth's livery. But, according to Asquith, Shakespeare is not endorsing Romeo's view. Romeo was a "hothead" and his approach ended only in sorrow.

Needless to say, Shakespeare’s Catholicism is by no means universally accepted, though some consider it a growing consensus. The Catholic Encyclopedia questioned not only that he might be other than Catholic, but whether "Shakespeare was not infected with the atheism, which ... was rampant in the more cultured society of the Elizabethan age."{{ref|Atheisim}} Stephen Greenblatt, of Harvard, suspects Catholic sympathies of some kind or another in Shakespeare and his family but considers the writer to be a less than pious person with essentially worldly motives. An increasing number of scholars do look to matters biographical and evidence from Shakespeare’s work such as the placement of young Hamlet as a student at [[Wittenberg]] while Hamlet’s ghost is in [[purgatory]], the sympathetic view of religious life ("thrice blessed"), scholastic theology in "The Phoenix and Turtle", and other matters as suggestive of a Catholic worldview.