Was Shakespeare Catholic?
What if William Shakespeare were secretly Catholic? From John Henry Newman and G.K. Chesterton to the present day, there is a persistent strand of scholarly thought that holds the Bard clung to a Catholic faith, even while writing and staging his popular plays in Elizabethan England.
Now Bay Area residents can learn about Shakespeare and, at the same time, join London-born Jesuit scholar Father Peter Milward, S.J. in exploring the textual clues in Shakespearean plays and sonnets which indicate a strong Catholic sensibility and sympathy.
Father Milward, scholar of the English Renaissance and professor emeritus at Sophia University, will present the view at a four-day seminar at the Jesuit Retreat House in Los Altos, from Aug. 17-21. He also will speak in San Francisco Aug. 25 at 7 p.m. at Saint Mary's Cathedral.
"Almost all his plays reveal the dramatist's Catholic sensibility, once we relate them to the religious background of his age, when it was a major aim of the Queen and her favored ministers to uproot the old religion, and when the supporters of that religion had to lie low for fear of incurring punishment under the strict penal laws," Father Milward said.
A few known facts of Shakespeare's life also point toward Catholicism even though Catholics were hunted down, lost their property, and drawn, quartered and hanged as traitors during the brutal reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Father Milward said. King Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, the mother of Elizabeth, leading to decades of brutal persecution and civil strife.
A Sept. 13, 2004, New Yorker magazine review of Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt's book "Will in the World" describes the era:
"The underlying crisis was religious. In half a century - within the lifetime of Shakespeare's father, John - England had gone through a very conservative regime of Catholicism, to an uneasy form of improvised state Catholicism under Henry VIII, through a period of radical Protestantism under King Edward VI, back to Roman Catholicism under Queen Mary, and then on to the staunchly Protestant monarchy of Elizabeth. As each sect seized power, it set about burning and disemboweling those who had been ascendant moments before. By the time Shakespeare was a young man, to be a Catholic priest at all was a capital offense."
The view that Shakespeare was Catholic is a minority one. Greenblatt, for instance, ascribes the Catholic references in the Bard's works to his family and to the culture in which he was raised rather than to a personal faith.
"I think it is likely that Shakespeare grew up in a family that had continuing ties to Catholic practices and beliefs, and his works display a fascination with Catholic figures (monks, friars, etc.)," Greenblatt said in an e-mail. "And, of course, much that you are likely to identify as "Catholic traditions and ideas" was also fully absorbed into the Church of England. (The Puritans executed Archbishop Laud - an Anglican - for this reason, among other factors). But I also believe that Shakespeare's spirit was skeptical and secular."
What's more, the website CatholicEducation.org refers to the fact that Shakespeare's daughters were raised Protestant.
But, Father Milward says, there is evidence throughout Shakespeare's writings and in his life of Catholic sensibilities: "If this doesn't stand out even in his most famous plays, it is because Shakespeare himself had to take pains to prevent it from standing out. He always had to be on his guard against the ‘suborned informer' (Sonnet 125)."
In Shakespeare's life, little is known for certain, Father Milward said. "But there are many suggestions pointing to a Catholic formation both through his parents at Stratford and as a ‘schoolmaster in the country' of Lancashire," he said. The scholar said there are signs of Shakespeare's familiarity with the writings of two Jesuits, Robert Persons and Robert Southwell, not to mention his portrayal of "the hunted priest" in "King Lear."
"Two of his plays, "King Lear" and "Pericles," were shown to Catholic audiences in Yorkshire in 1609-10, as if implying their relevance to such audiences. After his departure from London he was involved in the purchase of the Blackfriars Gatehouse, a notorious place of resort for Catholic priests and Jesuits," Father Milward said.
The Jesuit scholar said there are key elements in Shakespeare's plays that indicate he was Catholic, including "invariable nostalgia for ‘the good old days' in England, in contrast to "these last times so bad" (Sonnet 67)."
Despite the looting and destruction of the monasteries under Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare presents friars favorably in "Romeo and Juliet," "Much Ado About Nothing," and "Measure for Measure," Father Milward said. And, in the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet," there is the "Catholic prayer for the souls of the dead on the lips of Juliet's Nurse."
Some signs that Father Milward sees in Shakespeare's works that indicate sympathy to Catholicism:
• Shakespeare's sympathy with the old order, as opposed to the new, present order, as personified by characters like Hamlet in Denmark.
• His frequent treatment of exile and banishment, as in "As You Like It" and "King Lear."
• His favorable presentation of friars in "Romeo and Juliet," "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Measure for Measure," in contrast to Protestant parsons/Puritans.
• His characterization of ideal heroines, especially in his Jacobean plays, in terms reminiscent of medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary.
Above all, "King Lear" can be read "between the lines" as Shakespeare's extended comment on the intolerable sufferings undergone by English Catholics and especially priests in the Elizabethan Age.
At the Jesuit retreat house, Father Milward will lead seminars on the Shakespearean plays and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in the mornings. In the afternoon sessions, he will discuss the Marian heroines of Shakespeare's Jacobean plays. In the evenings, Father Milward will read from his new work "Poem on the New Creation."
Father Milward was educated at Oxford when C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Neville Coghill (translator of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales") were teaching. He attended Lewis' lectures as a student.
Father Milward's books include "The Catholicism of Shakespeare's Plays" (1997), "Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age" (1977), "Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age" (1978), "Christian Themes in English Literature" (1967) and "Shakespeare's Religious Background" (1973).
Father Father Milward's home page is www.info.sophia.
Shakespeare on stage at local high schools this fall includes these productions:
“Romeo and Juliet“
Archbishop Riordan High School, San Francisco: Nov. 13-22. Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, San Francisco: Nov. 12-24 and 19-21.
“Macbeth“
TriSchool Productions at Serra High School, San Mateo: Oct. 23, 30, 31. (Collaboration by Mercy-Burlingame, Notre Dame, and Serra high schools).
“A Midsummer Night's Dream“
San Domenico School, San Anselmo, Nov. 19-21.
By Valerie Schmalz
From July 24, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
