The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1912. SHAKESPEARE AND CATHOLICISM

New Zealand Tablet, 22 February 1912, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1912. SHAKESPEARE AND CATHOLICISM

■ an- ' •fipifWfr visit of Mr. H. B. Irving, the distinM Im| guished son of his distinguished father, has jEt’hJo# set many a citizen dipping into his Shakemt speare and thumbing again the loved and nce familiar pages; With the revived interest in his works, comes, naturally, f a revival of interest in the man. SrV Who was this Shakespeare ? Who were the friends by whom he was surrounded, and, it may be, influenced ? What books did he read ? Where and how did he get the models for his characters, his amazing knowledge of the world, his magnificent mastery over words ? What was his religion ? In regard to almost all queries respecting the details of Shakespeare’s life, the answers are imperfect and inadequate; and the reply to the last of our series of questions can hardly be regarded as an exception. We do not intend to claim that Shakespeare was a formal Catholic, though there is distinct and by no means insignificant authority for the statement that he died in the faith. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (latest edition) says; ‘ Richard

Davies, a Gloucestershire clergyman of the end of the seventeenth century, reports that the poet “ died a papist,” and the statement deserves more attention than it has received from biographers. There is indeed little to corroborate it; for an alleged “ spiritual testament” of John Shakespeare is of suspected origin, and Davies’s own words suggest a late conversion rather than hereditary faith. On the other hand, there is little to refute it beyond an entry in the accounts of Stratford corporation for drink given in 1614 to “a preacher at the Newe Place.” ’ Weknow, indeed, that Shakespeare's father had been fined quite into bankruptcy as a ‘ recusant ’—that is, one failing to attend the worship of the Church of Queen Elizabeth. We know also that Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, was an ardent Catholic, in spite of the persecution. One of her distinguished relatives was put to death for the faith : and the ‘woods of Arden,’ the family property of Shakespeare’s mother’s family, were the meeting place and hiding place of many a priest and scholar of the proscribed faith. * Outwardly, and at least till near the close of his life, Shakespeare was apparently a member of the Church of England. What sacraments he had received in his youth and .early manhood were received at the hands of clergy and bishops of the Anglican Church. That was almost inevitable. There were no other ministers of religion tolerated. But whatever .the,-external form of his religion may have been, it can be safely claimed that he displayed in his dramas a most complete and intimate .knowledge of the doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church, and showed in a hundred ways, direct and indirect, his unmistakable sympathy with the old Faith. As an instance of this latter, take his treatment of the story of Romeo and Juliet. The play is based upon a story in verse by one Arthur Brooke, entitled ‘ The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet, contayning in it a rare Example of true .constancie, with the Subtill Counsels and Practices of an old Fryer; and their ill Event.’ The poem was written in the interest of the new religion and to bring odium on the old. The alleged dangers to the young of secret confession to a priest were luridly brought out ; and the sacred tribunal was described in language which is to-day unprintable. The monk in the story was the villain who worked all the wrong like the Mephistopheles of Faust. Shakespeare, took that story, preserved the plot and all the main points, but made the friar learned and gentle, the wise and kind father and adviser and helper of all concerned—an altogether attractive and delightful character. One who had any real sympathy with the new spirit of Protestantism would never have done that. * Romeo and Juliet is supposed to have been Shakespeare’s first play, and King Henry VIII. one of his last. In the latter as in the former Shakespeare had ample opportunity to display animus or bias against the Catholic Church, and once again he goes out of his way to show • unmistakable sympathy. King Henry VIII. was written in part by Shakespeare, and in part by John Fletcher. ‘ The central figure in the play is the Catholic Queen Katharine of Arragon, and the critics are agreed that the delineation of her character is almost entirely the work of Shakespeare, and that in the few scenes in which it has fallen to Fletcher’s lot to represent the Queen he has adhered faithfully to, Shakespeare’s conception of her. And how has Shakespeare depicted her, at a time when-Catholicism in England was overthrown, banned, proscribed, and penalised in every way. He has drawn her, says one of the greatest of modern critics, ‘with a caressing touch.’ He makes even her rival, Anne Bullen, admit that Katharine was . . So good a lady that no tongue could ever Pronounce dishonor of her; by my life, She never knew harm-doing. Arid the King, even while repudiating her, was made to say :

‘Go thy ways Kate: ./ X That man i’ the world who shall report he has A better wife, let him in nought be trusted, For speaking false in that; thou.art alone, If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness, Ihy meekness saint-like, wife-like government, Obeying in commanding, and thy parts ’ " , Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out, The queen of earthly queens.’ No writer, in those fevered times of persecution for the faith, would have made the outraged Queen so splendid a woman in every way and let her preach so sweetly so many sublime precepts of the Church but one who had some measure of genuine sympathy with the Church.

And no other would have hit so heavily at Henry as he is hit in that play, and that too while Henry’s daughter ' was reigning with a rod of iron. The drama closes with Cranmer’s lengthy and flattering prediction of the greatness of Elizabeth and James, which is now admitted by all competent authorities to be the work of Fletcher, and Fletcher at his worst. ‘Shakespeare/ says the learned critic above referred to, ‘ clearly had no share in this tirade, which makes all the more strange the part it has played in the discussions which have been carried on with so little psychology relative to Shakespeare’s religious arid denominational standpoint. How many times has the prophecy that under Elizabeth “God shall be truly known been quoted in support of the great poet’s firmly : Protestant convictions. Yet the line was evidently never written by him, and not a single turn of thought in the whole of this lengthy speech owns any suggestion of his. pathos and style.’ •. / * . We have referred to Shakespeare’s intimate acquaintance with Catholic doctrines and practices; and of this, one or two illustrations— from the play which New Zealanders have just had the opportunity of witnessing must suffice. Take, for example, this vivid description of Purgatory, given by Hamlet’s Ghost: My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. ... I am thy father’s spirit, Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires, ill the foul crimes done in .my days of nature • Are burnt and purged away. The need of Confession, and of the ministrations of the * priest, particularly at the hour of death, is referred to in the following 'lines : Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d: Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, . Unhousel’d disappointed, unaneled. No reckoning made, but sent to my account ' - With all my imperfections on my head. The Catholic doctrine, not only of Confession, but of Satisfaction for sin as necessary to forgiveness, is thus outlined in the King’s well-known speech But, 0, what form of prayer - r ■ Can serve my turn ? ‘ Forgive me my foul murder’ ? That cannot be; since I am still possess’d Of those effects for which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition and my Queen. : " May one be pardoned and retain the offence • . . ’ tis not so above; - ... There is no shuffling, there the action lies V V In his true nature. : p The Catholic practice of praying for the dead is alluded to.in the reference to ‘ singing a requiem,’ and in the oft-recurring expressions ‘God ha’ mercy on his soul,’ and ‘ God rest his soul.’ Altogether, it is safe to say that whether the great poet was formally a Catholic or not, there is a supreme glow of Catholic thought arid Catholic sympathy in his works, and that in his majestic dramas the Catholic spirit of the Pre-Reformation time in England is nobly saved to the world. 1 /