“Thou smilest and art still, out-topping knowledge.”
‘Shakespeare’: Matthew Arnold
Somebody, I forget who, said that from reading
the Sonnets one would have to conclude that Shakespeare was either homosexual, heterosexual
or bisexual.
To
this might be added asexual: if the ‘I’ of the poems is a fictional character –
as well he might be, just like Hamlet – rather than Shakespeare himself. It is never safe to deduce biographical
details from fiction.
Even
finding a fragment of someone’s diary would not necessarily prove anything
definitive. A diary can be, among other
things, a literal record of events, an emotional
record of hopes and fears and fantasies, or an intellectual record of evolving
opinions.
Something written one day in
depression might be counteracted by a different entry when the mood had
passed. You might say you hate someone
after a row, and that you love them after the quarrel is resolved. If the discovered fragment contained only one
of these and not both, a very lopsided picture might emerge.
Again,
if the discovered diary extract were from the record of a spiritual or
intellectual pilgrimage, then the extant
January entry might be very different from that of November: which is missing.
To explore an idea does not mean that you have
to believe in it, to understand a concept does not mean that you have to accept
it, to imagine an event or a relationship does not mean that you must have
personally experienced it. In Dr Faustus,
Marlowe wrote a Christian play.
This tells us that Marlowe understood Christian doctrine. It does not tell us whether or not Marlowe
himself believed it.
I
do not propose in the brevity of this essay to answer what is an unanswerable question
from the available data. I merely seek
to show, from a few random examples, Shakespeare’s awareness of both Protestant
and Catholic issues.
In Act 5 Scene 1 of Hamlet, the gravediggers debate whether Ophelia is truly eligible to
lie in hallowed ground, having committed the Catholic mortal sin of suicide. The
first of them cites the Scripture – however fallaciously - to justify his argument,
and this right of the common people to debate religious questions seems essentially
Protestant; although about an essentially Catholic topic. The dispute that
follows between Laertes and the Priest seems not only about what sort of rights
to rites Ophelia has forfeited by her action, but also about Catholic versus
Protestant forms of burial.
“The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man
hath not seen.” (A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. 4,1,209). Thus Bottom’s
citing of St Paul
Is this an example of Tyndale’s claim, “I will
cause a boy that drives the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou
doest!”? If so, this particular yokel is
not the best endorsement, given the muddle he has made of it. Is he an argument for leaving the Bible in the
hands of the priests?
On the other hand, if Bottom did
not benefit from access to Scripture, Shakespeare himself certainly did. Macbeth,
for instance, is full of Biblical
allusions. To give just two examples,
“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell” (4,2,22) cites Isaiah 14:12 about the fall of
Lucifer, while “The very stones prate
of my whereabout” (2,1,58) recalls Habakkuk 2:11.
“Bare ruined choirs, where late the
sweet birds sang.” Sonnet 73. Does this mean birds signing late into
the evening? Or does ‘late’ mean
‘recently’? Is this a veiled criticism of
the dissolution of the monasteries and the disappearance of sweet-voiced
Catholic choristers?
Is
the lament for the passing of things Catholic echoed in Twelfth Night with Sir Toby’s complaint about the threat to cakes
and ale? (2,3, 110).
Harmless, genial Catholic practices
are fading with the gathering gloom of Puritanism. On the other hand, Malvolio has protested
about a bear baiting (4,5,7). Given the
hideous cruelties inflicted on bears, any system seeking an end to their
sufferings can’t have been all bad.
Like
Macbeth, Twelfth Night is suffused
with religious imagery. “Now Heaven
walks on Earth” (5,1,91) might have been
pleasing to Elizabethan Protestants and Catholics alike as a doctrine
common to both, but what about Feste’s addressing Olivia as ”Madonna”? Is Feste a crypto-Catholic?
If
so, what are we to make of Feste’s successful attempt to prove Olivia a fool in
Act 1 Scene 5?
Olivia is in sustained mourning for
her dead brother. Feste argues this must
be must be because she knows his soul is in hell. On the contrary, she knows his soul is in
heaven. If that is so, why does she
mourn? Take away the fool.
What is carefully missing from this
exchange is the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory: whereby Olivia’s actions and
emotions would have had some purpose in speeding up her brother’s access to
Heaven.
If
Purgatory is conspicuous here by its absence, in Hamlet it is conspicuous by its presence. Old Hamlet is confined to fast in fires until
his “foul crimes” are “burnt and purg’d away.” (1,5,12). His problem is that he has died without the Catholic
sacrament of Last Rites: has gone to death, “with all my imperfections on my
head.”. All this is far removed from the
Protestant view that it is your faith in Christ’s redeeming sacrifice that
leads to your salvation.
If
Old Hamlet is Catholic, Young Hamlet is Protestant. Young Hamlet is a student at Wittenberg
On
the other hand Young Hamlet’s resolution not to kill his uncle while Claudius
is at his prayers, and to wait until some act “that has no relish of salvation
in’t” (3,3,91) – ‘works’ rather than ‘faith’ - shows Young Hamlet in a Catholic
rather than a Protestant frame of mind.
So does his invoking of Saint Patrick (1,5,136) , who removed the snakes
from Ireland
In 1757[1]
the owner of the house where Shakespeare was born decided to have the building
re-roofed. Under the original tiles,
some secret documents were found that established Shakespeare Sr as a Catholic
sympathiser. (The fact of where the
documents had been hidden is itself indicative of their incriminating
nature).
Is
this the real-life equivalent of the situation that we find in Hamlet: a tension between a Catholic
father and a Protestant son? Perhaps.
And
then again, perhaps not. Either way,
establishing with reasonable certainty the religious sympathies of the father
does not entitle us to thereby surmise the religious convictions of the son.
The unresolved questions about
Shakespeare still abide.
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