A Remnant Book Review….
Shadowplay
By Clare Asquith (2005)
■ Little is actually known about Shakespeare’s private life, other than his place of birth, early schooling, members of his family and death. Perhaps he wanted it that way given the constant turmoil of England, but what of his religious life?
Reviewed by Vincent Chiarello
Remnant Columnist
Despite
the turbulent times for practicing Catholics during the reigns of Elizabeth I and her successor, James I, England was home to a host of writers who were to make an indelible mark on world literature. Often referred to as the "English Renaissance," this period gave rise to the careers of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and others, whose creativity had a lasting influence. In evaluating the relative merits of these talented authors, however, clearly the one whose reputation rises above all the others is Shakespeare, a writer whose works have been translated into more than 80 languages, surpassed only by the Bible.
Little is actually known about Shakespeare’s private life, other than his place of birth, early schooling, members of his family and death. Perhaps he wanted it that way given the constant turmoil of England, but what of his religious life? What, if anything, is known about his views on religious matters?
For centuries scholars who have delved into the subject have come up empty handed, but over the past decade several books including, Shakespeare the Papist, by Peter Milward, S.J. (2005) and The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome, by Joseph Pearce (2008), have been written that seek to identify William Shakespeare as a Catholic, or "crypto-Catholic," that is, one who concealed or camouflaged his beliefs. The conclusions of these authors have been met with fierce criticism by literary critics, including an Oxford Don, who basically refuse to believe that the evidence justifies the authors’ claims.
The most criticized and controversial is the author Clare Asquith, whose book, Shadowplay, posits that Shakespeare was, indeed, a Catholic, but arrives at that conclusion in a very unusual way.
Suppose you were to attend a theatrical production in a foreign country, one whose language you knew well enough, and listened to the actors on stage recite their lines and draw laughs and guffaws from the audience. To you, however, there was nothing funny about what was being said. Suppose, further, that the inexplicable laughter would continue throughout the entire production with you clueless as to why. You know the language; you know the meaning of the words...or do you?
In the winter of 1983, Asquith and her husband, the Duke of Oxford, a diplomat assigned to the British Mission to the Soviet Union, attended a performance of samizdat theatre where unauthorized readings of poems, books and plays forbidden by the state were recited by Soviet dissidents. During the performance the audience cheered and laughed, while the Asquiths and the few other foreigners in the audience remained silent. Something was going on that they did not understand, for in the rendering of these words and lines by the performers a meaning known only to the Soviets was apparent.
But coded language has long predated samizdat performances: nursery rhymes have been employed in using simple words to express a far deeper meaning. For example: Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row.
The Mary being referred to is believed to be "Bloody Mary," the Tudor Catholic queen of England, who executed some Protestant clergymen; the garden referred to is actually a graveyard.
What, then, if Shakespeare was writing in coded language, and only the Catholics in the Globe Theatre audience really understood what his words were meant to convey? It is that supposition that undergirds Shadowplay. Farfetched? Hardly. Today anyone interested in the subject of coded language can purchase the lectures on "The Secret Life of Words," from the Great Courses program, a course designed by two linguistic professors.
Several of the reviewers of Asquith’s book were unusually strident in a very non-English sort of way, claiming that she had gone far beyond the limits of scholarship and was, literally speaking, acting as a cheerleader amongst the "Shakespeare is Catholic" contingent with no evidence to do so. By far the most vitriolic reviewer was Prof. David Womersley, a member of the British Academy, and Thomas Warton, Professor of English Literature at Oxford University. His review concluded: "There are people who will find the argument of this book persuasive, just as there are people who believe that Elvis Presley is still alive, that the moon landings were staged in a hangar in Southern California, and that the Royal Family are the ringleaders of an international conspiracy aimed at world domination. Shadowplay is perhaps best regarded as a Da Vinci Code for that subset of the credulous whose obsessions are as much literary as religious."
Less personal, another reviewer made the point that Asquith was "...looking from the man to his work, or from the mask to the man hidden in his work," whereas the opposite approach should be operative: looking from his work to define the man. Fair enough.
Further, the reviewer makes one other important point: Asquith and her supporters, "...deal not so much with the biographical as with the literary aspect of Shakespeare – with the Catholicity of his mind, about which we can (I claim) achieve certainty, rather than the Catholicity of his allegiance, which is always open to debate." Again, fair enough.
The publication of these three books – and others – within a short period of time elicited this comment from Thomas McCoog, S.J., Principal Archivist for England and Wales for the Jesuits: "The quest for such proof has progressed from a demi-confessional cottage industry to a non-sectarian semi-circus."
Is Asquith’s book, then, just another addition to this "semi-circus?" What can be said of the author’s efforts to demonstrate that her theme is clearly within the reasonable bounds of academic research, and her conclusions are examples of extensive research and reasonableness, too? The References at the end of the book list more than 100 book titles; there are 27 pages of footnotes, and A Glossary of Selected Code Words is also included. Asquith claimed that Shadowplay was five years in the making, and given the scope and breath of her readings and resources that extended time frame seems perfectly understandable.
Asquith seeks to set the stage for what follows by describing an England that began to change slowly after Henry VIII’s break with Rome. The immediate embrace of the Church of England by the English people was not nearly as evident as we have been led to believe. (For the pioneer work in this aspect of the English Reformation, see: Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 1992, to be reviewed in the next edition of The Remnant.) For those "recusants" who would not accept "the dark new religion" there were serious penalties, including heavy fines, land expropriation, and in some cases, death, so why would Shakespeare, remarkably successful at Elizabeth’s court, even consider such a move? Biographers of Shakespeare have commented that his native intelligence and self-confidence separated him from his contemporaries, to which Asquith adds: "These two qualities...are the hallmarks of the way Shakespeare set himself the task of encoding and perpetuating the true story of England."
Did his Catholic sensibilities compel him to use coded language in his plays and sonnets to avoid the religious sensors and ubiquitous government spies? If so, how long would that evasion survive? An answer and the final piece to the Shakespeare puzzle remains to be put in place, something Asquith refers to in her chapter entitled, "Silenced."
In 1610, at the relatively young age of 45, William Shakespeare, Court favorite, financially secure, and at the height of his creative energies and powers, closed up shop: he left the Globe Theatre and London, the city and site of his greatest successes, and returned to Stratford, the place of his birth.
A well-planned retirement, no doubt. Author Asquith thinks otherwise: "Later comments imply that Shakespeare did not go quietly, but that to the end he refused to compromise, that force was used to get him either to conform or to leave."
Ben Jonson, who had renounced his Catholic beliefs, commented that Shakespeare’s failure to use restraint and prudence, something Jonson had done, coupled with Shakespeare’s refusal to keep quiet, resulted in Shakespeare’s current problems and trouble. With one exception, his writing of The Tempest, Shakespeare slowly faded into English memory. Asquith claims that in the play’s Epilogue, which begins, " ‘Please you draw near,’ " there is further evidence that Shakespeare did not leave voluntarily.
At the end of the day, however, does it really matter if William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, Will of the World, was a member of the Church of England, the Church of Rome, an agnostic or an atheist? I’ll allow Asquith to answer that: "The hidden, Catholic, level matters, literally, like a mountain—because it’s there. It’s a part of this work by the greatest of writers. And therefore we should give him his due. If he was writing with the intention that what he was covertly saying should be preserved down the generations, it is to do him an extraordinary disservice not to look at it." Game...Set...Match.
Read the book...if only as a mystery trying to assemble what happened and why. You will thank me for the suggestion. ■
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William Shakespeare, Roman Catholic?