SHAKESPEARE: THE HEART OF HIS MYSTERY - PART II
by
Elizabetta Sala
'The Plot Thickens'
(Or How More Pieces Fit Into The "Shakespeare Was Catholic" Puzzle)
Sir John Gilbert's 1849 painting: The Plays of William
Shakespeare - 420 scenes and characters
from several of William Shakespeare's plays.
Let’s examine some other clues of
dissidence in his works. For example: why does Shakespeare fill his classical plays
with anachronistic elements such as abbeys, churches, bell-towers and
monasteries? In the Comedy of Errors,
to cite one, an abbey right next to
“graves” makes topical reference to a place of execution. It has a
definite importance because in the 1930s it was discovered that the setting was
exactly the same as that next to the first theatre Shakespeare worked in:
there, following the defeat of the Armada, a Catholic priest was executed for
the mere fact that he was one. Could
Shakespeare be paying tribute to a martyr?
Robert
Southhall, a martyr Saint under the Elizabethan
regime. Shakespeare was influenced by his writings.
Priests were hunted by the regime
and automatically guilty of high treason simply for their presence on English
soil: this is what happens to the unfortunate merchant in the Errors: in this sense it is of distinct importance that “merchant” was a
code-word for “missionary”. Obviously, the references were more explicit for
those knowing how to identify them, while they could pass almost unnoticed by
inattentive eyes and ‘untrained ears’.
The Comedy of Errors: Duke Solinus, ruler of Ephesus, presides over
the trial of the unfortunate merchant, Egeon of Syracuse. Syracusians were not
allowed in Ephesus, so Egeon has been detained. (engraving)
Shylock, the Jewish money-lender in the Merchant
of Venice, gets ready to rip out 'a pound of flesh' from Antonio, The Merchant, who hasn’t
been able to pay back the loan he contracted with him.
References to priests - and the
savagery inflicted on them by the regime -
can also be found in the Merchant
of Venice, where the punishment of a ripped-out heart was even too realistic
and applicable to daily life. Most of all, the hunted missionary for whom “no port is free” is Edgar in King Lear, constrained to disguise
himself as a poor half-wit to escape capture. In the same play we have one of
the most bone-chilling scenes of the entire canon: the torture and blinding
(without trial) of the elderly Earl of Gloucester, falsely accused of
treason. In Shakespeare, such accusations
are usually reserved for innocent figures, who, in fact, are the most faithful
of all and disposed to paying for their fidelity with their own lives.
Fundamental then to this point, are the academic studies retracing how much the
entire canon is impregnated with the influence of Jesuit writers, primarily,
Fathers Robert Persons and Robert Southwell.
King Lear Act 4 Scene 6: The blinded Duke of Gloucester is led by Edgar, his son and heir, forced to disguise himself as a half-wit) .
Once one has started reading between the lines, the subversive elements keep increasing. Even in the comedies; even in those that seemed innocent, longer-classic poems; even in some of the Sonnets. In The Rape of Lucrece, which is everything but an edifying tale pulled out of school-books, you can in fact read a dangerous allegory of violence inflicted on the Country by King Henry VIII in person (resumed again a little bit everywhere and in an especially clear way in A Winter’s Tale). In Venus and Adonis, we get a glimpse of Elizabeth’s political seduction of young nobles coming from Catholic families.
A lithograph image
depicting a scene from The Rape of Lucrece
And so on and so forth. Some
recurring themes are striking: if encountered in isolated works they may not
arouse particular suspicion but they become very clear messages specifically
for their recurrence throughout the entire Canon, from the works of youth to
those in maturity, from comedies to tragedies, from the histories to the romances. We are talking about the
exile of the good, the lawfulness of tyrannicide and, most of all, a foreign
invasion (often led by the same exiled “renegades”) as the sole remedy in the
saving of a Country, wounded and oppressed by its own rulers.
The Execution of the Earl of Essex, 1601 (French Chocolate Bar Card)
Here things began to get very hot
indeed for our playwright and his company. So much so that they were once even
investigated for the part one of their plays had had in encouraging a palace conspiracy. We are referring here to Richard II and the Essex conspiracy of 1601. Fear should have silenced him; instead, he
immediately went ahead to stage Hamlet, filling it with oblique
references to the entire affair, along with regret for good old times, for the
old world where the souls of Purgatory sought help from the living. Shakespeare
might well have been supported by important Catholic circles, but his audacity
is impressive.
Hamlet- Act 3
Scene 1-Polonius and Claudius spying on Hamlet behind the arras – spying is everywhere in the play - mirroring the complex
spy-network during the Elizabethan regime.
Then, in 1610, Shakespeare was
publicly accused of being in league with the number-one enemy of the regime:
Father Persons. The accusation had no criminal consequences, but it was perhaps
no accident that he retired from the stage the following year, at the height of
his career, with no apparent explanation.
Father Robert
Persons (1546-1610) an English Jesuit and the major figure in establishing the
“English Mission” of the 16th century
And why, two years later, when he
was no longer residing in London, did he make his first and only purchase of a
property in that city, never to live there? Why did he cede that portion of the
building, Blackfriars Gatehouse, to an obscure (recusant) tenant for a peppercorn
rent? Everything becomes very much clearer when you discover that the said
building was a refuge for priests and recusants hunted by the government, who
had perhaps the charge of repaying him by praying for his soul. This may be why
Prospero, the protagonist of The Tempest, bids farewell to his audience
with the hope that “indulgence” may “set him
free” (The Tempest ACT V- THE
EPILOGUE).
The gossip did not stop even after
his death: at the end of the 1600s, the Anglican priest Richard Davies, the
same who alleged that the reason for his escape to London was poaching,
declared that Shakespeare “dyed a Papist”. Of course he died a Papist, for he
had been one all his life, albeit the entire 18th and 19th
centuries bent over backwards to cancel that ‘stain on his reputation’ and
transform him into a champion of the Anglican settlement.
With all this, of course, the
mystery of his heart remains, otherwise it wouldn’t be Shakespeare. But many
pieces to the puzzle are slipping into place as
many once-suppressed (or ignored) details about him are being brought
out into the open. And as time goes by,
paradoxically, the Swan of Avon is becoming increasingly more “Roman” and less
“British.”
Prospero’s Speech
(The
Tempest ACT V- THE EPILOGUE).
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
