Shakespeare as Religion & as a Weapon
This week I pull together various sources that may seem unrelated. A Facebook forum member * posted a link to a good essay in the Hudson Review that (somewhat tangential to its main topic, but not entirely) contained a number of references to Shakespeare as a kind of religion. This prompted me to think a bit more about my own work on Biblical allusions in Hamlet in the larger context of literary studies, specialists in the field, nationalism, and all of that within the context of religious reforms and reformation.
On the topic of Shakespeare as religion, the essay quoted Arthur Murphy, Voltaire, and David Garrick:
Here’s Brooke Allen, in Hudson Review, “The Shakespeareans,” referencing English playwright Arthur Murphy:
Later, she cites French philosopher and Enlightenment figure, Voltaire:
Brooke Allen paints a picture of a contrast between scholars and editors of Shakespeare like Samuel Johnson, on the one hand, and the masses who attended theater productions purporting to be Shakespeare, but which actually were sometimes radically revised versions of Shakespeare's texts.
Murphy and Voltaire might be seen as merely using metaphor in a casual way to describe enthusiasm about Shakespeare, but Brooke Allen’s essay also refers to “this kind of doggerel” by famous Shakespearean actor David Garrick, which is even more explicit in the metaphor:
Shakespeare: Religion-Substitute in an Age of Diminishing Faith?
Murphy, Voltaire, and Garrick lived in an age that gave rise to political revolutions and new political thought, and soon, in the United States, many early political leaders like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson considered themselves deists, not attached to the idea of the bible as the inspired Word of God.
In this way, Reformation and Enlightenment led to a kind of splintering of different religious groups and schools of thought as they achieved freedom from authoritarian institutions like the Roman Catholic Church.
It reminds me a bit of what one NPR commentator said when Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected by the College of Cardinals in 2013 and chose the name of Francis, after Francis of Assisi. Guest experts spoke about Francis and all the various religious orders that sprang up over centuries. One commentator observed that when Catholics disagreed (especially in the Middle Ages), they started new religious orders, but when Protestants disagreed, they started new denominations.
(Before the reformation, new denominations would have been labeled schisms or heresies. Within the church, new religious orders could try to demonstrate new monastic visions of a simple Christian life of prayer lived in community, but these could only go so far by example in reforming the larger problems in the Catholic church; once free of Roman authority, reforms could go much further, but left the old church behind, unreformed).
It’s natural in many ways for different religious orders, different denominations, and also different branches of thought, or arts and sciences, to have evolved and broken apart as needed to suit changing circumstances, and also to adapt as distinct branches in times of disagreements.
The Center Cannot Hold?
Some have noted possible causal relationships between the Protestant Reformation and growing secularism: As individuals and groups questioned and cut their ties to established religious authorities, it became more acceptable to have religious doubts, or to be an atheist or agnostic. As one book reviewer put it, “a tradition of scholarship from Max Weber to Brad Gregory [...] argues for a causal relationship between the Protestant Reformations and modern secularism.” (Some Catholics, therefore, would love to blame the Protestant Reformation for secularism and lost ground, or failures of religion, but perhaps a too-authoritarian church was always its own enemy in this regard?)
Literary studies in general have long included many special areas of focus and schools of thought, some that may seem outdated but still exert their influence. But it can seem a splintered field. Are there so many areas of specialization because there is a rich blossoming of ideas in the field? Or because many members of English departments don't want to be bothered with new ways of thinking, so they'd rather hire a specialist in a new, seemingly trendy area, and let *them* do that sort of work, because many other department members really don't have much interest? Or a bit of both?
Allusions to the Bible (or to many other texts) within Shakespeare, or the study of Shakespeare and Religion, are just small subsets of many other larger areas, within a long list of specialties.
But all of the various areas of specialization may seem overwhelming, especially to newcomers, giving an impression of fragmentation and chaos; As the W.B. Yeats poem “Second Coming” observes,
Yet other times, there may be a share of hubris involved, a sense that one’s own area of specialty matters more than others.
So in a field that can seem splintered, it seems strange, especially as I study Shakespeare’s Biblical allusions and plot echoes, to ponder how people would refer to him as a kind of deity or religion; how people faking in, or disillusioned by, or cast off from the various splinters of religious faiths, might seek something in Shakespeare that they are not finding elsewhere.
But on the other hand, I am not religious in the (unfortunately) traditional Christian sense of taking scripture very literally when it comes to virgin birth and resurrection, nor am I pleased to near news of abuses by clergy; so I can empathize with how people can feel disaffected from traditional religion.
Similar cultural and historical forces may have resulted in some readers and scholars of Shakespeare having a strong disinclination toward consideration of Shakespeare and the Bible, or Shakespeare and Religion.
Idol & Idolatry in Shakespeare
Naseeb Shaheen notes that, in Shakespeare’s lifetime, he often heard church- and state- approved homilies read in church from the First (1547) and Second (1571) Books of Homilies (55-57).
[
The longest of these homilies was called "On Peril of Idolatry," and appeared as the second homily in the second book. This was in many respects a condemnation of Roman Catholic liturgical practices.
Especially for Catholic-sympathizers, and for those who dreaded the longest sermon, this particular text may have had a bad reputation, ripe for a bit of satire on the state and in love poetry. In that resepct, it’s interesting to note how often Shakespeare uses the words “idol,” “idolatry,” or “idolatrous” in his plays and poems.
According to Open Source Shakespeare’s search feature, it appears in the following:
All's Well That Ends Well: 1.1.80
Hamlet: 2.2.1191
Love’s Labor Lost: 4.3.1397
Midsummer Night's Dream: 1.1.104
Romeo and Juliet: 2.2.962
Sonnet 105: lines 1,2
Troilus and Cressida: 2.2.1046; 2.3.1404; 5.1.2937
Two Gentlemen of Verona: 2.4.800; 4.2.1764; 4.4.2020
"Venus and Adonis": 231
These represent a great variety, some of which utilize a familiar and ironic use in romantic love, where the beloved is one’s idol, a focus of worship. Sonnet 105 even claims that, because a sort of trinity of “Fair, kind, and true” are all constant and present in the beloved, the beloved becomes a kind of sacrament of something divine.
But Shakespeare’s treatment of the term, especially in Troilus and Cressida and Two Gentlemen of Verona, show that he is very aware of the negative connotations of the word.
For these reasons, it seems at first glance that Shakespeare would not approve of his own elevation to the status of an idol for worship.
Sacrament of "The Least of These": Not Idolatry, but God in the Other?
And yet his own playfulness in using “idol” as a metaphor for the beloved, as well as his treatment in this vein in Sonnet 105, bring to mind a gospel phrase:
At perhaps it puts at least a bit of Bard-enthusiasm in a different light as well.
Bardolatry still gets in the way of good scholarship: We don’t love one another best, or Shakespeare best, when we elevate these so high that we no longer attend to the worst faults or most problematic aspects; we miss out on much of the complexity that makes up their greatest strengths.
Shakespeare as a Weapon
Yet it should be deeply concerning, that the rise of Bardolatry, and the promotion of Shakespeare as England's national poet and playwright, coincided with a rise in nationalism and patriotism. This brought along with it a promotion of England and its empire as superior and worthy-to-rule, because, well, they had Shakespeare. So Shakespeare, elevated to divine status, was used as a weapon to oppress those nations England wished to subjugate to its rule, to make people of other cultures feel their own cultures were inferior. This goes against the spirit of Shakespeare's work as well as that of the Bible to which he often alluded.
We who love Shakespeare may think: Me? I would not have that attitude! And yet the pernicious effects of the elevation of Shakespeare to a semi-divine status may influence more people than realize it. Brandi Adams and Andy Kesson mention this in a recent YouTube "A Bit Lit" video, the idea of Shakespeare as a weapon, and how it may have too much influence on the ways we think about the cannon. Even the texts we routinely refer to as Shakespeare's may very well have been the fruit of collaboration, both in the traditional sense of who actually thinks up and writes down particular passages, but also in a broader sense of the human communities and supportive and challenging interactions with fellow players and neighbors who inspire the writing of a text.
The plays demonstrate that Shakespeare (and perhaps his collaborators) understood how people, especially monarchs, sometimes put on a show of piety and use religion as a weapon: Polonius acknowledges this after giving Ophelia a prayer book, so that she can look like the Virgin Mary at prayer, saying we "sugar over the devil" in these and other ways. Claudius wants Hamlet to stop mourning the death of his father in Hamlet 1.2, and he uses many ideas borrowed in part from scripture to justify his argument. But Claudius is a murderer and usurper who doesn't like a mourning son as a reminder of his dark deeds, so he resorts to insult instead of kindly advice from an uncle and stepfather.
What Fills the Hollowness of a God-Sized Hunger?
The word "hollow" or some variation of it occurs in Shakespeare's plays and poems a surprising number of times (59!), often related to kings ("the hollow crown"), but also related to things such as unkept or perjured promises (Romeo & Juliet, Friar Lawrence, 3.3., "Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury"). Perhaps institutions representing Christian religion failed their followers in their promises, too often becoming self-serving of the authority and livelihoods of their leaders. Pedantic defense of literal readings of scripture really serves to shore up such authority. In the process, perhaps they often failed to explore the fuller implications of mysterious meanings in their own scriptures. And at times some in authority violated their own best moral precepts, hiding the sexual abuse of children.
And when people (literary scholars included) look to religious authorities and find them and their promises hollow, what can fill a God-sized hunger?
Perhaps in such circumstances, Bardolatry and other forms of hero-worship are at times inevitable substitutes. But perhaps, recognizing this, we can strive for better?
NOTES:
[* For bringing my attention to the Hudson Review essay, I have Alexander Kuskis to thank for a post (April 30 at 7:04 PM) in the Shakespeare and Early Modern Friends FaceBook forum.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: By noting bible passages in this blog, I do not intend to promote any religion over any other, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
Here’s Brooke Allen, in Hudson Review, “The Shakespeareans,” referencing English playwright Arthur Murphy:
“There had been a gradual elevation of Shakespeare from just one among several popular Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights to the one and only national treasure: ‘a kind of established religion in poetry,’ as the playwright Arthur Murphy was already describing him in 1753, as well as a focus for a new, patriotic British nationalism that had begun to coalesce at that time.”So this involves not only Shakespeare as a kind of literary religion, but an association with growing nationalism (and we might note that a rise in nationalism is often viewed in our own time as a threat and cause of troubles). More on that near the end of this blog post.
Later, she cites French philosopher and Enlightenment figure, Voltaire:
“But the national obsession with all things relating to Shakespeare was growing exponentially; as the cynical Voltaire remarked from continental Europe, ‘The taste [for Shakespeare in England] becomes a religion; and there are in that country many fanatics in respect of that author.’”Voltaire was a critic of religion and an advocate of freedom of speech and religion, so it’s interesting to note how, perhaps for some, greater criticism of established religion, and a general move toward secularity, may have coincided with the elevation of Shakespeare *to* a religion. When religion is lost as a focus of meaning, perhaps some sought substitutes?
Brooke Allen paints a picture of a contrast between scholars and editors of Shakespeare like Samuel Johnson, on the one hand, and the masses who attended theater productions purporting to be Shakespeare, but which actually were sometimes radically revised versions of Shakespeare's texts.
Murphy and Voltaire might be seen as merely using metaphor in a casual way to describe enthusiasm about Shakespeare, but Brooke Allen’s essay also refers to “this kind of doggerel” by famous Shakespearean actor David Garrick, which is even more explicit in the metaphor:
My eyes, till then, no sights like this will see,This may seem a bit strange or even shocking, an elevation of Shakespeare to a kind of deity status, in service of a growing English nationalism and patriotism - something to which it would seem Shakespeare himself would object.
Unless we meet at Shakespeare’s Jubilee!
On Avon’s Banks, where flowers eternal blow!
Like its full Stream our Gratitude shall flow!
There let us revel, show our fond regard,
On that lov’d Spot, first breath’d our matchless Bard;
To him all Honour, Gratitude is due,
To him we owe our all—to Him and You.
Shakespeare: Religion-Substitute in an Age of Diminishing Faith?
Murphy, Voltaire, and Garrick lived in an age that gave rise to political revolutions and new political thought, and soon, in the United States, many early political leaders like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson considered themselves deists, not attached to the idea of the bible as the inspired Word of God.
In this way, Reformation and Enlightenment led to a kind of splintering of different religious groups and schools of thought as they achieved freedom from authoritarian institutions like the Roman Catholic Church.
It reminds me a bit of what one NPR commentator said when Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected by the College of Cardinals in 2013 and chose the name of Francis, after Francis of Assisi. Guest experts spoke about Francis and all the various religious orders that sprang up over centuries. One commentator observed that when Catholics disagreed (especially in the Middle Ages), they started new religious orders, but when Protestants disagreed, they started new denominations.
(Before the reformation, new denominations would have been labeled schisms or heresies. Within the church, new religious orders could try to demonstrate new monastic visions of a simple Christian life of prayer lived in community, but these could only go so far by example in reforming the larger problems in the Catholic church; once free of Roman authority, reforms could go much further, but left the old church behind, unreformed).
It’s natural in many ways for different religious orders, different denominations, and also different branches of thought, or arts and sciences, to have evolved and broken apart as needed to suit changing circumstances, and also to adapt as distinct branches in times of disagreements.
The Center Cannot Hold?
Some have noted possible causal relationships between the Protestant Reformation and growing secularism: As individuals and groups questioned and cut their ties to established religious authorities, it became more acceptable to have religious doubts, or to be an atheist or agnostic. As one book reviewer put it, “a tradition of scholarship from Max Weber to Brad Gregory [...] argues for a causal relationship between the Protestant Reformations and modern secularism.” (Some Catholics, therefore, would love to blame the Protestant Reformation for secularism and lost ground, or failures of religion, but perhaps a too-authoritarian church was always its own enemy in this regard?)
Literary studies in general have long included many special areas of focus and schools of thought, some that may seem outdated but still exert their influence. But it can seem a splintered field. Are there so many areas of specialization because there is a rich blossoming of ideas in the field? Or because many members of English departments don't want to be bothered with new ways of thinking, so they'd rather hire a specialist in a new, seemingly trendy area, and let *them* do that sort of work, because many other department members really don't have much interest? Or a bit of both?
Allusions to the Bible (or to many other texts) within Shakespeare, or the study of Shakespeare and Religion, are just small subsets of many other larger areas, within a long list of specialties.
But all of the various areas of specialization may seem overwhelming, especially to newcomers, giving an impression of fragmentation and chaos; As the W.B. Yeats poem “Second Coming” observes,
Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe proliferation of areas of specialization need not imply radical disunity: One can study in a certain area of specialization, but still appreciate the work going on in other areas. It’s also true that people often choose an area of focus, not only because it’s interesting *to them,* but also because they believe it represents insights that are too often overlooked.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world….
Yet other times, there may be a share of hubris involved, a sense that one’s own area of specialty matters more than others.
So in a field that can seem splintered, it seems strange, especially as I study Shakespeare’s Biblical allusions and plot echoes, to ponder how people would refer to him as a kind of deity or religion; how people faking in, or disillusioned by, or cast off from the various splinters of religious faiths, might seek something in Shakespeare that they are not finding elsewhere.
But on the other hand, I am not religious in the (unfortunately) traditional Christian sense of taking scripture very literally when it comes to virgin birth and resurrection, nor am I pleased to near news of abuses by clergy; so I can empathize with how people can feel disaffected from traditional religion.
Similar cultural and historical forces may have resulted in some readers and scholars of Shakespeare having a strong disinclination toward consideration of Shakespeare and the Bible, or Shakespeare and Religion.
Idol & Idolatry in Shakespeare
Naseeb Shaheen notes that, in Shakespeare’s lifetime, he often heard church- and state- approved homilies read in church from the First (1547) and Second (1571) Books of Homilies (55-57).
[
The longest of these homilies was called "On Peril of Idolatry," and appeared as the second homily in the second book. This was in many respects a condemnation of Roman Catholic liturgical practices.
Especially for Catholic-sympathizers, and for those who dreaded the longest sermon, this particular text may have had a bad reputation, ripe for a bit of satire on the state and in love poetry. In that resepct, it’s interesting to note how often Shakespeare uses the words “idol,” “idolatry,” or “idolatrous” in his plays and poems.
According to Open Source Shakespeare’s search feature, it appears in the following:
All's Well That Ends Well: 1.1.80
Hamlet: 2.2.1191
Love’s Labor Lost: 4.3.1397
Midsummer Night's Dream: 1.1.104
Romeo and Juliet: 2.2.962
Sonnet 105: lines 1,2
Troilus and Cressida: 2.2.1046; 2.3.1404; 5.1.2937
Two Gentlemen of Verona: 2.4.800; 4.2.1764; 4.4.2020
"Venus and Adonis": 231
These represent a great variety, some of which utilize a familiar and ironic use in romantic love, where the beloved is one’s idol, a focus of worship. Sonnet 105 even claims that, because a sort of trinity of “Fair, kind, and true” are all constant and present in the beloved, the beloved becomes a kind of sacrament of something divine.
But Shakespeare’s treatment of the term, especially in Troilus and Cressida and Two Gentlemen of Verona, show that he is very aware of the negative connotations of the word.
For these reasons, it seems at first glance that Shakespeare would not approve of his own elevation to the status of an idol for worship.
Sacrament of "The Least of These": Not Idolatry, but God in the Other?
And yet his own playfulness in using “idol” as a metaphor for the beloved, as well as his treatment in this vein in Sonnet 105, bring to mind a gospel phrase:
“And the king shall answer, and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me.” (Matthew 25:40, Geneva)This puts Romeo and Juliet in a different light, speaking of kissing lips meeting like pilgrim hands in prayer: In the face of great love, we often feel humbled, among “the least of these,” so what lovers do unto one another, to paraphrase Matthew, is a sacrament that embodies what we do to the mystery of the universe, or God.
At perhaps it puts at least a bit of Bard-enthusiasm in a different light as well.
Bardolatry still gets in the way of good scholarship: We don’t love one another best, or Shakespeare best, when we elevate these so high that we no longer attend to the worst faults or most problematic aspects; we miss out on much of the complexity that makes up their greatest strengths.
Shakespeare as a Weapon
Yet it should be deeply concerning, that the rise of Bardolatry, and the promotion of Shakespeare as England's national poet and playwright, coincided with a rise in nationalism and patriotism. This brought along with it a promotion of England and its empire as superior and worthy-to-rule, because, well, they had Shakespeare. So Shakespeare, elevated to divine status, was used as a weapon to oppress those nations England wished to subjugate to its rule, to make people of other cultures feel their own cultures were inferior. This goes against the spirit of Shakespeare's work as well as that of the Bible to which he often alluded.
We who love Shakespeare may think: Me? I would not have that attitude! And yet the pernicious effects of the elevation of Shakespeare to a semi-divine status may influence more people than realize it. Brandi Adams and Andy Kesson mention this in a recent YouTube "A Bit Lit" video, the idea of Shakespeare as a weapon, and how it may have too much influence on the ways we think about the cannon. Even the texts we routinely refer to as Shakespeare's may very well have been the fruit of collaboration, both in the traditional sense of who actually thinks up and writes down particular passages, but also in a broader sense of the human communities and supportive and challenging interactions with fellow players and neighbors who inspire the writing of a text.
The plays demonstrate that Shakespeare (and perhaps his collaborators) understood how people, especially monarchs, sometimes put on a show of piety and use religion as a weapon: Polonius acknowledges this after giving Ophelia a prayer book, so that she can look like the Virgin Mary at prayer, saying we "sugar over the devil" in these and other ways. Claudius wants Hamlet to stop mourning the death of his father in Hamlet 1.2, and he uses many ideas borrowed in part from scripture to justify his argument. But Claudius is a murderer and usurper who doesn't like a mourning son as a reminder of his dark deeds, so he resorts to insult instead of kindly advice from an uncle and stepfather.
What Fills the Hollowness of a God-Sized Hunger?
The word "hollow" or some variation of it occurs in Shakespeare's plays and poems a surprising number of times (59!), often related to kings ("the hollow crown"), but also related to things such as unkept or perjured promises (Romeo & Juliet, Friar Lawrence, 3.3., "Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury"). Perhaps institutions representing Christian religion failed their followers in their promises, too often becoming self-serving of the authority and livelihoods of their leaders. Pedantic defense of literal readings of scripture really serves to shore up such authority. In the process, perhaps they often failed to explore the fuller implications of mysterious meanings in their own scriptures. And at times some in authority violated their own best moral precepts, hiding the sexual abuse of children.
And when people (literary scholars included) look to religious authorities and find them and their promises hollow, what can fill a God-sized hunger?
Perhaps in such circumstances, Bardolatry and other forms of hero-worship are at times inevitable substitutes. But perhaps, recognizing this, we can strive for better?
NOTES:
[* For bringing my attention to the Hudson Review essay, I have Alexander Kuskis to thank for a post (April 30 at 7:04 PM) in the Shakespeare and Early Modern Friends FaceBook forum.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: By noting bible passages in this blog, I do not intend to promote any religion over any other, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
Yet another amazing entry, Dr. Fried.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Michael!
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