Biases & Assumptions Influence What We Notice, Seek, or Neglect (Part 1)

Our biases and assumptions will influence what we notice, seek, or neglect.

I have been thinking about bias in recent weeks, in part because I came across two articles from late 2018 about a visit by Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury) to Notre Dame. He gave a keynote lecture titled “‘Relieved by Prayer’: Power, Shame and Redemption in Shakespeare’s Drama.” The lecture is available on Youtube and was also scheduled to be published in Religion and Literature Journal. The lecture itself begins about 6 minutes in, and goes until about the 50 minute mark, although the introductions take a while and some discussion follows.

What caught my attention was that the news items described the keynote as part of a series called “The Catholic Artistic Heritage,” as if assuming Shakespeare was Catholic. Yet the two news items (here and here) did not quote Rowan Williams as mentioning anything about Shakespeare’s institutional-religious allegiancesas leaning Catholic, but the full text of the lecture may prove otherwise.

[Images, clockwise from L: Shakespeare’s Christian Dimension, Roy Battenhouse (1994);
Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine, Roland M. Frye (1963);
Secret Shakespeare: Studies in theatre, religion and resistance, Richard Wilson (2004)
Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, Clare Asquith (2005);
Shakespeare the Papist, Peter Milward (2005)
The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome, by Joseph Pearce (2008);
Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden, Catherine Belsey (1999);
The Elizabethan Hamlet, Arthur McGee (1987).]

Various critics have claimed that Hamlet is a “Catholic play,” but this may be based on a superficial reading of certain details: For example, the ghost speaks of being “purged” (purgatory?) and of his (erroneous?) assumption that he is there only for not getting the sacraments before dying. In fact, the ghost is exactly the kind of Catholic that Protestants loved to hate.

It seems doubtful that prince Hamlet is Catholic: He had been a student at Wittenberg, at a university that was not as old as the Amleth source tales from Saxo Grammaticus, and associated with Luther.

Others might argue that Laertes seems Catholic for seeking the comfort of more ceremony at his sister’s funeral, while the “churlish priest” withholds ceremony, perhaps representing changes in Protestant burial rites (highlighted nicely by Stephen Greenblatt in his book, Hamlet in Purgatory).

But again, if Catholic, Laertes, like the ghost, is the sort Protestants parodied and condemned: He speaks of how he’d even cut Hamlet’s throat in the church, something audiences in Shakespeare’s day may have associated with the Pazzi Conspiracy,* in which Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini dei Baroncelli were among those who sought to kill Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici, but only succeeded in killing Giuliano. The Pazzzi Conspiracy was as recent, and perhaps as famous in Shakespeare’s time, as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth is in the US in our time.

(Does Shakespeare include Pazzi allusions to project an impression of the play as anti-Catholic, as cover for allusions to Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux, associated with the "bare ruined choirs" of deserted English monasteries? Does he do this in the same way that Hamlet feigns madness to confuse his adversary, and uses the story of a poisoned Italian duke to cover for his allusion to John the Baptist, "Baptista"?)

All interpretations run the risk of confirmation bias; interpreters are inclined to seek evidence that confirms the interpreter’s assumptions. Hans Georg Gadamer has noted that one may seek to transcend one's biases, but this means working against the natural tendency.

In upcoming weeks, I will explore some examples of how biases express themselves in various interpretations of Hamlet.

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* See Hamlet: Edited by Horace Howard Furness, Volume 4, page 241, via Google Books, and also at archive.org (both, free).
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Series on Religious (and a few other) Biases in Shakespeare Scholarship:
1. Biases & Assumptions Influence What We Notice, Seek, or Neglect - 11 January, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/01/biases-assumptions-influence-what-we.html

2. Secular/Universal Bias in Shakespeare/Hamlet Scholarship - 18 January, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/01/part-2-factors-contributing-to.html

3. Victors Wrote the Histories of Shakespeare and Francis of Assisi - 25 January, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/01/victors-wrote-history-of-shakespeare.html

4. Biblical Seeds of Secular Shakespeare Bias - 1 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/biblical-seeds-of-secular-shakespeare.html

5. Catholic Bias in Simon Augustus Blackmore - 8 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/catholic-bias-in-simon-augustus.html

6. Nietzschean & Christian-Mythical Bias in G. Wilson Knight - 15 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/nietzschean-christian-mythical-bias-in.html

7. Roland Frye's Protestant Bias - 22 February, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/02/roland-fryes-protestant-bias.html

8. Gatekeeping and Religious Turns in Shakespeare Scholarship - 1 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/gatekeeping-and-religious-turns-in.html

9. Honigmann, Hammerschmidt−Hummel, and Moses' Shoes - 8 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/taking-off-shoes-in-presence-of.html

10. Protestant Bias in Arthur McGee's 1987 book, "The Elizabethan Hamlet" - 15 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/protestant-bias-in-arthur-mcgees-1987.html

11. Catholic Bias in Clare Asquith's 2005 book, "Shadowplay" - 22 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/catholic-bias-in-clare-asquiths-2005.html

12. Protestant and authoritarian bias in Roy W. Battenhouse - 29 March, 2022
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/03/battenhouses-authoritarian-protestant.html



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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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