Catholic Bias in Simon Augustus Blackmore (Part 5: Religious Bias in Shakespeare Scholarship)
Simon A. Blackmore, a Jesuit priest, wrote a lengthy work called The Riddles of Hamlet and the Newest Answers (1917). He demonstrates his own unique bias, including the assumption that Shakespeare was Catholic. The book can be read for free online ; its title is reminiscent of the Baltimore Catechism (1885), which imagined in advance all the questions that the faithful might ask which the church believed most important, and then offered definitive answers. This is a far cry from more recent scholars who observe that the play raises more questions than it answers. While the book contains many helpful insights, it is also deeply problematic. Examples: 1. Blackmore (like other Catholic scholars) is very happy that the play seems to offer a ghost from purgatory (17, 142 n., 152-4, 262, 387), mostly neglecting that the ghost may be a devil in disguise (not an impossibility for Catholics, but something he’d rather avoid) 2. Blackmore resists the idea that Hamlet as a student at Wit...