The Missing Body Of Polonius And Alleged Atheism Of William Cecil
Last week my post addressed the anxiety of characters in Hamlet about the missing body of Polonius, compared to that of the women at the tomb regarding the corpse of Jesus . [Images: Illuminations from Folio 117r of the Pericopes of Henry II, Reichenau, c. 1002–1012: The Three Marys, and the Angel at the Empty Tomb. Public domain, via Wikipedia , and fair use, via Flickr .] If Shakespeare is satirizing William Cecil as Polonius (and as *the antithesis of Jesus*), the point is not to affirm belief in a resurrection of Christ, but to perform political satire. But there is more to this missing body business (as there usually is with Shakespeare). Consider certain claims about William Cecil and the Privy Council before we return to Polonius: Robert Persons, a Jesuit priest, claimed in 1592 that there was a "school of atheism" in England centered on Sir Walter Raleigh . Atheism in Elizabethan England was a label for many things, including those (like later US Pres...