Notes on Parallels between the Plays and Catholic Tenets and Ritual
There are numerous passages in Shakespeare’s plays that show he had a deep
understanding of Catholic dogma and practice . The overall theme of Hamletcould be viewed as the religious conflict between adherence to the old faith and adoption of the new and how this choice must affect the individual conscience. The following verse spoken by the ghost of Hamlet’s father echoes lines from the English translation of the Borromeo Testament Item I, which talks about the possibility of being “cut off in the blossom of my sins”.
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d
No reck'ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O, horrible, O, horrible, most horrible!
In the oft cited lines, again spoken by the ghost, we have an image that clearly represents the dogma of purgatory:
I am thy father’s spirit;
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away.
Peter Milward and Christopher Devlin both acknowledge that there are a number of parallels in theme and language between the devotional work The Christian Directory, attributed to Campion’s fellow English missionary Robert Persons, and a number of the plays, especially Hamlet. [18]. It is likely that Campion would have been very familiar with the subject matter in the Directory and may well have helped Persons compile it.
Notes on the Characters
Michael Cumming observes that Shakespeare “often cast Catholic characters in a favourable light in conflicts involving moral principles, unjust traditions and practices, and theological and philosophical issues”. [19]. He gives the example of Aemilia, the abbess in The Comedy of Errors , Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, Friar Francis in Much Ado about Nothing and Thomas More in Sir Thomas More. Cummings does, however, acknowledge that Shakespeare also casts some Catholic characters in an unfavourable light. The playwright appears not to wish to judge individuals on their faith. This can best be seen in his sympathetic portrait of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice.
Shylock is one of a number of outcasts or isolated individuals who take centre stage in Shakespeare’s plays. Many of the titles of his plays refer to, or are indeed the very names of, these exiles: The Merchant of Venice; Timon of Athens; King Lear; Hamlet and Sir Thomas More. The question is posed in Cumming’s discussion whether Shakespeare uses his outcasts as Catholic surrogates. If Campion was the playwright, it is certainly understandable that he would have had great sympathy for his religious pariahs.
Macbeth, the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays, again deals with the theme of exile. The characters Malcolm and Macduff leave Scotland for England where they lament their enforced displacement and the suffering of those at home.
(iv.3)
Each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face..
Bleed, bleed poor country! (Macduff)
I think our country sinks beneathe the yoke;
It weeps, it bleeds. (Malcolm)
Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. (Ross)
Peter Milward describes this condition as “precisely in contemporary terms, the lament of Catholics in and out of contemporary England - as of no one else. They could see both the spiritual ruin inflicted on their country by the small Protestant party in power, led by Sir William Cecil and (in another way) the Earl of Leicester, and the physical and mental sufferings endured by their fellow-Catholics. Their laments are echoed and re-echoed in the “recusant literature” of the age...”. [17].
Many recent critics have discussed Macbeth in relation to events surrounding the Gunpowder plot of 1606 as a subtext to the play owing to its first recorded performance around this time. Another main reason for this perspective pertains to the subject matter of the ‘Porter Scene’ which many critics, however, including Coleridge, dismiss as written by someone else and of far inferior literary worth. I can’t imagine Shakspere or any playwright of the early 1600s would dare to write about such a controversial topic so soon after the event. Campion, witnessed the execution of one of the earliest Oxonian martyrs, Dr. John Storey, in London before he left home shores for Europe. I can well imagine him lamenting the state of his “weeping England” and thus inventing a literary conceit used by his fellow Jesuit writers in the years to come.
Notes on Parallels between the Plays and Catholic Tenets and Ritual
There are numerous passages in Shakespeare’s plays that show he had a deep
understanding of Catholic dogma and practice . The overall theme of Hamletcould be viewed as the religious conflict between adherence to the old faith and adoption of the new and how this choice must affect the individual conscience. The following verse spoken by the ghost of Hamlet’s father echoes lines from the English translation of the Borromeo Testament Item I, which talks about the possibility of being “cut off in the blossom of my sins”.
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d
No reck'ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O, horrible, O, horrible, most horrible!
In the oft cited lines, again spoken by the ghost, we have an image that clearly represents the dogma of purgatory:
I am thy father’s spirit;
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away.
Peter Milward and Christopher Devlin both acknowledge that there are a number of parallels in theme and language between the devotional work The Christian Directory, attributed to Campion’s fellow English missionary Robert Persons, and a number of the plays, especially Hamlet. [18]. It is likely that Campion would have been very familiar with the subject matter in the Directory and may well have helped Persons compile it.
Notes on the Characters
Michael Cumming observes that Shakespeare “often cast Catholic characters in a favourable light in conflicts involving moral principles, unjust traditions and practices, and theological and philosophical issues”. [19]. He gives the example of Aemilia, the abbess in The Comedy of Errors , Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, Friar Francis in Much Ado about Nothing and Thomas More in Sir Thomas More. Cummings does, however, acknowledge that Shakespeare also casts some Catholic characters in an unfavourable light. The playwright appears not to wish to judge individuals on their faith. This can best be seen in his sympathetic portrait of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice.
Shylock is one of a number of outcasts or isolated individuals who take centre stage in Shakespeare’s plays. Many of the titles of his plays refer to, or are indeed the very names of, these exiles: The Merchant of Venice; Timon of Athens; King Lear; Hamlet and Sir Thomas More. The question is posed in Cumming’s discussion whether Shakespeare uses his outcasts as Catholic surrogates. If Campion was the playwright, it is certainly understandable that he would have had great sympathy for his religious pariahs.
