VII.
WAS SHAKESPEARE CATHOLIC?
The conflict between the Christian tradition and the Renaissance excitement, in all the people of that period, was very deep and subtle; in none more deep and subtle than in Shakespeare. But I take it as absolutely certain that, however complex and violent was the struggle, their Christianity was perfectly sincere. Shakespeare wallowed in paganism, but there are passages in Shakespeare which I defy any independent person to read without realizing that he was what we call a Christian, that he had that particular humility of mind which was the chemical change in mankind produced by Christianity.
(“Mary Queen Of Scots,” Revaluations)
It is not unnatural that there should be a certain vagueness about the personal celebration of Shakespeare in his own personal place of residence. In the very highest artist there is always a disdain of art. Shakespeare left his manuscripts loose all over the place as if they were old envelopes; and it may seem curious, and even exasperating, that the learned world should think so much of some pieces of paper of which their author thought so little. But even in this queer and casual aloofness Shakespeare is very satisfactorily typical of the English nation. It has been said that England created an empire in a fit of absence of mind; it is quite certain that William Shakespeare created a drama in a fit of absence of mind. All that is best in England is expressed in the fact that Shakespeare has no biography; which means that he had a very jolly life. All that is good in England is always all the better because it comes unexpectedly, because it comes unreasonably, as an English town appears suddenly at a twist of an English road. … The things that come to us out of our national polity we have to accept as splendid accidents. Even Shakespeare was a splendid accident; and little as we know of his life, he seems always to have behaved like one.
Nearly all Englishmen are either Shakespearians or Miltonians. I do not mean that they admire one more than the other; because everyone in his senses must admire both of them infinitely. I mean that each represents something in the make-up of England; and that the two things are so far antagonistic that it is really impossible not to be secretly on one side or the other. The difference, in so far as it concerns the two men, can be expressed in all sorts of ways; but every way taken by itself is inadequate. Shakespeare represents the Catholic, Milton the Protestant. … Shakespeare never went to an English University; Milton did. Milton regarded the trick of rhyming with contempt; Shakespeare used it even in the most inappropriate moments. Milton had no humour; Shakespeare had very much too much: he never lets anything else entirely run away with him, but he lets his laughter run away with him. Milton was probably unkind to his wife; Shakespeare’s wife was probably unkind to him. Milton started from the very first with a clear idea of making poetry. Shakespeare started with a very vague idea of somehow making money. Whenever Milton speaks of religion, it is Milton’s religion: the religion that Milton has made. Whenever Shakespeare speaks of religion (which is only seldom), it is of a religion that has made him. Lastly, Milton was mostly blind, and took great care of his manuscripts; while Shakespeare was often blind drunk and took no care of his.
If from the above the reader cannot form a mental picture of the two men, I am sorry for him. If, however, these strictly historical facts are inadequate, I can conceive of hypothetical facts that might explain the matter. An amusing romance might be written about the everlasting adventures of the ghosts of Shakespeare and Milton passing through the world of to-day. If it were a question, for instance, of dressing for dinner, Milton would either dress exquisitely or refuse to dress on principle. Shakespeare would either remain in morning dress, lazy but embarrassed, or he would put on evening dress eagerly and all wrong. Milton would be regarded everywhere as an aristocrat, except among the aristocracy; Shakespeare would be regarded everywhere as a bounder, except among the aristocracy. They would take a hansom cab together: Milton would direct the cabman; Shakespeare would pay him. But the subject enlarges itself too magnificently before me. I cannot pause to tell you of all the other examples of the diverse and significant conduct of these great men. I cannot dwell upon the variety of their methods in dealing with a bootblack, or the highly characteristic way in which each of them behaved in the Hammersmith omnibus. How can I tell you of the Miltonian way in which Milton dealt with the post office, or the extraordinary conduct of Shakespeare in a tea-shop? It is enough that, as I say, all Englishmen are either Shakespeareans or Miltonians, and that I, for one, am not a Miltonian.
Many people have wondered why Milton described the Devil so much better than he described anything else; I think the reason is really simple: it is because he was so extraordinarily like the Devil himself. A certain Cavalier, whom some Puritan had denounced for the immorality of his troopers, replied (in a sentence that is none the worse for being certainly historical): “Our men had the sins of men—wine and wenching; yours had the sins of devils—spiritual pride and rebellion.” I sympathise, politically speaking, with the republicanism of men like Milton; but I cannot help feeling that there was a truth in that answering taunt, and that the rebellion of Milton, at least, was the rebellion of spiritual pride; it was a cold anger, an intellectual violence. I do not blame him for helping Charles I to lose his head, but I do blame him for never losing his own. This strain of a stern and frigid propriety, full of scholarly memories and many dignified public virtues, does exist in Milton and it does exist still in England. Miltonic England has nearly destroyed Merry England, but not quite. The struggle is still going on, and Shakespeare is still alive, and with him all the Middle Ages. The war in us is still going on between Falstaff, who did evil stupidly, and Satan, who desired evil intelligently. Falstaff is a mocker because he is incomplete; Satan is serious because he is complete.
For this reason it is impossible not to feel a kind of mischievous pleasure in the fact that Shakespeare escaped all those formative influences which have made the modern English gentleman. Shakespeare is a sort of gigantic truant. He ran away from school and college—at least, he kept away from school and college, and I fancy he has kept away from most of his own celebrations. The lack of biographical detail about him is not, I think, a mere accident of circumstances or records. It is a part of a certain splendid vagrancy and vagueness in the daily existence of that kind of man. We do not know much of the life of Shakespeare; but I doubt if Shakespeare knew much either. Life does not consist of incidents; incidents, even happy incidents, are often an interruption to life. It may be that Shakespeare stopped living for a moment even to imagine Othello; in such a great vitality the greatest experiences are often shapeless, unconscious, and unrecorded; and it may be that the happiest hour of Shakespeare was when he had forgotten his own name. In fact, he may very well have forgotten it quite often, as he never seems to have managed to spell it twice the same. But for this reason, there must always be, as I have said, something just slightly artificial about all pomps and mysteries which celebrate Shakespeare at a particular time or in a particular place. The cant saying that Shakespeare is for all time has a double truth in it; it means that he is the kind of poet to endure for ever, and it also means that he was probably the kind of man who never knew what the time was. As Orlando says to Rosalind, “There is no clock in the forest.” The poet of the wood is free from all chains, but chiefly from the most galling and oppressive of all human chains—a watch chain. And as it is with time, so it is with space. Shakespeare does not live in the forests of Warwickshire, but in the Forest of Arden. His traces may be found anywhere or nowhere; he is omnipresent, and yet he has escaped. He is hidden away somewhere under nameless woods, concealed along with the soul of England, where God has hidden it from Imperialists and thieves.
(Illustrated London News, May 18, 1907)
Shakespeare and Milton (Again)
A correspondent has written to me asking me what I meant by saying that Shakespeare was a Catholic and Milton a Protestant. That Milton was a Protestant, I suppose, he will not dispute. At least, he will not dispute it if he has any faint belief in the possibility of the dead returning to this earth in anger. But the point about the religion of Shakespeare is certainly less obvious, though I think not less true. The real difference between a religion and a mere philosophy is (among other things) this: that while only subtle people can understand the difference between one philosophy and another, quite simple people, quite stupid people (like you and me), can understand the difference between one religion and another, because it is a difference between two different things. The difference between two philosophies is like the difference between two solutions of a geometrical problem. The difference between two religions is like the difference between the smell of onions and the smell of the sea. Both religions may have much good; the sea is good, and onions are even better than the sea. But nobody requires to be cultured in order to distinguish one from the other. The whole practical working world bears witness to this fact, that ordinary people do not recognise a philosophy as a reality in the same way that they recognize a religion as a reality. There are real people living in real houses who will not have a Roman Catholic servant. I never heard of any people living in any houses who advertised in the newspapers that they would not have a Hegelian servant. People are really horrified if they learn that a man is an atheist; they do shrink from him morally; they almost shrink from him physically. But ordinary people do not shrink from a Hegelian: they merely pity him. They do what they can to make his life happier: they make him Minister of War. But about all these things that are of the character of religion there is this double difficulty: that, while everybody can feel them, nobody can express them. There is no ordinary housekeeper engaging a housemaid who believes for one moment in the modern theory that all religions are really the same. Being a healthy-minded housekeeper, she will probably have a preliminary and just objection to her housemaid being religious at all. But she will quite certainly feel that if her servant is a Salvationist she will have one sort of difficulty, if her servant is a Roman Catholic another kind of difficulty, and if her servant is a Hindu, another. But, while this difference is obvious to sense, it is obscure to language. The stupidest person can feel it; the cleverest person cannot define it.
For which reason I would respectfully decline to explain in a space like this exactly why I feel one religion in one author and another religion in another. I think the remarks of Aristotle somewhat too compressed to be clearly understood; still, I can understand that Aristotle was a pagan. I think the remarks of Lord Meath, on the other hand, somewhat too diffuse and large; still, I would under any circumstances be prepared to bet that Lord Meath was born after the introduction of Christianity into Europe. These impressions are hard to explain, because they are impressions of everything. But here, at least, is one way of putting the difference between the religions of Shakespeare and Milton. Milton is possessed with what is, I suppose, the first and finest idea of Protestantism—the idea of the individual soul actually testing and tasting all the truth there is, and calling that truth which it has not tested or tasted truth of a less valuable and vivid kind. But Shakespeare is possessed through and through with the feeling which is the first and finest idea of Catholicism that truth exists whether we like it or not, and that it is for us to accommodate ourselves to it. Milton, with a splendid infallibility and a splendid intolerance, sets out to describe how things actually are to be explained: he has seen it in a vision—
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
But when Shakespeare speaks of the divine truth, it is always as something from which he himself may have fallen away, something that he himself may have forgotten—
O … that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter;
or again—
But if it be a sin to covet honour
I am the most offending soul alive.
But I really do not know how this indescribable matter can be better described than by simply saying this; that Milton’s religion was Milton’s religion, and that Shakespeare’s religion was not Shakespeare’s.
(Illustrated London News, June 8, 1907)
Shakespeare did believe in the Roman Catholic Purgatory. He believed in the very doctrine which was considered the chief mark of a Catholic as distinct from a Protestant:
. … condemned to fast in fires
Till the foul sins done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. …
(G.K.’s Weekly, June 13, 1925)
In so far as Shakespeare the Little Englander does reach out to something larger than England, it is emphatically not to the expanding empire of the English, but to the ancient religious unity of the Europeans. He exults not in the Schism but in the Crusades.
Renowned for their deeds as far from home
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the Sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, Blessed Mary’s Son.
(G.K.’s Weekly, June 13, 1925)
Medieval religion, including medieval asceticism, was totally different from Puritanism, was indeed contrary to Puritanism, and was certainly much less gloomy than Puritanism. It was different in meaning, different in motive, different in atmosphere and different in effect. The two things were so diverse that even when they were the same they were different; as different as a Catholic and an atheist vegetarian when they both refuse meat on Friday. … Men like Shakespeare and Ben Jonson had fathers or grandfathers who must have remembered the old medieval routine as it remained after the Wars of the Roses. Even if the Renaissance had penetrated every byway of the north (which seems most unlikely) the interruption must have been very recent and very brief. Tradition must still have been full of the momentum of the long medieval memories. Under these circumstances, if the Puritans had only been like medieval priests, they would have been noticed as being like medieval priests. The tone of the comments on them would have been “Oh Lord, here are the dismal old shavelings back again.” It was totally different. The tone of the comments was “Who ever heard of such nonsense as these new religious people are talking?” So Shakespeare’s characters, who accept a friar as something familiar and presumably friendly, will talk of Malvolio being a Puritan as if it were a sort of monster. It is to me simply incredible, as a mere matter of human nature, that people should speak thus of a new thing if all the old things had been exactly like it.
(Superstitions of a Sceptic)
I believe that recent discoveries, as recorded in a book by a French lady, have very strongly confirmed the theory that Shakespeare died a Catholic. But I need no books and no discoveries to prove to me that he had lived a Catholic, or more probably, like the rest of us, tried unsuccessfully to live a Catholic; that he thought like a Catholic and felt like a Catholic and saw every question as a Catholic sees it. The proofs of this would be matter for a separate essay; if indeed so practical an impression can be proved at all. It is quite self-evident to me that he was a certain real and recognizable Renaissance type of Catholic; like Cervantes; like Ronsard. But if I were asked offhand for a short explanation, I could only say that I know he was a Catholic from the passages which are now used to prove he was an agnostic.
(“If They Had Believed,” The Thing)
That Shakespeare was a Catholic is a thing that every Catholic feels by every sort of convergent common sense to be true. It is supported by the few external and political facts we know; it is utterly unmistakable in the general spirit and atmosphere; and in nothing more than in the scepticism, which appears in some aspects to be paganism. But I am not talking about the various kinds of Catholic; I am talking about the atmosphere of the sixteenth century as compared with the fourteenth century. And I say that while the former was more refined, it was in certain special ways more restricted, or properly speaking, more concentrated. Shakespeare is more concentrated on Hamlet than Dante is upon Hell; for the very reason that Dante’s mind is full of the larger plan of which this is merely a part. But … Shakespeare seems to identify himself with Hamlet who finds Denmark a prison, or the whole world a prison.
(“Chaucer and the Renaissance,” Chaucer)