Octavia Ratiu
Staff Writer
“PETER HOLLAND did me the compliment of criticizing my book,” Ms. Clare Asquith controversially began the last lecture in the 2007 Catholic Culture Series. Asquith, an English independent scholar and author of Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, further enlightened Domers about Shakespeare’s dalliance with Catholicism in a talk on “Shakespeare’s Dark Matter” on October 9.
Uniquely claiming that Shakespeare was a political rebel who wrote in code to Elizabethan Catholics, Asquith described writing her book as “lobbing a small hand grenade into the bastion of Shakespeare scholarship.” She welcomed—with a smile—the criticism of ND’s own Professor Holland.
“We’re very forgiving of Shakespeare,” Asquith said, referring to his habit of losing the audience’s focus by lingering on seemingly unimportant trivia. Instead of attributing these confusing passages to Shakespeare’s love of quibbles, Asquith instead claimed that he very consciously included these details in order to communicate to a Catholic audience. To understand the “dark matter” of Shakespeare, one must look at the turbulence of his time and realize that “the history of the 16th century was a story written by the Protestant winners,” Asquith said.
When Elizabeth I first assumed the throne, Catholics were actually in the majority; Asquith argued that we should look at England not as a country with a few zealous Catholics, but one full of “religious traitors.” Catholic resistance in England was strong for the half-century after the Reformation began with Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. The mandatory monthly attendance at Anglican services produced a nation who solemnly went to church—present in body but certainly not in spirit.
The literature of the 16th century was thus a way around the ensuing widespread censorship, and there were various techniques playwrights could use to weave in their opinions on religious and political turmoil. Making plays ridiculously long in order to hide subversive sections was common, Asquith said. Religious and political commentary could be included—as long as it was veiled as benign and light-hearted.
Asquith echoed Finnis’ lecture as she explained the use of markers like “high” and “fair hair” to signify Catholics, and “low” and “dark hair” to indicate Protestants. “These flags were an invitation to look at the underlying story,” Asquith said.
She invited the audience to probe further, claiming that Shakespeare used not only words but whole themes to clandestinely communicate to English Catholics. For instance, his use in sonnets of “my love” and “my heart” meant “my faith” and “my soul,” respectively. Shakespeare used romantic love, Asquith asserted, to allude to the importance of true faith, Catholicism. His sonnets, in which he “addresses his country as an afflicted Catholic, [give] insight [as] to what kind of Catholic Shakespeare was,” Asquith said.
Much of Asquith’s talk focused on specific examples of Shakespeare’s ‘dark matter’ taken from his works. She suggested that these examples of his literary musings were more than just arbitrary tangents.
In his earliest tragedy, Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare fixates on the pit that a murdered corpse is thrown into, mentioning it ten times in one passage. In fact, Asquith says, “the pit” refers to a rather nasty form of torture, often used against Catholics, in the Tower of London. “It was like an Abu Ghraib in the middle of London,” Asquith said. “People knew about it, but didn’t talk.”
In King John, Shakespeare tried to convey in the three page hesitancy of King Philip to defend the papacy the similar problem facing the entire population of England: pledging allegiance to the Pope and Catholicism, or to the English monarch and Protestantism. Just as King Philip sways back and forth, so do the perplexed English people.
Shakespeare confuses audiences further by the unintelligible teasing—including references to 6 July—of Much Ado About Nothing’s hero, Benedick. Why July 6? This date was driven deep into Elizabethan Catholic consciousness as the day of Saint Thomas More’s execution by the Protestant King Henry VIII. When Benedick warns the teasers, “examine your consciences,” he is telling them not to laugh at the death of More.
“It’s scandalous that the relevant history of the 16th century is hidden because it’s essential to reading Shakespeare,” Asquith passionately stated. “It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.”
Books like Shadowplay will undoubtedly give a fresh direction to Shakespeare studies. The combination of the different insights of Holland, Asquith, Finnis, Pearce and other Shakespeare scholars will, as Asquith said on an ending note, give rise to an understanding of a much richer Shakespeare.
Contact Octavia at oratiu@nd.edu.
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