Faith and the Playwright

New book explores evidence that Shakespeare was a Catholic

By CLAUDIA McDONNELL

In the eyes of scholars and playgoers for the past four centuries, William Shakespeare is a literary genius, the world's premier playwright, a dramatist and poet without peer. And, many say, most likely a kind of secular humanist without religious convictions.

But could he have been a Catholic? And not in name only, but a practicing Catholic who encrypted messages about Catholicism into his plays at a time when Catholics in England were being violently persecuted by the government?

Joseph Pearce, an author and teacher, did not think so at first. But he does now, and he explains why in his new book, "The Quest for Shakespeare" (Ignatius Press, 2008).

Pearce has written biographies of a number of prominent Catholic authors, including G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and J.R.R. Tolkien. He is a writer in residence and professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla.

In an interview with Catholic New York, Pearce said that some of his colleagues on the Ave Maria faculty had maintained that Shakespeare was a Catholic, but he thought the evidence was insufficient. When he took a closer look, he changed his mind."Bit by bit, things materialized," Pearce said. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle, he added: as pieces fell into place, the big picture emerged. "I was astonished at how much solid documentary evidence there is for Shakespeare's Catholicism," he said. "That's when I decided to embark on a book."

He isn't the only one to take up the subject.

"There is a history of scholarship showing Shakespeare's Catholicism going back to the 18th century," he said. "From the 19th century onward it is consistent. It has been marginalized by the secular academy, and has not been taken seriously until recently."

Pearce's book has drawn criticism from scholars, some of it harsh, but he said that the evidence is now so weighty that even scholars in the secular academic world are "being forced to confront the issue."

Why does it matter whether Shakespeare was a Catholic? Because if he was, Pearce said, that fact "crucially" affects how the plays should be understood and causes them to yield new meanings.

"Basically all works of art are incarnations of the personhood of the artist," Pearce said. "Therefore Shakespeare's Catholicism informs his plays totally...To read the plays as anything other than being Catholic is to misread them."

That is why he has drawn such vehement criticism from some scholars. To accept Shakespeare's Catholicism, he said, would mean that "they've been misreading and teaching (the plays) in an incorrect way for all of their careers."

"That's something they don't want to hear, but sometimes the truth is unpleasant," he said.

In his book, Pearce presents facts about Shakespeare and, where facts are not available, draws plausible conclusions from circumstances. He notes that the playwright's father and mother, John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, were Catholics, and that he might have had Catholic schoolmasters.

It was a dangerous era for English Catholics. Queen Elizabeth I was brutally enforcing the religious reformation begun by her father, Henry VIII, and Catholics were suffering severe persecution. Those who clung to their faith, known as recusants, were often fined for such offenses as not attending Anglican services, and John Shakespeare was among them.

Catholic priests, and sometimes laity, were branded as traitors and executed with barbaric cruelty. Martyrs during Shakespeare's lifetime included the Jesuit priests Edmund Campion and Robert Southwell, and although no proof exists, Pearce writes that there is "circumstantial evidence" that Shakespeare might have known both of them.

One of the most intriguing pieces of evidence that Pearce presents is Shakespeare's purchase of a building in London known as the Blackfriars Gatehouse in 1613, after his retirement to Stratford. The Gatehouse had belonged to the Dominicans before Henry VIII took over the monasteries. It had several Catholic owners and eventually became a center of clandestine Catholic activities, including the celebration of Mass. Pearce cites "a government informer" who reported to authorities that the house had numerous secret hiding places, passageways and backdoors—an obvious advantage for priests and others whose capture would mean imprisonment and agonizing death.

Pearce wonders whether Shakespeare himself attended Mass there, and addresses a larger question: Why did he buy the building? "There is no record of Shakespeare buying any other property in London, whereas there is evidence to show that he lived in rented accommodation," he writes. And Shakespeare had bought a house in Stratford in 1597 where his wife and children lived.

Pearce maintains that Shakespeare bought the Gatehouse to provide shelter for Catholic priests and laity. The building's reputation as "a hub for recusant activity" dated back to around the time when Shakespeare came to London, and he must have known about it, Pearce surmises. Moreover, Shakespeare leased the Gatehouse to John Robinson, "son of a gentleman of the same name who was an active Catholic," Pearce writes; thus Shakespeare knew "that in leasing the Gatehouse to John Robinson he was leaving it in the possession of a recusant Catholic." The younger Robinson visited Shakespeare during his final illness and signed his will.

Pearce also notes that Shakespeare died a Catholic—or, in the words of an Anglican clergyman writing 70 years later, "he died a papist."

Acknowledging the strong criticism he is receiving from some scholars, Pearce said, "They're grasping at straws. (For) every piece of solid evidence that's presented, they try to find the weakest link to the exclusion of the rest of the case...If people want to honestly engage the evidence, that's great," but if they simply attack it, "that's just prejudice."

But couldn't Shakespeare have acquired knowledge of Catholic belief and practice from his family and Catholic schoolmasters, and then inserted it into his plays while rejecting it in his personal life? Pearce dismisses that question as a "convenient" dodge that allows scholars to "look at any Catholic element in a postmodern way, (as) the dead past, old superstition, something no one believes."

"That's reading narcissistically," Pearce said.

In Shakespeare's time, the English people were required to attend Anglican church services. Pearce remarked that there is no record of Shakespeare's attending his local Anglican church in London, although his friends did. Scholars see this as proof "that Shakespeare was not a believing Christian, that he left the Church behind," Pearce said. He draws a far different conclusion. He notes that Shakespeare's recusant father, John, and daughter Susanna both were fined for not attending Anglican church services.

"The logical conclusion is that Shakespeare was not attending for the same reason as his father and daughter, not because he had become a 21st—century agnostic," he said. He continued, "For me, there are two ways of reading any literary text: subjectively, from our own prejudiced perception, to have it reflect what we want to see in it, and objectively, as far as possible through the author's eyes.

"To read Shakespeare to the fullest, we have to read through Shakespeare's eye...If we can show that Shakespeare was a Catholic, then to read him as an atheist or a secular fundamentalist is to misread him."

Pearce is speaking throughout the country on Shakespeare and is planning a second book on the evidence for Shakespeare's Catholicism in the plays. "It's there in abundance," he said. He has filmed a 13—part series for the Eternal Word Television Network based on "The Quest for Shakespeare," scheduled to air next year.

Pearce cites another reason for promoting the evidence for Shakespeare's Catholicism: bringing the faith to bear on culture everywhere, even on secular campuses.

"The impact of Catholicism upon the world is inestimable," Pearce said. "The impact of showing Shakespeare's Catholicism forces Catholicism back onto center stage."

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