tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62066758440597294702024-03-04T20:09:28.946-08:00The Christian ShakespeareKevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12239185608038738884noreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-4733780341574425542020-04-29T14:17:00.002-07:002020-04-29T14:17:49.895-07:00Othello - Act FiveKevin O'Brien on Act Five of <i>Othello ...</i><br />
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<i><br /></i><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OPQx5XMzeJw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-71811374323331584342020-04-06T12:10:00.001-07:002020-04-06T12:11:51.954-07:00"A Midsummer Night's Dream" - the Problem<div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Problem - </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why is there an Act Five after the Plot is Resloved?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/search/label/Renfrew">Donald L. Renfrew MD</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 24pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 24pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Problem</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The problem in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> is that Hermia and Lysander are in love, but their love is blocked by Hermia’s father Egeus. Hermia’s father approves of Demetrius (who loves Hermia, although Hermia does not love him) and demands that Hermia marry Demetrius and not Lysander. Lysander tells King Theseus us that he is just as worthy of Hermia’s hand as is Demetrius:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">1.1.99-104</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I am, my Lord, as well derived as he,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">As well possessed. My love is more than his,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">My fortunes every way as fairly ranked, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">If not with vantage, as Demetrius’.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-bdf8fb3a-7fff-9cdf-abdf-73fce7f61700" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Meanwhile, Hermia’s childhood friend Helena loves Demetrius, and Demetrius at one time loved Helena, but no longer. Egeus insists that Hermia marry Demetrius; Hermia asks Theseus what her options are, and Theseus tells her bluntly:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">1.1.65</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Either to die the death or to abjure</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Forever the society of men.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">He gives Hermia four days to make up her mind to agree with her father and marry Demetrius or suffer the consequences:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">1.1.119-120</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Or else the law of Athens yields you up</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">(Which by no means we may extenuate).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Theseus himself is getting married in four days to Hippolyta, and as part of the festivities a group of tradesmen (including Bottom the weaver) are preparing a play to present the night of the wedding.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Solution</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Lysander and Hermia conspire to run off to the Lysander’s aunt (who lives “remote seven leagues” from Athens, and beyond the jurisdiction of the harsh Athenian law). The aunt is a dowager and treats Lysander as her son. The first step in this journey is to escape into the forest outside Athens. They tell Helena of their plan. They escape to the forest. Helena tells Demetrius of the plan and Demetrius follows them to the forest, followed, in turn, by Helena. Bottom and his fellow tradesmen also go to the forest to practice their play.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Once in the forest, the four are caught up in the activities of the fairy king Oberon and his right-hand man Robin Goodfellow (also known as Puck). Oberon wants a changeling child that his queen Titania has taken from an Indian King. Titania refuses to give the child to Oberon. Oberon creates a magic potion which causes whoever is treated to love the first thing he sees upon awakening. Oberon treats Titania with the potion, which causes her to fall in love with Bottom (who has, apparently as a prank, been given an ass’s head by Puck).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Oberon overhears a conversation between Demetrius and Helena and tells Puck to treat Demetrius with the potion as well so that Demetrius will love Helena. Puck mistakenly treats Lysander, who then falls in love with Helena. Oberon later treats Demetrius, who also falls in love with Helena. Helena thinks (incorrectly) that Lysander and Demetrius are mocking her by claiming their love for her and their disdain for Hermia.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">At the end of Act 3, Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia all fall asleep in the same place (thanks to Puck’s handiwork), and Demetrius is treated with another magic potion which reverses the effect of the first potion. In the first scene of Act 4, we learn that Oberon has secured the changeling child from Titania</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> and so reverses her treatment as well. The two sleeping couples are awakened by the wedding party (in the forest on a hunt) which includes Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Theseus reminds Egeus that today’s the day where Hermia must decide between abandoning Lysander/marrying Demetrius, death, or “abjuring the society of men”. The just-awoken Lysander admits that he and Hermia ran off to be married, at which point Egeus demands “I beg the law, the law upon his head” (4.1.154). Demetrius interrupts Egeus protests by explaining that he no longer loves Hermia, but instead loves Helena. Theseus then states “Egeus, I will overbear your will” (4.1.178), doing exactly what he said he was incapable of doing in Act 1 (1.1.120). The three couples are married, and the play should end, as the archetypal three-part structure of the comedy has been accomplished: young love blocked; escape from the block; and reintegration into society with marriage.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And, of course, this leaves us with a second problem: why is there an Act 5? What is the problem posed and solution prescribed in the play within the play, as the royals offer commentary (ala </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Mystery Science Theater 3000</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">) on the play presented about Pyramus and Thisbe</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Not only do the royals offer distracting/illuminating commentary throughout the play, the players themselves several times break the “fourth wall” and comment on the play they are performing: the Prologue (5.1.126-150) tells the entire story before it begins, Snout announces “That I, one Snout by name, present a wall</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">” (5.1.135), Bottom breaks character to correct King Theseus that the wall should </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> talk (5.1.181), Snug warns the ladies of the audience that he’s not really a lion (5.1.217), and Bottom finally again breaks character to tell Demetrius that Wall is departed (5.1.336).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">How can we in the audience recognize the artificiality of what is transpiring in the play within the play, and not immediately apply this to the play we are watching, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">? Is the plot of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">, involving a Greek legendary king, an Amazonian queen, a reversible love potion, fairies, mutable Athenian law, and a magic forest any more believable than the Pyramus and Thisbe story? What of the common workman, the weaver Bottom, being given an ass’s head and then doted on by the fairy queen? Should we not be making the same derisive/insightful comments on the play that the royals do about Pyramus and Thisbe? Shouldn’t Theseus, Hippolyta, Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena break character as the lion, the wall, and of course Pyramus/Bottom do throughout the play with a play, and as Puck does at the end of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">5.1.406-421</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">If we shadows have offended,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Think but this, and all is mended,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">That you have but slumber'd here</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">While these visions did appear.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And this weak and idle theme,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">No more yielding but a dream,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Gentles, do not reprehend:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">if you pardon, we will mend:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And, as I am an honest Puck,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">If we have unearned luck</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">We will make amends ere long;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Else the Puck a liar call;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">So, good night unto you all.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Give me your hands, if we be friends,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And Robin shall restore amends.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Shakespeare gives us a hint about how we should think about this. In the play within the play in the space of a few lines, there are two references to the larger play of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">BOTTOM (AS PYRAMUS)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I see a voice: now will I to the chink,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">To spy an I can hear my Thisbe’s face. Thisbe!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">FLUTE (AS THISBE)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">My love thou art, my love I think.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">BOTTOM (AS PYRAMUS)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's grace;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And, like Limander, am I trusty still.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">FLUTE (AS THISBE)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Bottom refers to “Limander” which is glossed as the famous lover in Greek myth Leander, but which also sounds a lot like “Lysander”, and Flute refers to Helen, the famous Greek beauty, but this sounds a lot like Helena. The play-within-the-play is referring to the play it is in.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In addition, Bottom says he </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">sees</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> a voice and can </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">hear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Thisbe’s face. Where else in the play does Bottom have this sort of synesthesia? It is in Act 4, Scene 1, where Bottom awakens and struggles to understand why he, an ass</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">, has been doted upon by an immortal Fairy Queen.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> 4.1.203-212</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I have had a most rare</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">was. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Bottom almost (but not quite) quotes St. Paul. Is the point here that what he says is a pale imitation of what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, just as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> is a pale imitation of the reality of the Christian story? St. Paul explains to the hedonistic, promiscuous, worldly Greeks of Corinth how it was that they came to be saved by Jesus, not through “sublimity of words or of wisdom” but by the power of the Spirit: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -36pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">But as it is written: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God revealed to us through the spirit.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Just as Bottom is quoting scripture, Paul himself is quoting Scripture (Isaiah 64,3)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">. Bottom, an ass and representative of all humanity, has been loved and doted upon by a Fairy Queen. The Corinthians, asses and representative of all humanity, have been loved and doted upon by God. Unlike the situation in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">, however, the Fairy Queen’s love does not go away like melted snow, and salvation is real. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Summary</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Pyramus and Thisbe is a story. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> is a play. Reality and the greatest story ever told is not a play: it really happened, even though, as Paul says, we do not know this by “sublimity of words or of wisdom”, but by the divine intervention of the spirit. </span></div>
<br />Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-52012831444044694862020-03-19T14:58:00.001-07:002020-03-19T15:06:09.639-07:00The Taming of the Shrew - or Rehab in Padua<div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rehab in Padua</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Who is the real head of the household in any family?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/search/label/Renfrew">Donald L. Renfrew MD</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>The Taming
of the Shrew</i></span><span style="font-size: x-large;">, or, </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Rehab
in Padua</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The
Problem</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Katherine
Minola is a shrew. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Elizabethans,
who never laid eyes on a Disney cartoon, would not have mistaken a
shrew for a cute, cuddly, kindly mouse. They would know that a shrew
is a vicious, relentlessly aggressive animal, the only mammal with
poisonous venom, and that a shrew’s bite can kill an animal several
times its size (which the shrew will then eat). Elizabethans had no
illusions about how truly nasty shrews are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It
is a mistake to think that Katherine is justifiably angry for a
specific cause. She is angry, but it’s not justified and there is
no cause. Katherine binds (2.1.1) and strikes (2.1.22) her sister
Bianca. Bianca tries desperately to supply a satisfactory answer to
Kate’s questions, but, unable to do so, falls silent. Her father
Baptista asks “Why dost thou wrong her that did ne’er wrong thee?
When did she cross thee with a bitter word?” Katherine answers:
“Her silence flouts me, and I’ll be revenged” (2.1.29).
Revenged for </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>what</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">?
She also strikes Petruchio (2.1.217), strikes Grumio (4.3.31), and
insults everyone without provocation. Yet there is no cause for this
behavior. She is wealthy, young, and beautiful (1.2.83). She has a
loving father and sister. She lacked for nothing when being raised:
Baptista says “I will be very kind, and liberal/To mine own
children in good bringing up (1.1.100-101). Katherine herself admits
“I . . . never knew how to entreat, nor never needed that I should
entreat” (4.3.7-8). Her anger is unexplained and inexplicable.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This
is irrevocably devastating to Katherine: she is unhappy in her fury
and it is difficult to see how she could successfully and happily
fulfill any of the roles open to her in Shakespeare’s imaginary
Italy (or, for that matter, and anachronistically, our own world of
today).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The
Solution</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The
cure for Katherine is Petruchio. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It
is a mistake to think that Petruchio is a lazy money-grubber, and it
is a mistake to think that he is a misogynist bully.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">With
respect to wealth and industriousness, Petruchio tells Hortensio us
that his father has died and that he has been “Left solely heir to
all his lands and goods/Which I have bettered rather than decreased.”
(2.1.117-118). He is generous, offering to leave Katherine “all my
lands and leases whatsoever” (2.1.125) upon his death. He is
hard-working, noting in multiple conversations that he is anxious to
keep working (2.1.74, 2.1.114, 3.2.185) and even at the play’s
concluding banquet complains those there do “Nothing but sit and
sit, and eat and eat!” 5.2.12). Katherine’s handsome dowry
(1.2.54-55), as well as the bribes of Gremio (1.1.138), Hortensio
(1.2.211-212), Gremio again (1.2.213), and Tranio (as Lucentio)
(1.2.265-266) to marry Katherine are all offered to him </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>prior
to his asking</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">. He
does say (</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>after</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
Hortensio’s telling him of Katherine’s dowry) “wealth is a
burden of my wooing dance” but it is never hinted that Petruchio is
a selfish or greedy man. When he says to Hortensio “Thou know’st
not gold’s effect” he may mean that he seeks money for use toward
a noble goal.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">With
respect to being a misogynist bully, it is important to put in
context Petruchio’s goal, and to do this it necessary to examine
the four frauds perpetrated in the play.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<ol>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">In
the induction, a Lord concocts an elaborate ruse to deceive the
drunkard Christopher Sly that Sly is a nobleman rather than a
commoner. The ultimate purpose of this ruse is not clear. The
fraud runs through the induction, appears in 1.1.242-246, and then
is not mentioned again.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">From
1.1.188 – 5.1.107, Lucentio and Tranio conspire to deceive those
of Padua that Lucentio is a scholar and tutor named Cambio and that
Tranio is Lucentio, in order that Lucentio (Cambio) may subvert
Baptista’s plan to keep Bianca from all suitors until after
Katherine is married. Lucentio first pointlessly lies to his other
servant Biondello (1.1.225-226), telling him that the cause of his
exchange of identity with Tranio is a murder. Lucentio then lies to
Gremio, his sponsor, whom he tells “Whate’er I read to her, I’ll
plead for you” (1.2.150), and, of course, misrepresents himself to
the Minola household and Petruchio. This ruse is dropped after
Lucentio achieves his goal of marrying Bianca, after nearly getting
his own father Vincentio jailed. While Lucentio achieves the goal
of marriage with Bianca, the last words between the newly wedded
couple are an acrimonious spat wherein Lucentio berates Bianca for
losing him money and Bianca calls him a fool (5.2.135-138).</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">From
1.2.128 – 4.2.17, Hortensio pretends to be music teacher named
Litio, also in order to subvert Baptista’s plan to keep Bianca
from all suitors until after Katherine is married. Hortensio lies
to Baptista (his neighbor and the father of the woman he wishes to
marry) and to Gremio (breaking their “parle” agreed in
1.1.113-134). Hortensio drops this ruse when he learns that Bianca
favors “Cambio” (actually Lucentio). This occurs in 4.2.1 –
4.2.17, a deliciously “meta” scene wherein Hortensio as Litio
meets with Tranio as Lucentio, which is thus a play (Litio and
Lucentio in the scene) within a play (Hortensio and Tranio in </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The
Taming of the Shrew</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">),
within a play (two players, in the play put on for Christopher Sly
as described in the induction). Hortensio foreswears Bianca and
vows to wed a wealthy widow, but despite “going to school” with
Petruchio, ends up at odds with the new wife in Act 5. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">From
2.1.131 - ?, Petruchio pretends (?) to be “as peremptory as she
[Katherine] proud-minded” with the goal of curing Katherine of her
fault. As he announces this, Petruchio states that “extreme
gusts” will extinguish both his peremptory and her proud-minded
nature, “So I to her and so she yields to me” (2.1.136). Note
the “I to her” in this statement. In 4.1 and 4.3, at
Petruchio’s estate, Petruchio prevents Katherine (and
simultaneously himself) from eating and sleeping, orders dresses to
be made and then sends them away, and in general acts the opposite
to Katherine as the Lord does to Christopher Sly in the induction,
where Sly is treated to a comfortable bed in the “fairest
chamber”, music, aromatic fragrances from “sweet wood”, baths
in warm scented water, food and drink, fine clothes, and everyone
doing his every bidding. Both may be viewed as rehabilitation
exercises; it seems obvious that treating a drunken sluggard to wine
and a comfortable bed is a recipe for failure, and the induction
scene may be making the point that there’s no easy way to
rehabilitate bad habits (of drunkedness and sloth, or of anger).
Petruchio, as he summarizes in 4.1.165-188, has an entirely
different plan than that of the Lord in the Induction, and he
concludes humbly enough “He that knows better how to tame a
shrew/Now let him speak; ‘tis charity to show.”</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Petruchio’s
efforts are to cure Katherine, not to subjugate her to his will
because of a need to exert male dominance. The greatest problem
current audiences have with the play is that they do not understand
the Elizabethan view of marriage. The two sections that make
audiences clench their teeth are: 1. Petruchio’s announcement as he
takes Katherine away (over her protestations) after the wedding and
before the reception; and 2. Katherine’s speech at the end of the
play.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Before
reviewing these, note that the Elizabethan (Christian) view of
marriage would follow from St. Paul’s description in Ephesians
5.21-33:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="22"></a><span style="color: black;">Be
subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="23"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="24"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="25"></a>
<span style="color: black;">Wives should be subject to their husbands as to
the Lord, since, as <a href="https://www.catholic.org/clife/jesus">Christ</a> is
head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head
of his wife; and as the Church is subject to Christ, so should wives
be to their husbands, in everything.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="26"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="27"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="28"></a>
<span style="color: black;">Husbands should love their wives, just
as <a href="https://www.catholic.org/clife/jesus">Christ</a> loved
the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy by washing
her in cleansing water with a <a href="https://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=4781">form</a> of
words, so that when he took the Church to himself she would be
glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy
and faultless.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="29"></a><span style="color: black;">In
the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own
bodies; for a <a href="https://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=7463">man</a> to
love his wife is for him to love himself.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="30"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="31"></a>
<span style="color: black;">A <a href="https://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=7463">man</a> never
hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is
the way <a href="https://www.catholic.org/clife/jesus">Christ</a> treats
the Church, because we are parts of his Body.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="32"></a><span style="color: black;">This
is why a <a href="https://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=7463">man</a> leaves
his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two
become one flesh.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="33"></a><span style="color: black;">This <a href="https://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=8298">mystery</a> has
great significance, but I am applying it to <a href="https://www.catholic.org/clife/jesus">Christ</a> and
the Church.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">To
sum up: you also, each one of you, must love his wife as he loves
himself; and let every wife respect her husband.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Husbands
and wives are to be “subject to one another”, just as Petruchio
says he when telling Baptista of his plans for Kate “So I to her
and so she yields to me” (2.1.137). Petruchio accepts his role of
leadership</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
but also his role of sacrifice for his wife. After their marriage
and when Petruchio announces that he and Kate will not stay for the
reception (as it is, as they say, time to “stage the
intervention”), he says:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.224"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.225"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.226"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.227"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.228"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.229"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.230"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.231"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.232"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.233"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.234"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.235"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.236"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.237"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.238"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.239"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.240"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.241"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.2.242"></a>
<span style="color: black;">They shall go forward, Kate, at thy
command.<br />Obey the bride, you that attend on her;<br />Go to the
feast, revel and domineer,<br />Carouse full measure to her
maidenhead,<br />Be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves:<br />But for my
bonny Kate, she must with me.<br />Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor
stare, nor fret;<br />I will be master of what is mine own:<br />She is
my goods, my chattels; she is my house,<br />My household stuff, my
field, my barn,<br />My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing;<br />And here
she stands, touch her whoever dare;<br />I'll bring mine action on the
proudest he<br />That stops my way in Padua. Grumio,<br />Draw forth thy
weapon, we are beset with thieves;<br />Rescue thy mistress, if thou be
a man.<br />Fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch<br />thee,
Kate:<br />I'll buckler thee against a million.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Katherine
is “my chattels” but so much more: she is also “my any thing,”
that is, all that he has and is and for whom he is willing to
sacrifice all that he has and is. Note that he has also commanded
the other guests to follow Katherine’s orders.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Katherine’s
speech at the end of the play, after her “successful
rehabilitation”, is enough to make the current crop of feminists
vomit:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.148"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.149"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.150"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.151"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.152"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.153"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.154"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.155"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.156"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.157"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.158"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.159"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.160"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.161"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.162"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.163"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.164"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.165"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.166"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.167"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.168"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.169"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.170"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.171"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.172"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.173"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.174"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.175"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.176"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.177"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.178"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.179"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.180"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.181"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.182"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.183"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.184"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.185"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.186"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.187"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.188"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.189"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.190"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.2.191"></a>
<span style="color: black;">Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind
brow,<br />And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,<br />To wound
thy lord, thy king, thy governor:<br />It blots thy beauty as frosts do
bite the meads,<br />Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair
buds,<br />And in no sense is meet or amiable.<br />A woman moved is like
a fountain troubled,<br />Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of
beauty;<br />And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty<br />Will deign
to sip or touch one drop of it.<br />Thy husband is thy lord, thy life,
thy keeper,<br />Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,<br />And
for thy maintenance commits his body<br />To painful labour both by sea
and land,<br />To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,<br />Whilst
thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;<br />And craves no other
tribute at thy hands<br />But love, fair looks and true obedience;<br />Too
little payment for so great a debt.<br />Such duty as the subject owes
the prince<br />Even such a woman oweth to her husband;<br />And when she
is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,<br />And not obedient to his honest
will,<br />What is she but a foul contending rebel<br />And graceless
traitor to her loving lord?<br />I am ashamed that women are so
simple<br />To offer war where they should kneel for peace;<br />Or seek
for rule, supremacy and sway,<br />When they are bound to serve, love
and obey.<br />Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,<br />Unapt to
toil and trouble in the world,<br />But that our soft conditions and
our hearts<br />Should well agree with our external parts?<br />Come,
come, you froward and unable worms!<br />My mind hath been as big as
one of yours,<br />My heart as great, my reason haply more,<br />To bandy
word for word and frown for frown;<br />But now I see our lances are
but straws,<br />Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,<br />That
seeming to be most which we indeed least are.<br />Then vail your
stomachs, for it is no boot,<br />And place your hands below your
husband's foot:<br />In token of which duty, if he please,<br />My hand
is ready; may it do him ease.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">For
those who believe that men and women are “the same” (not at all
what St. Paul or the Elizabethans thought), there is much to hate in
this speech. Perhaps one way of mitigating this hatred is to believe
that Katherine delivers the speech ironically. Another way of
mitigating the hatred might be to think that Katherine and Petruchio
concocted the sequence of events in the entire last act as a way of
extracting more resources for their (now mutual) noble goal that
Petruchio has chosen for his (now their) money. Another way of
mitigating the hatred is to consider that Katherine may be passing
through a phase, and that after this phase she will reach a mean
between her previously headstrong, completely independent but
destructive behavior and her current seeming obsequious subservience.</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.1.195"></a><span style="font-size: medium;">Summary</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Kate
is a shrew, Petruchio cures her of this condition, and the two live
happily ever after (5.2.117-119): </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">LUCENTIO</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Here
is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">HORTENSIO</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">And
so it is. I wonder what it bodes.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">PETRUCHIO</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Marry,
peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">And
awful rule, and right supremacy,</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">And,
to be short, what not’s that’s sweet and happy?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Understanding
Ephesians 5.21-33 means understanding that Petruchio is talking of
not of </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>his</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
rule, but of </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Christ’s</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
rule. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Those
who would apply our current standards of rehabilitation or marriage
to Shakespeare’s era should consider two things:</span></div>
<ol>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This
is an anachronistic disservice to the greatest author who ever
lived.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Maybe
the Elizabethans were onto something: half of marriages in the
United States now end in divorce and the success of our
rehabilitation facilities is even worse.</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a><sup> </sup>
Indeed when in his home and on the route back to town, he tolerates
no contradiction, says day is night and night is day, and “turns
man into woman”.</span></div>
</div>
<br /></div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-58977666711949384322019-05-26T22:53:00.001-07:002019-05-26T22:53:14.571-07:00Shakespeare in Gloucester<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A3q8iqqdhXVApJxZe5ORXCxthNDDpogQ/preview" width="540" height="480"></iframe>Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-963139577841560332019-01-03T14:25:00.001-08:002019-01-03T14:27:13.806-08:00Counsel in "Macbeth"<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Counsel in <i>Macbeth</i></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The voices that are heeded and ignored in <i>Macbeth</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/search/label/Renfrew">Donald L. Renfrew MD</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Counsel
in </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Macbeth</i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The
Problem</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In
Act 5 Macbeth, despairing of any goodness and purpose in life,
delivers his most memorable speech.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
To-morrow, and
to-morrow, and to-morrow,<br />
Creeps in this petty pace from day to
day<br />
To the last syllable of recorded time,<br />
And all our
yesterdays have lighted fools<br />
The way to dusty death. Out, out,
brief candle!<br />
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player<br />
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage<br />
And then is heard no
more: it is a tale<br />
Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury,<br />
Signifying nothing.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
animating sentiment of this speech is that of the Columbine killers</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
and philosopher David Benatar, author of </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Better
Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.
A few lines later, Macbeth summarizes his thesis and chooses,
instead of suicide</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">,
“death by cop” (5,5):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
I ‘gin to be
aweary of the sun,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
And wish th’
estate o’ th’ world were now undone –
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Ring the
alarum-bell! Blow, wind! Come, wrack!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
At least we’ll
die with harness on our back.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">What
brings the king to such a state, where he agrees with high school
shooters or morbid contemporary philosophers? One key to
understanding Macbeth’s fall is to note that he also agrees with
Goerthe’s Mephistopheles:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
I am the spirit who
negates</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
And rightly so, for
all that comes to be</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Deserves to perish,
wretchedly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
It were better
nothing would begin!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Thus everything
that your terms sin,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Destruction, evil
represent –
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
That is my proper
element.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In
addition to the title character, there’s another fallen character
mentioned in Macbeth. Malcolm, when he is sounding out Macduff’s
faithfulness (4,3), notes:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Angels are still
bright, though the brightest fell.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">What
were kings to the Elizabethan audience of Shakespeare? Many rulers
were held in high esteem, </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>and
with good reason.</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
Properly functioning royal rulers stood in for God, as Shakespeare
illustrates in 4.3 where King Edward heals the sick, has the gift of
prophesy, and possesses additional unspecified “sundry blessings”:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
[Citizens are
afflicted with a disease which] ‘Tis called the evil.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
A most miraculous
work in this good king,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Which often since
my here-remain in England</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
I have seen him do.
How he solicits heaven,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Himself best knows,
but strangely visited people,
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
All swoll’n and
ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
The mere despair of
surgery, he cures,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Hanging a golden
stamp about their necks,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Put on with holy
prayers. And, ‘tis spoken</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
To the succeeding
royalty he leaves</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
The healing
benediction. With this strange virtue,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
He hath a heavenly
gift of prophecy,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
And sundry
blessings hang about his throne,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
That speak him full
of grace.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Elizabethans
knew that their rulers were human, but they hoped – and prayed –
that their own royal leader would “channel the Almighty” and act
as God. In Genesis, God brings habitable order into being from
chaos, and pronounces creation “good”, that is, better </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>to</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
have been than to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>not</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
have been.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">How
did Macbeth get where he is in Act 5? It is the downstream result of
a hasty decision made not in the heat of battle, but in the
afterglow. Macbeth’s first thought, upon being told by the witches
that he is to be king, is to murder Duncan. We know this because of
Banquo’s observation (1.3):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Good sir, why do
you start; and seem to fear</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Things that do
sound so fair?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth
indicates what he has in mind later in the same scene:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
. . .why do I yield
to that suggestion</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Whose horrid image
doth unfix my hair [?]</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Why
does Macbeth immediately think of murdering Duncan upon hearing that
he will be king? Consider the circumstances: he has just come from
not one but two bouts of brutal hand-to-hand combat (described by the
wounded Captain in 1.2). The survivor of two battles, still hot and
bloody from the fray, would naturally think of murder. Macbeth
himself notes that someone emotionally charged might hastily pursue
violence when he explains why he kills Duncan’s guards</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
(2.3):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Who can be wise,
amazed, temp’rate, and furious,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Loyal and neutral,
in a moment? No man.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Th’ expedition of
my violent love</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Outrun the pauser,
reason.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">While
Macbeth’s first impulse upon hearing the witches’ declaration is
to murder Duncan, he realizes immediately that this may not be
necessary (1,3):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
If chance will have
me king, why, chance may crown me</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Without my stir</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">If
Macbeth knows he has at least two options (action and inaction), how
does he choose between the two? It seems he wants to discuss the
issue with his fellow soldier Banquo, as within a few lines of
realizing that he does not necessarily have to kill Duncan to become
king he tells Banquo:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Think upon what has
chanced, and, at more time</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
The interim having
weighed it, let us speak</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Our free hearts to
each other.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">We
presume this discussion did not ensue, for Macbeth’s next
discussion of the matter is with Lady Macbeth. In 1.5 she reads a
letter from Macbeth recounting his meeting with the witches, and she
immediately thinks that Macbeth should murder Duncan (“the nearest
way” to become king), but she worries that he will be “too full
of the milk of human kindness” to do the job. Lady Macbeth implores
the “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts” to fill her with
cruelty. Once Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth counsels him to kill
Duncan, but Macbeth demurs, saying at the end of 1.5 “We will speak
further.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In
1.7 Macbeth provides several reasons </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>not</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
to murder Duncan. When Lady Macbeth interrupts, he tells her “We
will proceed no further in this business.” She then challenges his
honesty, his consistency, his bravery and his manhood (capped by the
image of her pulling a baby from her breast and dashing the baby’s
brains out). She also provides a concrete plan for the murder, at
which point Macbeth (reluctantly?) agrees:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
I am settled, and
bend up
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Each corporeal
agent to this terrible feat.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Even
though he has committed to this course of action, however, Macbeth
has second thoughts, and in 2.1 asks Banquo for the second time to
speak with him about the witches’ prophecies.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Where
did Macbeth go wrong? Was it in listening to his wife? Was it in
failure to listen to Banquo? He knows he should not listen to her,
and it seems likely that he should have listened to him. But he does
not avail himself of the opportunity to speak with Banquo. Who else
could he have spoken with?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">There’s
one Being Macbeth did not consult, as shown in 2.2, immediately after
his second and third murders. Duncan’s guards wake just before
Macbeth kills them, say prayers, and then fall back to sleep.
Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth (1,2):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.2.36"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.2.37"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.2.38"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.2.39"></a>
One cried 'God bless us!' and 'Amen' the other;<br />
As they had seen
me with these hangman's hands.<br />
Listening their fear, I could not
say 'Amen,'<br />
When they did say 'God bless us!'</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Lady
Macbeth (that font of great advice) tells Macbeth “Consider it not
so deeply.” To emphasize the point, Macbeth continues:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.2.41"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.2.42"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.2.43"></a>
But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'?<br />
I had most need of
blessing, and 'Amen'<br />
Stuck in my throat.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Should
Macbeth have prayed before he killed Duncan? Would he have killed
the guards, killed Banquo, killed Macduff’s wife, children, and
servants, and ruined his country if he had prayed beforehand?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth
does </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>not</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
seek the counsel of God. He’s still listening to Lady Macbeth when
he despairs of an inability to pray (say “Amen”). And he </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>never
does </i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">seek the counsel
of God. Whose council does he seek? In Act 4, he purposefully seeks
out the witches, the personification of malevolence in the universe.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Does
Macbeth talk to anyone else on his road to despair? Who is he
talking to when he gives his most famous speech?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Seyton.
Say it out loud if you don’t get the point.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">If
one of the many messages in the play is that Macbeth should have
sought God’s counsel, are there mentions or depictions of prayer in
Macbeth?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">There
are 16 occurrences of the words “pray” or “prayer” in the
play. Most of these are the use of the word “pray” as a synonym
for “ask” (for example, in 1.3 where Banquo asks to speak with
Ross and Angus by saying “Cousins, a word, I pray you”). For a
complete list, see the Appendix.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">There
are at least four depictions of prayer (seeking counsel of a
superhuman entity) which do not use the word “pray” or “prayer”
in the text. First, in the first scene of Lady Macbeth (1.5, after
she reads Macbeth’s letter and has immediately decided that she
needs to push him into regicide), she implores the witches she has
just learned of in the letter:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.44"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.45"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.46"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.47"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.48"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.49"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.50"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.51"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.52"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.53"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1.5.54"></a>
Come, you spirits<br />
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,<br />
And
fill me from the crown to the toe top-full<br />
Of direst cruelty! make
thick my blood;<br />
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,<br />
That
no compunctious visitings of nature<br />
Shake my fell purpose, nor
keep peace between<br />
The effect and it! Come to my woman's
breasts,<br />
And take my milk for gall, you murdering
ministers,<br />
Wherever in your sightless substances<br />
You wait on
nature's mischief! </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Of
course, this sort of prayer is the opposite of what should be done.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Second,
and in distinction to Lady Macbeth, Duncan’s wife is described to
Malcom (her son) by Macduff as (4,3):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.126"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.127"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.128"></a>
. . . the queen that bore thee,<br />
Oftener upon her knees than on her
feet,<br />
Died every day she lived. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Third,
Macbeth follows his wife rather than the queen, when he chooses to
consult the witches in 3,4.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">We
will return to the fourth depiction of prayer later.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth’s
failure is not in having (again, in the afterglow of repeated bloody
hand-to-hand combat) an initial thought of murdering Duncan. It is
in avoiding counsel with Banquo and with choosing instead counsel
with Lady Macbeth (who explicitly prays to evil spirits), and (even
more) his failure to pray to God (rather than the witches). What are
the consequences of this bad decision?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Once
Macbeth has made the decision to murder Duncan, as Macbeth himself
notes in 3.2 “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill”; in
3.4 “Blood will have blood”, and</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
By the worse means,
the worst. For mine own good</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
All causes shall
give way. I am in blood</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Stepped in so far
that, should I wade no more,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Returning were as
tedious as go o’er.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
sequence of actions Macbeth undertakes escalate from reluctant murder
of Duncan performed after being talked into it by Lady Macbeth, to
murder of Banquo done without prior knowledge of Lady Macbeth, to
placing informants in all the households of the kingdom, to murdering
Macduff’s wife, children, and household servants. Macduff says,
even </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>before</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
he finds out about his personal catastrophe (4,3),</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Each new morn</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
New widows howl,
new orphans cry, new sorrows</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Strike heaven on
the face, that it resounds</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
As if it felt with
Scotland and yelled out</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Like syllable of
dolour.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
country itself suffers from Macbeth’s sins (4,3)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
I think our country
sinks beneath the yoke.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
It weeps, it
bleeds, and each new day a gash</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Is added to her
wounds.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Meanwhile,
Macbeth, who once had his hair unfixed at the thought of his murder
of Duncan (1,3), forgets “the taste of fears” (5,5):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
The time has been
my senses would have cooled</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
To hear a
night-shriek, and my fell of hair</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Would at a dismal
treatise rouse and stir</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
As life were in ‘t.
I have supped full with horrors.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Direness, familiar
to my slaughterous thoughts</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
Cannot once start
me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Only
after the fact do we learn that the shriek is that of Lady Macbeth,
dying.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">As
noted above, by Act 5, Macbeth contemplates suicide, feels that all
is senseless, and that the universe would have been better off to
have never been.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The
Solution</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">We
can all see that Macbeth makes a series of bad decisions resulting in
his tragedy, and that these decisions are brought about in large part
by failure to consult with those he should, and consulting with those
he should not. Is there a better model to follow in the story?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">While
it might be thought that Duncan or Duncan’s son Malcolm are the
antithesis of Macbeth, this is not the case: Duncan and Malcolm are
rightful Kings, and Macbeth is not. The true antithesis of Macbeth
is Macduff. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
names are virtually the same: “Mac” followed by a voiced stop and
an unvoiced fricative, both formed in the front of the mouth. They
are both Thanes. The first scene with their wives (neither named as
other than “Lady Mac[]”) finds them absent: Lady Macbeth awaits
Macbeth’s arrival; Lady Macduff learns Macduff has fled the
country. Lady Macbeth finds her husband lacking: he is “too full
of the milk of human kindness” and insufficiently masculine. Lady
Macduff finds her husband lacking: he “wants the natural touch”
and is insufficiently masculine. We first encounter Macbeth (with
Banquo) when he speaks with the witches (the interface between our
world and hell); we first encounter Macduff (with Lennox) when he
speaks with the Porter (in comic relief, acting the part of the
porter of hell-gate). Macbeth is the last man to see Duncan alive,
while Macduff is the first one to see him dead</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">If
Macbeth takes counsel with the witches and his wife, where does
Macduff take counsel? Is the counsel Macduff receives better than
that received by Macbeth? </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macduff
asks the Porter whether he was up late, and then, in response to the
Porters answer that he was up late drinking and that drinking
provokes three things, what those are</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macduff
then asks Macbeth “Is the king stirring, worthy thane?” and
Macbeth lies to him, saying “Not yet” which implies that Duncan
is still alive, although Macbeth has already killed him.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Later
in the scene, after Macbeth kills the guards before they can be
questioned, Macduff asks of Macbeth is “Wherefore did you so?”
and Macbeth lies again:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.3.134"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.3.135"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.3.136"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2.3.137"></a>
Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,<br />
Loyal and neutral,
in a moment? No man:<br />
The expedition my violent love<br />
Outrun the
pauser, reason. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">We
next see Macduff in 4.3, where he seeks the counsel of Malcolm.
Malcolm lies to him repeatedly regarding his own nature, to test
Macduff’s loyalty. Macduff proves his honesty by listening to all
of Malcolm’s lies and then telling him that he’s not only not fit
to be king, but that he is not fit to live. A doctor enters and
Macduff learns of King Edward’s holy status (see above).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Next,
Macduff seeks the counsel of Ross, who lies to him repeatedly
regarding his family’s murder:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech38"></a>
<b>MACDUFF</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.202"></a>
How does my wife?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech39"></a>
<b>ROSS</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.203"></a>
Why, well.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech40"></a>
<b>MACDUFF</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.204"></a>
And all my children?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech41"></a>
<b>ROSS</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.205"></a>
Well too.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech42"></a>
<b>MACDUFF</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.206"></a>
The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech43"></a>
<b>ROSS</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.207"></a>
No; they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ross
later tells him Macduff the truth: that Macbeth has murdered his
family. Macduff makes Ross confirm, repeatedly, that this is the
truth (and little wonder, since Macduff is having a hard time getting
the truth from anyone). Ross tells Macduff to “dispute it [his
family’s murder] like a man”, that is, to take vengeance upon
Macbeth, to which Macduff agrees but adds “But I must also feel it
like a man.” These lines recall the multiple times Macbeth’s
manhood is alluded to by Lady Macbeth, including when challenging
Macbeth’s back-tracking regarding their agreed upon murder of King
Duncan, and, later, when Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost at the banquet
after arranging for his murder. One point of this recall is to
emphasize that both Macbeth and Macduff are men, although they react
in contrasting ways to their plights.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">At
the end of Act 4, we have the fourth depiction of prayer (mentioned
above):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech61"></a>
<b>MALCOLM</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.259"></a>
Dispute it like a man.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech62"></a>
<b>MACDUFF</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.260"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.261"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.262"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.263"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.264"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.265"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.266"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.267"></a>
I shall do so;<br />
But I must also feel it as a man:<br />
I cannot but
remember such things were,<br />
That were most precious to me. Did
heaven look on,<br />
And would not take their part? Sinful
Macduff,<br />
They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,<br />
Not
for their own demerits, but for mine,<br />
Fell slaughter on their
souls. Heaven rest them now!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech63"></a>
<b>MALCOLM</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.268"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.269"></a>
Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief<br />
Convert to anger;
blunt not the heart, enrage it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech64"></a>
<b>MACDUFF</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
O, I could play the
woman with mine eyes<br />
And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle
heavens,<br />
Cut short all intermission; front to front<br />
Bring thou
this fiend of Scotland and myself;<br />
Within my sword's length set
him; if he 'scape,<br />
Heaven forgive him too!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="speech65"></a>
<b>MALCOLM</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.276"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.277"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.278"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.279"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.280"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.3.281"></a>
This tune goes manly.<br />
Come, go we to the king; our power is
ready;<br />
Our lack is nothing but our leave; Macbeth<br />
Is ripe for
shaking, and the powers above<br />
Put on their instruments. Receive
what cheer you may:<br />
The night is long that never finds the day.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In
this passage, Macduff uses the word “heaven” four times in twelve
lines, and explicitly notes that he is fallen (“sinful Macduff”).
Substituting the word “God” for “heaven” makes it clear that
this is a prayer.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macduff
acknowledges his own fallen state and indeed blames his problems
(loss of castle, title, and family) on his own sin and not on Macbeth
(or God). He calls for his family’s rest, in an explicit Christian
fashion. He asks God for the opportunity to directly challenge
Macbeth, but, in what must be one of the most remarkable yet
overlooked lines of the play, Macduff (despite his complete
justification and desire to kill Macbeth) acknowledges that God is in
charge: “. . . if he [Macbeth] escape, Heaven forgive him too.”
In other words, Macduff says “Your will be done, O Lord.”
Malcolm seconds Macduff’s prayer and also asks for divine
assistance (“the powers above/Put on their instruments”).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macduff’s
few lines between his discussions with Malcolm and Ross and his
encounter with Macbeth has him telling Malcolm and Siward it’s time
to stop talking and get to work as soldiers (5.4) and calling all to
battle (5.6).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
encounter between Macbeth and Macduff must have been much more
dramatic for those who were wondering how Macduff was going to kill
Macbeth given the witches’ promises and not yet knowing that
Macduff was delivered by caesarian section. Macduff is not
interested in talking to Macbeth, only in killing him. Macduff’s
final words, as he holds the severed head of Macbeth in front of the
new King Malcolm, are those of a servant of the king, not the king
himself:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.8.64"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.8.65"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.8.66"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.8.67"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.8.68"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5.8.69"></a>
Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands<br />
The usurper's
cursed head: the time is free:<br />
I see thee compass'd with thy
kingdom's pearl,<br />
That speak my salutation in their minds;<br />
Whose
voices I desire aloud with mine:<br />
Hail, King of Scotland!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Summary</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">On
one hand, we have Macbeth, who makes a hasty decision after battle to
kill the king and take his crown, and who takes counsel from those he
should not (Lady Macbeth, the witches) and not from those he should
(Banquo, God). He goes from careful consideration of his acts, to
acting first and thinking about it later in 3.4:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.4.163"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.4.164"></a>
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;<br />
Which must be
acted ere they may be scann'd.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.1.164"></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">And
again in 4,1:</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4.1.165"></a>
The very firstlings of my heart shall be<br />
The firstlings of my
hand. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth
has chosen to follow his own first impulses and work in his
self-interest.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">On
the other hand, we have Macduff, who gets worse counsel than Macbeth,
being repeatedly lied to by everyone (the porter, Macbeth, Malcolm,
and Ross). He turns to heaven for the appropriate course and follows
St. Paul’s advice to “pray without ceasing” (Thessalonians
5:17). Unlike Macbeth, who by the end of the play is acting on
instinct, Macduff is a soldier doing a soldier’s duty (directly to
his king, indirectly to God). While Macduff has sacrificed much in
the process, he is in the end a hero who has delivered Scotland from
the evil Macbeth.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">APPENDIX</span></div>
<table border="1" bordercolor="#00000a" cellpadding="7" cellspacing="0" style="width: 638px;">
<colgroup><col width="14"></col>
<col width="44"></col>
<col width="293"></col>
<col width="229"></col>
</colgroup><tbody>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><br />
<br /></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Act, Scene</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Context and Text of </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Macbeth</i></span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Comment</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1,3</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth and Banquo have
just been told by Ross that Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor
in fulfillment of the witches’ prophecy. Banquo says (to all
three?): “Cousins, a word, I pray you.” Macbeth breaks off
from the other three and delivers to asides to the audience.</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In this circumstance,
“pray” is simply a figure of speech. Note, however, that
Macbeth does not respond to prayer while the other two characters
do.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">2</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">2,2</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth cannot say “amen”
to the prayer of Duncan’s guards.</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">See above.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">2,3</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Porter, a comic relief
character, says “Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter.”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A figure of speech, with
the prayer addressed to the one (Macduff, unbeknownst to the
Porter) knocking at the door of Macbeth’s castle.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">4</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3,1</span></td>
<td width="293"><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth
is providing motivation and instruction to the two murderers he
later sends to kill Banquo. This is apparently the second such
meeting, and Macbeth is telling the First Murderer that Banquo is
the cause of his misery and states that he should not forgive
Banquo:</span></div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.1.92"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.1.93"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.1.94"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.1.95"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.1.96"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3.1.97"></a>
<span style="color: black;">Do you find<br />Your patience so predominant
in your nature<br />That you can let this go? Are you so
gospell'd<br />To pray for this good man and for his issue,<br />Whose
heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave<br />And beggar'd yours for
ever?</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth tells the First
Murderer that he should </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>not</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
pray. If the First Murderer </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>had
</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">prayed, perhaps he
would not have killed Banquo (paralleling Macbeth’s situation:
if Macbeth </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>had
</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">prayed, perhaps he
would not have killed Duncan.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">5</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3,1 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth
to at least look like he’s having a good time at the banquet, to
which Macbeth replies “So shall I, love; and so, I pray, be
you.”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth prays to/of Lady
Macbeth (the wrong counsellor).</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">6</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3,1 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Lady Macbeth tells those
gathered at the banquet, disturbed at Macbeth’s reaction to
Banquo’s ghost, to stay seated: “. . . pray you, keep seat.”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A figure of speech rather
than a true prayer.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">7</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3,1 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macbeth tells those
gathered at the banquet to sit still after Banquo’s ghost
vanishes: “Pray you, sit still.”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Again, a figure of speech
rather than a true prayer.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">8</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3,1 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Lady Macbeth asks Ross not
to speak to Macbeth following Macbeth’s seeing Banquo’s ghost:
“I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse.”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Again, a figure of speech.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">9</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3,5</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Lennox and a Lord discuss
Macbeth’s treachery (the first time in the play we know that
others know of this), and the Lord indicates that Macduff “Is
gone to pray the holy king [Edward].”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macduff is going to pray to
King Edward (God’s stand-in), in distinction to Macbeth who
fails to pray.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">10</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3.5 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Lord says in the same
conversation “I’ll send my prayers with him” meaning the
“holy angel” that Lennox has said should “fly to the court
of England” to tell Macduff of Scotland’s misery.</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A Lord prays for Macduff.
How can Macduff fail?</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">11</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">4,1</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ross has come to warn Lady
Macduff of Macbeth’s plans to kill Macduff and his household;
Ross says: “I pray you, school yourself”.</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A figure of speech.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">12</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">4,1 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Macduff’s son, with his
dying breath, tells his mother to flee the murderers sent to kill
them both: “Run away, I pray you!”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A figure of speech.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">13</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">4,3</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Malcolm and Macduff discuss
the state of affairs in Scotland under Macbeth’s tyrannical rule
and Malcolm is assessing which side Macduff is on. Malcom says “I
pray you, let not my jealousies be your dishonors” meaning “I
beg you, don’t take my suspicions as an insult” (the
translation offered by </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>No
Fear Shakespeare</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A figure of speech.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">14</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">4,3 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Malcolm asks a Doctor (who
just entered the scene) regarding the king’s whereabouts: “Comes
the king forth, I pray you?”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A figure of speech.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">15</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">4,3 (again)</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">King Edward prays for the
sick.</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">See above.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="14"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">16</span></td>
<td width="44"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">5,1</span></td>
<td width="293"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Gentlewoman (an attendant
of Lady Macbeth) seconds the Doctor’s wish that all go well:
“Pray God it be, sir.”</span></td>
<td width="229"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">An automatic response of
the pious (?).</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a><sup> </sup>
As noted by Jordan Peterson in <i>12 Rules for Life, </i>one of the
duo says: “Nothing means anything anymore” and “I say ‘KILL
ALL MANKIND’. No one should survive.”</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a><sup> </sup>
He contemplates “the Roman option” a few scenes later, and
rejects it.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote3">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a><sup> </sup>T<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">he
fact that he is lying as to his motivations by this point does not
belie the truth of what he says or of the acceptance of his
assertion by those who hear it.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote4">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a><sup> </sup>
Of course, the first person to see the King dead after Macbeth is
Lady Macbeth, but to her the dead are “but as pictures”.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote5">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6206675844059729470#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a><sup> </sup>
The answer is nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Three predictions
that parallel the witches’ that Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor,
that Macbeth will be king, and that Banquo will sire kings?</span></div>
</div>
</span></div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-13461306317327603392018-04-09T12:13:00.001-07:002018-04-10T13:25:55.586-07:00Homeschooled Students on "Hamlet"<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Three Essays on <i>Hamlet</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Three Essays on <i>Hamlet</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by students of</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Kevin O'Brien</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I am teaching several courses for <a href="http://periagogy.blogspot.com/">Homeschool Connections</a>, essays from three of which I'd like to share with you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">My prompt for each of these essays was ...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>What aspects of </b></span><em><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Hamlet </b></span></em><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>seem to you to be showing the distinction between a Catholic worldview (there are no Catholics in this play) and a modern/Protestant or post-Protestant one? What parts of the play and the attitude of the characters are Catholic? What parts are modern or nihilist or secular?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">***</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b> Ryan Bagley</b></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Shakespeare
draws a distinction between a Catholic worldview and a
modern/Protestant or post-Protestant one in </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Hamlet</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
by pitting the ghost of King Hamlet against usurper King Claudius,
with young Hamlet’s words and deeds caught between them. The ghost
explains that he is suffering in purgatory because he was killed
“unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,” that is, he died without
viaticum, confession, and last rites. Although he urges Hamlet to
avenge his death, the ghost of King Hamlet appears to want something
more like Aquinas’s justified tyrannicide than the modern idea of
revenge. Just as the old king embodies Catholicism under attack, so
too Claudius personifies rebel Protestantism. Luther’s “snow on a
dunghill” theory is played out to its logical end in Claudius and
Gertrude, who believe that their souls are beyond cleansing and try
to ignore that by living blindly in the moment. Even more like
Luther, Claudius splits from the rightful order of succession and
induces chaos. With “antiquity forgot, custom not known,” the
rabble shouts for a complete overthrow of the royal bloodline, just
as the Protestant mobs destroyed everything popish. Hamlet is caught
between the two camps. While testing the veracity of the ghost’s
claims and wrestling with his conscience about killing Claudius, he
simultaneously grapples with the worldviews the two kings represent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> Catholic
plot elements and character attitudes in </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Hamlet</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
abound. Polonius’s advice to Laertes as he leaves for France is
Catholic in tone. He encourages his son to enjoy his time there, but
act prudently. Furthermore, Hamlet gives counsel to his mother that
is a solid defense of ritual and tradition: “Assume a virtue if you
have it not. … That to the use of actions fair and good / [Habit]
likewise gives a frock or livery / That is aptly put on.” Finally,
the apt definition of theater as a mirror held up to human nature is
perfectly aligned with the mission of truly Catholic artists even
today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> Modern,
nihilist, and secular philosophies are not only present in the play,
but thoroughly analyzed. Gazing upon the Norwegian army, Hamlet longs
for meaning in life as he faces the modern idea that man is merely a
rational animal. He recommits to taking revenge, feeling that having
a will to power is the only way to find purpose. Further exploring
nihilism as he struggles to find reasons to accept misfortune, Hamlet
toys with the</span> <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">notion that
death spells oblivion, but cannot deny the sheer probability of
afterlife in his “To be, or not to be” soliloquy. In the end,
Hamlet embraces a much more Catholic mindset that allows him to both
accept trials and bring Claudius to justice, but Laertes’ highly
secular idea of honor eventually kills him. Instead of
unconditionally accepting Hamlet’s apology and refusing to proceed
with the assassination plot, Laertes decides not to taint family
honor—and accidentally receives the poison of his own blade.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b> Gabrielle Braud</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
“<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">Eternal
God, in whom mercy is endless, and the treasury of compassion
inexhaustible, look kindly upon us, and increase Your mercy in us,
</span><span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><b>that in difficult moments we
might not despair, nor become despondent, but with great confidence
submit ourselves to Your holy will,</b></span><span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">
which is Love and Mercy itself (950).” This is the optional
concluding prayer to the Divine Mercy Chaplet. The character Hamlet
is a man of Divine Mercy and trust. His eventual confidence in God’s
will is striking. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">In
the beginning, Hamlet seems depressed and is contemplating suicide,
but successfully rids himself of that temptation through his goal,
bringing justice to the murderer Claudius. Hamlet seeks the truth in
a spinning world, and justice in a morally broken one. He is living
where things are not what they seem, where men are only shadows, and
their true selves are hidden. He comes out of a suicidal state of
mind through the ultimately Catholic thoughts of trust and mercy to
an ending glory. He is the bearer of justice, sinner though he is,
and is rewarded by the hinted at glory we find in the requiem which
concludes the play. </span><span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><i>Hamlet </i></span><span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">is
not a “real” tragedy, for justice is accomplished, true
resolution is found, especially for Hamlet, as he meets his reward.
He is not perfect by any means, but he trusted, like King David, and
was rewarded. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">Claudius
</span><span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><i>could</i></span><span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">
have taken advantage of God’s Divine Mercy, and actually repented
of his immoral and sinful lifestyle, but instead he tries to pray
once, finds he cannot, and gives up after that. We cannot find mercy
if we ourselves are not merciful, and do not repent of our sins. We
must take off our dirty clothes to bathe. Claudius is not willing to
give up his ways, and so does not find mercy. Instead, he receives
justice in death, a more merciful end than he deserves, for living
shamelessly with a murder on his head would have haunted him,
potentially driving him mad.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">Polonius
is an atheistic, sterile man, the production of a Godless society. He
is a materialist, and worships himself. He has no use for beauty,
truth or justice, except when it can exalt or benefit him. The advice
he gives to his son is cold and empty. There is no real love between
him and his children. He is the center of his universe, therefore he
loves himself the most. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><i>Hamlet</i></span><span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">
is about shadows and reality. In mens’ case, it’s usually what
man is pretending to be, and what he actually is. “If God created
shadows it was to better emphasize the light”, St. John XXIII tells
us. Shadows vanish when the sun moves high enough. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;">Hamlet
is unfailingly Catholic, while Polonius is a self-centered
secularist. Claudius and Gertrude stubbornly cling to their sins
while begging for mercy, and Laertes remains bewildered by the
twisted world around him. He is not as clear headed as Hamlet, and
was nearly destroyed by his father’s twisted philosophy. He, above
all others, is the Influenced. He has a chance for mercy, though. If
he will accept it. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><b>Michael Marcham</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> The
Tragedy of Hamlet </i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">is
not only Shakespeare’s most widely known work, but also his most
experimental. An inconsistent character at best, the young prince
Hamlet’s troubled mental state makes gauging his thought process
and ultimate goal difficult for much of the play. This frustrated me
until I realized that Hamlet is not used by Shakespeare as a
character in the conventional sense. One of the advantages to having
a character who is constantly lapsing in and out of insanity, is that
one is able to express many different (and often conflicting)
philosophies/worldviews through a single character. The prince’s
purpose then, and that of the play as whole, seems to be the
exploration of various philosophies/worldviews and an illustration of
their effects on people’s lives. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">One
of the more confusing aspects of </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Hamlet
</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">is
its sense of spirituality, which is Catholic in belief, but not in
practice. The characters clearly believe in God, in an afterlife
(even going so far as to affirm the existence of Purgatory), and in
Divine Providence, but there is very little evidence of prayer or
other religious practices (the two exceptions being Claudius’
prayer of repentance and Ophelia’s funeral). Hamlet, struggling to
cope with the death of his father, is understandably moody and dark,
seeing no purpose in his existence. This attitude is driven in many
different directions by his insanity.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
dominant mindset for the first half of the play strongly resembles
that of the Puritans and Quietists. Hamlet, in a monologue
reminiscent of the book of Ecclesiastes, dismisses the beauty of
nature and of the human person as the “quintessence of dust”(Act
2, Scene 2, Page 13) He later takes this idea a step farther by
proclaiming that man is ultimately evil, no matter how hard he
strives to be virtuous. (Act 3, Scene 1, Page 5). This ultimately
leads him to reject marriage and procreation as evils, as he believes
they only serve to continue the wicked legacy of man upon the earth.
It also leads Hamlet to reject Ophelia, which drives her insane just
as he was driven insane by her rejection of him. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A
modern/secular train of thought can also be detected. Hamlet’s
serious depression, coupled with his obvious insanity, lead him to
consider taking his own life. However, he knows that if he does this
he will most likely go to Hell. This in turn leads Hamlet to feel
trapped in the material world. In a conversation with his friends,
the prince compares Denmark to a prison and later expands this
comparison to cover the whole world. (Act 2, Scene 2, Page 11) Such
sentiments are probably what lead him to abandon prayer, which as
mentioned earlier plays a very small role in this play. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Despite
all of this, Hamlet’s suffering manages to produce slightly more
positive results in the last act. He is able to see the success of
rashly made decisions contrasted with the failure of well laid plans
as evidence that God has a Plan for us, no matter how often we mess
up. (Act 5, Scene 2, Page 1) He later resigns himself to this Plan,
comforted by the knowledge that God will assure that justice
prevails. As a result, he is relatively calm for the remaining scenes
leading up to the climax and is able to peacefully accept its result.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "comfortaa" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<br />Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-71570961844750031822018-02-27T15:22:00.000-08:002018-02-27T15:22:31.259-08:00On Pilgrimage with Shakespeare in Protestant England<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ken Colston on Shakespeare and the Treasury of Merit</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Amassing Credit in the Treasure House of Merit</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Ken Colston</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Published in the May 2017 issue of The New Oxford Review as</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">AMASSING CREDIT IN THE TREASURE HOUSE OF MERIT </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">On Pilgrimage with Shakespeare in Protestant England</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><img alt="http://www.newoxfordreview.org/images/img-titlebreak.gif" height="15" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/L-GMmAqb5IZWVgp5E2DHT0BaNb7o3Ca_IcFdkS9tTa8duqH6wiTGNyD32gH6aMAN_9X3vVh0ZPZ7yAomgyvPidLiSeHq2z2eHxVZ287-rPMFy-W7Dv38YJ9Gr4Q3MKQ1RMA3V8oD6zuJ1kHuUg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="445" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Cultural practices die hard, thanks, in no small part, to the great poets. Geoffrey Chaucer in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Canterbury Tales</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> immortalized the salvific impulse of medieval man to take a painful joy ride: “So priketh hem Nature in hir corages / Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.” The impulse that stirred those hearts was the belief, tragically rejected by the fifteenth-century Protestant Reformers, that our acts of love create yet more love, that they and all our efforts may be offered as free salvific gifts to all of mankind, and that they may accrue to the benefit of others even in the next life. Such a belief binds us all together productively in work and leisure; without it, we are damned misers in our solitary self-love.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Medieval men traveled their short lives on pilgrimage, literal at times, metaphorical constantly. According to historian Eamon Duffy, as many as a hundred thousand pilgrims a year flocked to Canterbury alone before the English Reformation. Pilgrims’ badges found at Henry VI’s shrine at Windsor totaled nearly a third as many in fifty years as those found at Canterbury for Becket in three hundred years. Granted the abuses of lewdness, superstition, neglect of domestic duties, and “grace for sale,” the highest purposes of pilgrimages were to do penance for sin, to reawaken life in Christ or holiness, to ask for a special favor, and to gain an indulgence to remit the temporal effects of sin by drawing on and even adding to the “treasury of merit” of Christ and the saints. The pilgrim in John Heywood’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Four P’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (1543), the Catholic master of the interlude who fled to Belgium at the accession of Elizabeth, makes the traditional, commonsense claim: The “dayly payne” of the pilgrim will move God to mercy and thus “shall therby meryte more hyely / Then by any thynge done by man.” God’s merit is, of course, higher than man’s free penitential act, but the latter has consequence.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">As we mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the tragedy now often celebrated as the triumph of individual conscience over the corrupt Whore of Babylon, it is essential to remember the enormous loss: The Reformation began, to put it theologically, as a denial of cooperative grace. Appalled that indulgences were traded like trinkets at a market, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and their followers ossified their Augustinian theology and bound free will, junked the sacraments, ridiculed sacramentals, dethroned sacred Tradition, looted the treasure house of merit, emptied Purgatory, overbooked Hell, stripped the altars, whitewashed the icons, gagged the saints, grounded pilgrimages, muzzled prayer, and decapitated the Church. All this was aimed at suppressing the truth that man could add of his own pious efforts, or merit by good works done in true charity, an increase in sanctifying grace. The Reformation was a reign of spiritual terror.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Many of today’s Catholics do not understand cooperative grace, and so the Reformation has done serious damage even within the Catholic Church, particularly in the last fifty years, resulting in a de-emphasis of not only pilgrimages, purgatory, indulgences, vicarious atonement, and the communion of saints but also the salutary effects of praying the rosary, doing the works of mercy, cultivating cardinal virtues, practicing devotions, and offering up our own sacrifices at Mass. The loss of an understanding of cooperative grace has starved the Body of Christ, weakened the will, cast aside intellectual freedom, devalued human acts, sapped motivation, robbed daily work of meaning, and stupefied the soul. Where we once counseled the doubtful and admonished sinners, we now prescribe medication and deny personal culpability.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Cooperative grace is the notion that man may accept the invitation of God’s life and love (operative grace), use that grace, put it into action, and thereby add to sanctifying grace, or charity, through meritorious works. This doctrine was worked out by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, denied by the Reformation, and defined by the Council of Trent. Aquinas wrote the following:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">…</span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is fittingly divided into operating and cooperating. For the operation of an effect is not attributed to the thing moved but to the mover. Hence in that effect in which our </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">mind</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is moved and does not move, but in which </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is the sole mover, the operation is attributed to </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, and it is with reference to this that we speak of "operating </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">." </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But in that effect in which our </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">mind</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> both moves and is moved, the operation is not only attributed to </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, but also to the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">soul</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">; and it is with reference to this that we speak of "cooperating </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">."</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Now there is a double act in us. First, there is the interior act of the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">will</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, and with regard to this act the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">will</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is a thing moved, and </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is the mover; and especially when the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">will</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, which hitherto willed </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">evil</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, begins to will </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">good</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. And hence, inasmuch as </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> moves the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">human</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> mind to this act, we speak of operating </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But there is another, exterior act; and since it is commanded by the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">will</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, as was shown above (Question 17, Article 9) the operation of this act is attributed to the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">will</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. And because </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> assists us in this act, both by strengthening our will interiorly so as to attain to the act, and by granting outwardly the capability of operating, it is with respect to this that we speak of cooperating </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. Hence after the aforesaid words </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Augustine</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> subjoins: "He operates that we may will; and when we will, He cooperates that we may perfect."</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> And thus if </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is taken for </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God's</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> gratuitous motion whereby He moves us to </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">meritorious</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">good</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, it is fittingly divided into operating and cooperating </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">… </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">habitual</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, inasmuch as it heals and justifies the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">soul</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, or makes it pleasing to </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, is called operating </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">; </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">but inasmuch as it is the principle of </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">meritorious</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> works, which spring from the </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">free-will</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, it is called cooperating </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grace</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Summa Theologicae</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> I-II, q. 111, a. 2, emphases mine.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Even while condemning the sale and efficacy of indulgences, Martin Luther at first accepted implicitly the notion of cooperative (also known as created grace) in his Wittenberg Thesis 44 (1517): “By works of love, love grows and a man becomes a better man.” As Aquinas wrote, however, cooperative grace requires free will, which Luther explicitly denied only a year later in his Heidelberg Thesis 13 a year later: “҅Free will’ after the fall is nothing but a word, and as long as it is doing what is within it, it is committing deadly sin.” Consequently, the human merit of works is denied, and they avail only to discipline the body, certainly not to add to the treasure house of merit to be administered by the Pope for the Body of Christ (“The Freedom of a Christian, 1520). Having also denied free will after the fall (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Institutes of the Christian Religion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, I, 2,5), John Calvin also denied the human merits of works: do they not “make void the Cross of Christ” who is “our only Redeemer?”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">(</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Institutes of the Christian Religion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, III, 6).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">By contrast, the Council of Trent puts the word “merit” so strongly as to anathematize its denial in Canon 32 of the “Decree Concerning Justification” in 1547:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">that they are not also the good merits of him justified</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">does not truly merit an increase of grace</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Today’s Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it clearly but less confrontationally: “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life” (CCC, 2010). This truth is the most audacious mystery of created grace: an act of love can be given even for another’s sanctification.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> To see this former glory of Christendom and its tragic loss through heresy, it suffices to look at one prominent manifestation: penitential pilgrimage, condemned by Luther as “without value” and even “evil and seductive” (“An Appeal to the Ruling Class for Improving Christendom,” 1520) and by that most consequential heresiarch of the English-speaking Church, Thomas Cranmer, who in 1547 presented them as worse even than the idolatry of Israel in his “Homily of Good Works”:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Never had the Jews, in their most blindness, so many pilgrimages unto images, nor used so much kneeling, kissing, and censing of them, as hath been used in our time….Which sects and religions had so many hypocritical and feigned works in their state of religion, as they arrogantly named it, that their lamps, as they said, ran always over: able to satisfy not only for their own sins, but also for all other their benefactors, brothers and sisters of religion, as most ungodly and craftily they had persuaded the multitude of ignorant people: keeping in divers places, as it were marts or markets of merits; being full of their holy relics, images, shrines, and works of overflowing abundance ready to be sold. And all things which they had were called holy,--holy cowls, holy girdles, holy pardons, beads, holy shoes, holy rules, and all full of holiness. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Cranmer’s objection to lamps running over and to satisfaction for sins of “all other their benefactors” stems precisely from the failure to acknowledge the reality of created grace.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Thomas Aquinas had explained why it is possible to apply good works to another, even to the dead, in his distinction between “congruous” and “condign” merit. He argues that God rewards charity out of justice </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">condignly</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> and out of mercy </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">congruently</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">ST</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> I-II, q. 114, a. 3.) One can merit for others only congruently: that is, it would be fitting for a merciful God to answer a prayer to the father (an “impetration”) from an adopted son, but it would not be unjust (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">ST</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> I-II, q. 115, a. 6). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Third of Elizabeth’s Injunctions of 1559 forbade such “works devised by man’s fantasies” as “wandering to pilgrimages, setting up of candles, praying upon beads or such like superstition”; the Twenty Third Injunction then demanded the destruction of “all shrines, coverings of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindals, and rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles, so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glass windows, or elsewhere, within their churches and houses.” Such an obliteration, of course, was incomplete, as totalitarian attempts to expunge the past often are, and the pilgrimage system, of pardon and indulgence and created grace and shrines and relics and the treasure house of merit, remained alive in the heart of the faithful through the end of the sixteenth century, as can be seen in the working vision of William Shakespeare, that greatest English Catholic literary genius, like the yearning for private property in the hearts of Russians and Chinese and Cubans at the end of the twentieth.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">As we know from Chaucer, medieval man and woman traveled their short lives on pilgrimage, literal at times, metaphorical constantly. According to Eamon Duffy’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Stripping of the Altars</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, as many as 100,000 pilgrims a year flocked to Canterbury alone before the English Reformation. Pilgrims’ badges found at Henry VI’s shrine at Windsor (about which sainted monarch Shakespeare wrote three early plays and began his English history saga) totaled nearly a third as many in fifty years as those found at Canterbury for Becket in three hundred years. Granted the abuses of lewdness, superstition, neglect of domestic duties, and “grace for sale,” the highest purposes of pilgrimage were to do penance for sin, to reawaken life in Christ or holiness, to ask for a special favor, and to gain an indulgence to remit the temporal effects of sin by drawing on and even adding to “treasury of merit” of Christ and the saints defined in Clement VI’s bull </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Unigenitus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (1343). The pilgrim in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Four P’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (1543) of John Heywood, the Roman Catholic master of the interlude, who fled for permanent exile to Belgium at the accession of Elizabeth, makes the traditional, common-sense claim: the “dayly payne” of the pilgrim will move God to mercy and thus “shall therby meryte more hyely/Then by any thynge done by man.” God’s merit is of course higher than man’s free penitential act, but the latter has consequence. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Try as they might, the Reformers could not erase the memory, and poets can be gentle resistance fighters against baleful ideologies. Chaucer’s spiritual heir, now often secularized and misread as a modern nihilist, William Shakespeare bravely uses the suspect word “pilgrimage,” “pilgrim,” and “palmer” (a pilgrim to the Holy Land who returned with a palm branch as evidence of his journey), or variants of these words, at least 31 times throughout his work. Most of these are mentioned with reverence or respect; a few are used scornfully, but by speakers we ourselves scorn, like the villainous Richard III or the hypocritical Angelo of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Measure for Measure</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">; sometimes they occur with an elevated sacramental sense. Only an approving Catholic mind could have held this word affectionately so frequently on his linguistic palette, and only one who understood cooperative grace as the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">primum mobile</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> of traditional Catholic devotions. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Shakespeare’s happy association between pilgrimage and love goes back early in his career. In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Two Gentleman of Verona</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> in the early 1590’s, the heroine Julia compares the journey that she shall make from Verona to Milan to follow and woo her beloved Proteus to a religious pilgrimage:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Much less shall she that hath love’s wings to fly—</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And when the flight is made to one so dear,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Of such divine perfection, as Sir Proteus. (2.7.9-13)</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-0544573f-d991-2df2-f416-2bd014880d55" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Julia amplifies this juxtaposition of love and pilgrimage by comparing unanswered love to a river whose gentle current rages when stopped but moves productively when left unhindered:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But when his fair course is not hindered,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">He makes sweet music with th’enamaled stones,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And so by many winding nooks he strays,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">With willing sport, to the wild ocean.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Then let me go, and hinder not my course.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And make a pastime of each weary step,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Till the last step have brought me to my love;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And there I’ll rest, as after much turmoil</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A blessed soul doth in Elysium. (2.7.27-38)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Here we have glimpses of the pilgrimage experience that leads the patient wanderer to the divine shrine of love, a “wild ocean,” where she can rest in the foretaste of the beatific vision as a “blessed soul.” In the background of “sweet music” and “enameled stones” appear the happy associations of pilgrim sites, music, and devotional jewels bequeathed to the Church (and stolen by Henry and Elizabeth).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The same happy juxtaposition of romantic love and holy pilgrimage occurs famously and more completely in the first touch between Romeo and Juliet, a shared sonnet with a lingering quatrain:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Which mannerly devotion shows in this:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Romeo: Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purged.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">[Kisses her.]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Romeo: Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Give me my sin again. [Kisses her.]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Juliet:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">You kiss by the book. (1.5.95-112)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In this joint exercise of collaborative lyric poetry breaking into public drama, we may see the full expression of a traditional Catholic yearning in both playwright and audience. The kissing of a saint’s image becomes the first stirrings of romantic love, a combination that would have been blasphemous to a hard-line Protestant sensibility. The incarnational vision trumps religious piety. The human body is a “holy shrine.” The kissing of the saints’ plastered hands on pilgrimage is likened to the first chaste kiss of a fleshly beloved. “Mannerly devotion” does not forbid </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">eros</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">; human lovemaking can be a prayer to God. The poetry above ends with an understanding of the theology of pilgrimage in purging the temporal effects of sin: “my sin is purged.” As in Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Deus Caritas Est</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">eros</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">agape</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> are not opposed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The penitential aspect of pilgrimage emerges in several other Shakespeare’s plays. In the history cycle, pilgrimage offers a kind of metonymical expiation for the collective sins of unjust usurpation and political misrule. Richard II wishes to be quit of rule and, like Spain’s Philip II in his Escorial, live a post-royal life of penitence:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My figured goblet for a dish of wood;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My scepter for a palmer’s walking –staff…. (3.3.146-150)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The theme of pilgrimage is heavy in this play that launches the cycle of civil war. Reacting to Richard II’s truncation of his cousin Bolingbroke’s banishment from ten to six years, John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke’s father, makes reference to the medieval Christian </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">topos</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> of life as a weary pilgrimage in a couplet:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Thou canst help time furrow me with age,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage. (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Richard II</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, 1.3.228-229)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Bolingbroke himself refers to his exile as a “vow[ed] long and weary pilgrimage” (1.3.49) and an “enforcèd pilgrimage” (1.3.263), foreshadowing the penitential vow he makes at the end of the play:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">To wash this blood off from my guilty hand. (5.6.49-50)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Henry IV’s pilgrimage never comes off, a personal regret of the King and a source of the War of the Roses for England. In the Catholic economy of penance, however, sin, though redeemed by Christ’s meritorious sacrificial redemption, must be paid off by a penitential work by the sinner or by prayers for him. At the end of Act IV, Henry IV learns that he will die, not in the Holy Land, but in the Jerusalem Room of Westminster Abbey, a bitter, ironic consolation that bears no succor for England and her crown:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It hath been prophesied to me many years</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I should not die but “in Jerusalem,”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Which vainly I supposed to be the Holy Land.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In that “Jerusalem” shall Harry die. (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Henry IV, Part 1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, 4.4.236-240)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The irony of this speech is completely lost unless one assumes the Catholic understanding of pilgrimage. It will not do to ascribe to Shakespeare the mere intent to infuse his drama about the pre-Tudor kings distant and safe historical color, for he adds an unnecessary element that would have been controversial at least and perhaps even suspect to the religious and political authorities of his own day. Why would he take such a risk? Certainly to endow his drama with a moral depth that the historical chronicle did not reach, a moral depth that betrays the leaning in his own religious heart: the Counter-Reformation reassertion of commonsensical Catholicism that the sinner should pay for his sin with some penitential action of his own, the lack of which undermines the triumph of Bolingbroke’s son Henry V. After victory at Agincourt and the marriage with France, England suffers the War of the Roses. Richard Plantagenet, acting like a villainous foreshadowing of his own evil son Richard III, executes Mortimer, ironically likening his shortened death to a penitential pilgrimage:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In prison thou hast spent a pilgrimage,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And like a hermit overpassed thy days. (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Henry VI, Part 1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, 2.4.116-117)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Plotting to seize power from Henry VI, this same Richard, Duke of York, sarcastically repeats the insult to the King’s face, once again revealing Shakespeare’s and his Catholic audience’s understanding of the unpaid-for sin of Cain blighting English history:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer’s staff,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And not to grasp an awful princely scepter. (5.1.97-98)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A pilgrimage is a primary, public, and dramatic means by which a Catholic ay atone for sin, and, as it was in Protestant England, it is unachieved in Shakespeare’s history cycle and unmistakable to the audience. In the final installment of this saga, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Henry V</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, though following Richard II chronologically, Bolingbroke’s son Hal has made a penitential payment on his father’s (and his own) crimes, attempting to avoid the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I Richard’s body have interred new,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And on it have bestowed more contrite tears</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Than from it issued forced drops of blood.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Two chauntries, where the sad and solemn priests</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Though all that I can do is nothing worth,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Since that my penitence comes after all,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Imploring pardon. (4.2.295-305)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Stephen Greenblatt takes Shakespeare to be saying here through Henry V that these “expiatory rituals” are “worthless,” but a more orthodox reading is possible: the monarch acknowledges in humility that ultimately the work of pardon is the infinite God’s, in comparison with the piddling finite works of man. Contrite tears, proper burial rites, priests singing masses for the dead in chantry, these works are nothing unless they are accompanied by a penitent heart that “comes after all,” and the King here recognizes that his own is holding something back although the works are paid. Thus, it is not that the works are empty </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">in se</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">; rather, according to the classic understanding, they are empty without true penitence. The passage in fact illustrates Shakespeare’s ability to represent Catholic orthodoxy without upsetting Protestant sensibilities. It perhaps even summarizes Shakespeare’s final take on English history: the Protestant ending of the works system has left England unabsolved and riven by strife.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">All’s Well That Ends Well</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, the heroine Helena, rejected by her selfish husband Bertram whom she has captured in marriage by means of her dead physician father’s pharmacy, surprisingly decides to go on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela to amend her faults “with sainted vow,” and she finds refuge in an inn named “Saint Francis.” Her fault is failing to respect the freedom of her beloved; infatuated with the son of her mistress, she doesn’t woo this man above her rank but captures him by forcing his sick king to order their marriage as a payoff for her remedy of his fistula. Pilgrimage is her penance for both </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">her</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> sin and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">their</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> marriage. In fact, the pilgrimage, understood not merely as a plot device to absent Helena from the scene but also as a means of purifying character (her own, which critics often read as too pure for her cad of a husband, and his), helps overcome the largest critical objection of the play: he doesn’t deserve her faithful love, and she is above him in moral value but below him in rank. Pilgrimage has achieved its end of penance, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">in this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">case, through the loving congruent merit of an imperfect character yet in a state of grace, it works also by surrogacy or substitution</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, the aspect most detested by Protestants, banking on the credit amassed in the treasure house of merit. Shakespeare seems theologically aware of this Catholic distinction, for early in Henry IV, Part 2 the King’s protector Gloucestor claims that he dealt with criminals out of “pity” and never gave them “condign punishment” (3.2.125, 130). The Jewess Jessica employs the dangerous Catholic category of condign merit when she describes Portia as a heavenly lady who rewards Bassanio’s virtue by marrying him:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It is very meet</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Lord Bassanio live an upright life,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">For having such a blessing in his lady,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">He finds the joys of heaven here on earth. (3.5.75-78)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Shakespeare curiously avoids even the medieval satire of pilgrimage by, for example, his predecessor Chaucer. In the “General Prologue” of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Canterbury Tales</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, his pardoner, the traveling indulgence salesman, carries up the rear of the retinue, dead last, an effeminate hairless fraud who eschews his pilgrim’s hood to display his smooth, waxen, locks of hair like yellow flax, scamming peasants with such improbable relics as a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat or of St. Veronica’s veil, his wallet “bretfoul of pardoun comen from Rome,” his voice pitched to sing an offertory in order to win silver (ll. 669-714). Nor is there anywhere in Shakespeare mention of the potential for fraud at pilgrimage sites lampooned even by that champion of orthodoxy Thomas More, about whom also Shakespeare perhaps wrote a play. In the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Dialogues,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> More speaks of such tricks as false miracles of healed blindness or lameness or cult practices as impotent males passing their afflicted members through rings. Nor is there ever a hint of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s satire of pilgrimages, who in his </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Perigrinatio religionis ergo</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (“A Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake”) of 1526, translated into English in 1536 and perhaps read by Henry VIII, mocks such relics as the breast milk that nourished the infant Jesus on display at Walsingham and the thievery of beggars at Canterbury. The ultra-orthodox and highly popular Thomas à Kempis also warned against pilgrimages made “with little inclination toward amendment of life,…hurriedly,” without “true contrition.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Shakespeare’s most poignant use of the word “pilgrimage” as a purgative journey occurs in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">King Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, a play in which he is battling most mightily to create a modern theodicy to answer the assertion of nihilism. It comes in Edgar’s report of his father Gloucester’s death. Gloucester had learned from Edgar himself that his natural son had not in fact betrayed him:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I ask’d his blessing, and from first to last</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Told him our pilgrimage. (5.3.184-185) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Edgar and Gloucester had hobbled, in fact, in a southwesterly direction that the audience back in London would have instantly seen as walking approximately in the direction of England’s most famous pilgrimage destination, Canterbury. Their metaphorical pilgrimage of a father and son returning to each other is thus also a literal pilgrimage once walked by England’s Catholic masses, now forbidden. When you remember Edgar’s naked exile on the stormy heath, parallel to Lear’s, and subsequent restoration to his father’s grace, parallel to Cordelia’s, (emblematic of Everyman’s), you realize that the word here, in a play usually read now as nihilistic, is more than a word about a banned devotional practice. It comes from a deeply Catholic understanding of grace, one that, alas, has been forgotten by many Catholics today, but it remains very much alive in Shakespeare’s plays.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And even if the Reformation has executed cooperative grace in our Christendom, this common-sense mustard seed can still heal our hearts and those of others, in works of mercy, devotional prayer, acts of sacrifice, penitential practices, gestures of forgiveness, kind words, generous thoughts, sensory mortification, and sacramental trips, all these like tear drops shed into what Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has called “the infinite ocean of Love.” </span></div>
<br />Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-18225860940420067482017-02-08T11:29:00.000-08:002017-03-26T14:28:49.938-07:00Sacramental Usury in "The Merchant of Venice"<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ken Colston on Shylock, usury and <i>The Merchant of Venice.</i></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sacramental Usury in <i>The Merchant of Venice</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Ken Colston</a></span><br />
<br />
[<i>Editor's Note: This article is also published in </i>Logos Magazine. <i>We would like to thank </i>Logos <i>for allowing us to publish it here as well. Also note: The Theater of the Word will be performing </i>Scenes from The Merchant of Venice <i>at the <a href="http://www.aquinascollege.edu/calendar-event/3rd-annual-shakespeare-celebration/">Shakespeare Festival at Aquinas College, produced by the Center for Faith and Culture on April 22, 2017</a>, with commentary by Joseph Pearce.</i>]</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> That use is not forbidden usury<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which happies those that pay the
willing loan. (Sonnet IV)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In
the last two decades, critics have begun to explore the religion of William
Shakespeare. In particular, the old suspicion, advanced by his first
biographer, that he “dyed a Papist,” has been revived by Catholic partisans,
mainstream biographers, and even secular academics, some of whom speculate that
he was baptized, married, and housed as one. The evidence is mostly from the
biography, and it is slippery and circumstantial.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The plays are the thing, however, and increasingly they themselves are yielding
concrete evidence of Catholic affiliations, long suspected intuitively by such
literary giants as Chateaubriand, Newman, and Chesterton. David Beauregard has
glimpsed such Catholic differences as the specific elements of sacramental
auricular confession and of condign merit;<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Claire Asquith has seen an elaborate, winking Catholic recusant code systematically
at work;<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Stephen Greenblatt has elaborated the “social energy” of that most contested
Reformation bugbear, “purgatory,” in <i>Hamlet</i>;<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Beatrice Groves has found a key to Shakespeare’s “incarnational aesthetic” in
the Catholic mystery plays that he may have well seen in his youth at Coventry;<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Allison Shell has reviewed hints that persecuted Elizabethan Catholics
criticized their fellow, well-placed literary sympathizer for not writing
enough on behalf of their common Catholic cause;<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Peter Milward, laboring on the Catholic thesis for several decades, has even
recently proposed an inventive correspondence between Shakespeare’s plays and
the holy Rosary.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn7" title="">[7]</a></span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn7" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In general, Shakespeare’s plays
reveal important “field identification markers” of a Catholic dramatist in a
Protestant land, I contend, not necessarily as code words but as a working
theological vocabulary of a thinker formed, loosely and popularly, more in the
traditional Augustinian-Thomist tradition than in the Calvinist-Lutheran reform.
Where divergences between the Catholic and Reformation theologies arise,
Shakespeare leans Catholic: toward hierarchy, natural law, cooperative grace
(pilgrimage, penance, purgatory, indulgence), sacraments, liturgical pageantry,
religious authority, supererogatory acts of supernatural gift-love, and laxity.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn8" name="_ednref8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
To the presence and current relevance of these markers, which abound both as
central themes and as casual allusions in a variety of plays, may be added a
salient but surprisingly ignored one: the traditional Catholic understanding of
economic order in <i>Merchant of Venice</i>,
proceeding from sacramental union rather than from capitalistic contract, a
contrast, partly imagined, partly reflecting a changing social reality, between
a newer anxious economy of debt (Venice) and an older easy economy of
sacrificial gift (Belmont), a difference expressed by dichotomous meanings of
“bond” organizing the idea pageantry of the play: the legal “bond” as a
temporary, limited, breakable written agreement between two hostile parties,
and the “marriage bond” as a permanent, infinite, indissoluble spoken promise
between lover and beloved, a total sacrifice of self that proceeds both by
God’s operative grace and by an effect of man’s cooperative grace that we may
call sacramental usury.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The word Catholic here does not
necessarily mean that Shakespeare’s religious longing was ultramontane,
recusant, seditious, underground, Marian Roman Catholic, theologically precise,
clearly demarcated, coded in a winking argot transparent to fellow Papist
sympathizers, or confident about narrow propositions. It rather reflects a
general, traditional Catholic orientation or play of mind, some of which can be
found within, for example, even the (at times) Thomistic Richard Hooker or the
Lutheran Tudor court itself (both Cecil and Elizabeth venerated the crucifix),
but clearly opposed to radical Protestantism, represented by Calvinistic
Puritans, the theology of which was ushering in a view of usury, moneylending,
and money itself more friendly to capitalism. Shakespeare’s mind was fashioned
in a conservative mold, orthodox but not rigid, skeptical of change and
newness, biased toward older formulations, a popular-agrarian-feudal
religiosity. If Shakespeare and his audience thrashed about in the “great muddled
middle” between Protestant and Catholic extremes,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn9" name="_ednref9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
the theological expression in his drama is clearly orthodox. At the same time,
Shakespeare often seems simultaneously an heir of Thomistic essentialism and a
forerunner of existential personalism, a religious thinker somewhat
surprisingly relevant even to contemporary economic thought, with capitalism
under scrutiny again in the wake of the Great Recession.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><b>Melancholia
and Capitalism</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Antonio’s
melancholy (1.1.1) is not so mysterious.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn10" name="_ednref10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The medieval theory of the four humors made melancholy a characteristic
psychological condition that needed no further explanation, but Shakespeare has
also arrayed sufficient circumstances to make Antonio’s “want-wit sadness” a
consequence of capitalism. While Antonio denies his friend Salerio’s claim that
he “is sad to think upon his merchandise” hazarded at sea (1.1.39), surely the
merchant protests too much when he boasts that diversifying his ventures into
several bottoms (1.1.41) has made him “thank his fortune” (1.1.40). The play as
a whole shows that worry about enterprise is not unfounded. Capital-market
commerce, investing in products at several removes from their production, is a
game of constant risk and uncertainty. Salerio not only foreshadows Antonio’s
misfortune but also depicts the entire anxious atmosphere of emerging
capitalism:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">My
wind cooling my broth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Would
blow me to an ague when I thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">What
harm a wind too great might do at sea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
should not see the sandy hourglass run<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">But
I should think of shallows and of flats,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
see my wealthy Andrew docks in sand,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Vailing
her high top lower than her ribs,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">To
kiss her burial. Should I go to church<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
see the holy edifice of stone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which
touching but my gentle vessel’s side,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Would
scatter all her spices on the stream,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Enrobe
the roaring waters with my silks—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
in a word, but even now worth this,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
now worth nothing. (1.1.21–35)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Salerio inverts the image of the Church,
the traditional rock of security instituted by Christ and founded upon the
flinty Peter; in this puffy new international economy, even its stability
cannot calm thoughts of danger. Secular commercial anxiety threatens the old
religious serenity. “Argosies with portly sail,” “pageants of the sea” flying
“with woven wings” (1.1.8,10,13), might suddenly wreck and “vail” their high
tops lower than their ribs (1.1.27), seen as the exposed rib cage of a corpse,
and require “burial (1.1.28); that is, sudden death might kill and rot away the
“precious vessel” of silken cargo, seen as a feminine vehicle. The “sandy
hourglass” of time drips a constant reminder that economic ventures might be
reduced to “nothing” at any second. Antonio’s anxiety, despite his hubristic
dismissal, has thus a well-founded economic basis. Moreover, Salerio’s choice
of spices and silks as cargo reveals moral disdain for an economy founded on
consumption of showy but empty superfluities to puff up the sails of mercantile
“signiors and rich burghers on the flood,” fixing commerce in the aspirational
upper-middle-class that “overpeer the petty trafficers/That curtsey to them, do
them reverence” (1.1.9–13). At the same time, Salerio’s metaphor gently
discloses the bountiful, mysterious God of nature as the creator of surplus
value: the wind blowing fortune, as it were, like a Venetian glassmaker.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">However much Portia and Shylock
dominate the drama, Antonio possesses the title. He is the Merchant of Venice,
and his personal economic angst, an insistent death-dread unrelieved apparently
by an insurance system, stands for the city’s emotional vulnerability—a
peculiar setting with which to introduce a “comical history” (as the first
published Quarto entitled it). While engaged in the new global economy, Antonio
possesses the values of the old feudal order. Gratiano’s accusation that he is
a Puritanical killjoy, a “Sir Oracle” of “wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,”
does not really stick on this figure of the aristocratic past, whose values are
those of love and gift, not contract and exchange. His frustration lies
therein: he is a traditionalist in an uncomfortable business suit. Friendship
with Bassanio is where his treasure resides; the “petty” acquaintances
immediately yield to this deeper relationship when Bassanio, the jocular
prodigal, bounces on stage and lightens Antonio’s dark mood. Bassanio’s
self-accusation that he has spent his “time something too prodigal” connects
with Salerio’s “portly sail” metaphor of line 9:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">‘Tis
not unknown to you, Antonio,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">How
much I have disabled mine estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">By
something showing a more swelling port<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Than
my faint means would grant continuance (1.1.122–25). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Bassanio
does not present himself as a victim of a credit economy; he recognizes that
his own prodigality, his “willful youth,” has caused his “great debts” and that
Antonio’s love has enabled it, and yet neither does he “make moan to be
abridged/From such a noble rate” (1.1.126–27). Thus, we have here economy
understood in its traditional way: as an expression of morality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><b>Catholic
and Protestant Markers</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Something,
however, has changed in Bassanio’s credit history. On his secret pilgrimage to
Belmont, this prodigal son has found a “lady richly left” (1.1.161). Often
actors and commentators read Bassanio as a gold-digging playboy, but his
emphasis in describing Portia to Antonio for the first time is on her “wondrous
virtues, nothing undervalued/To Cato’s daughter” (1.1.163, 165–66). The words
“undervalued” and “worth” for Portia are meant in their moral rather than in their
commercial sense. The economic palette from which Portia’s values are colored
shows how even Venice’s capitalistic atmosphere grasps at the transcendentals
beauty and goodness. To be sure, Bassanio is not unaware of Portia’s wealth,
but he sees it as an obstacle and her personal beauty and virtue as his true
objects. Antonio’s deep friendship with Bassanio doesn’t prevent him from
raising the question of Bassanio’s “secret pilgrimage” (a field identification
marker of a Catholic practice condemned by the Church of England as idolatrous,
the first connection of Belmont to Catholicism), listening patiently to his
hyperbolic praise of his newest infatuation, and then, with his liquid assets
at zero, offering an unlimited credit line with no twinge of jealousy of “fair
Portia.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">What have we learned of the
text’s attitude toward the commodities market? It is associated with waste,
acedia, and frivolity—consumer debt to purchase silk and spices, precisely one
objection that Aristotle and Aquinas raised about trade as a state of life. Aristotle
writes about the psychological turbulence of trade in the <i>Politics</i>: “Some people suppose that it is the function of household
management to increase property, and they are continually under the idea that
it is their duty to be either safeguarding their substance in money or
increasing it to an unlimited amount. The cause of this state of mind is that
their interests are set upon life but not upon the good life.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn11" name="_ednref11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Trade itself “is justly discredited, for it is not in accordance with nature,
but involves men’s taking things from one another.” Usury was even worse than
trade in the ancient and medieval tradition, “most reasonably hated,” because
it is “the most unnatural form of wealth,” for its gain comes from money breeding
on money.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn12" name="_ednref12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Christ’s criticisms of trade in the Gospels occur in many places, but perhaps
the most salient here is “Consider the lilies how they grow: they labor not,
neither spin they” (Lk 12:27, Geneva version). Aquinas objected to trade’s
serving “the lust for gain.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn13" title="">[13]</a></span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn13" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> In contrast, some Protestant
preachers softened this traditional Catholic opposition against both usury and
commerce itself.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn14" name="_ednref14" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
For example, Daniel Price argued against the anti-commercial classical and
medieval tradition, wherein St. Jerome called Arabian merchants “the thieves of
the world,” Plato banned them from his <i>Republic</i>,
Cicero blamed them for ruining Greece with pride, covetousness, luxury, and
wickedness, and Erasmus denied them anything good or holy. Price’s sermon
instead praises the Christian vocation of the merchant: “the stories and
customs of Jews and gentiles, Grecians and barbarians, infidels and Christians,
do acknowledge the necessity, dignity, and excellency of merchants . . . the
most diligent for his life, the most assiduous in his labor, the most
adventurous on the sea, the most beneficial to the land, the glory of his
country, and the best pillar of his commonwealth.” The merchant is the type of
the Pauline active Christian who runs the race for Christ: “We are all merchants.
We cannot find the pearl of great price until we have fought for many good
pearls. O then run, wrestle, strive, sail, toil, labor, fight the good fight,
finish the course, seek to be like to the good merchant.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"> <a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn15" name="_ednref15" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></a></span> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">
While this sermon was preached nearly a decade after <i>Merchant</i> was written, Shakespeare does
not share its commendation of commerce. While he was himself a businessman, his
text exploits that traditional Catholic prejudice against trade. Antonio is
decidedly not Price’s merchant crusader or Max Weber’s ascetic Protestant. He
cares for friendship, not ships; his concern is neither consumption nor
production but sharing of his goods, his own person, and even his friend. The
emotional register of Venetian commodities trading here moves from antic
verbosity to unexplained angst; at any moment, fortunes may be lost. Wealth
derives from capital and speculation, not labor and intrinsic value. A negative
attitude towards the commodities market, if not against a proto-consumer
society, in which Antonio’s unstable fortune exists, emerges in this first
scene. This overvalued world of silly gentlemen of a nobility deeply in debt<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn16" name="_ednref16" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>—is
a vulnerable, anxious world ruled by the blind chance of insubstantial wind and
fickle weather arbitrarily yielding increase or loss (literally as windfall)
and peopled with light acquaintances who come and go quickly, without labor or
leisure, and an <i>unfair</i> world like
ours, where we constantly check our smartphones for capital market updates. Against
it rises like a distant dream the “richly left” and “undervalued” <i>fair</i> lady’s Belmont, a world not of
business “venture” but of sacred “pilgrimage,” the home of a priceless heroine
named after a classical figure known for her shrewd goodness, a land more
appropriate for Antonio and Bassanio than their avaricious Venice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Gabriel Egan points out that
miserliness was especially wicked in the Elizabethan 1590s, which were
experiencing serious inflation. In such circumstances, hoarding was a sure way
to lose capital, and therefore Bassanio’s prodigality may be seen in the more
favorable biblical light of the parables of the prodigal son and of the talents.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn17" name="_ednref17" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
In contrast, Shylock later turns his ducats into a “commodity fetish,”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn18" name="_ednref18" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
arguing that his right to Antonio’s must be upheld by the Venetian practice of
slavery (4.1.89ff). Against Shylock’s narrow accountancy of a limited fortune,
which he must borrow in turn from Tybalt and the success of which is the
information economy of the Rialto (“What news on the Rialto?” [3.1.1]), stands
Portia’s fabulous, boundless wealth. Her property, shared immediately with her
betrothed and his circle, stands opposed to Shylock’s narrow, deadly sin of
avarice. Who would be hated more than a moneylender? Her spontaneous offer of
36,000 ducats has been calculated to be worth almost ten million dollars in
today’s money.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn19" name="_ednref19" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
No wonder that Venice is anxious and Belmont is bored!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Some critics have claimed that
Shakespeare has attributed to Shylock qualities associated by his
contemporaries not with Jews but with Puritans. E. E. Stohl was the first,
Peter Milward informs us, to assert that Shylock would have reminded
Shakespeare’s audience of the Puritans, who were the “precisians and Pharisees
in [their] midst.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn20" name="_ednref20" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Milward develops the association more fully and finds seven parallels between
Shakespeare’s Shylock and Elizabethan representations of Puritans: occupation
of usury, habit of proof texting, reliance on Mosaic Law, application of cruel
legalistic justice, emphasis on sobriety and thrift, demonstrations of
pietistic hypocrisy, and refusal to eat and drink with common churchgoers.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn21" name="_ednref21" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
(Milward has found ample evidence of Shakespeare’s animus against Puritans
throughout his plays.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn22" name="_ednref22" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>)
Paul Siegel notes that the Puritans, like Shylock, were often seen by
Elizabethans as usurious Pharisaic hypocrites and misers contemptuous of
merrymaking and revelry and that Shakespeare’s Jew also has a modern parallel
as a ruthless capitalist because his lending money gratis brings down the rate
of usance.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn23" name="_ednref23" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Max Weber himself called Shakespeare “a
connoisseur of Puritanism who observed it with the keen eye afforded by
hatred.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn24" name="_ednref24" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
One can see why: Weber’s Puritan ascetic eschewed sensuality, the feudal landed
economy, ostentatious wealth, sport, and art itself—all a part of the medieval
Shakespearean aesthetic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The Anglican socialist economic
historian R. H. Tawney refined Max Weber’s famous thesis within sixteenth
century English circumstances. He attributed the rise of individualistic
capitalism in England to Calvin and his English Puritan followers, whose
participation in trade and finance and eventual cultural supremacy over landed
aristocracy removed the stigma attaching to those domains considered vulgar and
vicious by the medieval Catholic tradition. Of course, this revolution took
centuries to complete, but Protestant economic individualism was beginning to
split away from Catholic corporatism in Shakespeare’s day. While Calvin himself
distinguished between legitimate moderate interest for loans to businessmen and
usurious interest on loans to the poor, Calvinism opened the door to usury “by
enabling its critics of the traditional doctrine to argue that religion itself
spoke with an uncertain voice.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn25" name="_ednref25" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Some members of Parliament regarded the usury laws as “an antiquated remnant of
popery.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn26" name="_ednref26" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Whereas medieval councils and early Protestant preaching condemned usury as a
sin, with even small interest on loans condemned as late as Benedict XIV’s
encyclical <i>Vix pervenit</i> in 1745, the
Elizabethan House of Commons redefined usury to be the taking of interest above
ten percent as early as 1571.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn27" name="_ednref27" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Even the Tudors favored the traditional Catholic distributist state of
Chesterbelloc’s small craftsmen and peasant farmers, praised by Francis Bacon.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn28" name="_ednref28" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Aquinas (<i>Summa Theologiae</i> 2 q. 2, a. 77,
ad 4) criticized the occupation of merchant for confusing means with ends and
serving the lust for gain.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn29" name="_ednref29" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The traditional medieval model was the communist ideal, society as the body of
Christ, trade was legitimate in a fallen world but dangerous to the soul, and
finance was sordid.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn30" name="_ednref30" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
English Catholic monarchs had controlled the economy through the Privy Council
to protect stability and hierarchy against merchants and financiers and
continued to do so against Puritan capitalists in the Restoration.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn31" name="_ednref31" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Shakespeare demonstrates much of
this traditional Catholic bias against commerce in his depiction of Shylock as
the real merchant of Venice, transforming Antonio into an aristocratic lord who
eventually is brought into the gracious world of Belmont. Antonio’s success as
a merchant has obviously not been due to the burgher’s vulgar skills of
mathematical shrewdness, tough bargaining, and eye for value, but rather to the
lord’s virtues of trust, generosity, and friendship—and, so far, simple good
luck or Providence. Venice represents this emerging capitalistic economy, an
economy, moreover, that causes textual anxiety maybe in particular because
Shakespeare himself was a part of it as a stock-holder in a theater company, as
the son of a usurer for whom he sought a coat of arms,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn32" name="_ednref32" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[32]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
and as a usurer himself, both demanding and suing for payments on exorbitant
interest rates.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn33" name="_ednref33" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[33]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
In 1597, he was found guilty of hoarding ten quarters of malt during famine
times in Stratford.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn34" title="">[34]</a></span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn34" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The Weber-Tawney thesis continues
to have its partisans among historians of early modern England. Norman Jones
upholds the broad relationship drawn between capitalism and Calvinism,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn35" name="_ednref35" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[35]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
and Craig Muldrew and Delloyd Guth argue that an “Age of Debt” was giving way
to an “Age of Contract” as a result of the Protestant de-emphasis of works to
pay off the debt of sin: the written word of a legal contract was replacing the
unspecified trust and works exchanged between creditor and debtor.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn36" name="_ednref36" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[36]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
It is not, however, that Shakespeare is necessarily winking at his Catholic
audience or attempting to represent a social reality in fine detail. To be
sure, Calvinist theologians and the Church of England’s own <i>Book of Homilies</i> urged generosity toward
the poor and railed against avarice. Crucial for the audience instead is
Shakespeare’s use of the broad perception of social reality and of Christian
theology. In the agon or idea pageantry of literature, ideas about social
reality carry the burden. Most importantly, it is the combination of the
critical view of capitalism and the praise of aristocratic generosity that most
plausibly marks Shakespeare’s religious thought as traditionally Catholic. The
opposition between bourgeois Protestant Venice and aristocratic Catholic
Belmont is a construction consistent with the social reality in early modern
England, where Protestantism was strongest in London and Catholicism strongest
in the countryside,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn37" name="_ednref37" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[37]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
and where Puritans might have been seen as “middling classes.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn38" name="_ednref38" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[38]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Shakespeare employs ideas as a playwright, however, not as an historian.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><b>Belmont
and Sacrificial Gift</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Belmont
represents the counterpart, the landed past, mythologized, to be sure, but
carrying the moral center of the play. It is usually seen as the land of ease,
grace, beauty, harmony, music, bounty, and generosity, but it also carries less
obvious traditional meanings: prudence, entail, oaths, arranged marriages,
laxity, infinity, timelessness. Whereas Venice is specific to actual geography,
however unlike sixteenth-century Venice it may have been, Belmont is entirely
mythical and gives the play the fairy tale character that many have observed. The
suitors are lords hailing from the wide world, from Protestant, Catholic, and
even Muslim countries, but the economic world is that of the passing feudal
tradition. In contrast to pressing usury and trade of Venice, Belmont stands
for natural wealth and wise if demanding entail. Its fortune is vague and
mysterious but secure and natural: “beautiful mountain,” one of those places in
the Mediterranean that is rich not because of industry but because of
providential endowment—a wealth managed not by risky business ventures but by
good marriages and paternal foresight. The ultimate source of its wealth is
never explicit, lost in the mists of mountains, an uncountable accumulation and
cornucopia<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn39" name="_ednref39" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[39]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
that neither toils nor labors nor spins. Gold and silver cannot purchase it,
although three thousand ducats appear its qualifying opening bid or the travel
money to venture there. Above all, Belmont offers the infinite,
incommensurable, divine wealth of the human person; Bassanio’s suit is for
Portia’s “wondrous virtues” (1.1.163), not her estate, as the Argonaut Jason
(1.1.171–73) sails off in an extravagant, romantic quest, which, of course,
marriage essentially is. Among several other associations of Portia with a
Catholic lady, the suitor Morocco, Moorish but perhaps converted, employs two
transgressive Catholic field identification markers in his comparison of her to
a “shrine” and “mortal living saint” (2.7.40). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Belmont is the rich land of
traditional family-building marriage aligning choice with prudence; Venice is
weakened by such family-destroying elopement as Jessica’s and Lorenzo’s. It is
not, of course, that Shakespeare is writing an economic treatise or ethics
manual, but his sympathies are clear: Portia’s dead father is not seen as a
tyrant but as a “holy” and wise father (1.2.27), nor can his entail be
construed as constraining but should be rather interpreted as freeing the young
betrothed, “unlessoned, unschooled, unpracticed” (3.2.159), from an
inexperienced decision. It is a way of correcting infatuation with virtue. He
knows that her fortune will make her prey to gold diggers and that marriage
must be founded on a permanent thing, a total commitment demanded by the lead
casket: “Who chooseth me shall <i>give</i>
and hazard all he hath” (emphasis mine). In a Catholic emphasis on the
cooperative grace of man’s effort rather than on the operative grace of God’s
will, Shakespeare stresses here human self-donation by substituting it for
God’s providence in his <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>
source, “Whoso chooseth me shall find that God hath disposed.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn40" name="_ednref40" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[40]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The word give insists on the essence of the suitor’s quid pro quo: he receives
a chance on everything by risking everything in a donation unrestricted in
every direction and dimension: “all he hath.” In requiring the risk of lifelong
celibacy on a bet for infinite joy, it even echoes the Catholic priest’s
evangelical counsel rejected by the Reformation. It is not, in worldly terms, a
fair contractual lottery because, as marriage and love always do, it requires
giving everything for the only one. While Antonio’s credit is a foreshadowing
of generosity and self-gift, it is partial: a pound of flesh for three thousand
ducats—as Shylock insists, no more, no less. Belmont’s casket lottery is the
true lottery of chance requiring one to be all in, but it is grounded in an
entail that rewards not luck but traditional wisdom—Chesterton’s famous
“democracy of the dead in Orthodoxy—that can still live and act, whereas the
notarized bond is subject only to the immediate desires of the current parties.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Antonio’s bond with Shylock is
time-sensitive at three months, and the action in Venice in general moves
quickly, like bidding at a stock market. Shakespeare may be reflecting the
rapidly increasing use of the bond in early modern England, which sometimes
included even penal clauses and usurious penalties for tardiness as high as 100
percent.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn41" name="_ednref41" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[41]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
In contrast, Belmont’s ventures draw on, like simple interest-free “oral
credit” that had characterized the earlier feudal economy.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn42" name="_ednref42" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[42]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
When Bassanio approaches the caskets, Portia wishes that he would “tarry” and
“pause a day or two”; she would “detain [him] some month or two.” A day or two,
a month or two, Shylock is not there to count. He will be in the courtroom,
however, when Portia asks him to “tarry a little” (4.1.301) before executing
his bond; a few extra minutes to read the bond more scrupulously render it null
and void. What Shylock claims as the greatest violation of the bond is not that
Antonio has failed to pay but that he has failed to pay on time! (Weber’s first
noted maxim of Benjamin Franklin was, “Time is money.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn43" name="_ednref43" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[43]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Which, for a usurious money lender, it most certainly is.) Belmont’s very
language is cast under the timeless spell—almost entirely poetry, long batches
of blank verse, riming tetrameters, even song, whereas the copious prose in
Venice is choppy, nervous, manic, whether Lancelot’s wayward inanity or
Shylock’s nervous repetitions: “Ho, no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is
a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient: he hath an
argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies. I understand, moreover on the
Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he
hath squandered abroad,” (1.3.14–19) or “I will buy with you, sell with you,
talk with you, and so following. But I will not eat with you, drink with you,
nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto? Who is he comes here?” (1.3.31–33).
In contrast, Belmont is rich with leisurely set pieces to accompany long
ceremonious pageants: Morocco’s (2.7.13–60), Arragon’s (2.9.19–52), Portia’s
(3.2.1–23, 39–62), Bassanio’s (3.2.73–107), and Lorenzo’s and Jessica’s (5.2.1–88).
Order, control, harmony, and timelessness are the linguistic rule at Belmont.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Infinity and totality are the
modes of love’s sacrifice. An oath of celibacy, silence, and exile binds the
suitors if they choose wrong. If they choose rightly, Portia tells Bassanio as
he deliberates, she in turn will bestow her entire being:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">One
half of me is yours, the other half yours—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Mine
own I would say—but if mine then yours,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
so all yours. (3.2.16–18)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In
contrast to the pound of flesh demanded by Shylock as forfeit on three thousand
ducats, Portia promises an unspecified but immediate totality of self-donation:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Myself
and what is mine to you and yours<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Is
now converted. But now, I was the lord<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Of
this fair mansion, master of my servants,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Queen
o’er myself: and even now, but now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">This
house, these servants, and this same myself,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Are
yours, my lord’s. (3.2.166–71)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">“This
same myself”—Portia gives, it is important to see, not merely her entire fiscal
and landed inheritance, but her very self, her entire being, forgoing,
Katharine Maus points out, the common Elizabethan custom of “coverture,” by
which the bride could reserve a portion of the estate to a male trustee to
protect her from a spendthrift husband like Bassanio.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn44" title="">[44]</a></span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn44" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">If Venice represents the everyday
workaday world, Belmont represents festival—marriage festival specifically:
holiday, the Catholic excess to which Luther objected.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn45" name="_ednref45" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[45]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Joseph Pieper elaborates on the meaning of festival as the antithesis of
utilitarian existence in its sacrifice of labor for the sake of the love of
God:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
antithesis between holiday and workday, or more precisely, the concept of the
day of the day of rest, tells us something further about the essence of
festivity. The day of rest is not just a neutral interval inserted as a link in
the chain of workday life. It entails a loss of utilitarian profit. . . . The
day of rest, then, meant not only that no work was done, but also that an
offering was being made of the yield of labor. It is not merely that the time
is not gainfully used; <i>the offering is in
the nature of a sacrifice</i>; and therefore the diametric opposite of utility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">. . . A festival is essentially a
phenomenon of wealth; not, to be sure, the wealth of money, but of existential
richness. Absence of calculation, in fact lavishness, is one of its elements.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> . . . <i>We
do not renounce things, then, except for love</i>.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn46" name="_ednref46" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[46]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
(emphases mine)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Pieper
cites an early work by Aquinas (<i>Commentary
on the Sentences</i> [of Peter Lombard], 3 d. 37, I, 5, I and I) in which he
makes the beatific vision the object of contemplation of festival days and
reproaches the Jews, agreeing with Seneca, for filling the Sabbath with empty
rituals and missing the <i>divinorum
contemplatio</i>.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn47" title="">[47]</a></span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn47" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Marriage in Belmont reconstitutes
an idealized feudal world of bonds not through notarized contracts but by
oaths, with fealty, in vassalage, of the entire person. The difference is
immense—it is immensity itself. Bassanio will be Portia’s lord, governor, and king
(3.2.165), whereas Shylock will control only a precisely measured pound of
flesh. The marriage bond, in contrast to the contract bond, has no exit clause,
no surety, no forfeit penalty: two souls are indissolubly united into one
common life and fortune. It is a supernatural arrangement, not contrary to
nature like usury but perfecting it, a sacramental union insisted upon by Trent
and rejected as a sacrament by the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of
England. Shylock’s narrow imagination wants only a pound of flesh, whereas
Antonio would have been willing to give him his entire body, as Portia gives
Bassanio hers. He fails to see the totality of the human person, which, as
Portia intimates, is of infinite and not fungible value. Instead of a written
legal document specifying limiting terms, the symbol of the wedding bond, the
ring, confirms an open-ended but life-and-death (rather than piece of flesh)
commitment, the perfect circle of love. Not writing anything down and therefore
free from a legalistic and narrowed interpretation, Bassanio promises his own
ontological totality in a spoken, open vow:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">But
when this ring<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Parts
from this finger, then parts life from hence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">O
then be bold to say Bassanio’s dead. (3.2.183–85)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
marriage bargain, as Gratiano calls it, yields immediate infinite increase, not
limited interest, for he announces that his own spontaneous decision to marry
Nerissa came as love bred love: “You loved; I loved” (3.2.199). These explicit
monetary metaphors to describe the mutual self-gift of marriage are meant to
contrast with the bargain that Shylock has struck with Antonio. Portia does a
different kind of arithmetic to parody, not emulate, the accounting language of
commercial transaction:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Though for myself alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> I would not be ambitious in my wish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">To
wish myself much better, yet for you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
would be <i>trebled twenty times</i> myself—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">A
<i>thousand times</i> more fair, <i>ten thousand times</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">More
rich; that only to stand high in your <i>account</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Exceed
<i>account</i>. But the full <i>sum</i> of me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Is
<i>sum</i> of something, which to <i>term in gross</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Is
an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed. (3.2.150–59, emphases mine)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">When
she learns that Antonio’s losses at sea have made him forfeit the bond, she
immediately offers, “Pay him six thousand and deface the bond;/Double six
thousand and then treble that, . . .” (3.2.298–99). Extravagant inexact
increase was curiously the condition of Shylock’s own inapposite defense of
usury to Antonio on biblical grounds; his money, he claims, “breeds as fast” as
the “work of generation” of Jacob’s flocks, an allusion that shows that
Shakespeare was aware of the traditional Church objection against usury, going
back to Aristotle, that it was sinful because it was unnatural for money to
breed money. It is supernatural, however, for love to breed love. Shylock’s biblical
proof texting, like that of Puritan money lenders,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn48" name="_ednref48" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[48]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
fails according to the infinite promises of Belmont. His choice of a text
ironically reveals the ultimate source of worldly wealth: beyond human
ingenuity or duplicity to God’s fertility expressed in animal husbandry, a
natural miracle implicitly more represented by mythical Belmont than by
money-crazed Venice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The world of supernatural grace,
however, is not a fairy world without “sufferance,” as Shylock calls the pain
of his escaped daughter and stolen ducats. Hazarding all may mean losing all. One
cannot give, so the Incarnation and the Cross teach, without complete sacrifice.
Portia does not shrink. She testifies to this existential flesh-and-blood
commitment just before the song accompanying Bassanio’s perusal of the caskets:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
stand for sacrifice,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
rest aloof are the Dardanian wives<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">With
bleared visages come forth to view<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
issue of th’exploit. (3.2.57–60)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">She
is the giving sacrificed thing itself, her entire person, like that of the
Homeric warrior, and we are reminded both of Antonio’s partial flesh-and-blood
sacrifice for Bassanio and of Shylock’s later contrasting self-characterization
in the Venetian court: “I stand here for law” (4.1.141). The sacrifice of grace
is not the exact <i>quid pro quo</i> of exchange
but the indefinite hope and trust of an oath. The first two false caskets are
money caskets of silver and gold, the metals of the New World inflating the
Venetian economy of commerce and usury, commodities and finance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Shakespeare makes Portia a lady
on a landed estate of traditional, somewhat mysterious, but immeasurable
wealth, whose source is not human speculation but heaven itself. Portia lives
not in the doges’ republic but in the Pope’s domain, unspecified Italy, a
country of sacramental marriage, virtue, and blessing in contrast to the city
of vice, idle bachelorhood, and curse. Jessica makes the association of Belmont
and its lady with heaven in the comic scene following the marriage scene, a
scene that will yield three marriages, for Belmont proliferates self-gift:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">.
. . It is very meet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
lord Bassanio live an upright life,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">For
having such a blessing in his lady<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">He
finds the joys of heaven here on earth. (3.5.66–69)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Thus,
in its embrace of sacramental marriage as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet,
Belmont may represent one of the great Catholic estates in Lancashire, a
“hotbed of recusancy,” that Shakespeare might have enjoyed in his twenties as a
tutor, such as Hoghton Tower, whose recusant and ultimately exiled owner may
have bequeathed Shakespeare a small annuity.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn49" title="">[49]</a></span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn49" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Applying Shakespeare’s use of
ideas in <i>Merchant</i>, Sean Lawrence
analyzes the binary opposition between “gift” and “exchange,” or the two
meanings of “bond” as contract or marriage, in the frameworks of the major
anthropologists and philosophers Mauss, Douglas, Levinas, and Derrida. Lawrence
reviews the arguments that Bassanio’s and Portia’s mutual gifts are really
self-serving, that total and pure gift is impossible, and that Belmont is a
satirical aristocratic mirror of middle-class Venice, embroiled in the same
mercenary and mercantile anxiety and stratagems, and that the Reformation
theology of radical grace fails in the courtroom scene.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn50" name="_ednref50" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[50]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Without engaging in this philosophical and anthropological controversy,
Karoline Szatek argues that Belmont’s green, fairy world is a mere disguise for
its own, and especially Portia’s, Venetian commercial bondages.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn51" name="_ednref51" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[51]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
A Catholic Christian reading of the play, however, works against such
interpretations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">First, Bassanio wins the lottery,
it must be noticed, because he follows, as it were, the evangelical counsel of
hazarding his sexuality, the beatitude of meekness in choosing lead and
receiving Portia’s heavenly kingdom, and the Gospel principle of seeking the
last in order to become the first. Second, the “special deed of gift” (5.1.292)
of all of Shylock’s remaining possessions that Portia, through Nerissa, enjoins
upon him to pass to Jessica and Lorenzo in the trial scene (4.1.384ff), is
called by this rewarded gentleman “manna” (5.2.293), which is of course, a
typological figure of Christianity’s most significant sacrament, the Eucharist,
the source and summit of divine love: “Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way
of starved people” (5.1.293–94).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn52" name="_ednref52" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[52]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Like Portia’s “mercy,” landed wealth “droppeth like the gentle rain of heaven
upon the place beneath” (4.1.189–90); Holy Eucharist is thus a special figure
of Belmont’s mysterious, miraculous wealth. Human effort may augment it, but
heaven endows it—indeed, an aristocratic estate is a working example of that
traditional Catholic category, cooperation with grace. Shylock’s “title” or
justification of usury, the animal breeding of Laban’s flocks, ironically
applies rather to Belmont’s agricultural wealth of “husbandry” (3.4.25). The
anthropologists and philosophers may see all gifts as impossible, but the
theologians can see them as supernatural.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Third, Shakespeare explicitly
associates Belmont’s lady to the lost Catholic world with specific Catholic
practices condemned by Protestants. After “commending” the “husbandry and
manage of [her] house” to Lorenzo, Portia, to whom Bassanio had earlier gone on
“secret pilgrimage,” uses the language of forbidden Popish religion to deceive
Lorenzo:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">.
. . For mine own part,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
have toward heaven breathed <i>a secret vow</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">To
live in prayer and <i>contemplation</i>,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Only
attended by Nerissa here,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Until
her husband and my lord’s return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">There
is a <i>monastery</i> two miles off,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
there we will abide. (3.5.26–32, emphases mine)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In
act 5, the messenger Stephano brings the news that Portia, “a holy hermit” of
Catholic monasticism, is tarrying over Stations of the Cross on her return to
Belmont:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">.
. . She doth stray about<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">By
holy crosses where she kneels and prays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">For
happy wedlock hours. (5.1.30–32)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Portia
is treating the banned pilgrimage cross as a forbidden Catholic sacramental:
her marriage preparation, as it were, includes contemplation and penance. Prayer
cannot be considered a necessary part of a system of exchange. <i>Contemplatio</i> is yet another Catholic
field identification marker.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Fourth, yes, sacramental marriage
involves obligations, debts, duties, and sacrifice, but can Portia’s selfless
service to Bassanio, the infinite opening of her purse, the free outpouring of
gift upon gift in the Belmontification of Venice, really be reduced to a system
of mutual exchange? The exchange is neither equal nor proportionate nor even
rational; it is hazarded recklessly and freely; it cannot be bound by quantity
or time. While Portia does submit originally to the concept of an arranged marriage,
Shakespeare frees her absolutely from that bondage of her will by having
providence grant her Bassanio, the object of her personal desire, whereas in
Shakespeare’s likely source <i>Il Pecorone</i>
she is a figure of duplicity and avarice.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn53" name="_ednref53" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[53]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Moreover, in an act gratuitously beyond her father’s entail, she freely accepts
Bassanio a second time in act 5, despite his subsequent pseudo-infidelity in
giving away her marriage ring. Thus, she personifies both the sacrificial and
superfluous dimensions of grace. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Finally, a more Catholic theology
of grace, characterized by mercy, laxity, and accompanying works (Portia’s
“deeds of mercy” in her famous speech), operates in <i>Merchant</i> differently from Calvinistic irresistible grace and in
opposition to Puritan rigorism—the latter represented, according to Peter
Milward, by Shylock’s strict observance of law. Milward quotes Matthew
Sutcliffe’s depiction of Puritans (<i>Answer
to a Certain Libel</i>, 1592) as guilty of inhuman cruelty in racking rents,
demanding usury, and “skinning the poor” generally.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn54" name="_ednref54" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[54]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
He quotes the moderate Anglican John Whitgift (<i>Defence of the Answer to the Admonition</i>, 1574) in charging the
Puritan Thomas Cartwright of wishing to apply the strict Mosaic law of capital
punishment upon idolators, adulterers, and moneylenders.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn55" name="_ednref55" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[55]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Shylock boldly proclaims in the trial, “I stand for law.” His rigorism stands
thus explicitly contrasted with Portia’s earlier generous promise to Bassanio,
“I stand for sacrifice.” Sacrifice is spoken gift; law is written demand. Sacrifice
is a pledge, an oath; law is a bond, a contract. Perhaps Shakespeare was aware
of the post-biblical tradition that Baltasar, which he adds to his course, was
one of the three gift-bearing wise men to the Christ child, for Portia in her juris
doctor disguise dispenses gifts in her table-turning of narrowly interpreted
but generously applied justice: through the executive arm of the Duke and
plea-bargaining with Antonio, the gift of life and property to Antonio, of a
stay of execution or pardon of Shylock’s own forfeited life and property, a
deed to Lorenzo and Jessica, and of Christian conversion to Shylock. Portia’s
justice as mercy operates through forced legalism for the goal of generosity. Her
mercy, departing from the Lutheran formulation against works righteousness, is
the traditional Catholic understanding of freely offered works cooperating with
grace. She tells the “Jew” that God’s grace is of course not deserved but
itself teaches corporal works of mercy:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">But
mercy is above this sceptered sway;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">It
is enthroned in the hearts of kings;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">It
is an attribute to God himself,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
earthly power doth then show likest God’s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">When
mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Though
justice be thy plea, consider this—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">That
in the course of justice none of us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Should
see salvation. We do pray for mercy,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
that same prayer doth teach us all to render<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
<i>deeds</i> of mercy. (4.1.189–98, emphasis
mine)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Earlier,
the silver casket contained the image of a “blinking idiot,” Pelagian fool’s
silver, as it were: he who thinks he deserves heaven’s graces, like the
arrogant Aragon who “assumes desert” (2.9.50), is giving trust to the efforts
of a fool. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Imitating the duplicitous means
of the unjust steward (Lk 16:1–13), Portia’s justice ultimately yields mercy,
forgiveness, pardon, cancelled debts—all gifts, since they are not due in
strict justice. These are in addition to the gifts of life that Antonio and
Bassanio have made to each other in the trial scene. Antonio’s offer of
self-sacrifice has been somewhat grandiloquent:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Say
how I loved you; speak me fair in death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
when the tale is told, bid her be judge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Whether
Bassanio had not once a love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Repent
but you that you shall lose your friend<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
he repents not that he pays your debt;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">For
if the Jew do cut but deep enough,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I’ll
pay it instantly with all my heart. (4.1.271–77)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Bassanio’s
reply was to make a substitute sacrifice of total self-gift:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Antonio, I am married to a wife<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which
is as dear to me as life itself;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">But
life itself, my wife, and all the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Are
not with me esteemed above thy life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
would lose all—aye, sacrifice them all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Here
to this devil—to deliver you. (4.1.278–83)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
total mutual friendship of Bassanio and Antonio does not really threaten the
marriage of Portia and Bassanio, which must be seen as a higher union, for both
Bassanio and Antonio are transported by rhetorical excess that envisions a
contrary-to-fact hypothetical. Shylock would not accept any substitute for his
pound of flesh. Moreover, Portia witnesses this betrayal full on, and yet she
not only pardons Bassanio for this rhetorical infidelity but also bears the
letter with the news of Antonio’s three argosies “richly come to harbor”
(5.1.277). Her forgiveness and restoration of the ring with no sign of jealousy
(she merely teases later) are further gifts, and Antonio declares, “Sweet lady,
you have given me life and living” (5.1.286), his melancholy restored, and
friendship not endangering but rather adding to married love. Indeed, Gratiano
appeals to the Catholic doctrine of the intercession of saints to deliver
Antonio from Pharisaic legalism:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
have a wife who I protest I love—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
would she were in heaven so she could<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Entreat
some power to change this currish Jew. (4.1.286–88)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The Duke characterizes this world
of immediate and proliferating gift as Christian in essence and in contrast to
Jewish law:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">That
thou shalt see the difference of our spirit,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I
pardon thee thy life before thou ask it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">For
half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
other half comes to the general state,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which
humbleness may drive unto a fine. (4.1.364–68)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In
other words, the state itself offers to reduce its title in law to half of
Shylock’s estate to a small fine, itself acting generously beyond its due. When
Shylock points out that taking the means whereby he lives is to take his life,
Antonio makes a second stay of execution by immediately forswearing his half of
Shylock’s goods until his death but holding them in “use” or trust, where the
estate will go to the new Christian couple of his Jewish house, Lorenzo and
Jessica, as a “gift . . . of all he dies possessed” (4.1.385). For this
“favor,” Antonio proposes terms that would have been seen as generous then but
strike most readers today as cruel: that Shylock “presently become a Christian”
(4.1.383). They are ironic to either set of readers, for Antonio stipulates
that Shylock “record a gift” of his estate in writing to the Christian couple,
and Portia orders a clerk to “draw a deed of gift” (4.1.384, 390). The “mercy”
that Portia preaches in her famous set piece returns in Act V when she
practices it herself in forgiving Bassanio’s infidelity, after teasing him
mightily, and in herself remaining true to her own marriage vow. Her last words
in the play perhaps pun on the exclusivity requirement of the marriage bond:
“And we will answer all things faithfully” (5.1.299). Mercy and gift have
stretched—but not broken—justice and law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The hell of Venice has given way
to the heaven of Belmont, confirmed by Lorenzo’s poetry in act 5 as the
traditional Platonized Catholic “state of music” and “perpetual cosmic dance”
that E. M. W. Tillyard found in the words of the medieval encyclopedist Isidore
of Seville: “҅Nothing exists without music; for the universe itself is said to
have been framed by a kind of harmony of sounds, and the heaven itself revolves
under the tones of that harmony.’”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn56" name="_ednref56" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[56]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Lorenzo exudes thus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Sit, Jessica—look how the floor
of heaven<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Is thick inlaid with pattens of
bright gold;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">There’s not the smallest orb
which thou behold’st<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">But in his motion like an angel
sings,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Still quiring to the young-eyed
cherubims. (5.1.58–62)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><b>Love
and Marriage as Supernatural Usury</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">What
can be said about Shakespeare’s moral-economic thinking concerning emerging
capitalism from this analysis of <i>Merchant</i>?
First, capitalism engenders an atmosphere of anxiety, greed, Pharisaic
legalism, and revenge in contrast to the atmosphere of ease, generosity,
laxity, and mercy surrounding traditional landed wealth. Second, it proceeds by
blind chance (sailing winds) rather than wise Providence (entail and prudent
choice). Third, it reduces human relationships to narrow contracts rather than
broad oaths of fealty, prohibiting friendship as self-gift and making persons
into things. Fourth, it privatizes economics and obscures the common good. Antonio,
for example, begins the play as a profiteer who is certainly not a miser but is
the private entrepreneur whose purse is open only to one who has penetrated his
lonely heart. At the end, he has become not only a trustee for a new family beyond
his deepest friendship, Lorenzo, Jessica, and even his sworn enemy Shylock, but
even, in ratifying the stiff fine of the Duke upon Shylock’s usurious estate at
the rate of fifty percent, an agent of the state as what we would now call a
financial regulator. Whereas Tawney attributes to Calvinists (more, he says,
like Weber, than to Calvin himself)<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn57" name="_ednref57" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[57]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
the gradual separation of economics from ethics that culminates in laissez-faire
free-market capitalism,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn58" name="_ednref58" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[58]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
even to the point where friendship itself was seen as threatening thrift,
diligence, and frugality,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn59" name="_ednref59" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[59]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Shakespeare follows more traditional Catholic thinking that commerce must be
oriented toward the public good and that the state or Crown must intervene in
the economy to maintain order and render justice.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn60" name="_ednref60" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[60]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
In fact, Antonio’s movement as a merchant who seeks gain for the private end of
liberal friendship to one who becomes concerned with public goods is consistent
with Aquinas’s tolerance of commerce despite its propensity toward greed. Commerce
may be turned toward a virtuous end, such as the maintenance of a household or
of the state, “public advantage,” and so it cannot be condemned as
intrinsically evil.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn61" name="_ednref61" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[61]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Antonio’s and Shylock’s wealth and their very persons become part of Belmont’s
protected households: Jessica and Lorenzo’s, Nerissa and Gratiano’s, and Portia
and Bassanio’s—protected by the state and endowed by the musical heavens and
favorable winds of Providence. Above all, in eschewing interest absolutely
(“lends out money gratis” 1.3.39 and “I do never use it” 1.3.65), Antonio is
explicitly identified with the stricter, more conservative, medieval tradition
of canon and pontifical law that defined usury as any taking of interest, not
with the more liberal, contemporary Calvinistic interpretation (followed by the
Elizabethan Thomas Wilson) that defined it as extortionate interest or of
interest on loans to the poor.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn62" name="_ednref62" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[62]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Shakespeare makes Antonio’s refusal of not only usury but also legal interest
(yet accepting to pay it to an enemy out of friendship) a romantic gesture of
the idealized economic past.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Whereas nearly all the characters
in the play give freely, Shylock and Tybalt alone lend strictly. Shylock looks
down upon Antonio’s generosity as unintelligent business practice, “low
simplicity” (1.3.39), and understands Antonio’s own hatred of the Jews to be
grounded in economics, specifically the hypocrisy of engaging in commerce while
condemning the engine of commerce, lending at interest:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">He
hates our sacred nation and he rails,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Even
there where merchants most do congregate,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">On
me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which
he calls interest. (1.3.44–47)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">As
Tawney has shown, “well-won thrift” is precisely the economic virtue extolled
by Calvinistic Protestants from the merchant classes.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn63" name="_ednref63" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[63]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Moreover, it was Calvin, whose departure from the scholastic condemnation of
usury (upheld firmly in Sixtus V’s <i>Detestabilis
avaritia</i> in 1586), who provided the theological reasoning necessary to
allow moneylending on interest in Protestant countries such as England,
although many schemes and dodges had existed in Catholic countries for
centuries.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn64" name="_ednref64" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[64]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
In England, two Protestant wings, one following Calvin, another Aquinas,
emerged, and Jones claims that the liberal wing following Calvin eventually
prevailed over the conservative wing because of the more radical Protestant
ecclesiology, opposed by Hooker, that neither the church nor the state could
provide salvation, thus “loosening the theoretical bonds that made human law
answerable to God’s law.” Pragmatically, too, it was argued that the state
could no more eradicate usury than it could eliminate pride or drunkenness.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn65" name="_ednref65" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[65]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
While Shakespeare shows no signs of splitting hairs in this debate, he clearly
leans to the traditional scholastic side that condemns usury wholesale as any
sort of interest taking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In the Catholic tradition, usury
is violence against the body and its goods. Dante put usurers with the violent
even lower than murderers (<i>Inferno</i>,
Canto XVI), and Trent equated usury with murder.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn66" name="_ednref66" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[66]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Conversely, to a Christian and especially a Catholic audience, one nearly overt
analog of Antonio’s flesh sacrifice, a loving offer of atonement for Bassanio’s
spendthriftness, would have been the bloodless sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist.
To a Catholic, the Eucharistic sacrifice is not a personal possession but a
communal sharing, and it is opposed to the market. In a recent book opposing
Christian economic teaching to the new world “free market” economy, William
Cavanaugh writes that “the abundance of the Eucharist is inseparable from the
kenosis, the self-emptying, of the Cross. The consumer of the body and blood of
Christ does not remain detached from what he or she consumes, but becomes part
of that body: ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in
them’ (John 6:56).”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn67" name="_ednref67" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[67]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Antonio’s gesture of crucifixion for his friend has been dramatized in
productions of <i>Merchant </i>as a
Christ-like act, and the allusion is made explicit in Bassanio’s and Antonio’s
offers of mutual self-sacrifice in the trial scene:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Bassanio:
Good cheer, Antonio! What, man, courage yet:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones and all,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Ere
thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Antonio:
I am a tainted wether of the flock,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Meetest
for death; the weakest kind of fruit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Drops
earliest to the ground, and so let me. (4.1.110–15)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">John
Drakakis sees in Antonio’s comparison of himself to a sick castrated ram a
conflation of the Abrahamic substitution of the ram for Isaac (Gen 22:13) and
the Johannine Lamb of God sacrifice, which takes away the sin of the world (Jn
1:29).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn68" name="_ednref68" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[68]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Catholic sympathizers in the audience might have seen in Shylock’s merciless
bond on Antonio’s life the bloodless sacrifice of the Mass denied to them by
the English Reformation and deemphasized by its desacralized celebration of the
Last Supper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Throughout his work, however, Shakespeare
also employs usury as a fanciful metaphor for the miraculous increase of love
and marriage, which make something out of nothing.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn69" name="_ednref69" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[69]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
We may call this kind of usury, in contrast to Shylock’s, good or sacramental
usury. Its increase comes from self-giving love, not from the extorted sweat of
man’s labor exacted by merciless financiers. It is sought freely by the debtor,
and it yields happiness. Unlike Shylock’s usury, it follows the supernatural
law; it is an effect of cooperative grace. Shakespeare draws this comparison
out in several places. In Sonnets IV and VI, the persona enjoins the unnamed
bachelor “niggard” to forgo the selfish “forbidden” usury of celibacy and to
take up the sacramental usury of marriage:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Then,
beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The
bounteous largess given thee to give?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Profitless
usurer, why doest thou use<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">So
great a sum of sums yet canst not live?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">For
having traffic with thyself alone,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Thou
of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive. (Sonnet IV, 5–10.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">That
use is not forbidden usury<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which
happies those that pay the willing loan;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">That’s
for thyself to breed another thee,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Or
ten times happier be it ten for one. (Sonnet VI, 4–8)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In
“ten times happier” Shakespeare may be playing on the Elizabethan legal limit
of ten percent annual interest set on a loan; the sudden unfolding of increase
“that happies” is like Portia’s extravagant promise to be “A thousand times
more fair, ten thousand times more rich” (3.2.154) when Bassanio chooses wisely
and wins her hand in marriage: she will be “trebled twenty times” herself
(3.2.153). In <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>
(probably written just after the <i>Sonnets</i>
and just before <i>Merchant</i>), Friar
Lawrence contrasts the true use of life for married love with the evil usury of
suicide, which Romeo contemplates after Mercutio’s death and his own banishment
from Verona for killing Tybalt:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Fie,
fit, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which,
like a usurer, abound’st in all,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">And
useth none in that true use indeed,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Which
should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit. (3.3.122–25)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">It
is not merely the increase of progeny that grounds sacramental usury in these
examples, but the increase of love in marriage, which cannot be bound or
counted but must be used: sacramental usury leaps to excess, but, unlike
Shylock’s, has no precise terms and yields infinitely beyond its scheduled
payments. It requires indefinite sacrifice, not named costs, and it never
expires. It increases through both God’s operative and man’s cooperative or
created grace, merited by man’s works of love,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn70" name="_ednref70" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[70]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
a Thomistic doctrine ignored by the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of
England, repudiated by the Reformers, and endorsed by Trent in Canon 32 of the
“Decree Concerning Justification” in 1547.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn71" name="_ednref71" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[71]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The prodigal Bassanio’s original request was in fact less for a loan than for
an outright gift, and that gift was not a down payment on a material possession
but a chance on an eternal reward. It was for Holy Matrimony, which grows “in
use.” Portia’s own generous responses of
her entire self and then 36,000 ducats to Bassanio’s lottery victory were
themselves absolute gift borne of married love, even before the marriage was
technically made. Sacramental usury breeds love from love like the Eucharist,
which falls like the mercy of manna on the place beneath, in what Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI has called the “nuclear fission in the heart of being.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn72" title="">[72]</a></span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_edn72" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Michael Wood, <i>Shakespeare</i> (New York: Basic Books,
2003).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> David N. Beauregard, <i>Catholic Theology in Shakespeare’s Plays</i>
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Claire Asquith, <i>Shadowplay</i> (New York: Public Affairs,
2005).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Stephen Greenblatt, <i>Hamlet in Purgatory</i> (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Beatrice Groves, <i>Texts and Traditions: Religion in
Shakespeare 1592–1604</i> (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Alison Shell, <i>Shakespeare and Religion</i> (London: Arden
Drama, 2010).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn7">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref7" name="_edn7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Peter Milward, <i>The Pattern in Shakespeare’s Carpet</i>
(Hyogo, Japan: Bookway, 2012).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn8">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref8" name="_edn8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> See my “A Catholic Dramatist in
a Protestant Land,” <i>New Oxford Review</i>
(Fall 2014).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn9">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref9" name="_edn9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Arthur F. Marotti, “Shakespeare
and Catholicism,” <i>Theatre and Religion:
Lancastrian Shakespeare</i> eds. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard
Wilson (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), 219.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn10">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref10" name="_edn10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> All references to <i>Merchant of Venice</i> are to the Third
Arden Series, ed. John Drakakis (London: A & C Black, 2010). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn11">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref11" name="_edn11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> <i>Politics</i>, 1, 3, 1257b, trans. H. Rackham for the Loeb Edition (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1922).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn12">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref12" name="_edn12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> <i>Politics</i>, 1, 3, 1258b.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn13">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref13" name="_edn13" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> <i>ST</i>II-II, q.77, a. 4.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn14">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref14" name="_edn14" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Norman Jones, <i>God and the Moneylenders: Usury and Law in
Early England Modern</i> (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1989), 166.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn15">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref15" name="_edn15" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Daniel Price, <i>The Merchant: A Sermon Preached at Paul’s
Cross on Sunday the 24<sup> </sup>of August, being the Day Before Bartholomew
Fair, 1607</i>, excerpted in <i>The Merchant
of Venice</i>, Norton Critical Edition, 110–14.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn16">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref16" name="_edn16" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> R. H. Tawney, “Introduction” to
Thomas Wilson,<i> A Discourse Upon Usury</i>
(New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1925 [1572], 34.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn17">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref17" name="_edn17" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Gabriel Egan, <i>Shakespeare and Marx</i> (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 99.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn18">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref18" name="_edn18" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Egan, 106.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn19">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref19" name="_edn19" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Egan, 105.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn20">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref20" name="_edn20" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Peter Milward, <i>The Mediaeval Dimension in Shakespeare’s
Plays </i>(Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), excerpts reprinted in <i>Readings on </i>The Merchant of Venice ed.
Claire Swisher (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000), 69–70.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn21">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref21" name="_edn21" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Milward in Swisher, 72–76. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn22">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref22" name="_edn22" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Peter Milward, <i>Shakespeare’s Religious Background</i>
(Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1973), 144–63.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn23">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref23" name="_edn23" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Paul N. Siegel, <i>Shakespeare in His Time and Ours</i> (South
Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) excerpted in Swisher, 53–59.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn24">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref24" name="_edn24" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Max Weber, <i>The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of</i> <i>Capitalism</i> eds. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (New York: Penguin,
2002 [1905]), 268.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn25">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref25" name="_edn25" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> R. H. Tawney, <i>Religion and the Rise of Capitalism </i>(Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1926 [Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1962]), 120.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn26">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref26" name="_edn26" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> R. H. Tawney, 35.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn27">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref27" name="_edn27" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> R. H. Tawney, 160.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn28">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref28" name="_edn28" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 151.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn29">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref29" name="_edn29" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 35.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn30">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref30" name="_edn30" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 33.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn31">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref31" name="_edn31" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 166–68.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn32">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref32" name="_edn32" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[32]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Anthony Holden, <i>William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the</i>
Genius (Boston, New York, and London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), 146,
153. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn33">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref33" name="_edn33" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[33]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Charles Edelman, “Which Is the
Jew that Shakespeare Knew?: Shylock on the Elizabethan Stage,” <i>Shakespeare Survey</i> 52, ed. Stanley Wells
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 103–04, excerpted in The Norton
Critical Edition of <i>Merchant of Venice</i>,
ed. Leah S. Marcus, 243–45.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn34">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref34" name="_edn34" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[34]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Ian Mortimer, <i>The Time Traveller’s Guide
to Elizabethan England</i> (New York: Viking, 2012), 212.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn35">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref35" name="_edn35" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[35]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Jones, 166.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn36">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref36" name="_edn36" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[36]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Craig Muldrew, <i>The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of
Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern</i> England (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1998), 131–32.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn37">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref37" name="_edn37" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[37]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Adrian Morley, <i>The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I</i>
(Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), 14.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn38">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref38" name="_edn38" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[38]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Philip Benedict, “The
Historiography of Continental Calvinism,” <i>Protestant
Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts</i> ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth
(Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, Cambridge University Press,
1993), 317.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn39">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref39" name="_edn39" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[39]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Marc Shell, “The Wether and the
Ewe: Verbal Usury in <i>The Merchant of
Venice</i> in <i>Money, Language, and Thought</i>
(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1993), 79.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn40">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref40" name="_edn40" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[40]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> <i>A Record of Ancient Histories Entitled in Latin Gesta Romanorum</i>,
trans. Richard Robinson (1571; rpt. London, 1595), “The 32nd History,” sigs.
02-05r., excerpted in The Norton Critical Edition of <i>Merchant of Venice</i>, ed. Leah S. Marcus (New York: W. W. Norton,
2006), 83–84.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn41">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref41" name="_edn41" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[41]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Muldrew, 109–110.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn42">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref42" name="_edn42" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[42]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Muldrew, 106.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn43">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref43" name="_edn43" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[43]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Weber, 9.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn44">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref44" name="_edn44" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[44]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Katharine Eisaman Maus, <i>Being and Having in Shakespeare</i> (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 61–62.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn45">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref45" name="_edn45" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[45]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 92.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn46">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref46" name="_edn46" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[46]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Joseph Pieper, <i>In Tune With the World: A Theory of</i> <i>Festivity</i> [Kosel-Verlag, 1963] trans.
Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999), 18–21.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn47">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref47" name="_edn47" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[47]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Pieper, 18.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn48">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref48" name="_edn48" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[48]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Jacob is extolled as a “man of
grace” by Shakespeare’s Puritan contemporary Thomas Adams in <i>Works of the Puritan Divines</i> ed. Richard
Baxter, cited in Weber, 188.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn49">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref49" name="_edn49" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[49]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Holden, 53–55.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn50">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref50" name="_edn50" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[50]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Sean Lawrence, <i>Forgiving the Gift</i> (Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press, 2012), 40–82.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn51">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref51" name="_edn51" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[51]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Karoline Szatek, “<i>The Merchant of Venice</i> and the Politics
of Commerce,” in ‘<i>The Merchant of
Venice’: New Critical Essays</i>,<i> </i>eds.
John W. Majon and Ellen Macleod Mahon<i> </i>(New
York and London: Routledge, 2002), 325–52.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn52">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref52" name="_edn52" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[52]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> John 6: 31; 1 Corinthians 10:3;
Revelation 2:17.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn53">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref53" name="_edn53" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[53]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, “Il
Pecorone,” excerpted in <i>The Merchant of
Venice</i> (Norton Critical Edition), 84–99.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn54">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref54" name="_edn54" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[54]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Milward, <i>The Medieval Dimension,</i> 74.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn55">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref55" name="_edn55" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[55]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Milward, <i>The Medieval Dimension</i>, 71–72.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn56">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref56" name="_edn56" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[56]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> E. M. W. Tillyard, <i>The Elizabethan World Picture</i>
(Cambridge: Macmillan, 1944 [New York: Vintage Books, 1959] 101.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn57">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref57" name="_edn57" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[57]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> R. H. Tawney, “Introduction” to
Thomas Wilson,<i> A Discourse Upon Usury</i>
(New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1925 [1572], 118.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn58">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref58" name="_edn58" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[58]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 278 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn59">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref59" name="_edn59" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[59]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney,<i> Religion</i>, 243.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn60">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref60" name="_edn60" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[60]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 262.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn61">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref61" name="_edn61" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[61]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Aquinas, <i>ST</i>, II-II, q. 77, a. 4.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn62">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref62" name="_edn62" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[62]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> R. H. Tawney, “Introduction” to
Thomas Wilson,<i> A Discourse Upon Usury</i>,
116–19.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn63">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref63" name="_edn63" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[63]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Tawney, <i>Religion</i>, 110.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn64">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref64" name="_edn64" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[64]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> John T. Noonan, Jr., <i>The Scholastic Analysis of Usury</i>
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 220.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn65">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref65" name="_edn65" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[65]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Norman Jones, <i>God and the Moneylenders: Usury and Law in
Early Modern England</i> (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell), 166–67.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn66">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref66" name="_edn66" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[66]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> “Seventh Commandment,” <i>The Catechism of the Council of Trent</i> trans.
John McHugh, OP and Charles Curran, OP (Fort Collins: Roman Catholic Books,
1923), 445–46.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn67">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref67" name="_edn67" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[67]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> William T. Cavanaugh, <i>Being Consumed: Economics and Christian
Desire</i> (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 95.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn68">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref68" name="_edn68" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[68]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Drakakis, 341.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn69">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref69" name="_edn69" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[69]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> John Russell Brown,
“Introduction,” <i>The Arden Merchant of
Venice</i> (London: Methuen, 1955),liii–lv. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn70">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref70" name="_edn70" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[70]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Thomas Aquinas, <i>ST</i> I–II, q. 111, a. 2<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn71">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref71" name="_edn71" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[71]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> <i>Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English
Translations,</i> trans. H. J. Shroeder (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1941), excerpted
in <i>Confessions and Catechisms of the
Reformation</i>, ed. Mark A. Noll (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991),
188.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn72">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/Sacramental%20Usury.docx#_ednref72" name="_edn72" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[72]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI,
“Homily” (World Youth Day, Cologne, Germany), August 21</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 200%;">,
</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">2005</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 200%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-91897981892773952682017-01-30T21:38:00.002-08:002017-01-30T21:39:41.575-08:00Shakespeare and Queen Catherine Parr<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Carol Curt Enos on Shakespeare and Queen Catherine Parr</span></div>
<a name='more'></a><div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Shakespeare and Queen Catherine Parr</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Carol Curt Enos</a></span></div>
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Shakespeare
and Queen Catherine Parr<o:p></o:p></div>
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Who
would suspect that the country bumpkin from Stratford on Avon would have any
connection with a queen of England? An
intriguing web of relationships involving the Neville, Arden, Webb, and Green
families reveals several connections between William Shakespeare’s family and
Catherine Parr, last queen of Henry VIII.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Catherine
Parr, born in 1512 or 1514 either at Kendal Castle, Kendal, Cumberland, or at
Blackfriars in London, represents the religious controversy initiated by Henry
VIII’s break with the Pope in 1534. She
was probably raised as Catholic by her mother, her father having died when
Catherine was five years old. She
ultimately became devotedly Protestant and wrote two books on religion, <em>Prayers
or Meditations</em> and <em>The Lamentation of a Sinner, </em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">published while she was queen</span>. </em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">She
was closely related to the Throckmortons of Coughton Court, a militant Catholic
family that engaged in nearly every plot against Queen Elizabeth and James
I. Catherine’s determined Protestantism
after 1543 was at odds with the Throckmorton side of her family as well as with
the staunchly Catholic Ardens of Park Hall.<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<em><span style="font-style: normal;"> Catherine’s second husband, Sir John
Neville, 3<sup>rd</sup> Lord Latimer, was also a supporter of the Catholic
Church. He had opposed the annulment of
Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and in 1536 joined, perhaps
reluctantly, in ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace,’ a Yorkshire uprising against Henry’s
break with the Pope as well as social issues.
Lord Neville and Catherine then spent the next seven years, until his
death, in disgrace and in some danger.
At one point, Catherine and Sir John’s children of a prior marriage were
held hostage and their house was ransacked.
Physical and emotional strain over the penalties Catholics endured may have turned her from the Catholic faith
in which she was raised in favor of the safety of the new state religion.<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<em><span style="font-style: normal;"> After her marriage to Henry VIII in
1543, Catherine became embroiled in the controversy concerning the right of
everyone to read and study the Bible.
She favored this right, a Protestant position, but conservatives in the
Church of England, still essentially Catholic in Sacraments and ritual, warned
that citizens would grow to think for themselves, lessening Henry VIII’s control. She was accused of heresy, and Henry went so
far as to sign the warrant for her arrest, but she managed to convince him that
she was only trying to divert him from his physical pain with her theological
arguments.<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<em><span style="font-style: normal;"> To some of her very Catholic relatives,
she surely was a heretic according to their
concept of the ‘true’ Catholic church as opposed to Henry’s new reformed
church. These family members (young
William Shakespeare among them?) must have viewed her with a mixture of pride
that their family could boast of their Queen of England, and shame at her
turning away from the Catholic faith. </span></em><o:p></o:p></div>
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PARR’S CONNECTION to MARY ARDEN
through the NEVILLES<o:p></o:p></div>
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Catherine
Parr ruled as Queen of England and Ireland from 1543 to 1547. Her first husband, Sir Edward Burgh, died in
1533. In 1534, she married, as his third
wife, Sir John Neville 3<sup>rd</sup> Baron Latimer (1493–1543), her father’s
second cousin. He was a descendant of
Ralph, 1st Earl of Westmorland, by his second wife Joan Beaufort, the daughter
of John of Gaunt. The Neville connection
then leads to Shakespeare’s family, the Ardens of Park Hall. Sir John had a
brother, William Neville (1497-?), who married Elizabeth Greville
(1501-1600). This William and Elizabeth
Neville were the parents of Richard Neville (1523-1590) who married Barbara
Arden (1535-?), daughter of William Arden (1509-1545) and Elizabeth
Conway. Barbara Arden was the sister of
Edward Arden (1542-1583) of Park Hall who was executed as a participant in the
Somerville Plot instigated by his son-in-law, John Somerville. Barbara Arden and Richard Neville were the
parents of Edmund Neville (1555-1629) who claimed the hereditary title of Earl
of Westmorland. Sir John Neville and
Catherine Parr, as aunt and uncle of Richard Neville, probably knew Richard and
his future wife, Barbara Arden. Mary
Arden (1537-1608) was second cousin to Barbara Arden and Edward Arden, so it is
probable that Shakespeare’s mother was acquainted with all of these relatives: Barbara and Edward Arden, John Neville and Catherine
Parr, and their nephew, Edmund Neville, purported Earl of Westmorland. These relationships are outlined in the
following table:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>ARDEN NEVILLE</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Walter
Arden (1437-1502)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">John Arden (1467-1526)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas Arden (? 1563) William
Neville</span> (<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">1497-1545)
= Elizabeth | | Greville. William, brother<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">William Arden (d 1545) = Elizabeth Conway</span> | <span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">of John Neville </span><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">1493-1543, </span><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> | | <b><span style="color: red;">John Neville = Catherine</span></b> | | <b><span style="color: red;">Parr</span></b> in
1533.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: red; font-size: 10.0pt;">Barbara Arden (b 1535) </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">= Richard
Neville (1523-1590)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b> </b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Edmund Neville (1555-1629)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: red;"> </span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-size: 10.0pt;">Edward Arden</span></b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> (1533-1583)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">John Arden (1496-1526)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Thomas 1469-1546)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Robert Arden
(abt 1497-1556)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <b><span style="color: red;">Mary Arden
Shakespeare</span></b> (1537-1608)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> William
Shakespeare (1564-1616)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> William Arden (about 1479)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Robert Arden about (1475-?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> (Numerous
sources. Most can be found in Tudor.com)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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If
John Neville and his wife, Catherine Parr visited John’s nephew, Richard
Neville, Richard would have been between 10 years of age when they married and
around 20 when John Neville’s died in 1543.
Barbara Arden, Mary Arden’s cousin, was around 8 years old at this time,
and Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s mother, would have been around 6 years old. Even if they had not encountered each other
personally, the families would have been aware of the relationships, and Mary
Arden Shakespeare’s family were probably proud of their royal relative although
they differed on religion. <o:p></o:p></div>
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THE PARR CONNECTION through GREENE
and THROCKMORTON FAMILIES<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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As
noted, Shakespeare’s mother was distantly related to the very Catholic
Throckmortons of Coughton Court via Edward Arden of Park Hall’s marriage to
Mary Throckmorton (1543-1643). Catherine
Parr was a descendant of the Throckmortons through her mother, Maud (also known
as Matilda) Green Parr (1492-1531), granddaughter of Sir Thomas Green and
Matilda Throckmorton (1425- 1496).
Matilda was the sister of Thomas Throckmorton (1412-1472) of Coughton
Court, who was both the great, great grandfather of Mary Throckmorton, Edward
Arden’s wife, and the great uncle of Catherine Parr. Catherine Parr’s great grandmother, Maude
Throckmorton, was the daughter of Sir John Throckmorton and Eleanor de la
Spine, Heiress of Coughton. The
relationship among these families is very difficult to untangle and probably
more difficult to decipher from the evidence presented here. However, the families would probably have
understood and recognized the relationships.
The diagram below may add clarity.
These families clung to their Catholic faith and had to confront the
political/religious conflict that began in Queen Catherine Parr’s day. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Green/Throckmorton/Parr<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>[The first listing
below: Thomas Green 1369 to Matilda
Throckmorton is questionable. It cannot
be verified in other sources. This came
from <a href="https://www.geni.com/people/Sir-Thomas-Green-Kt/6000000002916812069">https://www.geni.com/people/Sir-Thomas-Green-Kt/6000000002916812069</a>.]<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Thomas Green </i><i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(1369-1417)</span> = 1) Ela Malorie 2) Matilda Throckmorton </i><i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(est 1339-1399) 3) </span>Mary Talbot
(1383-1433)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sir Thomas
Green (1400-1462) = 1) Lucy Zouche, 2) Philippa Ferrers, 3) Marina Bellers
(c 1414-1489)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(Sir Thomas was bro of
Margaret Arderne (d 1412) = Richard Arderne (1382-1412)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Sir
Thomas Green (1421-1462) = Maud <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(also known as Matilda)</span> Throckmorton (1425-1496)
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(Sister of Tho
Throckmorton 1412-1472)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sir
Thomas Green, Jr (1461-1506) = Tira Heaton and Lady Joan Fogge<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maude
Green <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(1495-1531</span>)
= Sir Thomas Parr (1484-1517)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(Lady in waiting on Queen Katherine
of Aragon)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Catherine
Parr (1512-1548)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Throckmorton<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sir Thomas
Throckmorton (1412-1472) = Margaret Olney<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(Bro of Maud Greene, (see
above) wife of Sir Tho Green and great uncle of Catherine Parr.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Robert
Throckmorton <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(1451-
1518) =</span> Elizabeth Baynan and Catherine Marrow<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
George
Throckmorton (1489- 1552) = Katherine Vaux <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Robert
Throckmorton (1513-1581)= Muriel Berkley<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mary
Throckmorton (1531-1559) = Edward Arden<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
QUEEN CATHERINE’S CONNECTION to the
WEBBS, ARDENS, AND SHAKESPEARES<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Catherine Parr had </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">a “trusty and well beloved servant, Sir Henry Alexander
Webbe (1510-1544), gentleman, usher of her privy chamber" whose lands had been
confiscated by Henry VIII during the suppression of the monasteries . A letter Catherine Parr sent her council asking
them to grant her friend, Sir Henry Webb, the lands and estates still exists. He was also knighted by Queen Catherine and
granted a Coat of Arms (Parr. <i>Complete Works and Correspondence, </i>p 57).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Sir Henry was born 11 May 1510, the son of Sir John
Alexander Webb, Jr. (1484-1516) and Margaret Arden Webb. His sister Abigail married Richard
Shakespeare, and they were the parents of John Shakespeare, father of William
Shakespeare. Sir Henry married cousins,
Margaret Arden and Grace Arden. He and
Margaret were the parents of Sir Alexander Webb, Jr., Kt (1559-1629), who
immigrated to America. He then married
the cousin of his wife Margaret, Grace Webb, and they were the parents of Agnes
O’Dell Hill Webb who married Robert Arden of Wilmcote (1506-1556), William
Shakespeare’s grandfather. Agnes became
stepmother (although they were cousins) to Shakespeare’s mother after Robert
Arden’s first wife, Mary Webb (1512-1550) died.
Little information is available about the Webb family, but because of
their intricate intermarriage with the Catholic Ardens and Shakespeares, it is
probably that they, too, were Catholic.
The Arden, Webbe, and Shakespeare families were very inbred as can be
seen in the diagram of WEBBE/ARDEN/SHAKESPEARE families below.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhvpkAc-NBwEN95Dl_emr78Zc-xZO4OV8-uBa_tnESDuiGcVKIlHmTEwH-aJzvwJhqXReYbi_nduzAByAwKPtZL7O4LJwpVbDASosfWoVm9dbi6SeFB8K3vuCNnVgq6zNZnUddjyF36nU/s1600/ArdenWebbShake.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="445" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhvpkAc-NBwEN95Dl_emr78Zc-xZO4OV8-uBa_tnESDuiGcVKIlHmTEwH-aJzvwJhqXReYbi_nduzAByAwKPtZL7O4LJwpVbDASosfWoVm9dbi6SeFB8K3vuCNnVgq6zNZnUddjyF36nU/s640/ArdenWebbShake.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Henry Alexander Webbe even has
a tenuous link with Shakespeare’s life in London: through theater associate James Burbage and
with Shakespeare’s patron and relative, Henry Wriothesley</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.
</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In
1922, Charlotte Stopes identified a link between Henry Wriothesley, Burbage and
the Theatre, Burbage’s first theatre, built in 1576, and Susan Webbe, daughter
of Sir Henry Alexander Webbe: </span><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“</span></b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A close friend of Henry Wriothesley’s, the Earl of Rutland, </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">[Roger Manners, 5<sup>th</sup>
Earl of Rutland (1576-1612)] had a town house on part of the old Holywell Priory
Estates, of which the other part, granted to Henry Webbe, was eventually sold
to Gyles Alleyn and let to James Burbage, who was then in trouble with his
landlord (Stopes, <i>The Third Earl of
Southampton, </i>93). Stopes identified
Susan’s father, Sir Henry Alexander Webbe (1510-154), as “a servant of Queen
Katharine” (Stopes, <i>The Third Earl . . </i>.<i> </i>486). After Sir Henry died in 1544, his daughter,
Susan, and her husband George Peckham, inherited his property in the old
Holywell Priory. George Peckham was a
nephew of Thomas Wriothesley (1505- 1550) who opposed Queen Catherine Parr’s
protestant theology. Thomas was the
grandfather of Henry Wriothesley, 3<sup>rd</sup> Earl of Southampton
(1573-1624), friend and patron of Shakespeare.
The year after Sir Henry died, his daughter Susan and her husband George
Peckham mortgaged the property to Christopher Alleyn and Alleyn’s son
Giles. Susan died in childbirth in
December 1555, and after her death, George </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">became a leader in an enterprise to allow Catholics to immigrate to the New
World to avoid penalties imposed by the Elizabethan government. In 1574 he joined with Sir Humphrey </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gilbert in exploring and
planning the settlement of Newfoundland.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Eventually, he was imprisoned in England as a recusant and died in
1608.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">His attempts to relieve the
repression of Catholics in England suggest that he, too, was a Catholic.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The perilous voyages of these explorers were
precursors of the 1609 voyage that ran aground in the Bermudas and is thought
to figure in Shakespeare’s </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Tempest.</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It
seems more than coincidental that</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">a member of Shakespeare’s Arden/Webbe family participated
in the transfer of property for the building of the Theater.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">
</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Recall
that Sir Henry’s wife was Grace Arden.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">To take
this a step further, because of Sir Henry Webbe’s close work association with
Catherine Parr, it is probable that his wife, Grace Arden, and some of Grace’s
family would have been acquainted with the future queen. These Ardens, Sir Henry Alexander Webbe, and
James Burbage were all citizens of Stratford on Avon who were well acquainted
with each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Shakespeare’s
seeming knowledge of the lifestyle of the upper class is often questioned and
regarded as incongruous with his somewhat lowly background in Stratford. The families named here as connections to
Shakespeare’s family were anything but lowly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> A very
brief summary of the <b>Neville family’s</b>
lengthy history comes from Wikipedia: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“The <b>House of Neville</b> (also the <i>House
of Nevill</i>) is a noble house of early medieval origin, which was a leading
force in English politics in the later Middle Ages. The family became one of
the two major powers in northern England along with the House of Percy and
played a central role in the Wars of the Roses.” </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Meg MeGath delineated
the <b>Green family’s</b> many ties to past
nobility: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> “</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Too
name a few of the ancestors of Lord Green:”</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, John I
of England <o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">Henry II of England <o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">Henry I <o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">Blanche de Brienne, granddaughter of
Berenguela of Leon, Empress of Constantinople, herself the daughter of
Alfonso IX, King of Leon and Berengaria of Castile [daughter of Eleanor of
England, Queen consort of Castile].<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">Alfred ‘the great’, King of Wessex.<sup>[3] </sup><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">David I of Scotland via Dervorguilla,
Lady of Galloway, granddaughter of David of Scotland<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">Llewelyn, Prince of Wales.<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: list .5in;">Louis VI <o:p></o:p></li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> (Adapted
from Tudorqueen6. <i>The Life and Family of Queen Katherine Parr<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i><a href="https://tudorqueen6.com/2012/09/24/family-of-queen-%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09katherine-parr-"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">https://tudorqueen6.com/2012/09/24/family-of-queen-katherine-parr-</span></a><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Additionally,
the<b> Green family </b>history from the
1200’s can be found in <i>The Green Family
Genealogy </i>by Lois Case. It names,
among many other notables, Sir Henry de Greene (c 1310-1369), Lord Chief
Justice of England and Lord Chancellor of England and largest landholder in
England. Case refers to Queen Catherine
Parr as a member of the Green family: “</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It might be interesting to add here that Henry VII's son,
Henry VIII, married as his sixth and last wife Lady Catherine of Parr, a
daughter of the House of Greene, and she was the only one of Henry's wives to
survive the ordeal!” </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The <b>Throckmorton family</b> traced its history
to the 12<sup>th</sup> century and had two baronetcies in two branches of the
family. The family lineage can be traced
in tudorplace.com. An example of many
members of note is Robert Throckmorton of Coughton, born 1451, who was Privy Councilor
to Henry VII. Another was Sir Nicholas
Throckmorton, born 1515, sewer in the household of Queen Catherine Parr, his
cousin. After 1544, following the death
of Catherine, Sir Nicholas spent some years in the service of Henry VIII’s
illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond, and eventually served as Queen
Elizabeth’s ambassador to France from 1559-1562.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The Webbe </span></b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">family. Sir Henry Alexander Webbe, servant to Queen
Catherine Parr appears to be the most illustrious of the line of Webbes that
can be traced back to Henry Webb (1350-1397?).
However, all of those listed from Henry Webb to Abigail Webb share the
honor of being ancestors of William Shakespeare, for Abigail Webb, Sir Henry
Alexander Webb’s sister, married Richard Shakespeare, and they were the parents
of John Shakespeare, father of William (see table below). They were also related to William’s mother,
as detailed above.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Henry
Webb (1350-1397)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Geoffrey
Webb (1372-?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> John
Webb (1402?-1455?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> William
Webb (1425-1495?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> John Webb
(1450-?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> John Alexander Webb
(1484-?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Sir Henry Alexander Webb, I
(1510-1544)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> {Abigail Webb (1515-1595) </span><i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Sister of Sir Henry
</span></i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> John Shakespeare (1535-1601) = Mary Arden
(1537-1608) William
Shakespeare (1564-1616) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> (Adapted from </span><a href="http://fabpedigree.com/s041/f376196.htm">http://fabpedigree.com/s041/f376196.htm</a><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The following is an
additional attempt to explain these complicated relationships:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sir John Alexander Webb, Knt
(1484-1516) = 1) Margaret Arden (1488-1548) 2) Alice Brueton
(1450-1490)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mary Webb
(1512-1550) = Robert Arden (1506-1556) <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Also = Agnes O’Dell/Hill<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Abigail
Webb (1515-1595) = Richard Shakespeare (1512-1561)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John
Shakespeare (1537-1601) = Mary Arden (1537-1601) <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">D of Mary and Robert Arden
(1506-1556) Sister of Margaret Webb =
Sir Henry Alex Webb, I (1510-1544)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
William
Shakespeare<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sir Henry
Alexander Webb, I (1510-1544) = 1) Margaret Arden (c 1538-1608) <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">D of Robert
(1506) and Mary Arden (1412). Their
son: Alexander Webb, Jr (1559-1629)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> immigrated
to America. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span>Grace
Arden (1512- 1539) <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">D
of Thos Arden, sister of Robert Arden (1506- 1556). 1<sup>st</sup> cousin of her husband.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span>Agnes
O’Dell/Hill Webb = Robert Arden (1506) <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">His 2<sup>nd</sup> wife</span> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The Arden family</span></b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> is one
of only three families in England that can trace its lineage to before the time
of William the Conqueror (James Lees-Milne.
<i>Burke’s Peerage/Burke’s Landed
Gentry</i></span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">, volume 1, as cited in
Wikipedia, <i>Arden family</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">. The extensive biographical sketches of earls
and noteworthy members of the family can be found in <i>A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain </i>by
John Burke, pp 637-640.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">To
judge from the ties the country bumpkin’s parents had with old, powerful
families of the upper classes and with Queen Catherine Parr, it should come as
no surprise that William Shakespeare understood their demeanor and language
well enough to incorporate it convincingly in his plays. Shakespeare’s family surely was proud to be
acquainted with and related to royalty, although for her Catholic relatives,
Queen Catherine Parr must have epitomized the religious conflict that was to
plague the country until the </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Roman Catholic Relief
Act, passed by Parliament in 1829.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Works
Consulted or Cited<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Burke, John. <i>A
Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain </i>by John
(See Wikipedia) <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Case, Lois. <i>The Green Family Genealogy </i> January
20, 2015. Carl J. Case, Ph.D.,
ed, 16 Sunburst Lane, Allegany, NY
14706. ccase@sbu.edu<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<h2 style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Enos, Carol Curt</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">. “</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal;">WEBBE/ARDEN/SHAKESPEARE Families.”</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Shakespeare’s Cheshire and Lancashire Connections and His Tangled Family Web. </span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Parker, Colorado: <i> </i>Outskirts
Press, 2016.</span><o:p></o:p></h2>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Fab Pedigree. http://fabpedigree.com/s041/f376196.htm<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lees-Milne James <i>Burke’s Peerage/Burke’s Landed Gentry</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, volume 1. (See Wikipedia)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Parr, Catherine. <i>Complete
Works and Correspondence. </i>Janel
Mueller, ed. Chicago: UP, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> 2011. </span><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Stopes,
Charlotte Carmichael. <i>The Third Earl of Southampton. </i>Cambridge UP, 1922<i>.</i></span><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tudor.com</span><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Life and Family of Queen Katherine Parr</span></i><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://tudorqueen6.com/2012/09/24/family-of-queen-%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09katherine-parr-"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">https://tudorqueen6.com/2012/09/24/family-of-queen- katherine-parr-</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wikipedia, <i>Arden family. </i>Reference to article by James Lees-Milne
in the 18<sup>th</sup> edition of <i>Burke’s Peerage/Burke’s Landed Gentry, </i>volume
1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kevin/Downloads/%20%20Wikipedia%20%20%20%20%20https:/--tudorqueen6.com-2012-09-24-family-of-queen-katherine-parr-"> Wikipedia
https://tudorqueen6.com/2012/09/24/family-of-queen-katherine-parr-</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-34853743940004199812016-06-22T18:12:00.002-07:002016-06-23T20:56:09.924-07:00The Ineffectual Sacrifice of Julius Caesar<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Kevin O'Brien on secular vs. sacred sacrifice in <i>Julius Caesar</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Ineffectual Sacrifice of Julius Caesar</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Kevin O'Brien</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1iLcsvuDKNslSWgH6Rnc6hkcZCFl6RKe6BwxExWT8AAKufy8ebM0sUdK6U89jFQjNyDnfkC0t7EE5up5CSTMNNzxP3tPFqUJfLQzO7lsbCuCzQ0z4v9DHwDcsW6tR2MI2nwtZ9RJ178/s1600/93ca5938cff3192f3fa2e248a6deed6d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1iLcsvuDKNslSWgH6Rnc6hkcZCFl6RKe6BwxExWT8AAKufy8ebM0sUdK6U89jFQjNyDnfkC0t7EE5up5CSTMNNzxP3tPFqUJfLQzO7lsbCuCzQ0z4v9DHwDcsW6tR2MI2nwtZ9RJ178/s1600/93ca5938cff3192f3fa2e248a6deed6d.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am thrilled to be conducting acting workshops this summer for the cast of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Julius Caesar.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This great political tragedy of Shakespeare’s will be performed in September at the </span><a href="http://www.flinthillsshakespearefestival.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flint Hills Shakespeare Festival</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in St. Mary’s, Kansas. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-6892afa1-7acf-d7b2-9bdd-4699a50794c1" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In preparation, I recently listened to a tremendous audio performance of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Julius Caesar </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by the Arkangel Players, which featured a particularly well done funeral oration scene. This production is </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Julius-Caesar-The-Arkangel-Shakespeare/dp/B00KBAMVTW" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">available through Audible</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for ten bucks, and I highly recommend it. </span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-6892afa1-7ad8-0130-6908-ee7725a893e7"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here are a few things that strike me about this play. Some of what I say may unintentionally mimic the theory of mimicry or </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mimesis </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of Rene Girard, who saw in </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Julius Caesar </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a tale of imitation and scapegoating, expressed by an act of sacrificial murder that not only failed to purge the political problem in ancient Rome, but only made it worse. And while I think Shakespeare is indeed showing us the conspirators engaged in a deliberate act of human sacrifice that carries with it a kind of ritual import, he is also showing this against an implied background of Christian theology that Girard and many moderns miss or fail to emphasize properly. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare’s original audience would have known a meta-setting of this play that transcends the setting in ancient Rome that is explicit in the drama. They would have known the secular authority of Rome as occupiers of first century Israel, and the role of Caesar Augustus (Marc Antony) in establishing the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pax Romana, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">which began at about the time of the earthly life of Our Lord and his first disciples, and which served as a secular echo or foreshadowing of the far deeper Peace offered by the cross of Christ. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This alone ties the play to Jesus and His Passion, as does the entire problem at the center of the story. How are men to be free? How is ambition in its most dangerous form, the desire of man to be God, to be checked? Can a political solution - especially one of violent murder and conspiracy - solve a problem that is much more than merely political? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are told that Caesar is ambitious, filled with pride and on the verge of becoming a repressive tyrant. And, in fact, there is much evidence in the play to support this. Though Caesar says little, and is hardly the main actor in the tragedy named after him, what he does say and do is very indicative that, if anything, Cassius is understating the case when convincing Brutus of Caesar’s hubris. In fact, Caesar is so filled with himself that mere flattery - the obvious and shallow flattery of Decius Brutus - convinces him to come to the senate on the Ides of March, against all the obvious reasons not to. And just before the assassination, Caesar erupts in the fullness of his vainglory …</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CAESAR: I could be well moved, if I were as you:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I am constant as the northern star,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no fellow in the firmament.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are all fire and every one doth shine,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But there's but one in all doth hold his place:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So in the world; 'tis furnish'd well with men,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet in the number I do know but one</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That unassailable holds on his rank,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unshaked of motion: and that I am he,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let me a little show it, even in this;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And constant do remain to keep him so.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CINNA: O Caesar,--</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CAESAR: Hence! wilt thou lift up Olympus?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Caesar speaks of himself as a kind of god, indeed as the mountain Olympus itself, home of the gods. This is a self-regard that clearly needs to be checked - not only by Caesar’s political opponents, but by the universe itself - which is to say, by the Law of Drama, which in Shakespeare is Divine Providence mysteriously at work in what I would call the Consequential, the innate and significant connection of an act and its results. Only in a universe where the Consequential has significance is Tragedy possible. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in this play the significance of the Consequential, ironically, transcends the very actors who try to act for the sake of Rome. When Brutus suggests, above the body of the friend he has justed helped murder …</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stoop, Romans, stoop,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And, waving our red weapons o'er our heads,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let's all cry 'Peace, freedom and liberty!'</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… our only response can be, “Um … right.” Especially when Brutus’ brutal suggestion is followed immediately by the prophetic words of Cassius. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages hence</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shall this our lofty scene be acted over</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In states unborn and accents yet unknown!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ugliness of modern history, from Shakespeare’s day forward, has shown us the futility of bloodshed to bring “peace, freedom and liberty”. Both Cassius, the ancient Roman, and Shakespeare, his Renaissance author, speak prophecy here.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the spectacle - which proves unforgettable onstage - of men who are claiming to be agents of good raising blood-drenched arms to the heavens and proclaiming, in effect, that the Kingdom of God is among us, as their very “purpled hands do reek and smoke” (in Antony’s words - reeking and smoking of still warm blood and gore!) - this spectacle, we know, is a corresponding act of hubris that draws down a divine and inexorable retribution upon the conspirators as fatal as their own public slaughter of Caesar. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the conspirators learn that the cycle cannot end. The sacrifice of Caesar, even if it is performed as a kind of ritual to purge Rome of Caesar’s sin, is ineffectual. If one head of the Hydra is lopped off, dozens more have appeared in its place. In fact, it’s as if a man were to lop off the head of Hydra, and then find, in horror, that many more of her own horrible heads have begun to sprout, not on Hydra’s shoulders, but on his own! And both Brutus and Marc Antony prove to be wearing new-grown Hydra heads.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indeed, Brutus is an enigmatic figure in this play. Marc Antony brilliantly turns the fickle populace against him by pointing out the ignoble acts of this supposedly noble man - but Antony, at the play’s end, also delivers a eulogy over the dead Brutus, which sounds as heartfelt as his eulogy of Caesar. But how heartfelt was that? Marc Antony turns the populace against the injustice of the assassins, but does so in a way that (as he reveals in an aside) is manipulative and Machiavelian, praying elsewhere that Ate come straight from hell to “Cry ‘Havoc,” and "let slip the dogs of war.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, the audience in Shakespeare’s day would have known of Antony’s history, though </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antony and Cleopatra </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was not yet written when </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Julius Caesar </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was first performed. Marc Antony’s ambition is well known to Shakespeare’s audience, as is his eventual dallying in Egypt, besotted by Cleopatra. Antony ironically says of the conspirators, “So are they all, all honourable men,” and yet the greater irony is that the honor of Marc Antony is as tainted and self-serving as is the honor of Brutus and Cassius. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brutus, indeed, is a kind of Pontius Pilate, thinking he can wash his hands of his crime, even as dips his arms in it up to his elbows. Brutus strikes me (as does Pilate, another noble Roman and “honorable man”) as an urbane intellectual, a man of great sophistication and sensibility, well trained and convinced of his own right-mindedness, highly civilzied, but prone to making appallingly bad decisions (as Brutus does throughout the play, and as Pilate did in a moment that will be forever infamous); Brutus is the kind of man who is sophisticated enough to ask, “What is truth?”, but who is too busy congratulating himself on his own sophistication to see the God who is Truth when He is standing right before him. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The great background of this play, and the meta-drama that reaches beyond the drama, is that only one Sacrifice brings freedom. The blood of Caesar is of no avail, for the death of Caesar is only the first terror in a reign of terror, the first chaotic moment in the “havoc” of confusion and petty bickering that follows. Another Sacrifice was needed, a Divine Sacrifice, for we are all Brutus, we are all Pilate, we are all self-congratulating Caesars who think in our constancy and good intentions that we can do no wrong, and that the very sign of our sins, our bloodied forearms, is a sign that frees us. But there is only one sign that frees us, and it is a sign that Crosses our merely human intentions.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For, as G. K. Chesterton wrote …</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is essential to recognise that the Roman Empire was recognised as the highest </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">achievement of the human race; and also as the broadest. A dreadful secret seemed to be written as in obscure hieroglyphics across those mighty works of marble and stone, those colossal amphitheatres and aqueducts. Man could do no more.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… There was nothing left that could conquer Rome; but there was also nothing left that could improve it. It was the strongest thing that was growing weak. It was the best thing that was going to the bad. … The peoples had pooled their resources and still there was not enough. The empires had gone into partnership and they were still bankrupt. No philosopher who was really philosophical could think anything except that, in that central sea, the wave of the world had risen to its highest, seeming to touch the stars. But the wave was already stooping; for it was only the wave of the world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The wave of the world is incarnadine. The one sea is red, red with blood, the blood of men who murder men. And only the blood of God can cleanse it.</span></div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-75308261511664185142016-06-06T15:50:00.000-07:002016-06-07T14:18:15.800-07:00Antigonus and the Bear: A Cautionary Reflection on the Power of Prayer<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Joanna Michal Hoyt bears down on <i>The Winter's Tale</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Antigonus and the Bear: A Cautionary Reflection on the Power of Prayer</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Joanna Michael Hoyt</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ask and it shall be given to you.—</span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus</span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Matthew 7:7</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.—Flannery O’Connor, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Violent Bear It Away</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exit, pursued by a bear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.—Shakespeare, stage direction from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Winter’s Tale</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Pray. It Works.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The message beams from T-shirts, bumper stickers and billboards. Presumably those who pass this promise on see it as an unequivocal recommendation. What about the frightening consequences of the promise that ‘to him who asks it shall be given?’ Leave aside for the moment the fear that God may be listening to Those Obnoxious People Who Ask For The Wrong Things. What if God hears our prayers? What about the gap between the world we pray for, the kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven, and the world we live in and are too often conformed to and comfortable in? What would happen to us if that gap closed? Would we be glad to see our prayers answered? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare seems to have been vividly aware of the gap between our praying and our living. He dramatizes the gap itself in plays including </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hamlet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Measure for Measure</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and he explores the possible consequences in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Winter’s Tale</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, ending in the direction quoted above.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Words Without Thoughts: Prayer and the Divided Mind</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, the fratricide and usurper, trying to talk himself into—or out of—praying, says,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“…O, what form of prayer</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder?” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That cannot be, since still I am possessed</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of those effects for which I did the murder, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My crown, my own ambition, and the Queen.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">May one be pardoned, and retain th’offence?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He seems to know he can’t, but he is definitely not planning to give up crown, ambition or Queen, and he tries kneeling and praying anyway. This doesn’t seem to help his soul—he says afterward, “Words without thoughts never to heaven go,” and he goes on to plot further murders. It does save his life temporarily, since Hamlet, who had just nerved himself for revenge, sees him praying, decides he wants him damned as well as dead, and lets him be. But this reprieve, given the ill intentions on both sides, only widens the scope of the tragedy so that more lives are destroyed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Claudius is one of Shakespeare’s more unmitigated villains, and we may hope that he’s not much like us. But Shakespeare also knew that plenty of more ordinary people find their prayers hobbled by the offences they wish to retain. Early in his dark comedy </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Measure for Measure</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a group of loose-living gentlemen are discussing politics when one exclaims, “Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s!” His friend Lucio laughingly compares him to the sanctimonious pirate who went to sea with the Ten Commandments, except that he scraped out “Thou shalt not steal.” To which the first speaker replies: “Why, ‘twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions; they put forth to steal. There’s not a soldier of us all that during the thanksgiving before meat do relish the petition well that prays for peace.” They argue and laugh about prayer for a little while, all maintaining that they take part in it regularly and praising it (“Grace is grace, despite of all controversy,” Lucio tells another friend, “as for example thou thyself art a wicked villain despite of all grace…”)and then shift to joking, a bit uneasily, about each other’s venereal diseases.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This, perhaps, strikes a little closer to home. We are deeply enmeshed in an economic and political system undergirded by violence and by economic exploitation which seems closely akin to stealing. We live in a culture of self-promotion which doesn’t tend to encourage honesty or humility. There’s a large gap between our society and the Kingdom of God which we ask to come on Earth as it is in heaven. Yet many of us live rather comfortably in our niches in this system and continue to carry out its functions. How do our lives in this system change our prayers? How do our prayers change our lives in this system? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale is not light-minded like the gentlemen in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Measure for Measure</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> nor wicked like Claudius. He’s a kind man from first to last, his prayers are sincere, and it appears that his life falls out of harmony with them, not through greed, but through a simple failure of nerve, or possibly a misguided sense of duty. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Winter’s Tale</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is not one of Shakespeare’s better-known plays, I’ll summarize it here, with an emphasis on Antigonus’ part. King Leontes of Sicilia falls into insane jealousy. He believes that his wife and queen Hermione is having an affair with his best friend, and that the child she carries is a bastard. When Leontes arrests Hermione on charges of adultery and treason everyone else in the court knows the king is wrong, and they try to tell him so. Antigonus, one of his lords, tries to gently coax him out of his misapprehensions, first with humor and then with plain warning, but he backs off when Leontes won’t listen. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antigonus’ beloved and formidable wife Paulina takes a firmer stand. She talks her way into the prison, comforts Hermione, and takes Hermione’s newborn daughter Perdita to show the King. When Leontes doesn’t receive the child kindly Paulina calls him mad, treacherous and tyrannical, and when Leontes threatens to have Paulina burnt she snaps back, “I care not. It is a heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in’t…” Leontes, trying to convince himself and everyone else that he isn’t a tyrant, doesn’t act on his threat but has her forcibly put out of his presence. Then he turns in fury on Antigonus, blaming him for Paulina’s entry and demanding that he kill the child she has had to leave behind. When Antigonus protests Leontes asks him what he will adventure to save the brat’s life. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antigonus answers, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">…At least thus much; </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ll pawn the little blood which I have left</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To save the innocent; anything possible.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leontes then commands him to swear on the royal sword that he will do the King’s bidding; receiving the promise, he tells Antigonus “on [his] soul’s peril and [his] body’s torture”—and the death of his wife— to take the child out of Sicilia and abandon it in a deserted place without telling anyone where to find it. Antigonus is dismayed, but he swears again to obey. He adds, to the King, “Sir, be prosperous in more than this deed does require,” and to the child, “and blessing against this cruelty fight on thy side.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His prayer for the child is heartfelt, but he doesn’t fight on the child’s side himself. Perhaps he fears for Paulina, perhaps for his own life. Perhaps he believes that his soul will be in peril if he breaks his oath to the King; the play being set in pagan times, he presumably has not been warned that whoever tries to save his life (or his soul; the words are the same in Greek), will lose it, though the Christian audience may remember this. Whatever his reasons, Antigonus obeys the King’s order to the letter—indeed, goes somewhat beyond his orders by leaving the child in a place reported to be full of dangerous wild animals in the midst of a terrible storm. The sailors believe that the gods have sent the storm in anger at the child’s abandonment; hearing this, Antigonus replies “Their sacred wills be done.” The Christian reader may hear echoes that Antigonus could not: the prayer for God’s will to be done may become familiar to us by daily usage, but it’s also what Jesus prayed, in terrible earnest, on the night before he died. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nor can Antigonus know that the King would gladly release him from his oath. After Antigonus’ ship sets sail the Queen is brought to trial, Apollo’s oracle pronounces her innocent, the King declares he doesn’t believe the oracle, his only son and heir (whom, at his worst, Leontes has still known and loved as his) dies in fear for his mother’s life, and Hermione swoons with grief and is taken away, and then pronounced dead, by Paulina, who fiercely upbraids the King and defies him to do his worst. Instead Leontes announces his intention of spending the rest of his life in repentance, guided by Paulina. But it’s too late to send a countermanding order to Antigonus.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> On the wild coast Antigonus lingers to ask for Perdita the protection he has just failed to give her—“Blossom, speed thee well!”—and to grieve over her at length, until his measured lamentations break into panicked speech and his part ends abruptly with Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear.” We learn from later dialogue that the bear has caught and eaten Antigonus under the gaze of a sympathetic soul who feels sorry for Antigonus but doesn’t see his way to offering any practical help. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This looks like a particularly brutal form of poetic justice. But there’s more to it. The bear, following Antigonus, leaves Perdita behind to be found by a kind shepherd. She grows up in the shepherd’s house, loves and is loved by the son of King Polixenes, and eventually finds her way back to Sicilia, to be reconciled not only with her penitent father but also with her mother, who is mysteriously restored by Paulina after Leontes acknowledges his daughter. The final scene of restoration and reconciliation is one of the strangest and loveliest in Shakespeare’s strange and lovely works. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antigonus isn’t there to see the happy ending; at the time of his death the play is still unfolding as a tragedy, and his part in it is tragic enough. Nevertheless all his promises have been kept and all his prayers have been answered. Perdita has indeed been blessed and has sped well. Leontes has prospered better than his jealousy and implacability deserved. Antigonus has kept his bad vow to his King, and nevertheless the child has been saved at the sacrifice of Antigonus’ life, as he promised. It may be presumed that the will of the gods has been done.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That will could doubtless have been carried out in other ways. What would have happened if Antigonus had suited his actions to his heartfelt words and delivered the child into the shepherd’s care himself? Paulina openly defies the King’s commands and yet lives to raise her fatherless daughters and restore the King to his rightful mind and, finally, to his family. She freely risks her life for love and honesty, and she saves her life and others. But taken as a whole Shakespeare’s works do not promise that such courage is always rewarded. Cordelia risks her life for love and honesty and is killed. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We don’t get to find out what would have happened, in Shakespeare or in life, only what actually does happen. Antigonus constantly prays well and earnestly, He lives inconstantly, torn between generosity and fear. If he could see the whole story from the far side of death, would he be pleased to have been taken at his word? Would he see his sad ending and its service of the play’s happy ending as a kind of terrible mercy?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What about us?</span></div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-86529625948053916282016-06-02T15:13:00.000-07:002016-06-07T14:18:24.878-07:00Show the Heavens More Just<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Joanna Michal Hoyt examines the Domination System in <i>King Lear</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Show the Heavens More Just</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Joanna Michael Hoyt</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">I<b>ntroduction: The Image Of Authority</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some critics see </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">King Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as a defense of traditional views of religious and social order; they claim that Shakespeare wrote out of belief in the Great Chain of Being, the popular pagan and Christian conception of an order in which the obedience of subjects to their kings, liegemen to their lords, wives to their husbands, children to their parents, laity to clergy, women to men and the lower classes to the upper is of the same nature as obedience to God, and any breach of this order invites disaster. Others see Lear as a fundamentally nihilistic and antireligious play, exposing all our ideas of human and divine order as shams. Both explanations seem to me to leave out important aspects of the play.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I find in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lear </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a sharp critique of that version of faith which has been used, in Shakespeare’s day and in our own, to bolster the power claims of privileged groups. I also see a profound affirmation of the divine presence at work in the world, overturning or transcending its power structures. This strikes me as a profoundly (not exclusively) Christian vision, though it is not the uniformly prevailing message of any branch of the Church in Shakespeare’s time or in ours. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the course of this exploration I will borrow the terminology of Christians who have deeply explored the contradictory ways in which religion is understood and used. For that system of faith and order which reinforces the claims of power and privilege I will use theologian and activist Walter Wink’s term ‘the Domination System.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” This system, as Wink describes it, is marked by a strict sense of hierarchy in which some lives are seen as more valuable than others, and by the willingness, even eagerness, to enforce the humanly and divinely ordained authority by violence. For the alternative vision I will use the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s term, the Beloved Community.</span></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I. No Good Divinity: The Domination System in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and in Shakespeare’s time</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The destructive social and religious beliefs which undergird the Domination System in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">King Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> appear in concise and ugly form late in act 4, scene 5</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Goneril’s steward Oswald, riding in his lady’s service, encounters a blind and distraught old man being led by a poorly dressed young man. He recognizes the elder as the former Earl of Gloucester, recently blinded and dispossessed for treason, and says:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A proclaimed prize! Most happy!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That eyeless head of thine was first framed flesh</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To raise my fortunes. Thou old unhappy traitor, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Briefly thyself remember. The sword is out</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That must destroy thee.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the young man gets in his way he turns to him:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wherefore, bold peasant, durst thou support a published traitor?....Let go, slave, or thou diest.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This revolting bit of gloating is also a disturbingly sincere expression of faith, and of faithful service, in the Domination System. The suggestion of malign Providence is heightened by the fact that old Gloucester has just prayed the ‘ever-gentle gods’ to take his life themselves and never to let him be tempted to suicide again; Oswald does not hear this prayer but comes ‘pat like the catastrophe of the old comedy,’ just in time to appear to be an answer to prayer. While Oswald does not directly invoke the gods, he appeals to a sense of divine and human order which has been shared by characters who more openly profess religion. Let’s take a closer look at the elements of Oswald’s claim.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>First Framed Flesh To Raise My Fortunes</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That eyeless head of thine was first framed flesh to raise my fortunes...” This is clearly a theological statement, an assertion of the purpose for which the old man was created. Oswald is saying that the gods value his own life more highly than Gloucester’s, that Gloucester is rightly seen as an object to be used or disposed of to serve his own purposes; that Gloucester’s life has no value in itself. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lear’s early statements to Cordelia, made in an explicitly theological context, parallel this assertion. He calls the heavens and “all the operations of the orbs by whom we do exist and cease to be” to witness his disowning and banishing of the daughter who has refused to flatter him, and he tells her “Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Later, when Lear has been cast out by his older daughters and has discovered that he is neither all-powerful nor universally beloved, he calls on Jove’s thunderbolts to destroy the world and all mankind, since he is more important than them all and they have failed to please him. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both Oswald and Lear base their claims on their place in the Great Chain. The beings whom they treat as objects are below them on the chain, and they have failed to respond with unquestioning obedience to those above.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Death, Traitor!</b></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The accusation of treachery is made frequently by opposing characters in the play’s power struggles. The accusers conflate rebellion against human authorities with rebellion against the gods, and they believe that no punishment is too severe for traitors. Edgar, challenging his brother to a fight to the death, reinforces the link between the human and divine orders; he calls Edmund a traitor, false to his gods (a debatable point, as Edmund claims to serve only Nature, whom he understands differently than some of the other characters), his father and his brother (that charge is clearly true), and conspiring against the Duke of Albany (true, but it’s not clear at this point whether or not Edmund owes Albany allegiance.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lear calls the very loyal Kent a traitor and threatens him with death when Kent corrects Lear’s false assumptions. In Act 1, scene 1, Kent urges the king not to banish Cordelia and give over absolute rule to his other daughters and their husbands. He makes it very clear that he is motivated mainly by concern for the King’s safety. Lear calls Kent a miscreant—literally a wrong believer— who has committed the sacrilegious crime of trying to make Lear break his royal oaths. He also calls Kent a vassal, which he is, and a traitor, which he is not unless one admits Lear’s belief that vassals owe their lords complete and unquestioning obedience. He initially attempts to kill Kent for treason, and when his sons-in-law restrain him he banishes Kent from the kingdom. This is briefly echoed in act 3, scene 4, when Kent, now disguised as a poor servant, tries to explain to Lear that the naked madman on the heath is suffering from something other than filial ingratitude and Lear snaps back “Death, traitor!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Duke of Cornwall and his lady Regan, heirs to half Lear’s kingdom, believe themselves to have inherited Lear’s absolute power within their borders. It’s hard to judge the merits of this claim. Lear’s abdication is ambiguous; he tries to keep for himself the privileges of a king (‘the name and all th’ addition due…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) without the responsibilities (“cares of state…sway, revenue, execution…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) He immediately follows this abdication by banishing Kent, which might seem to be one of the powers he has just given up, and he makes his gift of power contingent upon his being treated with absolute deference and attended by a hundred knights. Cornwall and Regan set aside his conditions and his ambiguities and see themselves at the apex of the Domination System on earth. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Gloucester disobeys them by protecting Lear, first from the storm and then from assassination, and sending him to meet the invading French army, the Duke and Duchess are both surprised and outraged by this disobedience. They curse Gloucester for a traitor, both in his absence and in his presence, and punish his treason by blinding him, dispossessing him and turning him out to beg or starve. When Gloucester calls on his son Edmund for help, Regan answers, “Out, treacherous villain!...It was he that made the overture of thy treasons to us, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who is too good to pity thee.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> [emphasis mine]. We have seen in scenes 1.1 and 2.1 that Regan is capable of hypocrisy when she’s trying to get her own way, but Gloucester is now powerless and her victim and she has no motive for lying to him; very likely she believes that her claim is legitimate. When one of Cornwall’s servants tries to intervene and stop the blinding Regan and Cornwall are outraged at this breach of the obligations of servant to master; Regan spits “A peasant stand up thus!” Cornwall exclaims “My villein!”, and they kill him. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oswald, according to this theory, is a good servant. He is his lady Goneril’s faithful steward (the word has religious connotations), even when mocked and beaten by Lear and Kent for his obedience. When both Kent and Lear are driven into the outer darkness, Oswald likely sees Providence at work. So he sees Gloucester, who has tried to help them against the express command of his ‘great arch and patron’ Cornwall, as a traitor and lawful prey, and, like his masters, he is outraged by the peasant who interferes with his role as agent and beneficiary of Providence.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This dynamic would have been all too familiar to Shakespeare’s original audience from their own recent history. England had seen a great deal of bloody contention over the identity of the true sovereign and the true faith. Queen Elizabeth, and Queen Mary Tudor before her, were declared illegitimate by their father, and then relegitimated by their partisans so that they could rule. Both were quite willing to resort to torture and execution in suppressing religious and political dissent, which they saw as closely allied. But their religions were different. Mary’s England was no safe place for Anglicans, Elizabeth’s England was no safe place for Catholics, and neither was particularly hospitable to Puritans or Jews. Similar bloody religious and political struggles were convulsing the Continent. Lear’s remarks in 4.5 about the interchangeability of law officers and criminals are particularly relevant to religious and political crimes: change places, and handy-dandy, which is the traitor, which the patriot? Which is the heretic, which the defender of the true faith? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joseph Pearce</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and others have seen echoes of the martyrdom of Jesuits in Elizabeth’s England in Lear; Lilian Winstanley</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has seen echoes of the massacre of the French Huguenots. When Shakespeare’s plays were first produced the various members of his audience might each have remembered the martyrs of their own faith as they watched the sufferings of the late Lear, Gloucester and Cordelia, and might have remembered those who persecuted them as they watched the early Lear or the Cornwalls. Did any of them think of the martyrs on the other side, or the persecutors on their own? Clearly there were men and women of very different denominations who were willing to work steadily and risk painful death for the true faith as they saw it. But what of the people who promulgated and enforced the laws which made the martyrs? Did the lawgivers, the informers, the torturers and executioners see themselves as agents of Providence protecting God and the State? Did they find it easy to reconcile the Will of God with their own private profit? This must remain ‘something of a queasy question’ for all of us who profess a faith which has produced so many martyrs and murderers. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Superfluous Man…That Will Not See</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even in the absence of hostility, the Domination System makes life difficult for the less privileged. Those at the top are mindful chiefly of their own power and comfort; those in the middle are looking upward, mindful of their duty to their superiors; the lowborn and unfortunate too often are invisible. This directional blindness is clear in Gloucester and in Lear before their dispossession. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gloucester lacks the cruelty of the Cornwalls and the complete self-centeredness of the early Lear, but he is anything but attentive to those who have less power. As the play opens he says that he loves his illegitimate son Edmund as much as his heir Edgar, but he makes lewd jokes about the (apparently lowborn) woman on whom he has sired Edmund, and makes them in front of Edmund, apparently with no idea that he is causing pain. He says he has loved Edgar, “no father his son dearer,” but he doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to him; he doesn’t recognize Edgar’s handwriting, doesn’t know who his friends are, and on the basis of an unsubstantiated rumor convicts Edgar </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in absentia</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of attempted parricide and gives orders for him to be hunted down and killed. Gloucester is acutely aware of Lear, who is above him; he tries to stop Cornwall from provoking Lear, and when Lear is locked out in the storm Gloucester risks his own life to rescue him. In the course of this rescue he encounters what he takes for a mad beggar, naked, cold and in great distress. He fails to recognize the beggar as his cast-off son; he also fails to consider him as another person in need of shelter, or even to speak to him; he does say indignantly to Lear, “What, hath your Grace no better company?’—to which Edgar’s “The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman,” is a bitterly apt rejoinder. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shortly after Lear’s ambiguous abdication, when he is still trying to persuade his daughters to maintain his large retinue and make sure he gets what he wants when he wants it, he indignantly insists that “our meanest beggars are in small things superfluous,” and that without superfluities—such as his hundred knights and his daughters’ gorgeous apparel—“man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We know from Edgar’s testimony that among Lear’s subjects are many homeless beggars who lack food, clothing and shelter; the King, however, seems to have remained splendidly unaware of them. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This situation would also have been familiar to Shakespeare’s original audience, used to a system in which both princes of the state and princes of the church (of both the contending churches) indulged in great pomp and luxury while many in their kingdoms went hungry. Tom o’Bedlam was modeled on beggars of Shakespeare’s own time; some were pretending to suffer from madness, all were genuinely suffering from dire poverty.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>O Happy…</b></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oswald calls himself ‘most happy’, and the traitor whose death he intends ‘unhappy’. The adjectives had a richer meaning in Shakespeare’s time than they commonly have in ours. Happiness now usually denotes a subjective feeling of pleasure. In Shakespeare’s time ‘happy’ carried the double meaning ‘fortunate’ and ‘blessed.’ Oswald may not see any distinction between those two meanings. He isn’t the only one to be so confused. Lear, locked out in the storm, praises the elements for terrifying those who have committed sins, but argues that he ought to be preserved, as he is more sinned against than sinning. Even the Duke of Albany, the most thoughtful and scrupulous of Lear’s heirs, repeatedly praises the justice of the heavens when misfortune befalls his enemies. (We’ll look more closely at him later.) There is a very easy and perilous step from the hope that the heavens will reward virtue with success to the conviction that the successful must be blessed and the unfortunate accursed. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have been familiar with the idea that God’s Will was revealed in trial by combat, by then on the battlefield; an earlier time when single combat was considered likely to reveal the judgment of heaven had not been forgotten. But in the aftermath of a series of bloody civil wars Shakespeare’s more thoughtful contemporaries must have strongly questioned either the idea that victory was God-given or the nature of the God whose will appeared so changeable. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Plague of Custom</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Domination System as revealed in King Lear devalues the lives of the less privileged, exacts of unquestioning obedience from them, and insists that their suffering is deserved. The consolations of this religion allow its privileged adherents to neglect the needy, consolidate their own power and treat their enemies cruelly even as they claim divine sanction and political legitimacy. The early Lear disagrees with Cornwall, Regan and Oswald about who holds the ultimate authority, but not about how that authority should be exercised; being younger, less unbalanced and more uncertain of their new power than Lear, they are more sharply cruel in their exercise of authority, but this is a difference in degree not in kind. There are other characters in the play who do not accept the divine nature of the Domination System. This refusal leads to two very different responses.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Edmund, lacking a clear place in the hierarchy because of his illegitimacy, casts a cold eye on the hierarchy and its obligations. He is clearly aware of the hypocrisy which can pervade the Domination System; he berates those who consider themselves “villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion…and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting-on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” He makes no such evasion to himself, the audience or the gods. He does not bind himself to legal or divine obligations; he is his own providence, relying on his wit, courage and ruthlessness. He disposes of people who get in his way as coolly as though he himself sat at the top of the human chain—and near the end of the play it appears that this ruthlessness may indeed place him in the highest position, as King of all Britain. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His lover Goneril is less given to soliloquizing than Edmund, but she seems to have made a similar choice. Unlike her sister Regan, she does not call on the gods, impugn the morality of those who thwart her, or act the submissive wife. She is openly impatient with her husband’s attempts to weigh out the morality of his choices.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> She speaks the language of power and desire; she grasps at what she wants, eliminates human obstacles ruthlessly, and makes very little attempt to ‘daub it further.’ </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Edmund and Goneril’s cold honesty may come as a relief after Lear’s, Regan’s and Oswald’s misplaced righteous indignation and protestations of virtue, but there is little else to commend them. By the end Edmund has caused his brother to be disinherited and hunted for his life, his father to be dispossessed and blinded, the two women who love him to die of murderous jealousy, and Cordelia and Lear to die needlessly. Goneril has connived at the death of both her sisters and her husband. They wreak as much havoc as the devotees of the Domination System.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If this were all, then the nihilist reading of Lear would be convincing indeed. Fortunately, in Lear and in life, religion is not always synonymous with the Domination System, and rebellion against the Domination System is not always cruel or self-serving. There is another way of honoring the divine, another way of understanding authority and service. The second half of this essay will look more closely at the Beloved Community as it appears in Lear.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">II. Show The Heavens More Just: The Beloved Community in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lear</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the face of the destruction caused by the Domination System, the Beloved Community offers the possibility of compassion and regeneration. The choice between these systems is not so simple or obvious as the choice between different religious or political authorities. The same deities are invoked to sanction the Domination System and the Beloved Community. Both systems are active in each political faction in Lear, and sometimes both systems work in the life of a given character.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Several key factors distinguish the Domination System from the Beloved Community. The cardinal difference is that the Domination System treats some lives as more valuable than others, allowing those higher in the ranks to use and dispose of those below, while the Beloved Community affirms all lives as miracles, in the hands of heaven and not to be disposed of by any mortal. The other differences follow from this. The Domination System sanctions revenge on enemies, while the Beloved Community requires mercy toward them. Service to humans in the Domination System means unquestioning obedience; service to humans in the Beloved Community means the honest and loving attempt to act for the other’s good. The Domination System justifies inequalities by claiming that wealth, high position and good fortune are given by the gods to the deserving; the Beloved Community acknowledges the reality of injustice and requires the sharing of power and wealth. The Domination System equates service to the gods with service to the powerful; the Beloved Community equates service to the gods with service to those who are in need. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Thy Life’s A Miracle</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Act 4, scene 5, includes not only Oswald’s encapsulation of the values of the Domination System but also Edgar’s encapsulation of the values of the Beloved Community. As the scene opens Gloucester has judged himself as harshly as Oswald will judge him. He is blind and in pain, but his body distresses him less than his conscience. He fears that his son Edgar whom he unjustly condemned, and whom he no longer has the power to pardon, may be taken and tortured or killed by the people who have just blinded him. In his despair at this possibility he has spoken against the gods, claiming that they kill and torment men for their amusement; this, he believes, is sacrilege, and perhaps he fears that it will make the gods unwilling to hear his pleas for Edgar’s life and safety. He has also realized, too late, that he has lived in luxury while others went naked and hungry, and that he should have done something about this when the power and wealth of his earldom were still his. He no longer holds the power or position that kept his life from being ‘cheap as beast’s,” and he no longer believes that he deserved them when he had them. His life, then, seems worthless to him. He has decided to kill himself, with the help of the mad beggar who has agreed to lead him to a convenient cliff; he does not know that this beggar is in fact his son Edgar.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Edgar, however, sets a different value on his father’s life. He doesn’t try to reason Gloucester out of his despair. Reason does not seem to be Gloucester’s strong point, and in any case his miseries are too great to be transfigured and made bearable by anything less than an appeal to the transcendent. Edgar pretends to lead him to the cliff’s edge, and after he falls onto level ground returns to him, crying out in a changed voice “Thy life’s a miracle!” Gloucester at first is not disposed to see this miracle as a mercy, but Edgar persuades him that he was led to the cliff’s edge by a demon (basically true, though the demon was the despair in Gloucester’s mind and not the beggar at his elbow,) and that ‘the clearest gods’ have preserved him from that demon. He calls the ‘old unhappy traitor,” who has betrayed Edgar more unambiguously than he has betrayed his country, ‘happy father.” This is clearly not an allusion to the Earl’s subjective state of mind; Edgar is insisting, in spite of his misfortunes, that Gloucester is blessed. Gloucester believes him, and agrees that his life indeed is still required by and at the disposal of the gods, not his own to throw away. Soon afterward, as we have seen, Edgar also asserts at his own peril that Gloucester’s life is not at the disposal of the human authorities.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Pray You, Forgive</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both Edgar and Cordelia go beyond simple forgiveness, risking their lives to protect the parents who have rejected and endangered them for no cause. This may be filial piety at work; it may also be plain compassion. Cordelia speaks of love and her aged father’s right</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but dwells on the severity of the storm and his age and frailty, and adds “Mine enemy’s dog, though he had bit me, should have stood that night against my fire…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Edgar, when Gloucester reconciles himself to being alive and asks the identity of the peasant who has befriended him, names himself only as </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“a most poor man, made tame to fortune’s blows,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who by the art of known and feeling sorrows</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">am pregnant to good pity…”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This process works in Gloucester as well as his son. In his time of power, when he believes that Edgar has conspired against him, he orders revenge, leaving the gods out of it. Later, enraged by Cornwall and Regan’s treatment of Lear, afraid of what they are about to do to him for helping Lear and powerless to stop them, he threatens his tormentors with divine retribution, ‘the winged vengeance.” Then he learns that he has wrongly accused Edgar and put him at risk of the same merciless injustice to which he himself has been subjected. He does not curse the people who have just blinded him, or the son who betrayed him. Perhaps, knowing the evil he has done, he is no longer disposed to revenge the evils done by others. He prays for Edgar’s safety in the midst of his own anguish. Thereafter, through all his painful and dangerous pilgrimage, he calls on the gods often, but always in order to bless. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Known and feeling sorrows” at some points turn Lear toward pity and forgiveness, but in the chaos of his broken images of his gods and himself he is not able to hold onto it steadily. In his madness in scene 4.5 he pardons the imaginary subject who trembles before him, but that subject has not offended against him; later he maintains that ‘none does offend,” but soon after he is thinking again of killing his sons-in-law (one of whom is dead already, and the other of whom has done little to deserve such punishment). When he meets Cordelia again, however, he becomes acutely aware of his own need of forgiveness—and, like Gloucester, offers to die (‘If you have poison for me, I will drink it…’) When he receives Cordelia’s full pardon ‘the great rage’ dies in him.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even Edmund, at the very end, turns toward mercy. First he forgives the still-unknown man who has killed him; then he is moved to try to spare Cordelia and Lear. He no longer has time or breath to explain his reasons, so readers are left to their own surmises. But it is at the end of Edgar’s brief account of his care for their blinded father that Edmund says, “This speech of yours hath moved me, and shall perchance do good…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Edmund has seen the Domination System at work in Lear’s court, using a mask of piety to cover self-interest and cruelty. It may be that, until this time, he has not seen forgiveness at work. But now his brother has been as deeply wronged by their father as Edmund was, and has responded with compassion. Edmund sees that another way is possible, and with his last strength he turns toward it—too late to save anyone else, but in time to die fully human.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The vision of forgiveness shown in Lear is not what Walter Wink, or Dr. King, or I, would describe as fully Christian; Cordelia leads an army against her sisters, and Edgar kills his brother. Christians still argue about whether any circumstances justify destroying the divine miracle of a human life. However that may be, those characters in Lear who embody Shakespeare’s vision of the Beloved Community demonstrate that, when one’s enemy is at one’s mercy, one must have mercy on him. This rather minimal moral requirement was not widely practiced by the powerful men of Christendom in Shakespeare’s time, nor is it in our own.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>In The Way of Service</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Against Oswald, the ‘serviceable villain…duteous to the vices of [his] mistress,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” Shakespeare sets several characters who combine great loyalty with liberty of conscience.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cordelia is the first to love and disobey. As she tells her father, she loves him according to her bond and returns her duties as are right fit</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That fitness, in her view, does not include flattering, and does include speaking the truth, whatever her father may command. Kent makes the same claim, defying the King in order to defend him: ”To plainness honor’s bound when majesty falls to folly…See better, Lear!”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The audience recognizes this as loyalty. Lear does not, and he promptly severs the bonds between them, disowning Cordelia and banishing Kent on pain of death. But they will no more stop loving him at his command than they will blindly obey at his command. Both of them risk, and ultimately lose, their lives in his service.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cornwall’s nameless servant who intervenes to try to stop Gloucester being tortured makes a similar claim. He is not changing sides, disowning his master; he tells the Duke,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have served you ever since I was a child,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But never have I done you better service</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Than now to bid you hold. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is probably not a lie meant to mollify the Duke; a lifetime of serving Cornwall must have taught this man that anything but absolute obedience will be cruelly punished. Nevertheless he gives his life trying to save what is left of Gloucester’s sight, Cornwall’s character, and his own integrity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gloucester’s understanding of service changes over the course of the play. In the beginning he believes that the heavenly powers are urging men on to destruction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, he sees that the King is acting unjustly and unwisely in banishing Cordelia and Kent</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and he knows that Cornwall is high-handed and unreasonable</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; nevertheless he submits to them. He ventures a few mild suggestions to keep Lear and Cornwall from antagonizing one another; when these are ignored he subsides. His obedient resignation ends only when Lear and Cornwall fall out irrevocably, when he can no longer serve both his masters, when unquestioning obedience to the given order is no longer possible and he knows himself to have an important and irrevocable choice. Then, to his lasting credit, he chooses the master who is no longer in power but is in desperate need.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Distribution Should Undo Excess</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have seen that Lear, early in the play, insists that he needs his hundred retainers, and his daughters their gorgeous apparel, in order to be fully human— “Allow not nature more than nature needs, man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s”--and that he has given no thought to his many subjects who lack what nature needs. When he himself is cold, hungry and homeless his eyes are opened. He sees the misery of the Fool who has followed him into the storm, and for the first time in the play he shows pity for someone other than himself. This particular revelation leads quickly to a wider awareness of the miseries to which he has been blind:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That thou mayst shake the superflux to them</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">show the heavens more just…</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gloucester’s fall and awakening closely mirror Lear’s. When he is still Earl and sighted he turns away from the naked beggar on the heath in revulsion. Blind and dispossessed, he gives that same beggar the last valuable things he has—the jewels he carries, and the ‘ancient love’ of the old peasant who will clothe the naked man for Gloucester’s sake. Gloucester, speaking to the beggar, describes this as an act of restitution, not supererogatory charity:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That I am wretched</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Makes thee the happier. Heavens deal so still.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That slaves your ordinance, that will not see</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So distribution should undo excess,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And each man have enough…</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He does not realize, of course, that his gift is made to the son he has disinherited; but the reader knows, and may consider that Shakespeare is reminding us that Gloucester was always more nearly akin to the poor around him than he was willing to realize.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Take Physic, Pomp</b></span></div>
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<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those powerful characters who enter after suffering into the Beloved Community have their understanding of power changed as radically as their view of wealth. Lear, in the beginning, equates his power with the divine power, his will with the divine will. In the love-test he sets his daughters, and in banishing Cordelia and Kent, he shows his conviction that his subjects are there to obey him unquestioningly and the gods are there to hallow his authority and give force to his decrees. Goneril and Regan seem to confirm his beliefs with their fulsome protestations of devotion. When they become less lavish in affection after receiving their inheritance, they threaten their father’s image of the gods, the kingdom and himself. As his comfortable beliefs crack around him, he feels himself slipping into madness.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Early in his conflicts with his older daughters he retains his confidence that the gods will what he wills; he curses Goneril—and at some points carefully refrains from cursing her—with the apparent conviction that his curses would strike home. In his altercation with Regan he begins to question what the gods are and what they want: “if you do love old men, if your sweet sway permit obedience…if you yourselves are old…if it be you that sets these daughters’ hearts against me…</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” Homeless in the storm, he commands the heavens, pleads with them, rails at them, defies them—and finally, in miserable doubt, leaves the gods be and looks down to see the people around him. In this act of turning he comes to the speech, and the great recognition, quoted above. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a moment of insight on the edge of madness Lear has left off blaming the heavens for not upholding their obligations to him, and has begun to think of his responsibility for them and their justice. He has seen that this upward responsibility is one and the same thing as his downward responsibility to the poorest among his subjects. And he has seen this precisely at the time when he has nothing left to give, when he has shaken his superflux to his older daughters, who will not redistribute it the interest of heavenly justice. This realization, coming at the same time as his encounter with one of the ‘poor naked wretches’ he has just addressed, may be what drives him further into madness and despair.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After this his critique of the system he once headed sharpens. When he encounters blind Gloucester, the King who has prided himself on his authority says, “Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?...An the creature run from the cur, there thou mightst behold the great image of authority. A dog’s obeyed in office.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> He notes grimly that those powerful figures who punish the powerless for their crimes usually commit the same crimes themselves, while their wealth and position protect them from the consequences.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The man who banished his loving daughter and his faithful liegeman for contradicting him says, “To say ay and no to all I said ay and no to was no good </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">divinity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> [emphasis mine] He no longer describes what ‘good divinity’ might look like in the running of a kingdom; but after his healing his love, longing and care are turned entirely on Cordelia, the daughter whose loving challenge first overturned his well-ordered world.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Duke of Albany undergoes a similar transformation, in my view. He is less given to soliloquizing than some of the other characters, so we must infer his motives from a handful of choices and speeches. From the beginning he is the most honorable and scrupulous of the rulers we see in power. He acknowledges duties owed by those in high position to those below. He is aware that a man, however sorely provoked, may not lay violent hands on a woman</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, he speaks courteously to his servants, and even while hurrying to make the last preparations for battle he takes time to listen to the stranger in peasant’s garb who importunes his attention</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. He is willing to consider that apparent traitors may have good reasons for their choices—he pities Gloucester, and he intends to show mercy to Lear and Cordelia, though they have led a French army against England</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But as I see it he persistently tries to make himself believe that goodness and power go together, that wrongdoers will fall and the righteous will prosper, and he continues to try to preserve both his character and his power, with disastrous results.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before learning of the French invasion he has been preparing for war with Cornwall. When he learns of Cornwall’s death and Gloucester’s blinding he begins by affirming Providence at work: “This shows you are above, you justicers, that these our nether crimes so speedily can venge.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” Cornwall’s cruelty has been promptly and spectacularly punished, and Cornwall has also been gotten out of Albany’s way—heavens be praised! Hard on the heels of this consoling reflection comes a less comfortable thought. “But O, poor Gloucester! Lost he his other eye?” Told that he did, Albany reassures himself that, once the power of the kingdom is firmly in is hands, he will be able to avenge Gloucester, presumably on Edmund, who is emerging as the new likely leader of Cornwall’s half of the kingdom; he will still be able to do good and do very well for himself. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Albany goes into battle against the French army with some hesitation, acknowledging their just grievances but finding these outweighed by the fact that they are French and a threat to his state</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. His army defeats the invaders, leaving Albany free, as he fondly believes, to handle Lear and Cordelia “”as we shall find their merits and our safety may equally determine.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Edgar kills Edmund, thus avenging Gloucester and clearing the way for Albany to become King of all Britain by the grace of the gods. Fortified by these assurances, Albany dismisses his wife’s suicide as another example of Providence at work: “This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, touches us not with pity.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When he learns Edmund and Goneril have prepared a judgment of their own against Cordelia, Albany calls on the gods to defend her. Immediately thereafter she is brought before him, dead.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A harder man might have declared this divine justice, since Cordelia has invaded her mother country. Albany doesn’t take this way out. He does make one last desperate attempt to put all right and restore the hierarchy of the kingdom in accordance with the heavens. “We will resign, during the life of this old majesty, to him our absolute power…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This is unwise, given than the old majesty’s mind, body and heart are broken and he is no longer either capable of or interested in ruling; but it expresses Albany’s remorse, and leaves him free to inherit the kingdom with clean hands when the time comes. In the meantime Albany promises that Kent and Edgar will be restored to their earldoms, and that “All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue, and all foes the cup of their deservings…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> At this point in his speech he breaks off, seeing that the old majesty ignoring his disposition of the kingdom, being intent on his dead daughter. Then Lear also is dead, and all Britain has fallen into Albany’s lap. Albany abdicates, this time not temporarily but absolutely.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 9.6px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He doesn’t explain his decision, but in the context it seems likely to me that this is what he sees: There is nothing to stop him taking his place at the top of the human chain—nothing but his own conscience. He has not willed Lear’s or Cordelia’s deaths, but both have been caused by soldiers who were marshaled in his name to fight his battles. He can’t take the crown without feeling that he has won it through murder; he can’t believe that Lear’s and Cordelia’s deaths are the just designs of Providence. His image of the rule of the gods and the rule of kings had been broken. But for him, unlike Lear and Gloucester, the moment of breaking comes when he still has power. He uses that power to give the kingdom it to Edgar. We’ll look more closely at the profound significance of this gift late in the following section.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>III. The Promised End</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Enter King Lear with Queen Cordelia in his arms]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">….</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kent: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is this the promised end?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Edgar: Or image of that horror?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Albany:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fall and cease.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are we to make of the death of Cordelia? Kent and Albany, according to the interpretation of many commentators, are so horror-struck at first that they read her death as a sign of apocalypse; “the promised end’ may well be the end of the world, and “Fall and cease” may be addressed to the heavens and the earth. The most brave and loving character in the play is senselessly and prematurely dead, the great reconciliation between father and daughter has been terribly short-lived, and there is neither justice nor consolation. Small wonder that some commentators assert that the play ends in unrelieved horror and despair. But what has truly ended here, and what has begun? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Image Of That Horror</b></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of the characters of the play see Cordelia’s death as new and terrible thing, a break in the just order of the universe. But throughout the play we have seen very little evidence of a justly ordered universe in the sense that most of the characters imagine. We have seen the triumph of injustice, masked in many cases by the false piety of the Domination System. Cordelia’s death removes that mask. The world is not ending, but the comforting world-image of the Domination System is shattered for the witnesses of Cordelia’s death. After this they will not be able to persuade themselves that power and good fortune are the gifts of the gods or that weakness and suffering are merited and therefore do not need to be relieved. They have seen that the brave, the loving and the innocent suffer and die, crushed by the power struggles of the blind and the unscrupulous.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cordelia’s purity of heart and her murder present an image of the horror—and the healing—present in that greatest image of suffering innocence, divine love and human mercilessness, the Crucifixion. Jesus was killed in the name of God and the Empire—of the Domination Systems of his time—and the witnesses to his death also found their comforting images of earthly and heavenly order broken. Rene Girard describes this as the triumph of the Crucifixion. It does not end the process of scapegoating or the violence of the Powers that Be, but it reveals them in their full horror and injustice; they can no longer mask themselves with holiness</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those who have seen the image shatter know that, contrary to the Domination System’s claims, their love and their courage do not ensure their prosperity or security. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lear </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">makes it clear that virtue is not often rewarded in this life, and there is no guarantee of another life given in the play. (There are, however, some glimpses of a hope, which we will consider later.)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Worse, the witnesses know that their own evil and thoughtless actions have terrible consequences which heaven does not prevent. The responsibility for Cordelia’s death rests most heavily on Edmund and Goneril, who directly willed it, but it also touches Lear, whose selfish pride first tore his family and his kingdom apart, and Albany, who was willing to put the interest of his state before his awareness of just grievances. The responsibility for Jesus’s death rests on the Romans, dutifully suppressing all threats to the Empire, and on the Temple hierarchs intent on the security of their people (and their own ecclesiastical prestige), and on the followers who did not understand or trust him enough to stay with him when his way led to suffering and powerlessness. We who witness both deaths must acknowledge the great responsibility we bear for the innocents who suffer because of our own carelessness and self-seeking.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These realizations are terrible but necessary. We must be stripped of the conviction of our own security and our own innocence before we can rightly value the miracles of our own lives or other lives. False faith must be destroyed before true faith can be born, before we can be freed to work and love as servants of the God who suffers in and with us.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Naught Almost Sees Miracles But Misery</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This paradoxical union of horror and hope, misery and miracle, is emphasized throughout Lear, the play that contains some of the ugliest events in Shakespeare’s work, and also some of the most beautifully wrought language.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The virtues of the characters shine out all the more strongly in a world where they so clearly fail to reap external rewards. Ken Colston writes that “Lear imagines Christian love in a silent vacuum, which is the only environment in which pure gift-love may exist—otherwise, gift-love becomes a payoff to a bribing beloved.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I see something more than a silent vacuum in the play, but the heightened value of unrewarded love seems clear to me. Often under the Domination System love, courage, honesty and compassion are valued and practiced—or feigned--as means to an end, as ways to gain power and security. Once it is clear that they will not always be so rewarded, we must learn to look at them again and value them for themselves. Then we begin to see their intrinsic power and beauty. The haunting loveliness of Lear’s reunion with his daughter, the much-longed-for reconciliation between Gloucester and the son he wronged, is not diminished by the fact that their remaining time together in the world is brief. Cordelia dies early and violently, and this is horrible, but she lives and dies as Cordelia, and this is a truth which redeems all the sorrows she has felt. The play does not show an end to suffering, but it shows that love, beauty and meaning are present in the midst of the worst suffering. This is one of the seeds of hope present in the Crucifixion. Not that it saves us from loneliness or pain or death, but that it shows us that God has endured all these things, endures them again in and with each of us, and works in and through us in the deepest darkness.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes, in fact, our darkness and brokenness are the means by which God works. As we have seen, both Lear and Gloucester become fully human and enter into the Beloved Community only after suffering greatly and losing everything. Gloucester is quite clear about this process: “I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ‘tis seen our means secure us, and our mere defects prove our commodities…. Heavens deal so still!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” This is not a return to the Domination System’s message that misery is deserved and that therefore it is all right to cause misery to one’s fellow men; the play’s judgment on Gloucester’s tormentors makes that clear. It is, however, an affirmation of the divine presence that abides with us in our miseries and works through them to transform and reconcile us.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>This Would Have Seemed A Period…</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are hints in Lear, for those who will take it so, that this transformation and reconciliation may not end with death. Both Lear and Gloucester in their sufferings come to a point where they believe that they are dying, or have died—Gloucester when he thinks to leap from Dover cliff, Lear when he meets Cordelia and believes himself dead. Those who think of resurrection as a sentimentally pleasing prospect might take note that initially both men seem more terrified than reassured by the prospect of new life after death. When Edgar comes to Gloucester, crying out that his life’s a miracle, Gloucester says “Away, and let me die!... Is wretchedness deprived that benefit to end itself by death?” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lear, seeing Cordelia, says,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You do me wrong to take me out o’ th’ grave.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upon a wheel of fire, which mine own tears </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do scald like molten lead…</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But both men are persuaded to live. That new life still includes suffering, but also transformation and blessing. The brush with death weakens Gloucester’s despair and killed Lear’s rage. Both men are reconciled with the children whom they have wronged and are drawn deeper into the life of the Beloved Community.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given these changes, it is possible to hope that the deaths in the last scene do not end the work of knitting up the Beloved Community. Gloucester may be healed of the blindness of his body and the last vestiges of despair in his spirit. Lear may find his love for Cordelia deepened and purged of the possessiveness which still marks it in the last act. Perhaps even Edmund, who came very late to forgiveness, and Goneril and Regan, who loved Edmund as blindly, selfishly and intensely as their father once loved his daughters, may find themselves and their families made whole. We do not know, but it is possible to hope.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This, at least, is the foreshadowing of hope for the next life that I see in Lear. Other readers have found confirmation of their own hopes, fears or certainties on this matter. Gloucester’s miracle has been read variously as a prefiguring of resurrection or a kindly deceit wrought on a credulous old fool who couldn’t otherwise be reconciled to life. Lear’s last words have been read as a vision of Cordelia’s resurrection or a delusion that she still lives in this world. Among those who see a hope of heaven, some are looking not for universal reconciliation but for the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice. Shakespeare raises weighty questions here, but it seems to me that he refrains from offering unequivocal answers. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is, however, a clear and significant promise made at the play’s end, a promise of the growth of the Beloved Community in this world. This lies in the fact that the kingdom passes to Edgar.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> Heavens Deal So Still</b></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Until the end of the play the Beloved Community persists in spite of all persecutions, but it does not reign. It is the powerless and the unfortunate who recognize each life as a miracle, forgive and serve those who have wronged them, and give generously and sacrificially to those in need. The powerful are self-serving, arbitrary and violent. They take little care for the powerless. They will not see because they do not feel. The reigns we actually see in Lear might seem to substantiate the Devil’s claim that the kingdoms of this world, their power and their glory, are his to give to men whom he can deceive or daunt into his service. This does not make the powerful irredeemable; but for Gloucester and Lear, the fall from power which opens their eyes and brings them into the Beloved Community also makes them unable to remedy the great wrongs done in their blindness. The kingdoms of this world remain under the sway of the Domination System—until Cordelia’s death unmasks the evil of that system, and Albany stops temporizing between power and principle and gives the kingdom to Edgar.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 9.6px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Edgar’s accession offers the hope of another kind of rule. Edgar has been hungry, homeless, hunted, unseen and despised; his eyes have been opened to the harsh realities of the poor of the kingdom; and Edgar will be King. Edgar has loved and protected a victim of torture; if any of his subjects rebel against him and he is tempted to punish them severely he will surely remember his father’s courage and suffering; and Edgar will be King. There is reason to hope that in Edgar power may be reconciled with justice and compassion.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare’s Christian audience, unlike Shakespeare’s pagan characters, might have seen in Edgar’s accession the image of Christ’s promised kingdom. Edgar is not altogether an allegorical personification of Christ; he begins the play as his brother’s dupe and ends it as his brother’s killer, his father’s behavior toward him might trouble a strict and devout allegorist, and Shakespeare’s vision in Lear is too complex and paradoxical to be reduced to straight allegory. But Edgar in many moments bears the image of Christ. In his Bedlam disguise, “the basest and most poorest shape that ever penury in contempt of man brought near to beast,”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in his identity as the man “by the art of known and feeling sorrows…pregnant to good pity,”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in his care for his father, Edgar recalls Isaiah’s description of the Suffering Servant: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was despised and rejected by men,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like one from whom men turn their faces</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he was despised, and we esteemed him not.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surely he took up our infirmities</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and carried our sorrows…” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is hope for the kingdom that was Lear’s because the new king has suffered what poor men and rebels suffer. There is hope of the Kingdom come on our earth as it is in heaven because God has suffered as we suffer, been broken as we are broken. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we have already seen, this means that God is with us in the depths of our anguish, our loneliness and our despair. This is strength and a comfort in itself. Edgar, having seen the old King’s affliction, says “When we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers, suffers most in mind…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Dorothy Sayers, writing about Christ’s life and death, speaks of the conception, found in pagan as well as Christian writings, of “a God who can reconcile because He understands and can understand because He has in some way shared the suffering due to sin. It seems that whenever there is a suffering God, there is an end of tragic futility, and a transvaluation of all values…”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Furthermore, there is the promise, seen through a glass darkly, that this God who suffers with us will one day come to reign; that distribution shall undo excess and all men have enough; that the cycle of vengeance will end; that righteousness and peace shall kiss each other, faithfulness will spring up from the earth and righteousness will look down from heaven; that they will no longer harm nor destroy, because the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We see only the promise, not the realization of Edgar’s kingdom. While he speaks the last words, as the king should, he speaks still as the man of sorrows, not as the triumphant ruler. It could be argued that this is appropriate because Shakespeare’s characters lived before Christ and the Kingdom had not yet come. It could also be argued that Shakespeare was still painfully aware that in his own time Christendom was at war with itself, that too often all the warring parties accommodated themselves to the Domination System, that the Kingdom had not yet come. He had not seen the reign of justice and mercy. Neither have we.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Kingdom of God is within us and among us, but so far it is only present in the fellowship of the suffering servants. We cannot forcibly impose the Kingdom on the world; kingdoms imposed by force must rise by the methods of the Domination System, and they are captured and corrupted by that system. We cannot even clearly imagine what the Kingdom will look like when it comes. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neither, of course, could the characters in Lear. The righteous reign promised at the end is not the result of human contrivance, of the sort of power play we have seen in Lear himself, his older daughters and their husbands. Edgar has taken no part in the war between the English and the French, and does not seem to have considered himself, or to have been considered, as a contender for the kingship. He has lived as a member of the Beloved Community, and the clearest gods who make them honors of men’s impossibilities have done the rest. </span></div>
<br />Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-82145699704045703702015-08-06T07:34:00.003-07:002015-08-06T08:00:28.674-07:00The Cowardly Shakespeare<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kevin O'Brien reflects on what happens to Shakespeare if the modernist critics are right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cowardly Shakespeare</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by</span></div>
<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kevin O'Brien</a><br />
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My friend Ken Colston has written for First Things <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/08/the-bards-religion">a review of the book </a><i><a href="http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/08/the-bards-religion">A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion</a> </i>by David Scott Kastan. <br />
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What caught my eye were some of the things Colston quotes Kastan as saying in Kastan's attempt to deny that Shakespeare's plays are religious (my emphasis).<br />
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“Religion is central in the plays, but Shakespeare is not a religious playwright,” Kastan maintains. Religion primarily provides the playwright “with the fundamental language of value and understanding in the plays,” and it “<b>supplies the vocabulary in which characters understand themselves and are presented to us to be understood</b>.” Shakespeare “everywhere” betrays an “awareness of the inescapability of religion in his England,” “attentive to the fundamental, if sometimes fiercely debated terms in which people sought to understand their own lives and their relationships to their families, communities, and God.” It is, however, the “<b>experience of belief that engages Shakespeare rather than the truth of what was believed</b>,” “modes of thinking about religion as it is lived,” not “modes of religious thinking.” Unlike Spencer’s <i>Fairie Queene,</i> which sought “to celebrate the ‘discipline of faith and veritie,’” or Milton’s <i>Paradise Lost</i>, which aimed “‘to justify the ways of God to man,’” Shakespeare’s plays “<b>were not written to give form to a conception of holiness</b> <b>or to promote some polemical position in the fractious world of post-Reformation England.</b>”</blockquote>
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First of all, since Kastan deliberately overlooks a huge amount of documentary evidence regarding Shakespeare's Catholicity and even makes the appallingly silly claim that Shakespeare's father was as likely to have been Puritan as Catholic, the book (if Colston's review is accurate) can not be considered serious scholarship. <br />
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But it's the apparent philosophical bias that the above quotations reveal that interest me, for it is a bias that, in one sense, is quite understandable and forgivable. Kastan seems to see religious belief merely as a system of thought on the same level with ideology. Thus, for Kastan, if the plays are religious they are involved in promoting "some polemical position", which is exactly what ideologies do, but which is the last thing that religions are supposed to do. If one's faith becomes a mere system that dominates one's experience, then that faith has fallen from being a noble attempt to assent to a revealed and perceived truth and has degenerated into nothing more than a mode-of-life, which at its best becomes routine and comfortable, and at its worst becomes a means of avoiding reality rather than a means of approaching the deepest aspects of reality. <br />
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But we believers must admit that this indeed happens, and that we must guard against it in our own lives. Religion can become not the fruit of grace and a means of encountering God and loving Him and our fellow man, but a club we join that becomes a club we can beat other people over the head with. We see this all around us, and (if we're honest) we see this tendency in our own souls.<br />
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So it is, with great dramatic irony, that it is Kastan's love for Shakespeare that ruins his scholarship and that makes him seek to save the Bard from being pigeonholed by the "<a href="http://www.christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/">Christian Shakespeare</a>" type critics as just another narrow ideologue. Thus, Kastan's Shakespeare can only be freed from the narrow Christian critics if Shakespeare becomes a modernist who examines the dramatic consequences of the ways belief operates in people's lives rather than the dramatic consequences of how we live in relation to the truth which that belief affirms: the plays must become merely about man and not about God. Kastan frees Shakespeare from "religious ideology" at the cost of making the plays into mere studies in psychology rather than studies in the reality beyond our own souls. The plays become clever little ways of playing with the temporal consequences of subjective choice rather than profoundly serious examinations not merely of psychology, but of psychology and metaphysics - of man and God - and how man's relation to God plays itself out.<br />
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Here, then, is a surprising common ground with a critic who disagrees with us. We can assert, "Yes, Mr. Kastan, if all religions are mere ideologies, then a Shakespeare who looks at the dramatic effects of these ideologies rather than the dramatic effects of living in accord or not in accord with the truth the so-called ideologies assert would be a better, if more narrow, playwright." <br />
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This would make Shakespeare more of a Noel Coward than a Shakespeare - or perhaps a Cowardly Shakespeare - and how much is lost if that's all William Shakespeare was!<br />
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<br />Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-58761342824509606202015-05-28T14:05:00.002-07:002015-05-28T14:07:52.353-07:00When Shakespeare Fought Stalin<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brendan King tells of Boris Pasternak's use of Shakespeare as a protest against the Soviets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When Shakespeare Fought Stalin</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brendan King on </span><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Boris Pasternak</a><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">I have previously written and published an account of Boris Pasternak's heroic decision to translate the works of William Shakespeare -- a writer whom Joseph Stalin despised as "decadent" -- into Russian during the Great Purge of the 1930's. Since the publication of this article, however, a new piece of the puzzle has been brought to my attention. </span><br />
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Early in 1948, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to retaliate for Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" Speech by ordering twenty of the USSR's leading poets to compose verse on the theme "Down with the Warmongers! For a Lasting Peace and People's Democracy!" Among them was Boris Pasternak, a poet every bit as admired in the West as in the Motherland.</div>
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All twenty poets were to read their verse at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum, which possessed what was then the largest auditorium in the city. As Pasternak was to be reading, the whole auditorium was packed with an audience that squatted in the aisles and spilled outside. Among those present was British diplomat Max Hayward, from whom the following account derives.</div>
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As the meeting opened, twenty poets trooped out on to the stage and took their seats facing the audience. Novelist Boris Gorbatov, who was to preside over the meeting, took his seat at a nearby table with a small bell before him. To the palpable disappointment of the audience, Pasternak's chair remained empty. </div>
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The first poet to read stepped up to the microphone and began to recite a poem which overtly demonized the Capitalist "Warmongers", the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and, of course, Winston Churchill. </div>
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As the first poet was almost finished with his reading, the audience burst into applause as Pasternak entered the stage from the wings. After motioning for the audience to calm down, Pasternak at last took his seat. </div>
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As the other poets read their verse with visible discomfort, the audience squirmed while awaiting for Pasternak to be summoned to the microphone. When Gorbatov at last called his name, the audience went wild with applause, shouts, and cheers. When the audience finally managed to calm down, Pasternak announced, "Unfortunately, I have no poems on the theme of the evening, but I will read you some things I wrote before the war." Again the audience erupted into cheers and applause. Meanwhile, Gorbatov's bald head was suddenly drenched with sweat. </div>
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Visibly enjoying his dangerous victory, Pasternak began to recite poems well known to the audience, followed each time by thunderous applause. At last, someone called out a request for Pasternak to read his translation of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 66. </div>
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As Pasternak began to oblige, a terrified Gorbatov began ringing his bell frantically, trying to call an intermission. At last he succeeded. Even so, the evening had been destroyed from the Party's perspective.</div>
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According to Max Hayward, anyone other than Pasternak would have been arrested and potentially shot for staging such a "political provocation". But Stalin's orders to "Leave this cloud-dweller in peace", still held good. Pasternak not only outlived the dictator, but also continued to write his novel "Doctor Zhivago", which he smuggled to Italy for publication and for which the world outside Russia now remembers him. </div>
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Anyone who has read Hayward's account of that poetry reading, however may be forgiven for wondering why a Shakespeare Sonnet was considered so subversive. The answer lies in its contents, which are a ringing indictment of the hypocrisy of all police states, and how they wilfullly degrade morality, culture, and the arts.</div>
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"Sonnet 66."</div>
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By William Shakespeare.</div>
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"Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry, --</div>
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As, to behold desert a beggar born,</div>
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And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,</div>
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And purest faith unhappily forsworn,</div>
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And gilded honor shamefully misplac'd,</div>
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And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,</div>
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And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,</div>
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And strength by limping sway disabled,</div>
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And art made tongue-tied by authority,</div>
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And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,</div>
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And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,</div>
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And captive good attending captain ill:</div>
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Tir'd with all these, from these I would be gone, </div>
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Save that to die, I leave my love alone."</div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-52926179148487128162015-05-27T14:23:00.004-07:002015-05-27T14:23:55.802-07:00The Age of Shakespeare's Heroines<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joseph Pearce answers a reader's question concerning the age of Shakespeare's heroines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Age of Shakespeare's Heroines</span></div>
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<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joseph Pearce</span></a></div>
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I've received a good and interesting question about the age of Shakespeare's heroines and its significance. The question is below; my response follows:</div>
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If I recall, you felt that Juliet's extreme youth in <em>Romeo and Juliet </em>(just under 14) was one way of Shakespeare implicitly criticizing their romance. (Makes sense to me!) But I was recently reading (listening to, actually) <em>The Tempest</em> and <em>The Winter's Tale</em>, where Miranda and Perdita are, respectively, around 15 and 16, which isn't that much better. Does the fact that the latter two plays are not tragedies make a difference, do you think?</div>
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<strong><em>My response:</em></strong></div>
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The first thing I would say is that the difference between thirteen and fifteen or sixteen is seismic in significance, far greater than the passage of two or three years would suggest. A thirteen-year-old is a child approaching adolescence; a fifteen or sixteen-year-old is an adolescent approaching adulthood.</div>
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The second thing is to consider what Shakespeare does with these characters. Miranda is wide-eyed with innocence and wonder, almost like the unfallen Eve, whose purity is protected by her father in the manner in which he tests Ferdinand's own virtue as a means of ensuring that he is worthy of his daughter's hand in marriage. This includes the carrying of logs, symbolic of the taking up of the cross (of marriage), a sacrifice that Ferdinand embraces with willing obedience - in stark contrast to the anarchic disobedience of Romeo. Prospero's faith in the chastity and purity of Miranda and Ferdinand is rewarded when he finds them in <em>flagrante delicto </em>- playing chess! It is hard to imagine anything further from fornication symbolically than a game of chess, a fact which inspired Eliot to use it as an ironic image in "The Waste Land" in a clear intertextual reference to <em>The Tempest</em>.</div>
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Perdita in <em>The Winter's Tale </em>is also depicted as being chaste, as is her betrothed, and, as you say, she is sixteen-years-old, significantly older than Juliet.</div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-88368594759145746242015-05-18T09:44:00.000-07:002015-05-18T09:54:28.192-07:00The Other Christian Shakespeare<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Andrew Lomas argues that Rene Girard's view of Shakespeare is solidly Christian despite his innovative approach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Other Christian Shakespeare</span></div>
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<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Andrew Lomas</span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays as Christian has always
been opposed to those readings which find in Shakespeare radical ideas from the
Renaissance or of the modern world, or, worse still, postmodern notions. Yet
recently the traditional-minded Christian Shakespeares have been joined by
another. He might perhaps be called a “shadow brother”, though he shows no
inclination to remain in the shade. Indeed, if you ask after “the Christian
Shakespeare” in the halls of academia today, you will likely be directed to the
door of this interloper. Seated in his office, you will be lectured on the
death of philosophy, the fallacy of essentialism in psychology,
undifferentiation, and something called a <i>pharmakos</i>.
For, yes, while this alternate Christian Shakespeare may not actually <i>be</i> a postmodernist, he was certainly
born under the sign of postmodernism. And his central concepts have very much
the flavour of postmodernism’s esoteric terminologies: mimesis, mimetic desire,
mimetic rivalry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The man behind the new interpretation of Shakespeare is René Girard,
in his book <i>A Theatre of Envy</i>.
Coincidentally, perhaps, Girard is also the creator of the vocabulary of
mimesis, the founder of mimetic theory as a general theory of human behaviour,
and the tireless exponent of mimetic theory acrosss many books and disciplines.
Of course Girard says that he does not read his general theory into
Shakespeare’s plays; the plays, rather, he insists, have helped form his ideas
about mimesis. My purpose in the present essay is to investigate this claim,
seeing if and how far the texts support Girard’s construction: I shall attempt
to delineate and evaluate Girard’s Other Christian Shakespeare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the space of an essay it is not possible to follow <i>A Theatre of Envy</i> through its close and
detailed readings of many of Shakespeare’s plays. As a framework for my paper, I
will use what Girard calls the “mimetic cycle” of Shakespeare, a five stage
progression he finds in Shakespeare’s work. With each stage, I will try to give
Girard’s “best case”, presenting those textual readings which, I believe, most
cogently contribute to Girard’s position. To this end, <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> will be front and centre for much of the time,
with, later on, some reference to <i>Julius
Caesar</i> and <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Act One, Scene Two of <i>Troilus
and Cressida</i>, Pandarus is attempting to get Cressida to admire, and desire,
Troilus. In the attempt, Pandarus uses a particular tactic. That is, he talks
at length about Helen of Troy’s feelings for Troilus. Pandarus pretends that
Helen actually prefers Troilus to her own famous lover, Paris, and, “to change,
would give an eye to boot”(I.2.239). Now Helen is universally acknowledged as
the most beautiful, and the pre-eminent woman of this world. So Cressida is
intended to take Helen as a model: to copy or imitate the desire of Helen, and
begin desiring Troilus herself. In abstract terms, this desire of Cressida’s
would be triangular, composed of subject, object and model, with the subject
coming to desire the object by following the desire of the model. Now such triangular
desire is just what René Girard calls desire by imitation, desire by mimesis, “mimetic
desire”. And Girard’s “mimetic theory” is simply the theory that human desire
is predominantly mimetic. Obviously Pandarus, and Shakespeare, have no
knowledge of Girard’s terminology. But Girard is quite right in his claim that
Pandarus’ pandering shows that both have an understanding of the <i>phenomenon </i>of mimetic desire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is my opinion, nevertheless, that Girard’s reading of the scene
has serious limitations. For Girard is
so focused on Pandarus’ brilliant mimetic strategy that he fails to see that it
proves to be completely irrelevant. When Pandarus exits the stage, Cressida
drops her pretense of indifference, and declares that “more in Troilus
thousandfold I see/ Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be”(I.2.284-85).
Later Cressida tells Troilus “I have loved
you night and day/ For many weary months”(III.2.112-13)—long before Pandarus
began his boosting, and Helen appeared as a model for desire. Indeed, “I was
won, my lord,/ With the first glance”(III.2.115-116). From the positioning of
these speeches, and our general understanding of the characters, Shakespeare
clearly means us to believe Cressida. Thus Cressida’s passion for Troilus is
not a mimetic desire at all. It is actually one of those spontaneous passions
which Girard regards with great scepticism; worse, it is the “love at first
sight” he routinely derides. Girard’s interpretation over-states the role of
mimetic desire in Shakespeare’s text, and overlooks aspects of the text which
do not fit with mimetic theory. These shortcomings are typical of <i>A Theatre of Envy</i>, and make it, for all
its virtues, a frustrating book. In what follows I will not always have time to
qualify Girard’s readings, but it should be borne in mind that they generally
stand in need of some qualification. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having established that the Shakespeare of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> is at least aware of mimetic desire, albeit
not quite in the way Girards wants, let us see if the notion might help in
understanding one of the “problems” of this
“problem play”. The puzzle, that is, of Troilus’ on-again, off-again desire for
Cressida. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cressida has fallen for Troilus, Troilus has fallen for Cressida,
and eventually their mutual attraction is revealed. Immediately afterwards, in
a rather seedy moment, Pandarus conducts the tremulous young lovers to a bedroom.
Cutting to the morning after, we find Troilus attempting to take his leave of
Cressida. And although he is full of flowery endearments, it is obvious, to us
and to Cressida, that he can’t wait to be rid of her. “Are you a-weary of me?”(IV.2.7)
Cressida asks plaintively, and the answer is clearly “Yes”. Girard, not usually
a severe moralist, denounces “Troilus’ disgraceful behaviour on that early
morning”(<i>Theatre</i> 128).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Further evidence of changed feelings comes when Troilus learns that
Cressida is to be taken away from <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Troy</st1:place></st1:city>,
and him, to the Greek camp. Troilus accepts his lover’s removal with an aplomb
that is highly suspicious; Cressida, by contrast, goes into hysterics. When
Troilus visits the Greek camp, though, and looks on as Cressida begins an
affair with Diomedes, there is no lack of emotion. He rages that “never did
young man fancy/ With so eternal and fixed a soul”(V.2.168-9) as he for
Cressida. He rushes away to work off his passion by killing some Greeks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What are we to make of these about-turns? Does Shakespeare want us
to think that Troilus really loves the girl, or not? But with Troilus
apparently blowing hot and cold at random, is he a believable character at all?
And if a central character is not coherent, this surely has grievous
consequences for the play.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard’s solution to the “problem”, in terms of mimetic desire,
begins from Cressida’s ideas about love—which are remarkably cynical ideas for
a young woman in love. “Women are angels”, she notes, to men who are wooing
them, yet “Things won are done; joys soul lies in the doing”. She who is
beloved<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “knows naught
that knows not this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Men prize the thing ungained
more than it is”(I.2.286-9). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, as we have
already seen, Cressida for a long time plays it cool with Troilus. She
“designates herself rather than him as the desirable object”(<i>Theatre</i> 126), projecting an image of
autonomy, self-sufficiency. Now Freud called a desire of the self for the self
“narcissism”. However Girard does not accept that self-love can be genuinely
independent. He contends that the apparent narcissist needs the desires of
admirers to feed on, is in reality imitating the desires of these admirers. The
self-love, then, remains mimetic; Girard calls the strategy Cressida outlines,
and practices, “pseudo-narcissism”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Troilus buys her act. Imitating Cressida’s desire for herself,
he really believes she is self-sufficient, a being on a different plane from a
weak, needy creature like himself—truly almost a divine being. And by “winning”
Cressida, Troilus thinks he will come to be like her, gain access to her
superior level. Such a desire which
“does not correspond to anything real”, and yet “transforms the object into
something that appears superabundantly real”, Girard calls “metaphysical
desire”(<i>Things</i> 296). ( I consider
this rather unfair to metaphysics, but let it pass here.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Girard, metaphysical desire is especially prevalent in
the modern world, which began with the Renaissance. This is because, with the
decline of Christian religion, people have been searching for a substitute
religion. Girard quotes the aphorism of Louis Ferrero: “‘[Erotic] Passion is
the change of address of a force awakened by Christianity and oriented toward
God’” (<i>Deceit</i> 59; see also De
Rougemont 62 and <i>passim</i>). The analysis
certainly seems to hold true for Troilus’ passion. Troilus declares that in
love “the will is <i>infinite</i>”, “the
desire <i>boundless</i>”(III.2.79-80, 80-81,
my emphases); erotic love here transcends the biological and becomes religious.
It could only be satisfied by a divinity, and only a divinity could truly
realize it. “For two or three centuries”, Girard writes, “the underlying principle
of every ‘new’ Western doctrine” has been: “God is dead, man must take his
place”(<i>Deceit</i> 56). We begin to see
how Girard’s mimetic interpretation of Shakespeare is also a Christian
interpretation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But of course Troilus’ divinization of Cressida cannot survive the
bedroom. Gaining Cressida does not transport Troilus to a different plane of
being. Moreover he finds that Cressida is no autonomous angel; rather she just
another needy, dependent soul, one indeed clinging to him for meaning. By
Girard’s mimetic principles, it is wholly intelligible that Troilus should be
disillusioned, and even a little disgusted, on that morning after.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then, though, the dashing Diomedes enters the mix. He is very much
one of those “Grecian youths” whom Troilus has expressed jealousy about earlier—“full
of quality;/ Their loving well composed with gifts of nature,/ And flowing o’er
with arts and exercise”(IV.4.75-77). Troilus admires and envies the Grecian
youths in general, and Diomedes in particular: they are models for his desire. When,
on meeting Cressida, Diomedes immediately shows an interest in her, Troilus’
own desire for Cressida springs back to life. When Diomedes seduces Cressida,
Troilus forgets that his passion for her was ever less than white hot. With
Cressida paying court to Diomedes, moreover, she is no longer that tiresome,
clingy girl, but is back on her pedestal as the inaccessible, yearned-for
divinity. Metaphysical desire has transfigured Cressida once more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Note that the rivalry of Troilus and Diomedes over Cressida realizes
a possibility inherent in mimetic desire. A subject imitating a model’s desire
for an object may come to desire the same object as the model, and enter into
competition with the model over it. Such competition is the next stage in
Girard’s mimetic cycle, mimetic rivalry. But with regard to the “problem” of
Troilus’ fitful desire, I think we can say that Girard’s interpretation of
Shakespeare has proved its explanatory value. Troilus’ vacillations have been
shown to follow intelligibly from mimetic principles of human behaviour. And
far from being messy and inconsistent, Shakespeare’s play is revealed as
offering a penetrating analysis—and an analysis with Christian overtones—of
erotic passion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When we move from the love story of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> to the military/political plotline, Girard’s
reading becomes even more persuasive. The Trojan war portrayed by Shakespeare
is of course very different from Homer’s epic/heroic version. Consider the
treatment of Helen, that “face that launch’d a thousand ships”, the cause and
ostensible object of the war. In their reflective moments the major characters
of Shakespeare’s play, Greek and Trojan, are scathing in their assessments of
her. “[E]very false drop in her bawdy veins/ A Grecian life hath
sunk”(IV.1.70-71), is Diomedes’ typical judgement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But if both sides recognize that Helen is, objectively, of little
worth, why does the ruinous war over her continue? For the same reason, Girard
contends, that Troilus wanted Cressida again when he saw she was being courted
by Diomedes. The Greeks imitate the Trojans’ desire to have Helen; the Trojans
imitate the Greeks’ desire to have Helen; the metaphysical desires of both
parties transform Helen into a prize of supreme value. With violence and the
rising body count, passions are inflamed still further, and the mimetic rivalry
ever escalates. “Fools on both sides!” even Troilus at one point says. “Helen
must needs be fair,/ When with your blood you daily paint her thus”(I.1.92-3).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However there is not only rivalry between the Trojan and Greek
sides, but also within the Greek camp. In particular Achilles, “whom opinion
crowns the sinew and the forehand of our host”(I.3.142-3), refuses to accept
the authority of the Greek commander-in-chief, Agamemnon, and instead enters
into competition with him. In his pride Achilles defies Agamemnon, mocks the
tactics of the Greek leadership, and refuses to take the battlefield.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now the self-will of Achilles may appear to be beyond mimesis.
Achilles is, after all, the son of a goddess, actually semi-divine: does not he
have then a divine self-sufficiency, is he not an instance of genuine, Freudian
narcissism? On Girard’s reading, Ulysses, and Shakepeare, see through “this
‘essentialist’ conception of Achilles’ impressive success”(143). They realize
that his host of admirers provide models which the self-love of Achilles
imitates—just as Troilus’ desire was the basis for Cressida’s seeming autonomy.
Therefore to deflate Achilles’ pride, Ulysses simply arranges to cut off the
admiring desires. Ulysses has the Greek camp “pass strangely by” Achilles as he
stands at his tent “As if he were forgot”(III.3.39-40). Immediately Achilles’
facade of autonomy cracks. “What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?”
the great man pathetically inquires. “What, am I poor of late?”(III.3.39-40,70)
With Achilles behaving like some fading celebrity of our own day, lamenting
that the paparazzi no longer give chase, we see that his self-love is indeed <i>pseudo</i>-narcissism, his rivalries
mimetic. Ulysses gives the—Girardian—moral: that man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Nor feels not what he owes, <i>but by reflection</i>”(III.3.98-9, my
emphasis).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The competition between Achilles and his commander spreads through
the Greek army; there is an “envious fever/ Of pale and bloodless
emulation”(I.3.133-4). With rivalries in the Trojan ranks, too, and the mutual
emulation of the war, we have a world whose structure is collapsing under
mimetic rivalry. <i>Differences</i>—between
king and subject, leaders and common soldiers—are being replaced by <i>undifferentiation</i>. Hierarchical order—or
“degree”, in Shakespeare’s favoured term—is undermined. Girard’s general theory
of human behaviour supposes that such a plague of mimetic rivalry has occured
periodically in all human communities. It is the next, third stage of the
mimetic cycle, a stage which Girard calls the “crisis of Degree”. Girard finds
the supreme Shakespearean expression of this crisis, naturally, in Ulysses’
famous speech on Degree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ulysses begins the renowned passage with a vision of the cosmos.
“The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre/ Observe degree,
priority, and place”(I.3.85-6). Yet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Take but degree away, untune that string,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And hark what discord
follows!”(I.3.109-10).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the planets
“to disorder wander”, then “What plagues and what portents, what
mutiny”(I.3.95,96). The “bounded waters/ Should lift their bosoms higher than
the shores,/ And make a sop of all this solid globe”(I.3.111-13). Meanwhile, in
human communities, without hierarchical order how could peaceful commerce,
primogenture, “Prerogative of age”, and “crowns, sceptres, laurels”(I.3.107)
survive? Instead, sheer force would rule, “Strength should be lord of
imbecility,/ And the rude son should strike his father dead”(I.3.114-5). To
Ulysses, though, the rule of power offers no stable basis for society. Where
“everything includes itself in power”, power is subsumed “into will, will into
appetite;/ And appetite, an universal wolf”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Must make perforce an universal prey,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And last eat up
himself.”(I.3.119-20,123-4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The essential point of Ulysses speech, according to Girard, is that
degree sets limits to mimetic desire; this is degree’s whole meaning. With the
limitation of desire by hierarchical structure, a stable society becomes
possible. But “The breakdown of
traditional institutions destroys their ability to channel desire into
noncompetitive directions that prevent mimetic rivalries”(166). Note that,
given Ulysses defends his social order wholly in terms of its instrumental
function, he is acknowledging that the specifics of the order have no
priveleged status. An acknowledgement which, once again, fits in with Girard’s
general mimetic theory. In Girard’s general theory the monarchy, patriarchy,
marital codes, etc. of Shakespeare’s Greeks—and of medieval and Elizabethan
society—have exactly the same function and status as the rituals, prohibitions,
taboos of “primitive”, “savage” communities. Ulysses’ invocation of a celestial
order which parallels his particular cultural order is regarded by Girard as
“an antiquated medieval idea that Shakespeare might have borrowed for purely
decorative purposes”(166).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such a summary dismissal of the cosmic background to Ulysses’ speech
will be rather shocking to those generations of Shakespeare students raised on
E.M.W.Tillyard’s “Elizabethan World Picture”. Tillyard, we well remember, saw
Ulysses as referencing the “world picture” of Elizabethan England. This conception
of the world was said to be one which stretches back to Plato and Aristotle—being
grounded in the science of Aristotle and Ptolemy—and which dominated the
intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The world-view supposes, Tillyard
explains, that the celestial realm of planets and stars provides a model for
human social order. The traditional social order of Ulysses’ Greeks, as of
medieval times and the Elizabethans, is a reflection of and participation in
the cosmic order, the “Great Chain of Being”. Far from being one pragmmatic
arrangement among many, then, the traditional hierarchy is grounded in the
nature of things. These notions were held by Tillyard to be “taken for granted
by the ordinary educated Elizabethan”(v), including Shakespeare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Tillyard’s Elizabethan World
Picture is now generally regarded as involving inadequate intellectual and
social history. He ignored the waves spreading from the scientific revolution
which was overthrowing Ptolemaic/ Aristotelian cosmology . He ignored the
scepticism and agnosticism which were influential amongst the aristocracy and
intelligensia of Renaissance England (see Burrows xxix; Watkin 347; Parkes
407). There is, though, evidence elsewhere in <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> that Shakespeare took the normative cosmic order seriously.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> During the debate in the
Trojan camp over whether they should return Helen to the Greeks—Act Two, Scene
Two—Hector actually cites Aristotle’s dictum that young men are not fit to
study moral philosophy. I believe that Aristotelian philosophy lies behind the
discussion more generally. The argument Hector makes in the debate is that,
since Helen is indisputably married to Menelaus, “these moral laws/ Of nature
and of nations speak aloud/ To have her back returned”(II.2.185-6). “Moral laws
of nature”: here we have natural law morality, which was classically formulated
by Aristotle. It was also taught by St Thomas Aquinas, and, in Elizabethan
England, by the prominent Church of England divine, Richard Hooker (Rosier
574-6, Parkes 403). In all three morality is underpinned by a “nature” which,
in its widest extent, is a harmonious cosmic order. All three accept the
fundamentals of Tillyard’s Elizabethan World Picture. Now dramatically, in
Shakespeare’s play, Hector has the better of the argument amongst the Trojans;
even his opponent Troilus seems to agree that Hector has the better reasons,
since he resorts to denouncing reason. So there is a strong presence in <i>Troilus and</i> <i>Cressida</i> of moral/social values which are not just means of
preventing mimetic rivaly, but are rational, objectively real, and part of a
universal order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless, Girard is right to believe that there is something
quite irregular going on with the Elizabethan World Picture and its Great Chain
of Being in Ulysses’ speech on Degree. The Ptolemaic/ Aristotelian cosmology allowed for some deviation from perfect
circular motion by planets in the supralunary realm, and large amounts of
corruption and evil in our sublunary realm. But, Girard observes, “nothing like
the amazing meltdown portrayed by Ulysses”(162). As Girard asks, “Who has ever
seen a great chain of being collapse?”(<i>Violence</i>
54) Ulysses envisages a veritable crisis of Degree amongst the stars, with
literally earth-shattering consequences, and the total collapse of human
community. He takes the elements of the venerable picture, and uses them to
express something quite different. For Ulysses’ vision is not, ultimately,
traditional or conservative, but apocalyptic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the rough treatment given cosmic laws of nature in <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> is extended to the
related “moral laws/ Of nature”. We have seen that Hector makes a cogent appeal
to rational morality, and therefore a cogent case for returning Helen to the
Greeks. Immediately after his reasoned triumph, though, Hector performs an
about-face, and throws his support behind Troilus’ unashamedly irrational
determination to keep Helen. In Girardian terms, Hector “becomes a victim of
the [mimetic] <i>infection </i>he had
shrewdly denounced a few lines before”(151). Joyce Carol Oates has commented
that “The scene makes sense if it is interpreted as a demonstration of the
ineffectuality of reason as reason”(172). In so doing, it also demonstrates the
ineffectuality of rational morality. Shakespeare, we may say, presents an <i>experiential</i> critique of the natural law
morality expounded by Aristotle, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">St
Thomas</st1:place></st1:city> and Hooker. Man, or at least the mankind of <i>Troilus and</i> <i>Cressida</i>, is simply not the sort of being who will pay any heed to
such laws.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The laws that the characters in <i>Troilus
and Cressida</i> actually obey, regardless of the presence or truth of cosmic
and moral canons, are the laws of mimetic desire. Their world is, indeed, that
of Girard’s crisis of Degree: rent by endless rivalry, collapsing into
undifferentiation, and heading at breakneck speed toward self-destruction. Yet
Shakespeare does not allow us to remain complacently surveying this world, from
outside. At the end of <i>Troilus and
Cressida</i> Pandarus breaks the “fourth wall”, and addresses the audience. He
complains of suffering “aching
bones”(V.10.35), from the Neapolitan bone-ache or syphilis—an horrific sign of
mimetic contagion. Calling the audience “Brethren and sisters of the hold-door
trade”(V.10.52)—that is, fellow pimps—he assumes that those watching are also
suffering from venereal diseases; and, in a final gesture, says that he will
bequeath his fatal dose of the pox to the gallery. Shakespeare here intimates
that the Elizabethan playgoers, and us, are just like the humankind of the
play, diseased and dying in a crisis of Degree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So “Is there no way to cast my hook/ Out of this dynamited brook?”,
to use the lines of Robert Lowell (38). Can the crisis of Degree be overcome,
and Ulysses’ apocalyptic end-game averted? Girard holds that pandemics of mimetic
rivalry, which he believes to have recurred in all human communities since
human communities began, have usually been resolved. Indeed, the resolution is
said to have given rise to new religions, new and effective moral/social
orders. Girard detects such a cure in <i>Troilus
and Cressida</i>, with the killing of Hector by Achilles’
Myrmidons—interestingly, but rather tenuously, in my opinion. I believe Girard
is on much surer ground with the resolution he finds in <i>Julius</i> <i>Caesar</i>. Following
my policy of giving Girard’s “best case”, I will switch focus to the Roman play
for this part of the mimetic cycle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city>
of <i>Julius Caesar</i> is in the throes of
a crisis of Degree. The play opens with Caesar’s return to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city> after victory in a civil war with
Pompey’s sons; his victory celebrations are questioned because he has been
killing other Romans (I.1.35-54). This is just the latest in a series of civil
wars, as powerful rivals struggle for control of the Senate. Shakespeare
portrays the senators, even Brutus to an extent, as caught up in envy and
emulation of their fellows. The Republican order is evidently no longer able to
constrain mimetic rivalry. The degeneration of the Republic is underlined when
its great defender, Brutus, is making his speech over Caesar’s body, and for
the moment has the crowd on his side. Then a cry comes from the crowd: “Let him
be Caesar”(III.ii.52). “Brutus wants to save the Republic”, Girard notes, “but
the Republic does not want to be saved”(194). No matter what Julius Caesar
does, and regardless of whether he lives or dies, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Rome</st1:city></st1:place> will be ruled by a Caesar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet the conspirators fix the whole responsibility for the breakdown
of society on Julius Caesar. They contend that he, and he alone, is to blame
for the Republic’s ills. Therefore if only he can be removed, all will be well.
And therefore his removal is not murder, but something quite different. “Let’s
be sacrificers, but not butchers”(II.i.166), says Brutus. “Let’s carve him as a
dish fit for the gods”, so that “We shall be called purgers, not murderers” (II.i.173,180).
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Julius Caesar becomes the scapegoat for the Roman crisis of Degree.
And, Girard argues, this scapegoating has always happened in crises of Degree. When
the undifferentiation of society through rivalry reaches a certain level, the
anger and violence polarizes around an individual or group standing out in some
way. The person may have a physical defect, be a foreigner, or even be a leader
or king. All the mimetic violence is unleashed upon the arbitrary victim, and
he is killed. Girard calls the process the <i>scapegoat
mechanism</i>, and sees it as the terrible secret behind human society,
culture, and archaic religion, at the very foundation of the human world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As an historical example of the scapegoat mechanism, Girard observes
that during outbreaks of the Black Plague in medieval Europe, times of communal
crisis, anti-Semitism became hysterical, and the murder of Jews greatly
increased (<i>The Scapegoat</i>, Chapter One
<i>passim</i>). Another example is the <i>pharmakos</i> rite, so dear to the hearts of
postmodernists. In classical <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Greece</st1:country-region></st1:place>—birthplace
of democracy, philosophy, etc.—a number of degraded people, <i>pharmakoi,</i> were maintained by the city-state
at its expense. At times of civic calamity, these people were ritually
slaughtered. The term <i>katharsis</i>/catharsis,
which appears most respectably in our textbooks of literary criticism, originally
referred “primarily to the mysterious benefits that accrue to the community
upon the death of a human <i>katharma</i> or
<i>pharmakos</i>”(<i>Violence</i> 303). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like the Jews in plague times, and the <i>pharmakoi</i>, Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar is a scapegoat. Unlike the Christians of medieval <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>,
and the classical Greeks, Shakespeare’s play recognizes its scapegoat <i>as</i> a scapegoat. Placing the entire blame
for the societal crisis on Caesar, that is, and killing him, is shown to be a
great wrong. Now for Girard this recognition makes Shakespeare’s vision
essentially Christian. Christ “placed himself at the heart of the system” of
scapegoating “to reveal its hidden workings”(<i>Battling</i> xv); as Jesus quotes of himself, “‘I will utter what has
been hidden since the foundation of the world’”(Mtt 13:35, citing Ps 78:2). In
a way Christ in his crucifixion is just another sacrificial victim of
collective violence. Yet here, for the first time, the innocence of the
sacrificed one shows forth. Christianity, then, differs from archaic religions
in that it proclaims the innocence of the scapegoat; this is, in Girard’s
opinion, its momentous insight. Of course the example of Jews being persecuted
by medieval Christians indicates that, historically, Christians haven’t always
understood and lived up to the message. But in <i>Julius Caesar</i> Shakespeare does.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the play, nonetheless, Caesar’s murder brings about a resolution
of the crisis of Degree. This is prophesized in the dream of his wife,
Calphurnia, where she sees a statue of Caesar “Which, like a fountain with a
hundred spouts,/ Did run pure blood, and many lusty Romans/ Came smiling and
did bathe their hands in it”(II.ii.76-9). The conspirator Decius, with cynical
intent but speaking truer than he knows, calls the dream “a vision fair and
fortunate”, which “Signifies that from you great <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Rome</st1:city></st1:place> shall suck/ Reviving blood”(II.ii.84,87-8).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once a scapegoat has been killed, mimetic theory instructs us, the rivalry
and violence which had become fixated on him are exhausted. Peace and order
return. And since his death has actually brought peace, the victim comes to be
seen as a powerful peacemaker, and as the founder of the new, harmonious order.
Caesar’s death does not result in peace straight away, as Brutus planned; it is
not until Brutus himself has also fallen that the mimetic violence is spent:
there are two scapegoats rather than one. But then come the mysterious
benefits, the <i>katharsis</i>, a rebirth of
Degree. Julius Caesar is established as the founder of a new moral/social
structure, a new culture, a new religion. The new order is none other than the <st1:place w:st="on">Roman Empire</st1:place>. Here Caesar is a god, and “the Roman
emperor is both an absolute monarch and the official protector of the
Republic”(201). From Caesar’s mutilated body <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city> does indeed “suck/ Reviving blood”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The resolution of the crisis of Degree in <i>Julius Caesar</i> thus accords with mimetic logic. It conforms to the
pattern Girard finds in the foundation and renewal of human communities before
the Christian era. While Shakespeare portrays this solution, though, he does
not approve it. With his recognition of Caesar as a scapegoat, Shakespeare cannot
condone Caesar’s killing. It follows that he cannot accept the resulting
catharsis, and the resulting renewal of Degree. Shakespeare’s Christian insight
leads him to reject the means by which crises of Degree have been overcome, as
Girard contends, since human communities began.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But as Christianity rules out one solution to the crisis of Degree,
it is said to open up another of its own. Even Girard cannot find any hint of
this remedy in <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>
or <i>Julius</i> <i>Caesar</i>—which might give us pause for thought. For the final stage
of the mimetic cycle we must move on again, to one of Shakespeare’s late
romances, <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard maintains that <i>The
Winter’s Tale</i> is full of mimetic desire. King Leontes in particular, “this
terribly insecure man”, is “hypermimetic”(310, 318). At the beginning of the
play Leontes encourages a close relationship between his wife, Hermione, and
his best friend, Polixenes. He is hoping their mutual esteem will provide
models for his desire to imitate, enabling him to feel more secure about his
marriage and friendship. Yet when Hermione and Polixenes show the closeness he
has promoted, Leontes is immediately jealous. He fears he has become “a model
quite different from the one he wanted to be,...driving his wife into the arms
of his friend, and driving his friend into the arms of his wife”(310). Hence
Leontes’ sudden and violent rage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are back again with the mimetic phenomena and rationality of
Girard’s Shakespeare. Unlike the characters we have observed previously,
though, Leontes does not remain caught in the web of mimetic illusion. When the
death of his son and apparent death of Hermione come hard upon the oracle from
Apollo proclaiming her innocence, Leontes is jolted out of his anger, to a
recognition of error. His reform is confirmed, Girard believes very
importantly, when Florizel and Perdita, Leontes’ disguised daughter, come into
his power. Girard suggests this scene could be called the “ ‘last temptation of
Leontes’”(327). Florizel has asked Leontes to act as protector for the outcast
couple. It is clear, however, that Leontes is inclined to imitate Florizel’s
desire for Perdita, and compete with Florizel for her. “I’d beg your precious
mistress”(V.i.223), he says, and is warned “Sir, my liege,/ Your eye hath too
much youth in’t”(V.i.224-5). But rather than succumbing to the temptation and
attempting to appropriate the young lovers’ happiness for himself, Leontes
rises above to accept the role of their guardian. Leontes declares of the lovers’ desires, “I am friend to them and
you”(V.i.231).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Girard, such is the Christian resolution of mimetic
rivalry and the crisis of Degree. Taking Christ as a model, imitating Christ,
means “to renounce all possessive desire once and for all”(15). It is to
abandon the competition for things, status, and persons, and abstain from
retaliation against those pursuing competition. “The real choice”, says Girard,
“is between tragic conflict and total renunciation, the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Kingdom</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">God</st1:placename></st1:place>,
the Golden Rule of the Gospels. This alternative is so frightening that
Shakespearean heroes and heroines try to elude it”(15). Leontes, though, makes
the hard choice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And is rewarded most prodigally. Having been invited to view a
statue of his dead wife, Leontes sees the supposed statue come to life and step
down from its pedestal, and Hermione is returned to him. As mimetic desire
leads ever further from the real, Girard glosses, renunciation of desire brings
a return of the real. The true fulness of being is represented by Hermione’s
resurrected flesh—which, in turn, reminds us of Christ’s resurrected and
glorified body. Moreover with the “miracle” of Hermione’s return, Leontes is
finally released from guilt over his mimetic actions: he is granted “the
certainty of being forgiven”(342). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span lang="EN-AU">The Winter’s Tale</span></i><span lang="EN-AU">, on Girard’s reading, brings to conclusion the internal logic of
mimesis in Shakespeare. In plays like <i>Troilus
and Cressida</i> Shakespeare has explored mimetic desire, and shown it leading
to the crisis of Degree. In <i>Julius Caesar</i>
the scapegoat mechanism, as a solution to the crisis of Degree, is revealed and
rejected. All that remains is appetite, the “universal wolf” that must “last
eat himself up”, or Christian renunciation. Before Shakespeare gave us <i>The Winter’s Tale</i> “signs of humility and
compassion were not absent from his theater, but they were few”(342). However
with this play Shakespeare’s <i>oeuvre</i>
achieves a Christian consummation. “I view <i>The
Winter’s</i> <i>Tale</i>”, declares Girard,
“as the successful accomplishment of a purpose that long remained unfulfilled”(338).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard’s interpretation of Shakespeare involves a rejection of the
account of desire given in classical philosophy. For classical philosophy,
human desire is a response to the nature of its object. In Thomist terminology,
“It is the cogitative power which determines the movements of our sensitive
appetites”(Gilson 241). The realities we find desirable, by this analysis, are
not mere neutral stuff; they are “value-laden”. In particular, they may have intrinsic
moral or aesthetic value. Now if desire is determined by the way things are,
there are grounds for desire, reasons for desire, and desire is, in a sense,
rational. Desires can be merited or unmerited, appropriate or inappropriate,
proportionate or disproportionate (Lewis 15-17).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard intends that all this should go; his mimetic theory avows
that desire is determined by a model, not by the object. Yet in their detail Girard’s
readings of Shakespeare tell a somewhat different story. We have previously
noted the verdict Girard gives on Troilus’ weariness with Cressida after their
tryst—“Troilus’ disgraceful behaviour on that early morning”(128). We have also
observed, though, that Troilus’ actions can be explained as following from
disillusioned metaphysical desire; they obey mimetic logic. Yet if Troilus
simply desires, and acts, mimetically, how can his behaviour be “disgraceful”?
It can only be disgraceful as an inappropriate response to the reality at hand.
To the value-laden reality, that is, of a young woman who has given her heart
to him. So Girard’s criticism of a mimetic desire presupposes the classical
account of emotions he explicitly rejects.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nor is this just a one-off slip. Girard has defined illusory “metaphysical
desire” as desire which “does not correspond to anything real”(<i>Things</i> 296). But implicit in this
definition is that non-illusory, non-metaphysical desire will be desire which <i>does</i> correspond to the real, which is proportioned
to the nature of the object. Achieving “right desire”, then, is not just a matter
of following a different and better model, but of following reality. Drawing
out the logic of Girard’s own concepts, we realize that a mimetic understanding
of desire is not sufficient: imitative desire must be integrated with classical
desire. Shakespeare’s plays, by embodying the traditional account, reveal this
inadequacy in Girard’s theory. So Shakespeare may be said to deconstruct
Girard’s theory of desire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we must attend to grounds of desire as well as mimesis, however,
a host of further difficulties crowd in
for the Girardian Shakespeare. Perhaps most importantly, doubt is thrown on <i>The Winter’s Tale</i> being a Christian
conclusion to the mimetic cycle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard has argued that Leontes’ jealous rage is in accord with
mimetic logic; the king is “hypermimetic”. Girard therefore feels able to scorn
the “traditional critics” who find Leontes’ jealousy “‘insufficiently
motivated’”(317). But what these “traditional critics” , working with a
traditional understanding of desire, mean, is that Leontes’ jealousy is
insufficiently motivated <i>in relation to
reality</i>. And Girard admits as much. Leontes’ wife of many years is loving
and wholly faithful; his best friend from childhood is trustworthy; his
servants and subjects dutiful and devoted. Leontes’ passion has no basis in
objective fact. Mimesis may account for his jealousy, but cannot justify or
excuse it. The behaviour of Leontes is, like that of Troilus,
“disgraceful”—indeed, far more so. The traditional critics are quite right to
find Leontes’ rage, as Girard notes, “disturbing”(317); malice and madness are
here scrambled together. That the fury ends as abruptly as it began only makes
it the more unnerving. As for Girard’s “last temptation of Leontes”, over
Perdita. Well, one can be thankful that Leontes does not act on his lustful
feelings towards a girl who is not only young enough to be his daughter, but,
as we the audience know, actually <i>is</i>
his daughter. However Leontes managing, just, to respond to her with basic
decency does not make his behaviour some glorious Christian abnegation.
Contrary to Girard’s contention, <i>The
Winter’s Tale</i> does not encourage us to identify with Leontes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now in critiquing Leontes’ passions by reference to their grounds,
we see that the king’s Sicilia is not undergoing a crisis of Degree. While
Leontes may be “hypermimetic”, the world he lives in is not. Leontes is
surrounded by decent people who wish him the best, within a stable social order
accepted by all as good. There is even a benevolent cosmic/ religious order, as
demonstrated by the truthful oracle from Apollo. Leontes’ renunciation and
repentance is just a matter of complying with the norms of his world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> How then does the solution to
the crisis of Degree which Girard finds in <i>The
Winter’s Tale</i>, renouncing possessive desire, apply to the very different
worlds of <i>Julius Caesar</i> and <i>Troilus and Cressida,</i> worlds which <i>are</i> consumed by mimetic rivalry?
Renunciation is no part of the social norms in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Rome</st1:city></st1:place> and the Trojan war, and it is hardly
plausible that these communities would suddenly and unanimously adopt the Golden
Rule. As the mankind of <i>Troilus and</i> <i>Cressida </i>are not the sort of beings to
obey natural law morality, still less are they going to follow the Beatitudes,
barring some pretty spectacular miracle. So Christian repentance cannot resolve
crises of Degree in the way the scapegoat mechanism does. For on Girard’s
admission, remember, this mechanism has and does bring communities into
unanimty, against the scapegoat, and does bring order, once the scapegoat has
been murdered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The suggestion might be made that forgoing possessive desire is an
answer on an individual level. Yet Christian renunciation on the part of, for
example, Troilus, would not bring the reward Leontes receives. If Troilus let
go of acquisitive desire, in all liklihood his lover Cressida would have him
supporting her while she dallied with the “merry Greeks”. Troilus would
probably lose respect and status in the Trojan camp, and if he tried to stop
the war, or refused to fight, would probably be killed by the Greeks. Troilus’
fate, in short, would be just that of Lear and Cordelia, when thay renounce
possessive desire in a world of mimetic conflict. Obviously, the fact that
following the Golden Rule may bring suffering and earthly failure—different
forms of crucifixion—comes as no surprise to Christianity, and is no argument
against it. But <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>
does not engage with such harsh realities. This is not a criticism of <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>; my criticism is of the
way Girard attempts to use the play. In my opinion, Shakespeare’s play is not
in any way attempting to formulate the Christian response to the crisis of
Degree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet once we abandon Girard’s narrative of a mimetic cycle in
Shakespeare, leading up to the Christian consummation of <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>, he is left with a multitude of interpretative
complexities, and complexities of aesthetic evaluation. To take one example:
the statue scene in <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>,
and the scene at the sheep-shearing festival before it, are among the supreme
episodes in Shakespeare. Nevertheless, <i>The
Winter’s Tale</i> is not one of Shakespeare’s very greatest plays. Arguably some
of the comedies are greater, but the five major tragedies certainly are.
According to Girard, though, “signs of humility and compassion” are “few”(342)
in these tragedies, a Christian purpose is “unfulfilled”(338). But if
Shakespeare’s greatest works of art, his most searching and profound portrayals
of the human condition, are not Christian, where does this leave Girard’s
Christian Shakespeare?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Apart from a few fervent Girardians, who know a lot about Girard but
much less about Shakespeare, and of course Girard himself, I don’t suppose
there is anyone who believes that Girard gives a comprehensive and exact picture
of Shakespeare. Counter-examples to Girard’s reading can be piled high. In my
opinion, though, concentrating on such “falsifications” does not give an
adequate assessment of Girard. For a different perspective, I note that modern
accounts of rationality, following the work of Imre Lakatos, have moved away
from regarding falsification as the main principle in the evaluation of
scientific theories, or “research programmes”. After all, there are numerous falsifying
instances, labelled as anomalies, to all major scientific theories. Instead,
and especially with new and developing theories, greater emphasis is placed on
confirmations of different types (Lakatos 135-7).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And Girard’s theory of Shakespeare has confirmations in abundance. We
have seen how mimetic principles are able to explain the age-old critical
chesnut of Troilus’ inconstant passion. More generally with <i>Troilus</i> <i>and Cressida</i>, Girard has predicted, and verified, that the
agresssion and sexual desire which dominate the play are not instinctive,
“animal” drives, as the standard reading maintains, but are imbued by mimesis,
by emulation and envy. A whole new level of meaning in the play is thus opened
up. A new theme is opened up, too, across <i>Troilus
and Cressida</i>, <i>Julius Caesar</i> and
numerous other plays, through recognition of a contagion of mimetic rivalry which
undermines the social order—the crisis of Degree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As regards Shakespeare and Christianity, Girard finds in Shakespeare
an understanding of the false
divinization of erotic passion, that Renaissance and modern substitute for declining
Christian belief. The Shakespeare of <i>Julius
Caesar</i> exhibits what is for Girard a profoundly Christian attitude: recognizing
the innocence of the scapegoat, and rejecting the scapegoat’s murder. These
fairly sketchy readings leave much room for further and deeper investigation.
Finally, Christian renunciation appears in <i>The
Winter’s Tale</i> as an alternative to the delusions of acquisitive mimetic
desire; and this play shows that, in some circumstances at least, possessive desire
can be conquered by a Christian redemption.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given so many and such significant verifications, though not denying
the need for modifications, renovations, and even wholesale reconstruction of the theory, my
conclusion is that Girard’s research programme remains afloat. I believe it
provides us with a most lively and challenging Christian interpretation of
Shakespeare. Alongside the critical Christian Shakespeares down the centuries,
room must be made for this rather eccentric, sometimes infuriating, defiantly
new-fangled Other Christian Shakespeare. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WORKS CITED<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Burrows, Colin,
“Introduction”. In William Shakespeare, <i>Troilus
and Cressida</i>. Ed. R.A.Foakes. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>:
Penguin Shakespeare, 2006. xxi-lxiii.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">De Rougemont,
Denis, <i>Love in the Western World</i>.
Trans. Montgomery Belgion. Princeton: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Princeton</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>
Press, 1983.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gilson, Etienne,
<i>The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas
Aquinas</i>. Trans. L.K.Shook, C.S.B.. Notre Dame: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Notre</st1:placename></st1:place>
Dame Press, 2006.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard, René, <i>Battling to the End: Conversations with
Benoît Chantre</i>. Trans. Mary Baker. <st1:city w:st="on">East Lansing</st1:city>:
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Michigan</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>
Press, 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard, René, <i>Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other
in Literary Structure</i>. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. <st1:city w:st="on">Baltimore</st1:city>
and <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>: The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">John</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Hopkins</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place> Press, 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard, René, <i>The Scapegoat</i>. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. <st1:city w:st="on">Baltimore</st1:city>: The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">John</st1:placename>
<st1:placename w:st="on">Hopkins</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>
Press, 1986. Kindle e-book file.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard, René, <i>A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare</i>. <st1:city w:st="on">South Bend</st1:city>: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">St.
Augustine</st1:city></st1:place>’s Press, 2004.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard, René, <i>Things Hidden since the Foundation of the
World</i>. Research undertaken in collaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlian
and Guy Lefort. Trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer. Stanford: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Stanford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place> Press, 1987.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Girard, René, <i>Violence and the Sacred</i>. Trans. Patrick
Gregory. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state></st1:place>: Continuum, 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lewis, C.S., <i>The Abolition of Man: Or Reflections on
Education with Special Reference</i> <i>to
the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms</i>. 2<sup>nd</sup> ed.. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>: Geoffrey Bles,
1962.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lakatos, Imre,
“Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”. In <i>Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge</i>.
Ed. I.Lakatos and A.Musgrave. <st1:city w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:city>: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place> Press, 1974. pp.91-196.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lowell, Robert,
“The Drunken Fisherman”. In <i>Lord Weary’s
Castle and The Mills of the</i> <i>Kavanaughs</i>.
<st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1974. pp.37-38.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oates, Joyce
Carol, “Essence and Existence”. In <i>Shakespeare:
“Troilus and Cressida”: A</i> <i>Casebook</i>.
Ed. Priscilla Martin. <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> and <st1:place w:st="on">Basingstoke</st1:place>: The MacMillan Press Ltd, 1976. pp.167-180.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Parkes, H.B.,
“Nature’s Diverse Laws: The Double Vision of the Elizabethans”. <i>Sewanee Review</i> LVIII, No. 3, Summer
1950. pp.403-418.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rosier, James
L., “The Lex Aeterna and <i>King Lear</i>”. <i>Journal of English and Germanic</i> <i>Philology</i> 53(1954). pp.574-80.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shakespeare,
William, <i>Julius Caesar</i>. The Signet
Classic Shakespeare. Ed. William and Barbara Rosen. <st1:state w:st="on">New
York</st1:state> and <st1:place w:st="on">Scarborough</st1:place>: New
American Library, 1963.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shakespeare,
William, <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>. Ed.
R.A.Foakes. Intro. Colin Burrow. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>:
Penguin Shakespeare, 2006.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shakespeare,
William, <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>. The
Signet Classic Shakespeare. Ed. Frank Kermode. <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>
and <st1:place w:st="on">Scarborough</st1:place>: New American Library, 1963.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tillyard,
E.M.W., <i>The Elizabethan World Picture</i>.
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>:
Chatto&Windus, 1958.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Watkin, E.I., <i>A Philosophy of Form</i>. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>: Sheed and Ward, 1935.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-36824797151401852922015-03-25T11:50:00.000-07:002015-03-25T11:50:10.661-07:00A Really Bad Article on "The Merchant of Venice"<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
by</div>
<div>
<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Joseph Pearce</a><br />
<br />
Although I often like Sean Fitzpatrick’s literary articles, this is pure unadulterated drivel:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/merchant-venice-shakespearean-insincerity">www.crisismagazine.com/2015/merchant-venice-shakespearean-insincerity</a><br />
<br />
Mr. Fitzpatrick is merely echoing the Shylock-as-victim misreading of the play that is one of the most egregious cases of Shakespeare abuse imaginable. I do not have time to dissect the many errors in the article, not least of which is the casting of the saintly and wise Portia as a bigoted anti-semite, but would urge strongly that readers of the Christian Shakesepare buy my book <a href="http://www.ignatius.com/Products/TSE-H/through-shakespeares-eyes.aspx">Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays </a>in which I devote about half the book to discussing The Merchant of Venice, scene by scene. I would also urge you to buy the <a href="http://www.ignatius.com/promotions/ignatiuscriticaleditions/shakespeare-merchant-of-venice.htm">Ignatius Critical Edition of The Merchant of Venice</a> (audio book version <a href="http://www.ignatius.com/IProducts/26891/the-merchant-of-venice.aspx">available here</a>), which contains some superb critical essays, including a brilliant defence of Portia’s efforts to save Shylock by Daniel Lowenstein, a professor at the UCLA Law School, and an excellent essay by an economist on the way in which Shakespeare and his audience would have seen the practice of usury, i.e. in the light of the Church’s condemnation of it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-13468330349190908932015-02-19T21:59:00.000-08:002015-02-23T11:55:44.426-08:00The First Folio of St. Omer and "Neville"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Carol Curt Enos shows how the recently discovered First Folio at St. Omer in France is yet another proof of Shakespeare's Catholic faith.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>First Folio</i> of St. Omer and "Neville"</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by</span></div>
<div>
<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Carol Curt Enos</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">The discovery of a
Shakespeare </span><i style="line-height: 200%;">First Folio</i><span style="line-height: 200%;"> from a 17</span><sup style="line-height: 200%;">th</sup><span style="line-height: 200%;">
c library in the Jesuit seminary at St Omer, France, in Nov 2014 has implications
beyond reinforcing the theory that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic and that his
religion is reflected in his work. </span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">The
history of this </span><i style="line-height: 200%;">First Folio</i><span style="line-height: 200%;"> also supports
the most recent thrust of Shakespeare scholarship:</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">that teenage Shakespeare was a tutor or
developing actor in the homes of Alexander Hoghton at Hoghton Tower, Sir Thomas
Hesketh at Rufford, and finally, the Stanley family at Knowsley and Lea, which
led to his position in the acting company of Lord Strange (Ferdinando Stanley) and
onward to the London stage.</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">This theory
grew out of the discovery of a 1581 will of Alexander Hoghton at Hoghton Tower,
Lancashire, naming William Shakeshafte, an actor/musician who was ‘now
dwelling’ in his home who was to go to Sir Thomas Hesketh on Hoghton’s death
(Honigmann 85).</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">Chambers (1944) and
Honigmann (1985) have identified this Shakeshafte with William Shakespeare.</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> A fair assumption is that sometime in the mid 1600s the
Folio was taken to the Jesuit college founded in St. Omer in 1593 to be used as
a teaching textbook in the Catholic education of boys, which was banned in England<span style="color: #535353;">. </span>The
Jesuits were known for using theater as a teaching tool<span style="color: #535353;">.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #535353; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">The owner of the Folio has
been tentatively identified from the name ‘Neville’ inscribed on the first
surviving page as Edward Scarisbrick (Neville), a Jesuit priest who spent some
years in St. Omer (Schuessler<i>)</i>. My research supports Edward Scarisbrick as
the probable owner; however, three other men named Edmund Neville should be
considered. The erratic, unstable Elizabethan
and Jacobean spelling often interchanged the names Edward and Edmund. All four candidates have implications for the
Shakespeare in Lancashire theory or ties with Shakespeare’s family. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> One Edmund Neville 1555-1630 was not a Jesuit priest, but
definitely a Catholic. He was a second
cousin once removed from Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden (<i>Rootsweb. ‘</i>Neville/Westmoreland
Family’). He was nine years older than
William Shakespeare 1564-1616 and quite likely was acquainted with his distant
cousin in Stratford, for Neville’s mother was the sister of Edward Arden of Park
Hall in Warwickshire, about 35 miles north of Stratford. He was a Catholic conspirator involved with
his relative, William Parry, in the Parry Plot (1585) to assassinate Queen
Elizabeth. As a relative of William
Shakespeare, he quite possibly had an interest in the posthumous 1623
publication of Shakespeare’s plays and recognized their usefulness to the
Jesuits at St Omer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> Edmund was the great grandson of John Neville, third
baron Latimer, and in 1584 he returned to England from Spain claiming to be the
last Lord Latimer. Thomas Cecil had
married Dorothy, daughter of the late Lord Latimer, and he was determined to
thwart Neville’s claim by casting suspicion on his loyalty. Already in trouble, in 1585, Neville joined
Parry in the plot to kill the Queen.
Even though he turned on Parry and saved his own life, he was sent to
the Tower and remained there until 1595 when he again went abroad. In 1601, on the death of Charles Neville, 6th
earl of Westmorland, he returned to England claiming the earldom in vain even
though he had a solid claim. He was
later accused of participating in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 where he would
have been in the company of several of Mary Arden Shakespeare’s relatives who
were ringleaders of the plot (Milward 116). He died February 3, 1629/30, in Bruxelles,
Belgium.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Another
Edmund Neville (<i>alias</i> Elijah Nelson) 1563-1648
simultaneously claimed to be the rightful heir to Westmorland. This Neville was the nephew of Sir Thomas
Hesketh of Rufford and lived with Sir Thomas from about the age of 6 until the
age of 43 when, as ‘Edward Neville,’ he went to Rome to become a Jesuit priest
(Foley 220). </span>The Hesketh home was
frequented by Catholic priests who had studied in English seminaries
principally in the Low Countries and who were ministering secretly in Catholic
homes throughout England.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> Alexander Hoghton’s 1581 will specified that his
budding actor, William Shakeshafte, should go to Sir Thomas Hesketh. If this William was really William
Shakespeare, the two young men, nearly the same age, would have been in the
Hesketh home at the same time. Neville
proposed marriage to Mary Ward but was rejected. Mary Ward first joined the Poor Clare nuns in
St. Omer and later founded the so-called ‘Jesuitesses’ in various locations in
the Low Countries. Mary Ward’s family
was closely connected with the Wright, Winter, and the Ingleby families, all
related to Mary Arden Shakespeare via her relationship with the Throckmortons
of Coughton Court. All of these families
were committed and active Catholics in the Counter Reformation. Mary Ward was born in 1585, so Shakespeare
would not have met her at the Hesketh home, but there were multiple family ties
to Shakespeare. Because of Mary’s
association with St. Omer, it is not improbable that Edmund Neville contributed
the <i>First Folio</i> of his youthful
friend to the library at St Omer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 67.5pt 427.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Thomas
Hesketh’s mother, Grace Towneley, was Edmund’s great aunt. The Townleys may be a link between William
Shakespeare and associates on the London stage.
Edward Alleyn, the famous actor in London who surely knew Shakespeare,
was the son of Margaret Towneley, a sister of Sir Thomas’s mother and of Edmund
Neville’s grandmother (Chetham Society V I, 26, 27). All three men, Edmund Neville, William
Shakespeare, and Edward Alleyn may have been acquainted in Lancashire in the
1580s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 67.5pt 427.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
two Nevilles who claimed the Earldom of Westmorland traced their ancestry to
Geoffrey FitzRobert de Nevill, Baron of Raby 1197-1242. The Arden Neville descended from Geoffrey’s
son, Robert, and the Hesketh Edmund Neville descended from a son, also named
Geoffrey. The Arden Edmund Neville is
directly descended from Ralph, 1<sup>st</sup> earl of Westmorland whereas the
Hesketh claim does not go directly through Ralph’s line but can be traced to
Geoffrey FitzRobert de Nevill of the 12<sup>th</sup> c. Their avowed purpose was to use the
Westmorland inheritance to aid the Catholic religion in its struggle to
survive. Both men had connections with
St. Omer and probably with William Shakespeare that could have motivated them
to contribute the <i>First Folio</i> to the
seminary’s library.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Another Edmund Neville (<i>alias</i><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">
Sales) 1605-47 </span>was the nephew of Edmund Neville who lived with Sir
Thomas Hesketh. He <span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">did
his humanities studies at St. Omer and then entered the English College at Rome
at age 17 and took his oath in 1622 (Foley</span><i>. </i><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Vol
V, 350). </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">His ‘Palm of Christian
Fortitude’ was published in St. Omer in 1630.
His family ties with Shakespeare’s family were essentially parallel with
his uncle’s family. </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Identifying
this Jesuit priest has also been difficult for others as Henry Foley noted in
his <i>Records of the English . . . .
Society of Jesus</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 40.5pt; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> Edmund Neville.—Some, says Dr.
Oliver, affirm he was a Scarisbrick. The
Diary of the English College, Rome, however, states that Edmund Neville, <i>vere</i> Sales, of Lancashire, at the age of
seventeen, entered as an alumnus on the 29<sup>th</sup> of September, 1621, and
took the College oath on the 16<sup>th</sup> of May, 1622. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 40.5pt; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">.
. . . <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 40.5pt; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">On
entering the English College he states:
“1621. My name is Edmund Neville,
<i>alias</i> Sales. I was born at my father’s house at Hopcut,
Lancashire, and am seventeen years of age. . .
I made my humanity studies at St. Omer’s. I was always brought up a Catholic, although
I was never present at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or at confession in England
on account of my age.” In 1624 he was
serving the mission in St. Mary’s Residence, or the Oxford District, but we do
not trace him further.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> We are left in uncertainty as to his <i>real</i> name; the Diary calls it <i>Sales</i>, and his autobiographical account says Neville, <i>alias</i> Sales, but we think it is clear
that he was not a Scarisbrick. (Foley</span><span style="color: #262626; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> 296).<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> Foley’s pronouncement indicates this Edmund Neville was
probably was not the Edward Scarisbrick Neville who, to date, has been
identified as the ‘Neville’ inscribed on the first existing page of the <i>First Folio</i> found in the St. Omer
library collection. I concur with the
Scarisbrick identification, principally based on the fact that the frontispiece
and several of the beginning pages are missing from this copy of the
Folio. The removal of the first pages suggests
that the book was originally part of the library in the school at Scarisbrick
Hall, for someone had torn the fly leaves out of the books in the library as
recorded by Henry Foley:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-right: 1.5in;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> An Addenda, p
1398 entitled <i>Scarisbrick Hall and
Family, County of Lancaster p</i>rovided
by the Rev. W. A. Bulbeck, O.S. B., lists
books in St. Mary’s Library in Scarisbrick Hall:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 1.0in;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> During
the course of two centuries and a half the clergy who<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 103.5pt; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">have resided at Scarisbrick have gradually formed a considerable
library. On arranging these books in
order under the names of signature, it was found that they formed a regular and
almost unbroken series, like the geological strata in the crust of the
earth. The series begins with a name
that is highly distinguished in the literary annals of the Society of
Jesus. Some over-cautious person has
unfortunately torn out most of the fly leaves that had any writing on them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-right: 1.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">At the end of the list of books, a list of names of students or owners is given:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-right: 1.5in; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">List of Names extracted from the
fly-leaves of school-books at Scarisbrick,
County Lancaster, a school formerly taught by the fathers of the society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 1.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #262626; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The names
coupled together are in the same books, but it does not necessarily follow that
they were written at the same date. The
dates of the books are frequently of the greatest importance. From the names and dates I conclude that the
school <i>may have been in existence </i>in
1618, <i>probably</i> from 1628 to 1639, <i>certainly</i> from 1648 to 1652, <i>continuing probably </i>in 1679, and <i>certainly</i> in 1698—1700, <i>probably </i>in 1703, and <i>perhaps</i> twenty years later (</span><i><span style="color: #262626; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus ... in the
sixteenth ...</span></i><span style="color: #262626; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">p
687).</span><i><span style="color: #262626; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></i><span style="color: #262626; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;"> The probable identity of ‘Neville’ in the St. Omer <i>First Folio</i> is Edward Scarisbrick
1639-1708, the son of Edward Scarisbrick and Frances Bradshagh. </span>There is no surname of ‘Neville’ in
the genealogy of the family, so why did Edward Scarisbrick <span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">use
the alias of Neville? That question
seems to have no answer. Suffice it to
say: “Many members of the Scarisbrick
family of Scarisbrick Hall, near Ormskirk, became Jesuits during the penal
times and assumed the <i>alias</i> "Neville" (<i>Catholic Online</i>).</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It
is generally acknowledged that Ferdinando Stanley, 5<sup>th</sup> Earl of
Derby, was Shakespeare’s first patron in the early 1590s, and as a retainer in
the Derby household, Shakespeare may have been acquainted with the Stanleys’
Scarisbrick relatives. Even earlier,
Shakespeare/Shakeshafte and members of the Scaribricks would have met, for
Scarisbricks were also related to Hoghtons and Halsalls. By 1400 the Halsall, Stanley, and Scarisbrick
families were intermarried. Robert
Halsall married Ellen Scarisbrick c 1400.
Thomas Stanley 2<sup>nd</sup> Earl of Derby 1477-1521 had an illegitimate
daughter, Elizabeth born 1502 (rarely appears in the genealogy tables) who
married Thomas Scarisbrick 1502-1530, ward of the earl. Other Stanley/Scarisbrick marriages followed:
Edward Stanley 3<sup>rd</sup> Earl of
Derby 1509-1572 married Margaret Baralow sister of Alexander Barlow, father of
Margaret Barlow daughter of Alexander Barlow, Sr. His sister was Margaret Baralow, Countess of
Derby (wife of Edward Stanley 3<sup>rd</sup> Earl of Derby as his second wife). This Margaret also married Richard Halsal
[sic]. A later Richard Halsall d 1573
married Janet Scarisbrick.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The
Halsalls are included here because the Stanley, Scarisbrick, and Halsall
families had been closely connected since the 1400s. Robert Halsall and Ellen Scarisbrick c 1400
were the great, great grandparents of Jane Halsall, Countess of Derby,
wife/mistress? of Henry Stanley, 4<sup>th</sup> Earl of Derby. Jane Halsall was the mother of Ursula Halsall
wife of John Salusbury, probably the couple in Shakespeare’s <i>Phoenix and the Turtle. </i>Moreover, Jane’s grandparents were Sir
Henry Halsall 1482-1522 and Douce Scarisbrick.
Douce was the daughter of Gilbert Scarisbrick of Scarisrick Esq (Chetham
Society Vol 1, 115).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The
Stanley family, the first patrons of William Shakespeare likely acquired a copy
of the <i>First Folio</i> when it was published
in 1623. The Scarisbricks who probably
were acquainted William Shakespeare in his teen years also would have followed
his London theater career. Both
families, like other committed Catholic families, were attuned to his subtle Catholic
messages in the plays, reason enough to add the Folio to the library at
Scarisbrick Hall. Even before the Folio
was available there is evidence that Shakespeare’s plays were performed
secretly in Catholic homes. Richard
Cholmeley, in 1609, was charged with ‘bearing inward love and affection to such
as are obstinate popish recusants and having many obstinate popish recusants
that depend on him’, protesting that Cholmley had licensed a company of actors
whose plays contained ‘much popery and abuse of the law and justice.’ . . . (Cholmley). This did not stop him, however, for in 1610
he had a recusant group of players perform <i>King
Lear</i> at Gowthwayte Hall in Yorkshire.
Sell and Johnson, the editors, suggest that it, like other plays, ‘had
especial Catholic resonance’ and that the ‘recusant group of players exemplify
the organization of contemporary theatre for religio-political purposes’ (Sell
and Johnson122).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The
Scarisbrick and Stanley families were tightly connected geographically as well
as by kinship. The area which became
known as Scarisbrick originally belonged to the lord of Lathom, who held it as
early as 1086. The name ‘Scarisbrick’
first appeared in the reign of Richard I (1189-99) when Gilbert de Scarisbrick
was named as the owner of some of the Lathom property. So the Scarisbrick family was already settled
in the Lathom territory, much of which was taken over by Sir John Stanley who
married Isabel Latham in 1385. The earls
of Derby descended from this marriage and the manor of Lathom has been the
family seat since that time. Scarisbrick
Hall is about eight miles west of Rufford (Hesketh), about twelve miles north
of Knowsley (Stanley), and about two miles from Halsall, short distances that
enabled the families to interact and to marry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The
priest, Edward Scarisbrick 1639-1708, <span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">entered the Jesuit novitiate at Watten in Holland in 1657,
resigning his estates to his brother Robert.
His grandfather Edward Scarisbrick 1540-1599 </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">was
receiver-general for Henry, Earl of Derby, and was one of the gentlemen-ushers
who attended the burial of his father Edward, Earl of Derby in 1572. The senior Edward Scarisbrick appears many
times as a dinner guest of Henry Stanley in the <i>Derby Household Books </i>and is named as a loving servant in the will
of Ferdinando Stanley, which he witnessed 12 April 1594 (<i>National Archives</i> 5)</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edward
Scarisbrick, the priest, is the most likely candidate as the Neville named in
the <i>First Folio</i>. However, the other three Edward/Edmund
Nevilles should be considered as possibilities.
One of them was a direct relative of Mary Arden Shakespeare and
therefore probably was acquainted with William Shakespeare. The Hesketh Edmund Neville perhaps even lived
with William Shakespeare at Hesketh’s home at Rufford. Both he and his nephew, Edmund Neville
(Sales) knew Mary Ward who was distantly related to Shakespeare’s mother. Any one of these men had adequate ties with
St. Omer to motivate their contribution of the <i>First Folio</i> to the seminary library at St. Omer.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-59729136143748604102015-01-30T07:12:00.001-08:002015-01-30T07:12:17.552-08:00Best Biographies of Shakespeare<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Joseph Pearce on his choice for the Best Biographies of Shakespeare</div>
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<div>
Best Biographies of Shakespeare</div>
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by</div>
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<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Joseph Pearce</a><br />
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I'm in receipt of an e-mail from someone who has read my biography, <em>The Quest for Shakespeare</em>, and is keen to investigate the evidence for Shakespeare's Catholicism still further. She requested other biographies of the Bard that I would recommend. Here's my reply:</div>
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The biography of Shakespeare I would recommend above all others is <em>The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, 1564-1616</em> by Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel (London: Chaucer Press, 2007). Unfortunately it's not cheap but it's a very handsome coffee table book with numerous illustrations throughout and 400 pages packed with solid scholarship.</div>
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Others that I would recommend:</div>
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John Henry De Groot, <em>The Shakespeares and "The Old Faith"</em> (Fraser, Michigan: Real-View Books, 1995). An excellent and thorough examination of Shakespeare's family, especially his parents, and the documentary evidence for their Catholic recusancy.</div>
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H. Mutschmann & K. Wentersdorf, <em>Shakespeare & Catholicism </em>(New York: Sheed & Ward, 1952). This is not strictly a biography but a scholarly study of the evidence for Shakespeare' Catholicism from both the biographical and the textual perspective.</div>
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Ian Wilson, <em>Shakespeare: The Evidence </em>(New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999). A solid biographical study that comes to the conclusion that Shakespeare was a Catholic. (Not to be confused with another biography by a <em>Richard</em> Wilson, which is problematic for a number of reasons.)</div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-9029374293508218542015-01-28T14:55:00.000-08:002015-01-28T15:07:08.807-08:00"King Lear" and the Catholic Drama of Three Households and Four Loves<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ken Colston on seeing <i>King
Lear </i>through the <i>Four Loves </i>of C. S. Lewis, and of
seeing how sacrificial love redeems the play's nihilism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>King Lear </i>and the Catholic Drama of Three Households and
Four Loves <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Ken
Colston</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Originally printed in <a href="http://www.stthomas.edu/cathstudies/Logos/archives/volumes/16-4/16.4Colston.pdf">Logos
- A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture -16:4 Fall 2013</a>.
Re-published by permission.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“That word love, which greybeards call divine.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Henry vi, part iii</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hardly anyone now reads the
world’s greatest work of literature for its dramatization of Catholic wisdom.
By the 1960s, according to R. A. Foakes, critical opinion had crowned King
Lear as Shakespeare’s greatest play, and it is still indeed common to hear
it maintained that Lear is the greatest work of literature ever
written in any language. Foakes attributes this rise mainly to the
apocalyptic and nihilistic mood of the Cold War. And yet during the same
period, he points out, the accepted reading of Lear changed from that
of a play concerned with a “pilgrimage to redemption” to one offering
“Shakespeare’s bleakest and most despairing vision of suffering, all hints of
consolation undermined or denied.”1 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is not surprising that a
nihilistic, skeptical age would see only nihilism and skepticism in King
Lear. To be sure, the play has some of the ugliest, darkest minutes in all of
literature: two ungrateful daughters strip their aged father of his property
and drive him outdoors unprotected into a raging storm as he declines into
raving madness; a betrayed spy of the state has both eyes gouged out on stage,
one in cruel jest; a father reconciled to his only loving daughter
finds her hanged right after their reconciliation, and another father suffers
from a broken heart when he learns that he has wronged his loving son;
throughout it all, the cosmic order seems indifferent and even hostile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This pessimistic action,
however, is less than half the story. Consider these events, which are much more
than “hints of consolation”: the two ungrateful and evil sisters perish in
their own iniquity by poisoning and suicide; an evil son, “touched by love,”
albeit adulterous, recognizes his sinfulness and countermands his execution
order with a last-minute (although too late) pardon, a radical act of
gratuitous mercy; an unjustly treated son ministers to the very father, himself
unjustly blinded, who has mistreated him, with no hope of reward and no effort
to reveal his identify, in yet another radical act of gratuitous mercy; a
banished suffering servant continues to serve the very king who has banished
him for truth-telling at the risk of his own life, being put in the stocks,
like Charity in a morality play, turning treason into love; a king’s hired fool
loves the king to the point of a broken heart despite the king’s foolishness
and the imperatives of his own clear-eyed worldly wisdom; and there are
numerous other acts of redemption. In the final reckoning, all the evil
characters die, but some of the good ones survive. How can so many modern
interpreters remain unmoved by this catalog of consolations? It is as if King
Lear’s famous last words (in the Folio edition), which declare the glorious
resurrection of his beloved daughter, “Look, look there!” fall on blinded eyes,
to mix a metaphor, those of our own narrowed age that cannot see the “mystery
of things” glimpsed by Cordelia and Lear in their reconciliation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A modern skeptic may look
at the bountiful unbidden generosity of Edgar, the Fool, Albany, Kent, Edmund, Cordelia,
and Lear and see nothing but human beings who express simple human compassion
for victims of catastrophe, but Shakespeare saw it, I believe, because he saw
human beings in the Christian light of fallen nature, redeemed possibility, resurrected
hope—in a word, as touched by God’s grace. He was not a Buddhist who saw
the world as illusion, a secular humanitarian like Camus’s Rieux who
sought to combine enjoyment of the world with service to humanity, a Taldmudic rabbi
who looked for halachic clarity and purity in daily living, but
rather a baptized Christian, married and buried as a Christian and perhaps
according to Roman rites, whose deeply formed manner of thinking followed
Christian dramatic lines and categories. For Shakespeare, traditional
Christianity is mere Catholicism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is the worth of
forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption, however momentarily comforting,
when the heavens are silent? The answer to this question, Shakespeare’s answer,
is one that has not been fully appreciated. When the theater was restored, Lear was
seriously bowdlerized by pious performances after Nahum Tate in 1702, and Cordelia did
not die for over a hundred and fifty years of performances. At the other
extreme, the modern nihilistic performances à la Peter Brooks (1970 was the
year of the famous film version, and even the more generous Royal Shakespeare
Company production in the 2011 Lincoln Center Summer Festival was still in
this nihilistic tradition) minimize or suppress redemptive aspects, sometimes
push the darkest interpretations such as having the Fool commit suicide, and
even cut key redemptive passages, such as eliminating Edmund’s deathbed change
of heart or the report of Gloucester’s happy death—bowdlerizing, one is tempted
to say, not to protect wholesome Victorian families from Shakespeare’s
bawdiness but to shield audiences from Shakespeare’s Christian formation and
orientation. What is missed is the full force of the play, love layered among
the bleak ruins.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">God is love, St. John tells
us, and in Lear God speaks through the layers of love expressed by
his loving creatures. C. S. Lewis’s famous analysis, The Four Loves, can
show the fullness of Shakespeare’s vision, which was apocalyptic in the sense
of Christian hope. Although not Catholic, Lewis is known for his clarity and
represents a “great lay theologian of our present day” in conformity with
Augustine, Aquinas, Francis de Sales, and Leibniz, according to Thomist Joseph
Pieper.2 Shakespeare is in agreement with the mainstream of Catholic
Christian tradition not merely because he might have read Christian theology
but because in plumbing the depths of human and supernatural love he touched
Christian truth. In this same Catholic tradition, G. K. Chesterton and Pope
Emeritus Benedict XVI can shed additional light on Shakespeare’s spiritual
mastery of love.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The
Mother and the Home</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The cradle of love, Catholic wisdom teaches, is the family at
home, and it is the mother who makes the home. Chesterton argues poetically for
the natural justice of this traditional state of affairs in What’s Wrong With the
World. The mother is the wise generalist who has to teach the child not
something but everything. She is ordered by tradition following the natural law
to develop Chesterton’s version of human history: the real fairy tale of love.
She must “smatter the tongues of men and angels” and “dabble in the dreadful
sciences” and juggle with “frantic and flaming suns”3 to bring
order and life to the family, that institution of “ancient and anarchic
intimacy” (Chesterton, 44). Men, he claims, are usually either shiftless
drunkards or specialized monomaniacs—and so not to be trusted with humanity’s
present and future, which are sustained through labor-intensive child-rearing.
Thus, the home is the first chapter in Christendom’s love story, and the good
regime, whether in “Switzerland or Siam” (44), is merely the one that allows
familial love to generate and flourish. The home is the primary
household, the locus and hearth of love, where affection is engendered,
transmitted, and learned through a mother’s smile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One striking fact of
Shakespeare’s King Lear, noted by many critics, is the radical
absence of motherhood. Not one household contains a mother, no mother appears
on stage, several absent or irregular mothers are mentioned, curses upon
motherhood are unleashed, all the women but one are singular in their
barrenness, hardness, and specialization in governance, a role traditionally
reserved for men. Feminist criticism of Lear in particular has
observed this absence and accused the text and Shakespeare himself of
“patriarchal misogyny” in Kathleen McLuskie’s language. She argues
that the play sees family roles as fixed by nature, with the father’s role
being to protect the kingdom from primal chaos, and so for her Cordelia’s saving
love does not so much redeem Goneril’s and Regan’s selfishness and
cruelty to their father as restore his usurped patriarchy.4 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The traditionalist side of
the argument, however, would not emphasize the usurped specialist father but
seek out the missing universalist mother. It would focus not on the
women turned into generals and rulers of the world but on the men turned into
nurses on the heath and at Dover cliff, not on women punished for doing men’s
work but on men redeemed for doing women’s work. This maternal absence, so
palpable as to be in fact a deforming presence, does much to explain the great
themes of the play: confused and defective love, and households out of order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The springboard for both
the main plot and subplot of King Lear, in fact, is adulterous motherlessness,
both suspected and admitted. Lear’s deceased wife and his daughters’ mother has
three mentions in the play, and in all three adultery lurks. After Kent is set
free from the stocks, Regan appears and says she is “glad to see your highness,”
and Lear responds to her in the second person intimate:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If thou shouldst not be glad, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">sepulchering an adulteress. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1.2.319–21)5<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In act 1, Lear had called Goneril a “degenerate
bastard” (1.4.245). In act 4, Kent wonders how “one self mate and
make” could “beget such different issues” as Cordelia, Goneril, and
Regan (4.3.35). Adultery may be only a baseless fear of Kent’s sympathy or a
fantasy of Lear’s deranged mind, but it is a famous constant: “Let copulation thrive!”
Lear says (4.6.112) when he forgives Gloucester’s sexual sin as Jesus pardons
the woman taken in adultery in the Gospel of John 8:3–11. 19 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the subplot, Edmund’s acknowledged “bastardy” has alienated him
not only from the household of Gloucester but also from nurture itself (whence
“nature” is his “goddess”) for nine years. Adultery, whether suggested or
outright, is a trailing indicator of the broken homes in Lear.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Storge and Eros in the
Primary Households</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like Chesterton, Lewis begins with the family, where the most
basic and most animal love grows: storge, or affection, illustrated by the
image of a mother nursing a baby.6 Lewis
makes a crucial further distinction even in this elemental first love between
“gift-love” and “need-love.” His example of affective gift-love is “that love
which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his
family which he will die without sharing or seeing”; his example of affective
need-love is that love “which sends a lonely or frightened child to its
mother’s arms” (Lewis, 1). Affection, like all natural loves, can resemble
God’s love as gift-love but often becomes demonic when this gift-love itself
becomes a need-love. His example of divinelike gift-love quickly
souring into diabolical need-love is given by the allegorical figure of Mrs.
Fidget, the long-suffering mother and wife who crushes her household with a
suffocating and “terrible need to be needed” (52). Lewis describes this failing
of gift-love as a failure to let go of affection and as a liability that is
almost “congenital to the maternal instinct.” It is not only mothers, however,
who are guilty of perverted affection in Lewis. Balancing the example of
suffocating affection as perverted gift-love, he draws an example of equally suffocating
affection as perverted need-love from the pitiful old father himself in King
Lear: “It would be absurd to say that Lear is lacking in affection. In so far
as affection is need-love he is half-crazy with it. Unless, in his own way, he
loved his daughters he would not so desperately desire their love. The
most unlovable parent (or child) may be full of such ravenous love. But it
works to their own misery and everyone else’s” (41) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No doubt Lear rails all the
more for affection from his daughters because their mother and his wife, his<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">natural-law affective
donor, is gone; in addition, his affective needs have further increased as he
leaves the specialized man’s world of government and enters the unknown domain
of retirement and dependency. The first baffling question of King Lear,
whence comes his strange demand to his daughters to declare fulsomely and
competitively their love for their father, has a plausible answer in the greedy
need-love of Lewis exacerbated by the absent mother and wife of Chesterton’s
first household.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Viewed in the lens of the
orthodox twentieth-century popular Christian theology of Chesterton and Lewis, King
Lear can thus be approached as a tragedy of broken homes, dysfunctional
loves, absent mothers, and consequent insanity. These dysfunctional loves,
however, are redeemed, we shall see, through purgatorial suffering, sacramental
relationships, several orders and examples of natural gift-love, and, finally,
by supernatural gift-love, however briefly felt and glimpsed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The major characters of the
play, far from suffering mere chaotic meaningless calamities, all experience
redemptive suffering. The first steps in their journeys take place in the
primary household, which, in the play as in life, is the family. Affection is
out of joint in all four families that appear on stage. Dysfunctional love
emerges as a major theme of the play in the first scene when Gloucester’s two
motherless households are revealed. Gloucester coarsely jokes about the
genitals (“smell a fault,” 1.1.15) of the mother of his natural son,
Edmund, a “whoreson” by adultery, within earshot. This grotesque prelude,
alluding to the first in a series of missing mothers, announces an important
critique of the household. Although Gloucester claims that his legitimate son
is “no dearer” (1.1.19) and that he owes a duty to his illegitimate (“the
whoreson must be acknowledged” [1.1.22– 23]), the sin of adultery begets
the sin of envy, and domestic evil follows upon domestic evil. Gloucester does
not shirk his bastard or deny his own culpability, but his sinful action
unleashes a compounding series of crimes, as if a rupture in sacramental form
disturbs natural-law relationships. Edmund falsely maligns his half-brother, a
gulled Gloucester banishes his honest son, Edmund betrays his own father, and,
finally, the good brother takes revenge upon the evil one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While Shakespeare in no
wise dispenses moralistic platitudes, he exposes immediately the disorder of
the harm committed by adultery upon the form of the family irrespective of the
“sport” of the “making” (1.1.21–22): it weakens the father’s authority and
alienates the mother. In the households of Gloucester, as in those throughout
the entire play, no mother is present, neither the wife nor the mistress, and
so the balance of familial love is wildly out of kilter. The perfect setting
for this maternal abandonment, barrenness, and marginality is the bleak,
elemental, pagan, Godless, pre-Christian Britain, which itself may be analogous
to the England contemporary to Shakespeare where the cult of the Blessed Mother
and fidelity to Holy Mother Church could be considered treason.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The traditional Christian
holy family of father, mother, and children, united in one bond of assorted
loves with father as head, mother as heart, and children as cocreated gifts
in blood flowing between them, have been seen by Blessed John Paul II as
following the pattern of the Trinity as a communio personarum.7 The
family is the training ground and the proving ground of Christian love: to use
Lewis’s categories, need-love, emerging from sacramental eros into
balanced storge, can ascend toward self-giving agape. In the blended
families of Gloucester, however, Venus, the raw sexual instinct devoid of eros (Lewis’s
word for “being in loveness”), poisons storge and prohibits
agape. The loves are disordered and misappropriated. Thus, with such a
background, Edmund hates Edgar, and Gloucester too credulously believes a lie
about his good son, insensitively jokes about his bad one, and doesn’t know the
soul of either. The nurturing mothers of tenderness and intimacy are totally
absent, and the loving gaze in this unholy family is totally blinded long
before Gloucester’s eyes are gouged out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No immediate formal cause
of the unbalanced storge in Lear’s own household emerges, but the
parallels are exact and manifold: a foolish father, jealous siblings, a wronged
good child, an absent mother and wife. This out-of-joint family background, not
revealed immediately, is essential to understanding Lear’s initial question as
to which of his daughters loves him most: broken families breed impatient love.
In his sudden, autocratic, seemingly spontaneous question of love, Lear demands
and thereby undoes love, for gift-love is not gift-love if not freely given,
whereas he commands it as a father-king. He needs gift-love, and needy
gift-love is impossible to negotiate, for love that fills a need cannot be an
overflowing gift but only an insufficient response to an unanswerable
requirement. He turns from daughter to daughter voraciously and promiscuously,
and even before Cordelia is precise with her answer we know that it
will fall short.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In other words, to use
Lewis’s categories, the essential early problem of Lear is that he (and other
characters) confuses need-love with gift-love. Shakespeare introduces the
essential paradox of human love with the wisdom of a solitary father (almost
all biographers conclude that he was separated from his household in Stratford
for long periods as a playwright in London):8 love commanded
is love denied. Lear demands gift-love from his daughters, but, as daughters
about to receive their inheritance, they can offer only affective need-love
tainted by the lure of gain. They owe him love as filial obedience; their
answer will in turn be rewarded contractually. He sets them, in other words, a
self-contradictory task. Whereas Regan and Goneril (“reeking”
[2.2.220] and “gonorrhea” [2.2.411]) play a word contest in their fulsome
responses, talking not like modest women but swooning swains or milites gloriosi, Cordelia (“heart”
in Latin) is serious in her radical understatement. Regan and Goneril make
more sense in their blatantly insincere flattery than Cordelia does
in her coldly sincere precision. Critics almost never note Cordelia’s stinginess
and literalness, for they miss what she too misses about love. When Lear asks
his “joy” (1.1.82) what she “can say to draw a third more opulent than [her]
sisters,” (1.1.85–86) she answers “nothing” twice (1.1.87–89), falling
absolutely and shockingly short of the “everything” that Lear craves. She loves
her “majesty/According to my bond, no more nor less.” She owes love,
but she does not give it, and so nothing is precisely what she does give even
when she promises half:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Good my lord,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Return those duties back as are right fit,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Obey you, love you and most honour you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which have my sisters husbands, if they say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They love you all? Haply when I shall wed,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Half my love with him, half my care and duty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sure I shall never marry like my sisters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To love my father all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1.1.95–104)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most critics look past the mathematical parsimony of Cordelia’s response:
“begot,” “bred,” and “loved” are duties that produce with exactitude, no more,
no less; “obey,” “love,” and “honour,” all to be divided exactly in half. Even
the asyndeton in “begot me, bred me, loved me” suggests a minimalist
appreciation of Lear’s gift-loves through eros and affection. If Goneril and
Regan reduce love to a word game, Cordelia reduces it to a zero-sum
game. She even misunderstands the sacrament of marriage, which requires
infinite, not divisible love: only half of her love will be for her husband.
She distorts the meaning of filial bond nearly to mean filial bondage. As Lear
wishes for gift-love but can only command need-love, Cordelia sees
gift-love as finite, but in fact it is infinite because by nature it reaches
out from and to the infinite values of the human person. As St. Thomas Aquinas
says, against Abelard and Bernard, love cannot increase by addition, but “by
being intensified in its subject.”9 As such,
“it is a participation of the infinite character which is the Holy Ghost,” and
“the cause of the increase of charity, namely God, is possessed of infinite
power.”10 Furthermore, she baldly confuses affection and eros: how can
it be wrong to give her father all her filial affection and her husband all her
uxorial eros? In amatory mathematics, eros and affection cannot
be added or subtracted to each other, for they belong to different sets. Love
is a relation, to use Aristotle’s categories, not a quantity. Cordelia cannot
fathom how she can love her father more without loving her husband less. This
theme of love as accounting is repeated by her sisters in the second act when
they bid their father’s “need” for “fifty” retainers down to twenty, ten, one,
and finally none by the end of act 2. Peter Saccio sees the same
misunderstanding of love as a quantity at play between Lear and Cordelia (although
he blames this confusion entirely on Lear alone and doesn’t see Cordelia also
at fault as I do) in Sonnet 87 and claims that this “favorite idea of
Shakespeare” has as its source the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of
Matthew. He contrasts the reckless “great gift” of love (line 11) with the
prudential and legalistic self-concern of “bonds” (line 4) and points out
that these oppositions (Portia’s “mercy” versus Shylock’s “bond”) organize the
drama of The Merchant of Venice. Saccio calls the infinite
generosity of love as understood in the Gospel as part of Shakespeare’s most
common “mental equipment.”11</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surely these misconstrued
loves—Lear’s self-contradictory demand for gift-love, Regan and Goneril’s shallow
view of love as rhetorical game, and Cordelia’s stingy understanding
of love as finite duty—can be explained in part by the lack of the exemplary
queen of love, the mother and wife, in their household, by Christian tradition
the domestic church, to balance affection and to teach infinite giving. Lear’s
household, to use Chesterton’s categories, is lopsided: arbitrary paternal
monomania is not countered by nurturing feminine universal wisdom. Lear knows
only to demand love, Cordelia is afraid to speak love, and Goneril and
Regan are faithless in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In short, need-love is
demanded and answered first in the family through the selfish cry of the babe
for milk, of the “stealthy” for “lust” (Edmund’s words for his illegitimate
conception), of the sibling for advantage, of the individual for everything. In
healthy families, need-love is demanded and answered, but also given and
exceeded. In broken families, again drawing upon Lewis and Chesterton, in
particular where the mother and wife are absent, unsatisfied need-love can
become an obsessive futile search, and Lear demonstrates this
obsession tragically. “All” is never enough (Lear), and the little that one has
is clinched and held back (Cordelia), thrown about meaninglessly (Goneril and
Regan), talked about scoffingly (Gloucester), or used for personal gain
(Edmund).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indeed, misconstrued,
unstable, withheld, jealous, uncertain affection is announced in the very first
line of the play by Kent: “I thought the King had more affected the Duke of
Albany than Cornwall.” Lear’s confused affection for Regan’s and Goneril’s households
is not only a prelude and sign of his affective disorder but also thrusts us
into Cordelia’s arithmetical language on love. Furthermore, Lear’s
confusion of the categories of need-love and gift-love and the clear admission
that he needs gift-love more than he wants to be given need-love are revealed
at the end of the task of publicly declaring their love that he sets his
daughters:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which of you shall we say doth love us most,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That we our largest bounty may extend,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where nature doth with merit challenge?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1.1.51–53)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In other words, Lear is asking for infinite gift (“love us most,”
“largest bounty,” “may extend”) as a reward for finite deserved need (“nature”
and “merit”).12 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lewis’s understanding of
the second natural love, eros, helps us to understand the other two
primary households. Eros, the obsession with one particular man or woman as
oneself, may or may not coexist with Venus, sexual desire, and it can even
be a brief foretaste of charity, the selfless concern for all humanity as
oneself: “The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to
reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory. In one high bound
it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself
altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted
the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously
and without effort we have fulfilled the law (toward one person) by loving our neighbour as
ourselves” (114).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It starts out high: “one of
the first things Eros does is obliterate the distinction between giving and
receiving.” Even in the early stages, however, eros can also sink low, for
lovers can so desire each other that they sometimes say they want to eat each
other. Like affection, eros, “honoured without reservation and obeyed
unconditionally, becomes a demon.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">King Lear, unlike the
romantic comedies and even unlike Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello, has
no couple in love and thus no exemplar of divine eros, but Regan and Goneril do
exemplify demonic eros. They quarrel, turn against their husbands and each
other, and destroy their households for unrequited eros. Eros might at
first seem to have no hold on their lover Edmund, for he clearly is not in love
with them but is using them for advancement while getting a little Venus on the
side, but his usually puzzling repentance at the end of the play and
countermanding, too late, of the order to execute Cordelia, has an
explanation in the fact that eros has opened him to the vision of Cordelia’s beatific
personhood through relationship, however mercenary, with her sisters. As he
pants for life following Edgar’s mortal blow, he acknowledges Goneril’s and
Regan’s erotic love, which started, no doubt, as what Lewis calls “Venus”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edmund: Yet Edmund was beloved:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The one the other poisoned for my sake,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And after slew herself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(5.3.237–39)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has not been affection,
neither filial nor fraternal, that has touched Edmund, led him to relationship,
and opened him up to this vision of right action: “some good I mean to
do/despite of mine own nature” (5.3.241–42). It is too wicked to imagine that
his service to Cornwall, his treacherous betrayal of his own father by giving
Cornwall Gloucester’s letter from the invaders from France (which he has even
stolen from a “locked closet”), has brought him to relationship, even though
Cornwall promises Edmund that, for this action, “thou shalt find me a dear
father for thy love” (3.5.24–25). Edmund’s “loyalty” (3.5.22) to Cornwall,
which is disloyalty to his own father (to whom, of course, he owed nothing by
law but something by nature), has stolen the Earldom of Gloucester from his
illegitimate family but still his flesh and blood. The only explanation,
dramatically hidden like God’s grace at work in a great sinner’s heart, is that
the eros exchanged between him and Goneril or Regan (or
both) has somehow brought Edmund’s calculating heart closer to God’s giving
love than has affection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Catholic reader should
not be so surprised at Edmund’s astounding transformation. In Benedict XVI’s
first encyclical, God Is Love, he shows the ultimate unity of eros,
or “ascending, possessive, or covetous love” and agape, or “descending, oblative love.”
Western philosophy has too often made them opposites, he maintains, whereas
Sacred Scripture, in the Song of Songs especially, shows that the lover’s
erotic love of the beloved can be self-giving. He points out that the early
Church Fathers allegorized this love poetry as that between God and Israel and Christ
for the Church. God’s love for his creation has erotic power. As he puts it,
“God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also
totally agape” (paragraph 9). He has already explained how eros can
become agape:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet eros and agape—ascending love and descending
love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different
aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true
nature of love in general is realized. Even if eros is at first
mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of
happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with
itself, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants
“to be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into
this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own
nature. (7) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shakespeare goes even further in his own claim about the power of eros to
transform the heart. He shows how Edmund can be so touched by eros that
he offers a gift of saving love (his intent, not its effect) not to his
beloved, for Goneril and Regan are dead, but on behalf of Cordelia,
which is one of several acts of “motiveless benignity” in King Lear, to
twist Coleridge’s famous phrase about Iago. He does so not to seek pardon
for his soul nor to curry favor or advancement in the court but
because, to Shakespeare’s traditional Christian imagination, God infuses him
with grace, with what Lewis calls “supernatural Gift-love.” For Aquinas, such a
transformation is possible not as an acquired virtue but only as an infused
gift of the Holy Spirit (ST, II-II, a.24, q. 2).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 9pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Philia and the
Kingdom</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The secondary household in King Lear is the kingdom, or,
to emphasize better that the household is by definition a small unit, the
court, which is cross-fertilized with the family households. We see first that
Lear’s kingdom is to be divided among his daughters; thus, power moves along
family lines. The feudal system of king (Lear), duke (Cornwall and Albany), and
earl (Gloucester) is in force; households and thus families are arranged
hierarchically within the kingdom. If the primary households of family are ill,
therefore, there is little hope that the secondary household of the kingdom
will be well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In her recent book on the
hidden Catholic codes in Shakespeare, Shadowplay, the British scholar
Clare Asquith points out that King James had written just before King Lear a
treatise, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, arguing that the good
kingdom was really a family, with the king a father to his subject children.
James’s two sons were in fact named Cornwall and Albany, and to her it is no
coincidence that Shakespeare gives them significant roles in King Lear. He
is not so covertly telling the King, she maintains, that the family kingdom of
England, riven in two by the religious conflict, is sick at heart.13 When both
the primary households and the secondary household operate on the same model,
when your son-in-law is also your sovereign, family bickering can become civil
war. Since Cordelia marries France and mounts a rebellion or a
restoration, family problems can even lead to international crises.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As eros and
affection, the essential loves of the family, are ailing and failing in the
primary households, friendship, philia, the third human love, is entirely
missing in the secondary household, the kingdom. In Lewis’s discussion,
friendship involves (to use a metaphor that he would certainly allow), a shared
creed. Friends, who stand “shoulder to shoulder” rather than “face to face”
like lovers and family members, have the same beliefs, the same truths, the same
“abouts.” As Lewis says, “Friendship must be about something, even if it
were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice” (67). It is neither
necessary nor natural, he writes, and it arises rationally from a shared
interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no central pair of
dramatically significant friends in this sense at the beginning of King
Lear, like Macbeth and Banquo at the beginning of Macbeth (or
even Macbeth and Lady Macbeth), Othello and Cassio in Othello,
or Hamlet and Horatio in Hamlet. Kent and Lear and Lear and the Fool are
really one-sided affections at the outset. When Kent begins his objections to
Lear’s treatment of Cordelia in the first scene, friendship is not
among the catalogued relationships:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: Royal Lear,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whom I have ever honoured as my king,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Loved as my father, as my master followed,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As my great patron thought on in my prayers—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1.1.140–43)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As king, father, master, and patron, Lear does not possess the
same truths as his subject Kent, who disputes his claim that his daughter Cordelia does
not love him least (1.1.153). Although the King and the Fool do sometimes laugh
together after Lear calls for his amusement in the first act, they are too
often at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cross-purposes to be called friends. Both the Fool and Kent see
the truth of Lear, but Lear does not see at first the truth of himself or ever
of them. The Fool disappears for good without being noticed by Lear, and
Lear scarcely understands Kent’s self-revelation in act 5. The households
of Albany and Cornwall begin not as genuine friends but as territorial allies,
and they sap the health of the kingdom as they degenerate into rivals and
eventually enemies, with perhaps a remembrance of Old Testament divided houses:
“a man’s enemies are the men of his own house” (Micah 7:6).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The court is missing in
addition what Lewis calls the “matrix” of friendship, which is the shared
interest of companions, and companionship is necessary, even if friendship
isn’t, to the secondary household (63). Unlike Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet,
where the companionship of soldiers, fellow soldiers, and actors is often
dramatized, companionship is constantly dissolving in King Lear. Lear,
Kent, and Gloucester are separated in the first scene; Albany and Cornwall
become enemies; Edmund forms alliances and abuses relationships. There is no
shop talk in King Lear. Friendship, as Aristotle noted, is crucial to a
well-run polity.14 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The secondary household of
the kingdom, therefore, is as ill and mad as the primary households of the
family. In this way, the real madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar,
and the verbal madness of the Fool, who is said to “have much pined away” for Cordelia since
she was banished (1.4.72) have a common explanation in the sickness of the
households, both family and kingdom. Lear, confusing need-love and gift-love,
fatherhood and kingship, turns his heart inside out and his world upside down;
in fact, by banishing his beloved daughter and by mixing power with family
affection in his relations with his other two daughters, he is himself one
cause of his own madness and ill-treatment. The fugitive Edgar, victimized by
his brother and father, sees devils in his disguise as Poor Tom of Bedlam. The
Fool, worn out by his own manic puns, vanishes suddenly and without
explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This mad and motley trio,
however, in their broken humanity, along with the separated Kent and
Gloucester, and then Cordelia and finally Albany and even Edmund,
form a salvific (that is, a health-making) community too separated to be called
companions and too disjointed to be called friends. They create a small group
gathered in Lear’s name, something like a church, the third household in the
play, and they are united in the fourth love, this one becoming a supernatural
one, agape, or charity.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Agape and the
Church, the Third Household</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The seeds of the fourth love in the third household are sown in
the soul of a much-overlooked character in the play, Kent, the banished
servant, who, as the “true blank of [Lear’s] eye,” pays for speaking truth in
defense of Cordelia with the cost of exile, which he immediately
declares to be not “banishment” but “freedom” because of the foulness and
falsity of the first two households of Lear’s family and kingdom (1.1.182). He
leaves them, he announces, to “shape his old course in a country new” (1.1.188).
The “old course” is service in freedom, not in duty or affection, and the
“country new” is the third household of charity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The duty-bond between
servant and master has been annulled by Lear’s unjust decree of banishment;
Kent is free and owes nothing further in the order of justice to his king,
father, master, and patron. In that freedom, however, he returns Lear’s cruelty
with loving service, not contracted obligation, with what Lewis calls
supernatural gift-love, bestowed by God himself, related to but far beyond the
natural gift-loves that can grow out of affection, friendship, and eros:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But in addition to these natural loves God can bestow a far better
gift; or rather, since our minds must divide and pigeon-hole, two gifts.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He communicates to men a share
of His own Gift-love. This is different from the Gift-loves He has built into
their nature. These never quite seek simply the good of the loved object for </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 14pt;">the object’s own sake. But
Divine Gift-love—Love Himself working in a man—is wholly disinterested and
desires what is simply best for the beloved. . . . [It] enables him to love
what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky,
the superior and the sneering. Finally, by a high paradox, God enables men to
have a Gift-love towards Himself. . . . </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That such a Gift-love comes by Grace and should be called Charity,
everyone will agree. (127–29)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 9pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Kent and
the Drama of Supernatural Gift-Love</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent, at the moment of his return in service to Lear, is the first
character in the play to enter the household of charity. His service is a gift
because it has no hope of gain; it can be called supernatural, at least in
part, because it springs up at the very moment that Lear has become most ugly
and unlovable; it is against self-interest and, in worldly terms, absurd.
Kent’s description of his identity as a mere naked “man,” unclothed in any
social categories, indicates the purity of his new relationship with his old
master: it does not hope for gain or restoration (at least Kent never mentions
these motives); it comes mysteriously (Kent himself has almost no explanation)
as the result of an authoritative call. When Lear notices Kent in disguise,
their exchange is wrought in religious terms, even the jokes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: (to Kent) How now, what art thou? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: A man. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: What dost thou <i>profess? </i>What wouldst thou with us? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: I do <i>profess </i>to be no less than I seem; to <i>serve </i>him
truly that will put me in trust, to <i>love </i>him that is honest, to converse
with him that is wise and says little, to fear <i>judgement</i>, to fight when
I cannot choose—and <i>to eat no fish. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: What art thou? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the <i>King</i>.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: If thou be’st as poor for a subject as he’s for a king, thou
art poor enough. What woulds’t thou? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: <i>Service</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: Who wouldst thou serve? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: You. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: Dost thou know me, fellow? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would
fain call <i>master</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: What’s that? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: <i>Authority. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1.4.9–30, emphases mine.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In other words, Kent professes, in a new country and in a new
household, a relationship of naked loving service to the authority of a poor
king. The resemblance to the Christian project, to the profession of service to
the authority of the poor King of Kings, is unmistakable. It comes upon Kent as
“motiveless benignity.” He will serve Lear as Lewis claims the most sincere
Christian serves God: because he needs to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Supernatural gift-love and
supernatural need-love, Lewis accepts and Shakespeare dramatizes, come with
suffering. In this part of the fairy tale of love, Shakespeare follows
Christian tradition in showing how supernatural charity, agape, arrives by way
of the cross. Lewis’s focus is on the supernatural aspect of charity, its joy
and sublimity, but Shakespeare’s tragedy develops its natural encounter with
pain and death. Charity requires suffering both because the will aches and
burns, fusses and fumes, groans and laments, as it puts itself away in devotion
to the will of another, and also because the cold world is not governed by
reason and goodness, which are Charity’s lord and master. Lewis writes, “We
shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all
loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all
defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this
as the way in which they should break, so be it” (123). Thus, Kent
must, so to speak, do time in Charity. It is, of course, comical if not
bathetic that he is put in the stocks for offending the fop Oswald, Goneril’s steward,
who has in turn offended Lear; Kent’s charity, seen from below, is revenge in
the order of court manners. Seen from above, it is a divine chivalry, a defense
of a powerless injured party (who is also an injuring party), a vicarious
atonement. The Jacobean audience could have easily seen Kent’s hands and legs
stretched in the stocks as a miniature comic crucifixion. In the morality plays
of the day, the allegorical figure of Charity was often placed in the stocks.
While the stocks may have been nothing more than ankle binding (although the
Quarto text does say that at least his “legs” are to be “put in”), they do
cause pain, and Kent’s observation, albeit with some comic hyperbole, alludes
to the visionary heights and emotional depths of tragic Christian suffering:
“Nothing almost sees miracles/But misery” (2.2.163–64). As he falls asleep, as
Gloucester, Edgar, and Lear will all fall asleep later to awaken to subsequent
charitable vision, he says, “Fortune, good night; smile once more; turn thy
wheel.” This allusion to the “wheel of fortune” also recalls Lear’s reference
to being bound on a “wheel of fire” (4.7.47), which, as we shall see, is quite
clearly a purgatorial burning. Kent as comic suffering servant is a precursor
of Edgar, banished by Gloucester but still doing his father’s business on the
heath and on the cliff to Dover. Jan Kott, the Polish critic and one
founder of the existentialist-nihilist reading of Lear in Shakespeare
Our Contemporary, has written expressively of the dumb show, the pantomime
discourse, of Gloucester’s crawling toward the edge of the abyss and
representing by wordless action man’s abject and lonely existential state in
the play as a whole.15 Kent in the stocks, on the other hand, also communicates
wordlessly by the dumb show of charity in the stocks his salvific sacrificial
service to Lear, and it is significant that Kent’s speech (in the Quarto) also
ends with a mimic gesture: he sleeps. When he wakes, he discovers on stage his
lord Lear, who will set him free.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such availability is
necessary to the acceptance of gift-love, but receptivity is not the only
requirement. Cooperation with supernatural gift-love, with grace, is another:
“There is of course a sense in which no one can give to God anything which is
not already His; and if it is already His what have you given? But
since it is only too obvious that we can withhold ourselves, our wills and
hearts, from God, we can, in that sense, also give them” (128). Kent, although
he sleeps and suffers, also acts: he initiates correspondence with Cordelia,
which leads to the great reconciliation of the play between rejected daughter
and rejected father, but he acts blindly, as it were, seeking a good that he
senses but does not know. Far more important than his role as messenger between
divided England and distant France is his constant faithful presence to Lear
throughout their banishments, who recognizes him only dimly at the
end of the play:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: This is a dull sight: are you not Kent? . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: No, my good lord, I am the very man—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: I’ll see that straight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(5.3.279, 284–85. Folio)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But he never sees it straight, never sees the fullness of Kent’s
gift-love. Like the figure of charity in the stocks, Kent must be content to
have remained faithful to Lear in adversity without expectation of gratitude,
during the worst horrors of Lear’s exile on the stormy heath and all-too-brief
reconciliation with his daughter, and to have given, as Lear claims that he
himself has given to his ungrateful daughters, his all; his release from the
stocks is from the bondage of the contemptuous world, not into the full
reciprocated gift-love in his beloved’s heart. As so often in Lear, the
Christian shape of Kent’s loving service is orthodox but one-sided, frustrated,
unrewarded, and almost unnoticed, but the audience notices the “new man” Kent
who is “dead and rotten” in Lear’s forgotten remembrance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This drama of unjust exile
and separation, of sleepy resignation and impoverished patience, of suffering
agency through service and relationship, of reawakening and restoration of
surprising mysterious love, includes (and excludes) all of the characters of
the play. It is the deepest pattern of the play; it is the play itself. Kent is
the comic miniature prototype of this classic Christian mold, parts of which
touch even the diabolical Edmund, redeemed by erotic relationship and surprised
to goodness after Cordelia’s loving return, and Albany (“white”),
who throws over to the cause of good as he becomes aware of his intimacy with
the cause of evil.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 9pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Edgar and
Supernatural Gift-Love</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This redemptive pattern fits the Edgar and Gloucester story so
perfectly that it is clear that the purpose of the addition of this subplot to
the original King Leir source was to reinforce and highlight the
Kent-Lear and Lear-Cordelia redemptive patterns. Edmund betrays both Edgar
and Gloucester and causes their exile. He lies about his brother but merely
informs against his father, but both exiles are unjust: Edgar’s because it is
founded on a lie, Gloucester’s because he has sided with the just cause in
defending Lear against his daughters. Lear’s cause, while it owes much to the
King’s own selfishness and rashness, derives its justice from the natural and
divine law: fathers are owed basic shelter and obedience by daughters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gloucester demonstrates
sleepy resignation in his near-death experience at Dover cliffs. In the Quarto,
he kneels and falls after he makes this prayer:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gloucester: O you mighty gods<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This world I do renounce and in your sights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shake patiently my great affliction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(4.6.34–36)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His mock suicide attempt causes him to swoon: Edgar says that “he
revives” (4.6.47). His son has staged this event to “cure” his “despair”
(4.6.33–34). Gloucester awakes to discover that his “life’s a miracle”
(4.6.55). He has been cured and restored to psychic health, and Edgar
attributes the victory for his father’s soul to God’s wide possibilities over
Satan’s ugly narrowness:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edgar: As I stood here below methought his eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Were two full moons. He had a thousand noses, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Horns whelked and waved like the enraged sea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of men’s impossibilities, have preserved thee . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gloucester: I do remember now. Henceforth, I’ll bear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Affliction till it do cry out itself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Enough, enough,’ and die. . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edgar: Bear free and patient thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(4.6.71–80)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edgar’s own impoverished patience endures the ragged disguises of
escaped madman and uneducated rustic. He suffers exile longer than anyone in
the play, and his pronouncement on patience once again to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his “cured” father in the wake of Lear and Cordelia’s defeat
is oracular:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Men must endure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their going hence even as their coming hither.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ripeness is all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(5.2.9–11)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Neither Edgar’s nor
Gloucester’s patience prevents them from being suffering agents in service and relationship,
replacing for each other the missing mothers. Before Edgar has ministered to
his father, Gloucester seeks out banished Lear in the storm to offer him warmth
despite the decrees of his heartless daughters:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gloucester: Go in with me. My duty cannot suffer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">T’obey in all your daughters’ hard commands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though their injunction be to bar my doors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet have I ventured to come seek you out,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And bring you where both fire and food is ready.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(3.4.144–49)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later in this scene, he shelters them all, Lear, Kent, the fool,
and his own son Edgar, whom he does not recognize as Tom of Bedlam, in a
“hovel,” and soothes the raging Lear, who takes Tom for an Athenian philosopher,
with tender comfort: “No words, no words, hush” (3.4.177). He informs Kent of
the plot to kill Lear, and he offers them provision (3.6.85–94). Gloucester
joins the rebellion of Cordelia against the unjust households of Goneril and
Regan, which costs him his eyes and earns him the greatest on-stage torture in
all of theater.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, Edgar’s own
ministrations to the father who has wronged him may be prepared for by his
witnessing of his father’s kindness to himself and to his king. Supernatural gift-love
begets more supernatural gift-love. Edgar saves his father from despair, leads
him by the hand, kills Oswald as the henchman is about to execute his
“traitorous” father, and keeps him sane with chastening and soothing words,
kindly postponing the revelation of his identity as if he knew that recognition
would overcome his frailty. After he kills Oswald to save his father’s life in
fact as he has saved it in the dumb show of suicide, he takes Gloucester by the
hand to shelter him from the storm of war as his father had sheltered Tom from
the storm on the heath: “Come, father, I’ll bestow you with a friend.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gloucester ends surprised
unto death by restored mysterious love. Edgar tells the tale to Albany, who has
earned the right to hear this vision with his own alliance with goodness:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edgar: Met I my father with his bleeding rings,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their precious stones new lost; became his guide<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Led him, begged for him, saved him from despair . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I asked his blessing and from first to last<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Told him our <i>pilgrimage</i>. But his flawed heart,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alack, too weak the conflict to support,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Burst smilingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(5.3.188–98, emphasis mine.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By asking for Gloucester’s blessing, Edgar is recognizing his role
in the prolonged deception for his father’s good and honoring
Gloucester’s suffering service to mad Tom and Lear: Edgar sees
Gloucester’s love restored to him as Gloucester sees Edgar’s restored to him
“feelingly.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Charity even touches the
Edgar-Edmund relationship. Confronted with Albany’s accusations of treason,
Edmund eventually confesses his iniquity to him and “forgives” Edgar, who, as
he is still a stranger, receives an ironic gesture of gift-love that is also
consistent with divine retribution:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If thou’rt noble,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I do forgive thee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edgar: Let’s exchange charity:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If more, the more thou’st wronged me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My name is Edgar and thy father’s son.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The gods are just and of our pleasant vices<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make instruments to plague us:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The dark and vicious place where thee he got<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cost him his eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edmund: Thou’st spoken right, ’tis true;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The wheel is come full circle, I am here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(5.3.161–72)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The wheel of fortune, which Lear will later identify as the “wheel
of fire” of Purgatory, has brought Edmund, even Edmund, not only to the low
place of worldly suffering but also to its correlated summit of forgiveness and
grace.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 9pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Cordelia and
Supernatural Gift-Love</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This biblical pattern of suffering in exile and restoration of
love through beatific action in relationship reaches its zenith in the Cordelia-Lear
plot. It is impossible to isolate this plot or even this relationship from the
Edgar-Gloucester plot and relationship because they are not only parallel but
also intersecting. Those intersections are in fact part of the dramatic truth
of this play: persons are so bound to one another that individual isolated
action—like Edmund’s, Goneril’s, and Regan’s—not only harms the community
but even destroys the self.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we have seen, Lear and Cordelia misunderstand
one another and the nature of love at the beginning of the play. He demands
gift-love from her when it cannot be demanded; she confuses need-love with
closely audited duty. His immediately angry banishment mysteriously liberates Cordelia into
the realm of gift-love. It frees her, like Portia in The Merchant of
Venice, to be chosen by the suitor who can love her purely for her self and
not for her estate. France understands the metaphysical requirement of
gift-love to be free when he says to his rival Burgundy:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Love’s not love<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When it is mingled with regards that stands<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aloof from th’entire point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1.1.240–43)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cordelia’s parting words to her father misses that she has
entered, not left, the realm of grace: “But yet, alas, stood I within his
[i.e., Lear’s] grace, I would prefer him to a better place.” Like Kent and
Edgar freed of duty-bound affection, Cordelia travels to a “country
new.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We never see her in that
land of grace, where a scuttled arranged marriage blooms into gift-love
matrimony, but her long absence, though not dramatized, is dramatically
significant as yet another example of sleepy resignation and impoverished
patience, for she has accepted without complaint the loss of a third of Lear’s
kingdom. The rhetorical transformation from the amatory parsimony of “Nothing
more, nothing less” to the hyperbolic generosity of “all” is obvious in her
greeting, upon returning to England, to that other gift-lover:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cordelia: O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To match thy goodness? My life will be too short,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And every measure fail me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(4.7.1–3) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She speaks the very language of abundant gift-love that she had explicitly
refused to speak in the household of Lear. She is so transformed that her
father takes her first for a “soul in bliss” and asks where she did “die”
(4.7.46, 49). Her expansive language is obvious when she responds to his
glimpse of her real identity as Cordelia with the extrametrical “I
am, I am,” in which Fr. Peter Milward recognizes an allusion to God’s
self-identification to Moses in the burning bush of Genesis 3:14.16 Later,
when he acknowledges his injustice to her, she denies it again with repetition:
“No cause, no cause” (4.7.70, 75).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The household of
supernatural gift-love is a land of blessing and forgiveness. Like Edgar and
Gloucester, Cordelia and Lear perform a dumb show of prayer:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cordelia: [Kneels] O look upon me, sir,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And hold your hands in benediction o’er me!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[She restrains him as he tries to kneel.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No, sir, you must not kneel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(4.7.57–59)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Her new humility ends with Lear’s confession: “You must bear with
me. Pray you now, forget and forgive; I am old and foolish” (4.7.83– 84).
She herself has begged the gods for help: “O you kind gods! Cure this
great breach in his abused nature” (4.7.15).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Supernatural gift-love
arrives out of the blue and wakes us into a new life. Cordelia comes
upon Lear, from far away and unannounced, to suffer in service to Lear, whom
she calls her “sir,” her “highness,” and her “royal lord” (4.7. passim, 44, 83).
Supernatural gift-love is a blind surprise; Cordelia’s unexpected
unmerited arrival is like Lear’s appearance to Kent waking up in the stocks, like
the Fool and Kent’s discovery of Edgar asleep on the hay of the hovel, like
Gloucester’s trouvaille of his own life at Dover Cliff. Like Kent, Cordelia is
serving the King, not as a pledged military vassal, but as a minister in the
free land of grace, coming from France, the nation that, in Shakespeare’s day,
still permitted the cult of the Blessed Mother, like a St. Joan in the third
household of gift-love. To be sure, Cordelia has come also to fight a
rebellion against an evil empire, but this action is downplayed and left to the
leadership at the end of the scene to Kent. Cordelia’s chief purpose
is to save her father, not his kingdom, to be a servant in the third household,
not a warrior in the second. The absent mother of the first household, the
salvific woman, has finally made her appearance. Her suffering service exacts
from her the highest cost, her life by hanging as a captured rebel, the
crucifixion of supernatural gift-love. When Lear called her a “soul in bliss,”
he was seeing the second highest truth of the play. She becomes the sacrificed
Christ for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When she arrives back in
England, she acknowledges in a petition to a still absent Lear the supernatural
aspect of her loving service in what the Arden Shakespeare editor R. A. Foakes calls
the “most direct Christian reference” in the play (to Luke 2:49, where
Jesus, found at the Temple, says, “I must go about my Father’s business.”):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. . . O dear father,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is thy business that I go about . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No blown ambition doth her arms incite,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But love, dear love, and our aged father’s right.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(4.4.23–27)17 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The emphasis is on love, which does not contradict right but
surpasses it, a love that she connects to the Father of Creation, and
the word’s repetition shows once again how Cordelia has moved from
amatory parsimony to amatory expansiveness. She has learned that love cannot be
added or subtracted but only intensified. Moreover, she reveals that her
earlier fear of conflict between duty to father and duty to husband was
baseless; “great France” has been won over through compassion, not justice, by
the tale of Lear’s beggarly need, and love, dear love, does not acknowledge
territorial boundaries. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 9pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Lear and
the Domestic Church</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the most profound truth of the play, it is necessary to trace
out the aforementioned redemptive pattern in Lear himself. Unjust exile comes
from his “pelican daughters,” and it thrusts Lear from the autocratic
powerfulness of treating his kingdom like his purse to the utter powerlessness
of seeking a roof in a storm. He learns the hard lesson of creaturely
dependency. The tragic paradox of Lear is the paradox of supernatural gift-love
that stuns Lewis at the beginning of his study: “Man approaches God most nearly
when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than
fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence,
limitless power and a cry for help?” (4). Lear’s purgatorial suffering, the
“wheel of fire” to which he alludes when he awakens to Cordelia in
act 4, brings him to momentary faith. He is the only character in the play
to see God, not gods, in pre-Christian England (5.3.17). This beatific vision,
like Kent’s waking to Lear, like Gloucester’s reviving to Edgar, like Cordelia’s restoration
to Lear, comes about through the familiar pattern of impoverished patience and
suffering service.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In exile, the household of
grace, all is given, nothing commanded. For all his ranting and raving, Lear
also recognizes the need for patience when his daughters have denied him all
his retainers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wears’t,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But for true need—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(2.2.458–60)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear’s patience, to be sure, runs hot and cold and in fits and
starts, and it is achieved only temporarily and not until his drugged sleep in
act 4, but it also begins only at the onset of his impoverishment, where
he recognizes the nakedness and poverty of others whom he has never seen. This
sympathetic act of supernatural gift-love, a solidarity with the
invisible marginal poor of his kingdom, requires more imagination than that
needed by Kent, Edgar, Gloucester, and Cordelia, for their gift-love began
as affection for family and friendship with familiars. For the first time in
his life, Lear, searching for shelter on the heath with Kent and the Fool,
yields to another, gives preferment, puts himself last. Once again,
we observe an expressive dumb show:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kent: Good my lord, enter here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear: Prithee go in thyself, seek thine own
ease. . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[to the Fool] In boy, go first. You houseless poverty—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep. Exit [Fool]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[Kneels.] Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That thou mayst shake the superflux to them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And show the heavens more just.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(3.4.23–36)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On his knees in prayer, in the posture of radical impovishered patience,
Lear imagines a naked wretch like Edgar even before he is discovered hidden in
the straw inside a few lines later. Lear’s gesture of preferment to the Fool
and Kent is a tiny but significant pantomimed act of supernatural gift-love,
forming with the other meaningful gestures of generosity a quasi-liturgical
discourse, and, later in the scene, he unbuttons his “lendings” to give them to
Edgar’s “uncovered body” (3.4.99–107), like a St. Francis stripping to give his
clothes to a beggar in Assisi.18 As Lewis writes, “And as
all Christians know there is another way of giving to God; every stranger whom
we feed or clothe is Christ” (129). Lear discovers the corporal works of mercy
of Christian tradition, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting
the sick and the imprisoned, all collapsed into the needy Tom of Bedlam. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There on the stormy heath, King
Lear achieves a partial theodicy in simple gestures of corporal mercy. As
Edgar answers Gloucester’s famous condemnation of divine injustice, “As flies
to wanton boys are we to the gods/They kill us for their sport,” with “the gods
are just” through the miracle of his father’s life and the cure of despair, so
Lear turns the thunderous language of God in Job’s whirlwind back against the
universe: “Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!” (3.2.1ff).
A few lines later, Lear calls himself the “slave” of these elements (3.2.19). Foakes takes
“all-shaking thunder” as a specific allusion to Elihu’s God, who
“thundereth marveilously with his voice” (Job 37:5),19 but the
general point is that Lear is challenging divinity with its own majestic voice.
Nihilistic critics miss the story of grace, the story of the third household of
supernatural Gift-love, the Church, as the answer to the moral evil of the
play. The moral evil, which is the result of human cruelty, and the natural
evil, the misery caused by the storm, are temporarily answered and cared for by
the charity of this third household that forms in the hovel on the heath: Kent
leads Lear, Lear pushes the door open for the Fool and Kent and tears off his
clothes for Edgar, Gloucester finds them all and leads them to another
outbuilding with a torch. The late Frank Kermode recognized this attempt at a
Job-like theodicy but failed to see its success: “The Book of Job, which was so
obviously in the playwright’s mind, ends with Job’s patience rewarded and his
goods restored; Lear has no such restoration.”20 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, all these five
homeless men in the storm on the heath— mad Lear, his servant Kent, father
Gloucester, banished Edgar, the pining Fool (who also, in loving Lear against
his own worldly wisdom, is perhaps a “fool for Christ,”)—are hurt and
suffering, stripped of social and even natural bonds, related only in freedom
and dependency. But in the absence of women, they mother each other by keeping
house and seeking shelter and clothing in their nakedness. They are unaware of
their godliness; they are doing domestic work faute de mieux.
They form the slightest and the highest of households, not merely the Holy
Christian Family but even the Body of Christ, the Church. While the women may
not save the second household of the kingdom, the men save one another in the
third household of the Church. As the mother has been missing in the home and
friendship in the kingdom, cult, perhaps even the Roman rite
banished since Elizabeth’s England, has been missing from Christian
worship. The first household of the family is dysfunctional; the second of the
kingdom, in rebellion; the third of the Church, in exile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Theirs is the tiny but
universal household, united freely in the authority of the king, which grows
until it includes Edgar saving Gloucester from despair; Albany seceding from the
evil empire that does not grow but diminishes; and even Edmund countermanding
his execution of Lear and Cordelia. The third household, the household of
grace, is a mustard seed of a hovel: it is a tiny web of persons, of Needers and
Givers, who minister and relate to one another, like a band of Jesuit companeros,
not fellow Club members (for nothing but necessity and gift binds them
together), in such complex ways that they make the Trinity seem almost simple:
they all serve each other reciprocally, these broken men nursing one another in
neediness as proxies for the absent mothers, Kent and Lear, Edgar and
Gloucester, Lear and Cordelia; fathers become the children of their
children, the children become the parents to their parents (to borrow Edgar’s
phrase, the fathers child as the children father); the king becomes the servant
to his servant, a woman becomes both mother and Christ to her childish God the
father, a servant becomes Christ to his king, and so on. This group forms, in
short, a communio personarum united in the authority of the
suffering king (and so cannot degenerate into an anarchy of divisive
individualism), a unity in radical freedom without the duty-bonds of the first
and second households, family and kingdom or court, which lifts characters up
from sinful willfulness to living for others through others. It is a kind of
church where two or three are gathered freely in the name of the Lord. The
remains of this communio form the kingdom household that saddened
Edgar inherits and must bring together at the end of the play with reluctant
Kent and willing Albany, the evil empire of Goneril, Regan, Cornwall,
Oswald, and Edmund having poisoned itself to ruins. It is the kingdom of love,
the end of which is what Aquinas called the communicatio beatitudinis aeternae (“the
fellowship of everlasting happiness,” ST, II-II, a.23, q. 5).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This communio is
not just a good-works society or a charitable brotherhood. In its grandest
expression, in the reunification of Lear and Cordelia, the transformed
expatriates (one returning from abroad, the other from a heath teeming with
hellish devils) are brought before its transcendent dimension. Lear’s unjust
exile, his prayerful encounter with dependency, his purgatorial service, has
awakened him first to the vision of Cordelia as his restored beloved,
to which he has been reborn. We witness yet another dumb show as Cordelia comes
back to Lear carried in a chair and wrapped in “fresh garments” (4.7.21–22).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lear, drugged in a hospital
litter of dependency that is his new throne, is restored to the true royalty of
the true King: supernatural gift-love of one person for another, a love that
can only be given and received, not commanded and delivered. These fresh
garments are the white shroud of the baptism of desire, perhaps befitting
Paul’s “newness of life” and “new man” of the baptized believer, and Lear has
died and now sees Beatrice in heaven from Purgatory:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You do me wrong to take me out o’the grave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do scald like molten lead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(4.7.45–48)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only does Lear awake to
the supernatural gift-love of another person but also to the highest love in
Lewis’s scheme, “supernatural Appreciative love toward God himself.” He alone
sees it. The Fool, pining away for Cordelia in his natural love and
limiting Lear’s vision to the evil of others with his worldly wisdom, does not
see it and himself disappears into unmentioned nothingness as Lear begins to
see need and good in others, and Cordelia, the Fool’s successor, does not
express it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As captives to his wicked
daughters, Lear counsels Cordelia to eschew the world and serve God:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No, no, no, no. Come, let’s away to prison;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When thou dost ask me blessing I’ll <i>kneel</i> down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And ask of thee <i>forgiveness</i>. So we’ll live<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And <i>pray</i>, and <i>sing</i>, and <i>tell old
tales</i>, and laugh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And take upon’s the <i>mystery of things</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>As if we were God’s spies</i>. And we’ll wear out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a walled prison packs and <i>sects</i> of great ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That ebb and flow by the moon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(5.3.8–19, emphases mine.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This expression of adoration includes the only possible use of the
monotheistic singular of divinity in the entire play (in Folio), and the speech
is rich with the religious suggestions marked in italics. Lear has reached the
highest happiness, the contemplation of God, and as “God’s spies” Lear imagines
that he and Cordelia are doing time in Charity like captured Jesuits,
telling the old tales of the old faith in a walled prison, sure that their work
will outlast the sects of Protestant England.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Notice, too, particularly
in this passage, that Lear sees himself and Cordelia as lovebirds.
Agape, as Benedict tells us about God’s love, is also eros. The exchanges
generally between Lear and Cordelia and Edgar and Gloucester are
marked by tactile tenderness. The Fool pines away for Cordelia as a
lover separated from his beloved. Actors in stage productions inevitably (even
when they seek to follow the Peter Brooks’s radically stripped down
nihilistic interpretations) become quite affectionate and touchy in these
roles, sometimes overreaching the mark in incestuous fondling. Agape is not a
cold, insensate, exclusively spiritual state. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alas, as Lewis writes, this
“supernatural Appreciative love” is barely glimpsed on this earth. Like the two
travelers on the road to Emmaus who discover the risen Christ in the stranger
to whom they have offered hospitality in the breaking of the bread only to
watch him immediately vanish (Lk 24:31), Cordelia and Lear lose
their gift-love right after they discover it. As soon as Lear sketches this
vision, Edmund arrives and orders them away under guard, and Lear underlines
that the cross will be part of blessed togetherness: “Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
/ The gods themselves throw incense.” He returns to the polytheistic plural and
embraces her. When we see them touch again, he will be holding her executed
body. “Howl, howl, howl, howl! . . . She’s dead as earth”
(5.3.255, 257). Kent asks, “Is this the promised end?” (5.3.262). For
Lear, without his beloved, the apocalyptic end of the world is indeed at hand
(and he has just seen Cordelia in glory), and the triumph of Edgar’s
good household over the evil empire is trumpeted sporadically on the play’s
battlefield as Armageddon, but the universal judgment and resurrection of the
dead seem far away: “O thou’lt come no more/Never, never, never,
never, never.” The iamb in this line of blank verse is reversed, in
imitation of Cordelia’s unsprung life, into a trochee with
shortened unstressed syllables. All we hear is the negative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shakespeare, however,
leaves us suspended between death and resurrection, which suspension in turn
invokes or challenges our freedom, our ability for gift-love, by withholding
conviction and undercutting certainty. Lear recovers from the negativism for one
last vision, often held to be a delusion: “Do you see this? Look on her: look,
her lips, / Look there, look there!” (5.3.8–9, Folio). And then he
dies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lewis terminates his
description of “supernatural Appreciative love of God” with hardly more
confidence: “If we describe what we have imagined we may make others, and make
ourselves, believe that we have really been there. And if I have only imagined
it, is it a further delusion that even the imagining has at some moments made
all other objects of desire—yes, even peace, to have no more fears—look like
broken toys and faded flowers? Perhaps? Perhaps, for many of us, all
experience merely defines, so to speak, the shape of that gap where our love of
God ought to be. It is not enough. It is something” (140). Shakespeare
agrees. It is not enough. It is something. Not nothing, but something.
Something has come of nothing.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Shakespeare
and Traditional Catholic Belief</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">God is present, achieves the earthly justice of love, through his
loving people acting in his manner if not in his name. And yet Edgar’s
unrewarded ministrations to his blinded father, Kent’s unrewarded service to
Lear, Lear’s unrewarded corporal acts of mercy to the least of his brothers, Cordelia’s unrewarded
expressions of sacrificial love, Edmund’s unrewarded repentance—these have no
other explanation than as acts of divine grace, a view of life that Shakespeare
could have come to only as a formed traditional Christian. That this love is
best described as Christian gift-love rather than as simple human sympathy,
however, does not fix Shakespeare’s religious belief so much as reveal his
dramatic thought in traditional Christian pattern, which I would call loosely
Catholic. First performed during the Christmas season, it is Catholic drama,
not merely Catholic code. In places, it stands against Protestant theology: for
example, above all, against the key notion of the “total depravity” of human
nature. This redemptive structure presents systematic theology in the horizon
not of believers but rather of practitioners of Christianity, in a hostile
climate burned down to a few shining bones of faith; they make for a postmodern
Christian apologetics. Writing both of Lear in particular and of
Shakespeare’s late work in general, the Benedictine critic Paul Murphy writes,
“The aim of Shakespeare is not to assert a temporal survival after death. His
mysterious task, rather, is to reveal that a love which was real once but now
seems lost or dead, cannot in fact be dead. Somehow, even in the face
of death and failure, love survives.”21 This
dramatic thinking, however, while it does not profess a creed, confirms an
inclination, a flavor, and a hope. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That is, the play could
easily have gone another way: Edmund might have defeated Edgar; all the good
characters might have died rather than simply most of them; some of the evil
characters might have survived. Imagine the effect of a simple reversal in
Lear’s last moments, of the “Never, never, never, never, never” as his dying
words rather than “Look there!” (That “Look there” occurs only in Folio does
not mean that it was a pietistic interpolation or a late-in-life change of
heart: the entire play’s manifold movements of love give Lear and loving
witnesses on stage and in the audience the right to imagine a resurrected Cordelia,
a Cordelia that we and Lear can see as glorious, not as a delusion
but as a prepared-for surprise. Cordelia’s return from France has
resurrected hope, and her spirit carries the day and lives on in Kent, Albany,
Edgar, and some of us.) Imagine patience as not merely temporary and sporadic,
as it is in Lear, but as cold calculation, as it is in Goneril. Imagine no
third household of freely loving relatedness at all. Imagine no sacrificial
service but only self-serving individualism. With whom would you rather align
yourself, Cordelia, or Goneril and Regan? The play’s answer
is clear: even though all three daughters end up dead, the qualities of their
lives and journeys are not equal. As Maynard Mack writes, “We know it is a
greater thing to suffer than to lack the feelings and virtues that make it
possible to suffer. Cordelia, we may choose to say, accomplished nothing,
yet we know it is better to have been Cordelia than her sisters.”22 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looking for grace in Lear is
a daunting task. Even the late Anglican popular theologian and literary critic
Helen Gardner surprisingly finds Lear inimical to Christian dogma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[Shakespeare] makes it quite clear that whatever the time of the
play the world he presents is not a Christian world. There is no single direct
Christian reference throughout. . . . We are in a world in which men seek to
understand their fate without any revelation from heaven to be </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">accepted or rejected. The prayers and curses of Lear, the
despair of Gloucester, the</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">piety of Edgar, the morality of Albany, the skepticism of the
loyal Kent, the supreme virtue of Cordelia—all these exist in a world
outside Christendom. This deliberate withdrawal of the play from the world of
Christian thought in which Shakespeare and his audience lived is very striking
and gives King Lear a quality all its own.23<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“A world outside
Christendom”—there’s the rub, and there’s the postmodern attraction to the
play, although Gardner goes too far in claiming “no single direct Christian
reference” and a “withdrawal from the world of Christian thought.” The
households of the family and the court-kingdom, of dysfunctional affection, eros,
and friendship, are not ruled by the Gospel values of the third household of
supernatural gift-love; the first two households, outside Christendom, are
indeed hostile to the third household, the Gospel communio personarum.
Shakespeare depicts a situation where the Church and the State are not
coextensive, which was the situation absolutely in early Rome, beginning to
emerge again in Jacobean England, and nearly complete again in the modern West.
In this world, supernatural gift-love must speak and act for itself, for the
glory of a deus absconditus, for the beauty of the generous heart
alone. No picture of a reward in an afterlife, much adversity in this life. Lear imagines
Christian love in a silent vacuum, which is the only environment in which pure
gift-love may exist—otherwise, gift-love becomes a payoff to a bribing beloved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Miracles or providential
interventions, if demanded, can obstruct the moral freedom required by love.
Generosity can abound more fully under the angst of uncertainty. Thus, the
dramatic necessity of free characters and ancient spiritual truth coincide in
an amalgam quite satisfactory to contemporary taste, provided that this
taste remain open to supernatural possibility. It may be that Shakespeare
was answering this question: Can human beings who have lost the certainty of
God’s existence still manage to offer themselves compensatory divinely loving
acts in the service of a hidden transcendent value? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edgar Schell asserts that
Shakespeare inherited a theological world in which the clarity of providence of
Aquinas’s God had been replaced by the deus absconditus of
Calvin. For Schell, as for so many critics, Montaigne is Shakespeare’s
scripture, not sacred scripture itself or sacred tradition.24 For
William R. Elton, Lear lives and dies, like all the characters, a pagan in a
pre-Christian world dominated by deus absconditus, in his analysis,
more absens than absconditus.25 In my
view, however, Shakespeare peoples this cold naturalistic Protestant landscape
with generous Catholic supernatural love that triumphs over a bleak existential
masterpiece with a rich allegory of love for our time. It is this love that
finally shows “the heavens more just.” This Catholic Christian interpretation
of the play, with an emphasis on the horizontal dimension of faith action in
the silence of a vertical faith belief, may be one we have finally
caught up to—a vertical faith that can never again be taken for granted. Now
that the Cold War is over, it will be interesting to see if Lear’s
triumphant reputation holds—and it will be even more fascinating to see if a
new kind of redemptive reading emerges.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 9pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Notes</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <span style="font-size: x-small;">R. A. Foakes, “Hamlet”
versus “Lear” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
reprinted in King Lear: Norton Critical Edition, ed. Grace Ioppolo (New
York and London: Norton, 2008), 240–43.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">2. Joseph Pieper, Faith,
Hope, Love, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997
[1986]), 218.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">3. G. K. Chesterton, What’s
Wrong With the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994
[1910]), 175.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">4. Kathleen McLuskie,
“The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and King Lear,” reprinted in Political
Shakespeare, ed. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester,
England: Manchester University Press, 1985), 88–108.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">5. All citations to Lear refer
to The Arden King Lear, Third Series, ed. R. A. Foakes (London:
Thomas Nelson and Sons, 2001 [1997]). Like almost all editions, this is a
composite or conflated edition that uses both the Quarto and the Folio editions
of Lear. If a text or word occurs only in the Quartos (of which the
second was largely reprinted from the first) or only in Folio, I will
acknowledge it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">6. C. S. Lewis, The Four
Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1960), 31–32.54 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">7. Blessed John Paul II,
Wednesday General Audience, November 14, 1979.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">8. David Bevington observes
a preoccupation with father-daughter relationships in the plays especially from Lear on.
David Bevington, Shakespeare (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 189.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II,
a.24, q. 5.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">10. Ibid, a.24, q. 7.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">11. Peter Saccio,
“Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” Lecture 4 of Shakespeare: The Word
and the Action (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">12. It is possible that
Shakespeare uses the loaded word “merit” with an awareness of the controversy
between Reform and Tridentine theologians. See David N. Beauregard, Catholic
Theology in Shakespeare’s Plays (Cranbury, NJ: Rosemont Publishing, 2008), 40–56.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">13. Claire Asquith, Shadowplay (New
York: Public Affairs, 2005), 203–05.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">14. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1159b–1060a.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">15. Jan Kott, “King
Lear, or Endgame,” Shakespeare Our Contemporary reprinted in Shakespeare:
King Lear, ed. Frank Kermode (London: Macmillan, 1969 [1964]), 270–92.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">16. Peter Milward,
“The Catholic King Lear,” The Catholic Shakespeare?, Portsmouth
Institute Conference, June 11, 2011,
http://www.portsmouthinstitute.org/.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">17. Foakes, Arden
Lear, 323.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">18. Joseph Pearce, Through
Shakespeare’s Eyes: The Catholic Presence in Shakespeare’s Plays (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 175.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">19. Foakes, Arden
Lear, 263.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">20. Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s
Language (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 199–200.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">21. Paul Murphy, “God’s
Spy: Shakespeare and Religious Vision,” Communio 27, no. 4
(2000): 777.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">22. Maynard Mack, King
Lear in Our Time (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California
Press, 1965), 117.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">23. Helen Gardner, King
Lear, 1967, reprinted in King Lear: Critical Essays, ed. Kenneth Muir
(New York and London, Garland Publishing, 1984), 256–57.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">24. Edgar Schell, “The
Skeptical Traveler: King Lear and the End of the Pilgrimage,” Strangers
and Pilgrims: From The Castle of Perseverance to King Lear (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1983), 188–95.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">25. William R. Elton, King Lear and the Gods (San Marino,
CA: Huntington Library, 1966), 338.55<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-38215813260991946512014-04-02T12:05:00.002-07:002014-04-02T12:05:36.678-07:00Elements of Evil and the Science of Sin<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Kevin O'Brien on lessons learned from <i>Macbeth - </i>and from life.</div>
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Elements of Evil and the Science of Sin</div>
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by</div>
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<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Kevin O'Brien</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkKyduihmC3sFCq8JA1GiobUBzEF1oCu3x-nAbpXBwTb567Y-1ng2K19sEYSSEQABzRPV5eBxNVc6iRutJbi0IU3TsaDr0cNulHWGpl76qiEZEV2zhtKUKRwUz5ItuC89E3wud60IHHYs/s1600/satan-snake-fruit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkKyduihmC3sFCq8JA1GiobUBzEF1oCu3x-nAbpXBwTb567Y-1ng2K19sEYSSEQABzRPV5eBxNVc6iRutJbi0IU3TsaDr0cNulHWGpl76qiEZEV2zhtKUKRwUz5ItuC89E3wud60IHHYs/s1600/satan-snake-fruit.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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On Monday, t<a href="http://thwordinc.blogspot.com/2014/03/macbeth-and-me-or-me-and-macbeth.html">he Grunky Book Club discussed Shakespeare's <i>Macbeth.</i></a> <i>Macbeth </i>is a play that illustrates the effect of sin on the human soul.<br />
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I led the discussion of <i>Macbeth </i>not because <a href="http://www.christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/">I'm an expert on Shakespeare</a>, but because I'm an expert on sin. It's one of the benefits of being a lifelong sinner! In fact, as an official M.S. (Master of Sin), I can speak with some authority on this subject.<br />
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What we find in <i>Macbeth, </i>and what we find when we sin, can be organized into a kind of Science of Sin, whereby the Elements of Evil can be identified. <br />
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So what are the Elements of Evil that compose acts of sin? In both dramatic literature and in life, we see the following ...<br />
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<ul>
<li>Though evil itself is the privation of good, evil beings - persons who devote themselves to evil - are objective. In <i>Macbeth, </i>the witches are <i>real. </i>They are not mere figments of Macbeth's imagination. </li>
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<li>Evil exists as a parasite upon the good. "I can't <i>make </i>anything," Lucifer complains to God in Arthur Miller's play <i>The Creation of the World and Other Business. </i>"But you're such an excellent critic!" God replies.</li>
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<li>Evil is quite powerful, but it is limited in its effects. In <i>Macbeth, </i>the witches can torment a sailor by tossing his ship with ill winds, but they are unable to destroy the bark upon which he rides - they can disturb him, but they can neither kill him nor damn him. As with Macbeth, he must assent to his own damnation by taking the bait or the temptation that they offer. Without that, they can do nothing of lasting consequence.</li>
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<li>When we sin, we seek to step out of the natural order. In <i>Macbeth </i>this is shown as a Rupture of Time, a break in the healthy and salubrious flow of things. Which leads to ... </li>
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<li>Sterility. Sin is empty, impotent, vacuous. Macbeth and his Lady, for all their horrible efforts, have no heirs.</li>
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<li>Sin seeks to be hidden. This is a big one. It is a huge red flag for the inner life. If you seek to do something that you must hide from others, if the revelation of your deed would bring shame and embarrassment, then you are being tempted to sin. Thus ... </li>
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<li>Good builds communities, evil isolates. "I am not well with being over-solitary," Dr. Faustus, the man who sells his soul to Satan, complains in Marlowe's drama.</li>
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<li>Sin must put up a false front. It is devoted to the Lie and to the Father of Lies. As Lady Macbeth puts it, "<span style="color: #424242; font-family: LFT-Etica-Web, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px;">To beguile the time,</span><div class="original-line" style="color: #424242; font-family: LFT-Etica-Web, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px;">
Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye,</div>
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Your hand, your tongue. Look like th' innocent flower,</div>
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But be the serpent under ’t."</div>
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<li>Sin equivocates. It is a <a href="http://thwordinc.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-tease.html">tease</a>. Satan lures us with grand promises that deliver only death. When we sin we "sow the wind and inherit the whirlwind". (<a href="http://biblehub.com/hosea/8-7.htm">Hos. 8:7</a>) In Marlowe's <i>Dr. Faustus, </i>the sinner is promised great things in return for his immortal soul. What he gets is the ability to perform parlor tricks and an opportunity to become invisible and bop the Pope on the head. Sin never delivers the paradise it promises.</li>
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<li>Sin dehumanizes. Macbeth is promised that by daring to sin he will be showing his manliness. But he becomes less and less of a man as the consequences of his sins unfold.</li>
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<li>The effects of evil spread like ripples in a pond. Sin metastasizes. Not only the commonwealth, but nature itself and the natural order are damaged by our sin - in <i>Macbeth </i>even the king's horses eat each other when the evil breaks out; in <i>Genesis </i>all creation falls along with man.</li>
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<li>Since evil is empty, sin cannot satisfy. Just the opposite: Macbeth seeks "security" in his sins. "To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus ... " and this consumes him and drives him and his Lady to more and more horrendous deeds. Indeed, the greatest danger to our souls is not so much our proclivity to sin, but our insatiable desire to <i>establish ourselves in sin, </i>to glue together the house of cards we build upon the liquid foundation of shifting sand (cf. <a href="http://biblehub.com/matthew/7-25.htm">Mat. 7:25</a>).</li>
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<li>As with certain drugs, we build up tolerance to sin. The sort of things people watch on television these days would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Macbeth commits acts that are more and more horrible, feeling less and less compunction with each deed of death, until he finally laments, "<span style="color: #424242; font-family: LFT-Etica-Web, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px;">Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts / </span><span style="color: #424242; font-family: LFT-Etica-Web, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px;">Cannot once start me."</span></li>
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<li>Sin gives us no rest. Sleeplessness haunts Lord and Lady Macbeth, and a troubled conscience torments the heart of every sinner. We incessantly seek to justify our sins to ourselves and to one another, demanding even applause from others in the form of things like "gay marriage" - but even then, even if we can bully the world into cheering our perverse and wicked deeds, we will find ourselves awake nights, unable to rest in the peace that comes only with proper order.</li>
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<li>"The wages of sin is death" (<a href="http://biblehub.com/romans/6-23.htm">Rom. 6:23</a>), and really a fate worse than death. For the real fruit of sin is the nihilism and sad hopelessness in which, at the end, Macbeth finds himself ("Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ..."). With death at least comes peace and sleep; with sin comes the tormented insomnia and despair of hell itself.</li>
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For more insights into <i>Macbeth </i>and sin, <a href="http://www.christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/2012/12/ken-colston-on-macbeth-and-what-play.html">read this excellent essay by Ken Colston at the Christian Shakespeare,</a> and watch for The Grunky Book Club, which will premiere on our online video network <a href="http://twinc-tv.blogspot.com/">Grunky </a>some time this spring.</div>
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<br />Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-85043741965002046492014-03-18T06:47:00.004-07:002014-03-18T06:47:57.011-07:00The Rules of Engagement<div>
Kevin O'Brien on the chivalry, engagement and <i>Much Ado about Nothing</i></div>
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The Rules of Engagement</div>
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<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Kevin O'Brien</a><br />
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[This article first appeared in the <i><a href="http://www.staustinreview.com/">St. Austin Review</a>.</i>]<br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.1500000000000001; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s that awful Paul McCartney / Michael Jackson song from the 1980’s where Jackson pipes up in that androgynous little voice of his, “I’m a lover, not a fighter!” Well, now that you’ve got that horrible tune running through your head, forget it and see my point: loving and fighting are two touchstones for the Church.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the early Christian era, men like Tertullian were claiming that Christ taught pacifism, that any kind of military endeavor was prohibited for members of the Church. In like manner, regarding marriage, even St. Paul advised against it, for those who could manage to abstain. Fighting and loving were both frowned upon. Christ’s maxims to turn the other cheek and His approval of those who become eunuchs for the Kingdom’s sake were in a sense “proof texts” for this, especially in light of the persecuted status of the early Church and in light of the eager expectation of the supposed nearness of the parousia.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the Church’s understanding of these things developed; the Deposit of Faith was understood more fully when it became apparent that life was going to go on for a while, and that not all Christians were called to the “better way” of Mary’s contemplative life, but most were stuck in the nasty messy business of living in the world as Martha was.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And by the Middle Ages the understanding of the Incarnation was such that men realized – with the help of the Catholic Culture that formed them – that if they had an obligation to be “in the world”, this obligation was a way of affirming the Incarnation, of bringing Christ’s presence into all that they did. But here’s the rub – how can you fight like a Christian? How can you make love like a Christian? For to live in the world involves both loving and fighting. For, as Chesterton says, “The true soldier </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fights</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> not because he hates </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is in front of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">him</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but because he loves </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">behind him.” The two are bound together. So how does one battle and beget in a sanctified manner?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Church in the Middle Ages gave us the most supreme answer to this question – Chivalry. The ideal of Chivalry was to turn the nasty but necessary business of fighting into something Christian, to baptize the role of the solider by instilling a code in which he would defend the defenseless and honor Our Lord by fighting justly in just causes. Likewise, the Christian knight honored Our Lady in his treatment of all ladies, and in his devotion to his own earthly lady, the lady for whom he fought. Chivalry was a way of Christianizing both warfare and wooing.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now of course this is an ideal that, like every ideal, men had trouble living up to. If you think about it, it’s almost impossible for fallen men to fight-without-fury or love-without-lust. The Siege of Jerusalem in 1099 was proof of how easy it was even for chivalrous Christian knights to give way to wrath, for when the walls of the city were breached the Crusaders engaged in a wholesale slaughter, making the streets run ankle deep with blood. And we need look no further than the adulterous relationship of Lancelot and Guinevere as proof that even the ideals of courtly love were easily compromised.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it’s one thing to try and fall short of a Christian ideal and another thing not to try at all. The modern world has seen warfare abandon Christian principles, even in Western countries, as civilians are targeted, as prisoners are once again tortured, and as soldiers often fight not to defend the defenseless but to destroy them. And what has happened to romance? You don’t even find it that much it in smarmy pop tunes anymore, like the dreadful one I began with.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So somehow we’ve gone from a pristine disengagement from the world (in the case of the early pacifist Christians) to a noble engagement in the world (in the form of Chivalry, which was always in danger of faltering) to a shoddy disengagement from the world (in the form of the objectification of others, of using people as conquests in the battlefield or as conquests in the boudoir).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This whole problem, then, is a problem of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engagement</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> – in every sense of the word.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare, standing between the Middle Ages and us, wrote at a time that was still largely medieval and yet also surprisingly modern. In his seemingly simple comedy </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Much Ado about Nothing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> we see a bit of both spirits at play, and we learn a lot about this problem of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engagement – </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engagement in battle and engagement in marriage – in short, engagement in life. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Much Ado about Nothing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the brilliant but cynical Benedick resists the only woman the audience can see he’s meant for, the acerbic and witty Beatrice. Meanwhile, the noble Claudio falls in love with Beatrice’s cousin, the virtuous lady Hero, becomes engaged, and plans to marry her until the villain don John poisons Claudio against Hero by making him think she’s been unfaithful to him and is nothing more than a strumpet. In a heart-rending scene at the wedding, Claudio publicly disavows Hero and quite literally “disengages”, calling her out for the “approved wanton” he thinks she is.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At this central moment of the play, we have twin romantic plots that both look to end in disaster. Benedick all along has been railing against the whole concept of marriage as well as mocking the spunky Beatrice (there seems little hope for the two of them); and now Claudio, heretofore an easy mark, proudly proclaims in church (in front of God and everybody) his intention “not to be married”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But when the stage is cleared and Beatrice is alone with Benedick, he begins to proclaim his love for her. He says he will do anything for her and asks her what she wants him to do. “Kill Claudio,” she replies.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though at first reluctant, by the end of the scene Benedick concludes, “Enough. I am engaged.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This line resonates. He is engaged in his love for his lady, and almost literally engaged to be married. He is also engaged in battle, or soon to be, as he challenges Claudio who has dishonored Hero. “By this hand,” he continues, holding Beatrice’s hand in his, “Claudio shall render me a dear account.” It is the hand of Benedick’s lady that inspires him to use his own hand to wield a sword against Claudio and right the wrong done to one who is innocent and defenseless. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s much more to be said about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Much Ado</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but this scene serves as a moment of crystal clarity in which love and willingness to sacrifice go together, in which we see the wonderful implications of the problem of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engagement</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in which we are reminded again that if we are to avoid the life of the pacifist or the eunuch - and if we are to avoid the life of the cynic (such as Benedick), the disillusioned (such as Claudio) or the bored and manipulative (such as most people in the modern world), then we must look to the wisdom of the Church, a Church which knows that loving and fighting must necessarily go together, that both are great perils to our souls, vulnerable as we are to lust and wrath, and that only by imitating Christ, especially in the mode of Chivalry, can we truly be active in a way that gives glory to Him and that honors the rules of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engagement.</span></div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-348705109720387022014-01-15T18:29:00.000-08:002014-03-26T12:47:59.046-07:00The Roman Solution and the Christian Dissolution<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My website </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Christian Shakespare </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(</span><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) features articles by a great many Shakespeare scholars on the Christian elements in Shakespeare’s plays. Recently, I’ve found a reaction is brewing against this trend. Australian scholar Andrew Lomas contributed an essay recently that was very critical of Joseph Pearce’s interpretation of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Romeo and Juliet </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and other plays, claiming that Pearce was reading into the plays elements that aren’t really there. I encourage StAR readers to check out that article, as well as rebuttals to it written by both Joseph Pearce and me. It makes for some engaging reading.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-738fbc9e-98de-b29e-9622-f1a9125cfd01" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An assumption in the thinking of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anti-Christian Shakespeare</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> contingent seems to be that to be Catholic (as the documentary evidence demonstrates that Shakespeare almost certainly was, and as his writings certainly are) is to be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">limited</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Even though the word Catholic means </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">universal, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and even though the Bard’s plays are the most </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">universal </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of writings in the English language, they are not so </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">universal </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(so the critics imply) as to be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">catholic </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- and certainly not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Catholic </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with a capital C!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the things Andrew Lomas points out is that the plays show signs of a profound classical influence, that they incorporate a great deal of Pagan source material and express in a vivid way the Pagan spirit. Thus, Lomas sees Pearce’s criticism of the moral failings of the characters of Romeo and Juliet to be a Puritanical misconception of a story that lauds erotic love and romance in a way that breaks the bonds of what he sees as the Catholic / Puritan denigration of sex and romantic love, harkening back to a regard for sex that is more in the Classical tradition.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what Lomas and the critics who resist the Christian Shakespeare fail to see is that even when these plays are most Classical or Pagan they are always playing off an implied contrast that is utterly Christian.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps the best example of this is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antony and Cleopatra, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a late work that is a strange combination of Problem Play and Tragedy. Is this work a Pagan paen to a romantic love that challenges the Fates, a secular study of ancient politics, intrigue and warfare, a story in the Classical tradition of the great nobility of the Roman Way of suicide? No, it’s an examination of all these things from a profoundly Christian perspective.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Romeo and Juliet, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the two protagonists and their love affair in this play are drastically undercut with a deep irony. The shallowness and pettiness of Cleopatra and her waiting women provide scenes that could be played for great laughs. Less funny is Antony’s tendency throughout the story to</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “make his will Lord of his reason,” and to hold no real loyalty toward the woman who has beguiled him, abandoning his paramour and marrying Octavia out of what appears to be sheer political self-interest combined with a randy curiosity to have yet another woman. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And yet this play is more than a satire, for both Antony and Cleopatra have moments of greatness, of tragic greatness. But these moments are never left to stand on their own or to take the fore for long. After hitting rock bottom, Antony rouses himself to a manly valor and nearly defeats Caesar, only to fall victim the very next day to utter despair and an almost infantile mistrust of Cleopatra (who is far from trustworthy to begin with), falling even lower than the near madman he becomes in Act Three.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cleopatra, for her part, seems to rise to a level that nearly redeems the misgivings Antony (and the audience) have about her. Her stoic assertion of a lonely dignity in Act Five in the face of her conqueror Caesar almost makes this a pure tragedy in a Classic or Pagan style - until we learn that she continues to lie and to manipulate - about petty things. She proclaims to Caesar that she has renounced all worldly possessions, until we learn from Seleucus that she has kept back a great deal of stuff, “essentials” like make-up and jewelry and the giant blow dryer she picked up at the mall (so to speak). The Queen of the Nile ruins her great tragic moment and some really fine verse by getting defensive about her things and by having a typical tantrum in which she threatens to scratch Seleucus’ eyes out.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The audience tends to see this emotional rollercoaster through the eyes of Enobarus, a soldier serving Antony, whose cynicism is funny and perceptive and who seems more and more the voice of reason in a world gone slightly mad. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enobarus also shows one of the keys to unlocking this strange and complex story. When Antony is in the throes of his near-madness, Enobarus offers an aside … </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mine honesty and I begin to square.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The loyalty well held to fools does make</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our faith mere folly: yet he that can endure</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To follow with allegiance a fall'n lord</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does conquer him that did his master conquer</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And earns a place i' the story. (III xiii 41-46)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… in other words, I am a fool to be loyal to a foolish Lord - indeed a “fallen Lord” - but my allegiance is itself redemptive. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is indeed our allegiance to our own fallen and crucified Lord that redeems us of our own folly. This speech thus resonates with a Christian audience - especially an oppressed Catholic audience in Jacobean England, forced to renounce their loyalty to a fallen cause; resonates as the most noble and truly tragic element in the whole play to that point.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Old Will, master that he is, within ten minutes of stage time </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and in the same scene </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">brings Enobarus around to the very opposite conclusion - and brings our sympathies around along with him! </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A diminution in our captain's brain</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some way to leave him. (III xiii 194-200)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By now we can’t help but agree with Enobarus. He’s a sensible guy and Antony has totally lost it by this point and disloyalty seems the natural and even the sensible thing to do. Why go down with a sinking ship? Save your own skin. Abandon the loser and serve the winner. (And how many Jacobeans Catholics - priests even! - were doing that at the time).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But suddenly, in thinking this, in siding sympathetically with Enobarus the cynic, we are engaged as another character in the plot! For we find ourselves rationalizing a basic disloyalty, as Antony did when he cheated on Fulvia with Cleopatra, as Antony did when he glibly agreed to renounce Cleopatra and marry Ocatvia, as the Triumvirate do when they cheat on each other and backstab one another, as Pompey does when he comes to a convenient but ignoble peace, as Cleopatra herself makes a career of doing, and so forth. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Loyalty even in defeat is a Christian virtue. For the cross alone is a sign of defeat that is also a sign of final victory.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But loyalty is also a high Pagan virtue. Is not </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antony and Cleopatra, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">then, simply playing ancient virtue off against modern self-interest and consequentialism? If loyalty is the virtue most ignored by the characters in this play, and if loyalty is the virtuous backdrop against which the confused and sometimes giddy action takes place, then why is the play Christian and not simply Classic or Pagan?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here we come to a deeper answer.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of all the Shakespearian tragedies, this is the only one I can think of where every character who dies onstage dies by suicide. True, Enobarus and one of the waiting women die before our eyes mysteriously and perhaps from broken hearts, but Enobarus dies with suicide in his mind, in his prayer and on his lips, and perhaps somehow by his own hand (stage directions do not indicate this, but stage directions are notoriously inadequate in Shakespeare). The rest are all clearly and notably suicides.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suicide - the Noble Roman Way - is the single act that divides the Christian from the Pagan world. As Chesterton said, “Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.” It might be the Roman Solution. But it is the Christian Dissolution.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And while the characters in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antony and Cleopatra </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">see suicide from the Classical, and not the Christian, perspective, the suicides themselves are undercut with a ridiculous kind of irony. Antony wants to die by the hand of Eros (literally), but ends up having to fall on his own sword, and botches the effort, dying for a good ten minutes, and leading to a scene that is probably supposed to look as awkward as it reads on paper - a scene where Antony is lifted up by a number of guards for a final encounter with Cleopatra in the balcony, sort of how </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Romeo and Juliet</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> would be played if Romeo had a bad back.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the imagery of snakes and serpents that permeate the play reaches a climax with Cleopatra’s suicide, using creatures that are even today associated in the Christian mind with the devil and his demons. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so, far from being a Classical or Pagan drama, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antony and Cleopatra </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is utterly Christian - and even quite modern. For with the totalitarianism and religious persecution of Catholics in England the world sees the the beginning of the great modern disloyalty and apostasy that are the hallmarks of our age - the new men who commit a kind of cultural suicide that is as ill conceived and pathetic - indeed </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bathetic </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- as is so much of the modern world that Shakespeare began to describe some 400 years ago.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">***</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For more, visit The Christian Shakespeare website, </span><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">christianshakespeare.blogspot.com</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-41366296200120516932013-12-03T11:42:00.000-08:002013-12-03T12:18:26.324-08:00In Defence of RomeoAndrew Lomas advocates an interpretation of <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>that differs from that offered by Joseph Pearce.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
In Defence of Romeo<br />
by<br />
<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html" target="_blank">Andrew Lomas</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<i>[Editor's Note: Not Long ago Andrew Lomas, Joseph Pearce and Kevin O'Brien engaged on this website in a fascinating debate on Joseph Pearce's method of biographical criticism. Lomas launched his critique with <a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-to-read-shakespeare-or-anyone-else.html">How to Read Shakespeare? or Anyone Else?</a> O'Brien responded with <a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-text-whole-text-and-nothing-but-text.html">The Text, the Whole Text and Nothing but the Text;</a> and Pearce with<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/2013/09/learning-to-read.html"> Learning to Read</a>. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Glad that the old bloodlust that marks most academic pursuits finally made things interesting here on </i><a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/" style="font-style: italic;">The Christian Shakespeare</a><i>, we welcome another article by Andrew Lomas, which corrects what he asserts is Joseph Pearce's non-traditional and narrow assessment of the character of Romeo, and indeed of the whole play, </i>Romeo and Juliet<i>. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I am taking the time to write this introductory note to welcome any scholars of Shakespeare - amateur or professional - to contribute material that disagrees with the overall thesis of this website - which is that Shakespeare's Catholicism influenced his worldview in a way that most modern critics ignore, and in a way that readers and audiences of his plays must acknowledge in order to appreciate his works more fully.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I am particularly interested in receiving submissions of articles that are as well-written as the one that follows - and that can make a solid case, whether it agrees with the thesis of The Christian Shakespeare or not.]</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">IN DEFENCE OF ROMEO</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the
early chapters of <i>Shakespeare on Love</i>, Joseph Pearce gives a
scathing assessment of Romeo Montague. Romeo is, according to Pearce,
“totally self-centred, the epitome of the impetuous
adolescent”(loc.286), he may be “a hypocrite and a liar”(639),
there is suspicion of “a venality in his character and a venereal
motive in his actions”(464); “if he weren’t so young we would
have no hesitation in dubbing him a contemptible cad”(287). One is
left, a little open-mouthed, wondering “Are we talking about the
same Romeo here? The youth beneath the balcony? The model for young
lovers down the ages?”</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is
clear that Pearce intends his book to challenge the picture of Romeo
in the popular imagination. However, his overwhelmingly negative
portrayal is also a major departure from almost all critical
accounts. And therefore the question may be asked whether, in
providing a corrective to the popular image of Romeo, Pearce does not
go too far in the opposite direction, also misrepresenting
Shakespeare’s text: so that something should be said in Romeo’s
defence. In the present paper I will critically examine Pearce’s
case against Romeo, and investigate the implications for our
understanding of <i>Romeo</i> <i>and Juliet</i> as a whole.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What,
then, has Romeo done to earn Pearce’s censure? The foremost, and
most grievous, charge is that he latches onto, seduces, and corrupts
a much younger woman, indeed a child. For Shakespeare’s Juliet, we
are repeatedly told in the play, is just thirteen years old. As
Juliet’s father declares to another suitor, Paris, she “is yet a
stranger in the world”, not ready for marriage, since “too soon
marr’d are those early made”( Ignatius ed.,1.2.8,13). Pearce,
moreover, cites historical evidence that Elizabethans usually married
at a much later age, and concludes that Juliet’s courtship would
have shocked Shakespeare’s audience. Whereas Romeo, says Pearce, is
“considerably older than she”(371); “Shakespeare clearly
suggests he is older”(375).</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well,
there is no argument here that thirteen year old girls shouldn’t be
involved in marrying, wooing, or anything to do with these things. In
real life, that is—while we are talking about a play: more on this
point in a moment. First of all, though, I want to consider the idea
that Romeo is significantly older than Juliet. Pearce makes no
serious attempt to substantiate this notion, which he believes
obvious; he merely observes that in Arthur Brooke’s source poem
Romeo is described as so young that “his chin sports no
beard”(374), while Shakespeare’s Romeo is not described as
beardless. But since Shakespeare’s Romeo is not described as
bearded, either, whether this version has facial hair must remain
forever a mystery, and cannot prove anything. And at the risk of
appearing obtuse, I must say that the significant age gap between
Romeo and Juliet is not at all “clear” to me, nor has this “clear
suggestion” been recognized by any of the critics I’ve read.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now it is
true that Romeo proves to be very proficient with the sword,
defeating the feared “King of Cats”, Tybalt; which may appear the
deed of one fully matured. However in a society obsessed with
duelling, fight training would begin early; and Romeo has not
established a reputation as a swordsman, even among his
friends—Mercutio thinks Tybalt will beat him easily. Then, it is
also true that Romeo is friends with Benvolio and Mercutio, who do
seem older. But these two treat Romeo like a kid brother, mocking his
infatuation with Rosaline, and attempting to cajole him out of it.
This infatuation is, indeed, in its exorbitance and instability
painfully immature, the calf-love of one who is still, in Pearce’s
own term, “adolescent”. “Adolescent”: that is, not yet adult:
that is, not significantly older than Juliet. Further, Romeo’s bond
with Friar Laurence is clearly a teacher/pupil, even a father/son
relationship, not that between two adults. The “holy man”(4.3.29,
5.3.269) Friar Laurence, note, does not object to marrying Romeo and
Juliet on the grounds that he is too old for her.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Neither
does the “holy man” Friar Laurence object to marrying Romeo and
Juliet on the grounds that she is too young for marriage. And here we
can begin to see how Pearce’s focus on Juliet’s age, though
admirable morally, causes him to misapprehend the text as a whole.
Pearce has provided historical evidence that an actual marriage at
Juliet’s age would have been scandalous in Elizabethan England. But
his evidence does not show how a contemporary audience would have
reacted to early marriages in the alien, exotic Verona of the play,
and <i>in a play</i>. Whatever the attitude of the man in the stalls
might have been, moreover, it does not give us the attitude of the
drama he’s watching. This can only be determined through openness
to <i>all</i> the evidence provided by Shakespeare’s text.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As
previously observed, Juliet’s father states at one point to Paris
that she is too young to wed. Yet immediately afterwards he
encourages Paris to win Juliet’s heart, and says he will bless the
union if Paris is successful. Later, of course, Capulet commands
Juliet to marry. Juliet’s mother, Lady Capulet, while encouraging
her daughter to “think of marriage”, comments that “Younger
than you,/ Here in Verona, ladies of esteem/ Are made already
mothers”(1.3.70-72). And Lady Capulet declares “I was your mother
much upon these years/ That you are now a maid”(1.3.73-74). Since
Juliet’s father, mother, priest, also nurse—and Veronese society
generally—feel she is ready for marriage, the obloquoy Pearce heaps
on Romeo for taking the same view must be judged excessive. But,
indeed, any blame attached to Romeo would be excessive, since it is
evident that Shakespeare doesn’t intend Juliet’s courtship and
marriage to be shocking.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If in real
life a father agreed to the marriage of his fifteen year old daughter
to the first young man she has ever met, just days after they meet—as
Prospero does with Miranda in <i>The Tempest</i>—we would have him
up before the courts. But obviously age functions differently,
non-realistically, in <i>The Tempest</i>—as it also does in <i>Romeo
and Juliet</i>. According to F.R.Leavis’ dictum, “The mode has to
be recognized before the relevant criticisms can be made”(67): we
cannot assume that characters in Shakespeare’s poetic dramas are
just like characters in realist novels, or like people in real life.
With <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, Pearce himself comments that “romantics
will no doubt stress that the youth of the lovers is merely a device
to highlight the unblemished purity of their true love”(323). It
seems to me that these “romantics” have got it pretty right.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
#</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There is,
however, a second part to <i>Shakespeare on Love</i>’s case against
Romeo. And while the charge here is not as grave as that of preying
on a child, it still draws most severe strictures from Pearce. For
Romeo is said to be “devoted to Venus and the religion of erotic
love”(389), and so to show a heinous impiety regarding
Christianity. He certainly transgresses against Pearce’s
Christianity, and Pearce holds that he transgresses against
Shakespeare’s Christianity.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I want to
investigate two crucial instances of Romeo’s alleged impiety. Near
the beginning of the play, Romeo has been rejected by the object of
his youthful infatuation, Rosaline, who has told him she intends to
remain chaste. Romeo decries her choice as a “huge waste”:<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“For beauty, starved with her severity,</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
To merit bliss by making me despair”(1.1.216,217-220).</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Pearce
glosses that Romeo “scorns [Rosaline’s] desire to remain chaste
and treats with apparent contempt her apparent claim that her vow of
chastity is connected to her Christian convictions”(281).</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yet there
is something familiar about Romeo’s argument, repeated just
afterwards, that Rosaline should produce beautiful children,
otherwise her beauty will die with her. It is typically Renaissance
in its concern with the ravages of time, and appeal to a neo-Platonic
notion of beauty. I don’t find the reasoning terribly impressive
myself—but clearly Shakespeare thought otherwise. The opening lines
of the <i>Sonnets</i> are “From fairest creatures we desire
increase/ That thereby beauty’s rose might never die”(1.1-2). And
for the next seventeen poems some of the most beautiful poetry ever
written elaborates and illustrates this line of thought to the Fair
Youth.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Shakespeare’s
<i>Sonnets</i>, more generally, exhibit a scepticism about a young
person’s determination to remain single similar to Romeo’s. This
attitude of Shakespeare is perfectly compatible with respect for
those whose Christian religious vocation he accepts, as is shown by
his treatment of Friar Laurence. And Romeo’s scepticism is also
compatible with respect for those whose Christian religious vocation
he accepts—as shown by <i>his</i> treatment of Friar Laurence. It
is not plausible, though, that Shakespeare intends us to be
scandalized by Romeo’s protest against Rosaline, when Shakespeare
himself makes the same protest, in much the same terms, elsewhere.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The first
converse between Romeo and Juliet—the famous sonnet passage—is
for Pearce an even more grave example of Romeo’s impiety, and
iniquity. On Pearce’s reading, indeed, what we have is the
Temptation and Fall of Juliet. Romeo begins to Juliet,</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
To smooth that rough touch with a tender
kiss.”(1.5.91-94)</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Pearce
sees these lines as an example of Romeo’s “hyperbolic abuse of
religious imagery”(443). If we are to condemn the use of religious
realities as metaphors, though, we would have to condemn the entire
tradition of courtly love poetry, much of which was written by
Catholics. But I want, once again, to consider Romeo’s words in a
wider Shakespearean context. In <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, the Nurse
produces a stream of dirty jokes—“bawdy”, if you like—yet
remains a generally sympathetic comic relief; Mercutio is relentless
in his sexual innuendo, yet still manages to emerge as witty,
imaginative, dangerously glamorous. The displaced religious imagery
of Juliet’s response to Romeo’s killing of Tybalt—“fiend
angelical!”, “damned saint”, “the spirit of a fiend/
In...such sweet flesh”(3.2.75,79,81-82)—is truly extravagant.
Then look at a work written close to the composition of <i>Romeo and
Juliet</i>, the poem “Venus and Adonis”. Shakespeare’s
treatment of the character Venus is humorously irreverent rather than
worshipful; nevertheless, the tenor of his poem is most decidedly of
“the religion of Venus”. Even the pure, unspoilt Perdita of <i>The
Winter’s Tale</i> says things about flowers and maidenheads that
would make the denizens of a modern night-club blush. These examples
would offend many Christians of many types and many times: but
clearly they didn’t offend Shakespeare. Consequently it is just not
tenable that William Shakespeare should consider Romeo’s tame
religious metaphors about kissing sacrilegious.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When
Juliet replies to Romeo’s “blushing pilgrims” advance, she is,
says Pearce, “torn between chaste decorum and erotic desire. As the
mysterious stranger manipulates her words to serve his amorous
purposes, bestowing the first kiss, the girl’s struggle with her
conscience is strained to the limit”(447-8). Finally, with a second
kiss, “Romeo has inflamed desire in the object of his
advances”(457). Juliet has fallen into sin.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Fallen
very quickly, it must be said, at the risk of being indelicate. The
Pearcean Juliet succumbs to temptation in one and a half sonnet’s
worth of speech; Romeo’s contribution being eleven lines. That must
be some sort of record. However, I would like to draw attention to
the concluding words of the exchange. For after Romeo has
administered the momentous kisses, what is Juliet’s verdict? “You
kiss by th’ book”(1.5.108).</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“You
kiss by th’ book”: the note to the Ignatius edition, by Pearce,
comments “i.e., take my words literally to gain more kisses”(n.240,
5400). But this is not a plausible reading of Shakespeare’s line.
The phrase “by the book” meant to Shakespeare and the
Elizabethans what it means to us, “strictly according to the
rules”, in a very correct manner (cf. <i>As You Like It</i>,
5.4.90-1). But if Juliet is really protesting against Romeo’s
literal construction of her words, why does she apply “by the book”
to his kiss rather than his interpretation? Moreover why, in this
context, would “strictly according to the rules” be a literal
interpretation? The standard gloss of the line—in the New Penguin
Shakespeare edition, the New Cambridge Shakespeare, HBJ Shakespeare,
etc., etc.—is that Romeo kisses as if following the rules in a book
of etiquette ( New, n.110, p.200). Unfortunately, though, this
generally accepted meaning throws Pearce’s account of the sonnet
scene into doubt.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Juliet’s
appraisal that Romeo kisses as if following an etiquette manual shows
firstly that, as the daughter of an aristocratic Veronese family, she
is well acquainted with the etiquette of kissing. It also tells us
that Romeo’s kisses weren’t the passionate pashes of a Byronic
seducer, as Pearce imagines. But there are even more important
implications. If, after the kisses, Juliet is able to deliver her
calm, objective assessment of Romeo’s technique, then clearly,
<i>contra</i> Pearce, her judgement hasn’t been overwhelmed by
erotic desire. That Juliet should make this composed assessment
shows, further, a mind free from any concern that Romeo’s behaviour
may have involved her in sin. So her response to the first kiss,
“Then have my lips the sin”(1.5.106), did not express a genuine
fear she had been defiled, or reflect any real “struggle with
conscience”. Rather, it was an artful move in a sophisticated game.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Pearce
says that Juliet is too young “to play her part in the intertwined
sonnet with a suave savoir faire”(455). Here a theory about the
text has overwhelmed what is actually <i>there</i> in the text: for
Pearce rules impossible what Juliet <i>does</i>. Juliet’s lines in
the sonnet scan just as well as Romeo’s, their rhymes complete the
complex rhyme-pattern, and her metaphors of conventional piety answer
Romeo’s of conventional impiety. The sonnet exchange of
Shakespeare’s play is elaborate, formal, verbal fencing. Juliet is
neither tempted, nor does she struggle with her conscience, and she
doesn’t fall into sin. Though Romeo had her heart, as the saying
goes, at “Hello”—or even before “Hello”; as she had his.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I recall
reading a long time ago a critic who asserted that, in all his plays,
Shakespeare had never portrayed a gentleman. In terms of the
nineteenth century/ early twentieth century understanding of
“gentleman”, this may be true. Romeo certainly isn’t one. But,
of course, Shakespeare wasn’t aware of such a standard, and, if he
had been made aware of it, would probably have regarded it as absurd:
his own ideal of manhood was quite different. G.K.Chesterton remarks
that the Renaissance poets, including Shakespeare as the greatest of
them, inhabited “a wider and a wilder world”(230) than poets of
medieval times. “A wider and a wilder world”, too, than
Victorian/ Edwardian English gentlemen, and some twenty-first century
Catholics (including, in some parts of its geography, myself).
Whether these Renaissance innovations are <i>really</i> compatible
with Christianity is a tremendous question, far beyond the scope of
the present essay. However it is clear that Shakespeare’s views on
acceptable imagery, acceptable jokes, appropriate manners between the
sexes, the place of pagan ideas, cannot simply be read off from his
presumed Christianity. For even assuming this Christianity, sincere
Christians of different places, cultures, times have had greatly
varying positions on these matters. In his condemnation of Romeo for
profanity, I believe Pearce imports his particular Christian
standards into a play which embodies different standards.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
#
Pearce’s overarching
“cautionary or moral”(148) interpretation of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>,
whereby the play is about morally wrong choices made by the
characters and their consequences, undoubtedly contains much truth.
The “rashness and hastiness”(1289) of the lovers and parents is
convincingly shown to promote the ultimate tragedy; though it is
arguable that fate, or bad luck, are just as important, with the
Chorus lamenting the “star-crossed”(Prol.6) couple. However that
may be, and despite the merit in Pearce’s overall interpretation,
we have seen that he misconstrues the initial connection between
Romeo and Juliet, by putting Romeo in a far too negative light. Even
Capulet, sworn enemy of Romeo’s family, admits that “Verona brags
of” Romeo “To be a virtuous and well-govern’d youth”
(1.5.65-66); and nothing in the play overturns this testimomy of a
basic good nature. When Juliet says “if that thy bent of love be
honourable”(2.2.143), he should arrange their marriage, Romeo
accepts without a qualm: this is not the behaviour of a cad, even a
junior cad.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And
because Pearce misconstrues the initial connection between Romeo and
Juliet, he goes astray on the fundamental relationship of the play.
After giving his version of the sonnet scene, Pearce admonishes that
“the love between Romeo and Juliet can be nothing but skin-deep and
purely physical at this stage”(484). “How can such love be
anything but superficial, a bewitching of the eye in response to
great physical beauty?” (486) “Whereas true love is desiring the
good of the other”, moreover, he has noted earlier, “Romeo
desires that the other should feel good to him”(284). The relation
of Romeo and Juliet is thus seen as a shallow, selfish <i>eros</i>,
as opposed to self-less “true love”, the <i>agape</i> or <i>caritas</i>
of Christianity.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In
constructing this opposition, though, Pearce ignores a possibility
found in his own philosophical and theological guide, St. Thomas
Aquinas. St. Thomas grounds natural law morality on certain natural
“inclinations” or orientations. Among these, as one of the
inclinations humans share with other animals, is attraction towards
the opposite sex—“nature has taught all animals to mate”(
<i>S.T</i>.1-2.94.2, in Kerr, 108; <i>Political</i>, 46). The purely
carnal, pre-rational desire to mate must, of course, be regulated by
morality, should be transformed with maturity, and may be transcended
entirely through grace. But for Aquinas such “natural love is
always good, since it is nothing other than a natural urge implanted
by the author of nature”(<i>Human</i>, 44).</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am not
suggesting Shakespeare had studied Aquinas on natural law. However
St. Thomas’ reasoning here, typically, clarifies a common sense
view, and I <i>am</i> suggesting this same common sense view has
emerged from my readings of <i>Romeo</i> <i>and Juliet</i>. That
Romeo is attracted at first by “charm of looks”(2 Prol.6),
without stopping to quiz the young ladies on their philosophical and
theological opinions, does not reveal a shameful superficiality, but
merely shows that he is a young human animal, not some kind of
disembodied moral calculus. That Romeo switches his interest so
quickly from one pretty girl, who doesn’t return his feelings, to
another who does, may be suprising, and amusing, but is after all
perfectly normal behaviour in a young man seeking a mate; and
salutary, insofar as he now stops pestering Rosaline. That Romeo’s,
and Juliet’s, love involves—in part—“feeling good”, and is
directed towards satisfaction, does not mean that it is immorally
self<i>ish</i>. It is self-<i>interested</i>, certainly, yet the
self-interest is a legitimate element of good natural love.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Personally
I would prefer to leave Romeo and Juliet at this level. However it is
evident from my readings that the play insists on another tier to
their relationship. From the exquisite sonnet exchange of the first
meeting, to the dramatic tableau of the balcony scene, to the
matching gold statues in death—Romeo and Juliet are presented as
souls destined for one another: theirs is also a grand romantic
passion. But does then the play as a whole fall subject to the
criticisms Pearce makes of Romeo for his romantic “love at first
sight”? Does Shakespeare’s play glorify what is really just
imprudent “rashness and hastiness”, an attraction which can only
be “skin-deep and purely physical”?</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well,
considering Joseph Pearce is an admiring biographer of J.R.R.Tolkien,
we might consider the following questions. Are Beren and Luthien of
<i>The Silmarillion</i> culpably imprudent when they fall in love at
first sight? Is Aragorn misled by “charm of looks” when he loses
his heart from the first hour he sees Arwen? Not only before knowing
her name, but before knowing what species she belongs to. Does
Aragorn yield to a “purely physical” desire for Arwen, when a
little moral reflection would have shown that he was actually more
suited to Eowyn—with whom, after all, he has so much more in
common?</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It may be
objected that comparisons with Tolkien are invalid, because his works
belong to the genre of fairy-tale. However, the heightened romance of
<i>Romeo and</i> <i>Juliet </i>shows, once again, that the play is to
an extent non-realistic in mode; it is closer to a fairy-tale than to
a George Eliot novel. Besides portraying grand romantic passion,
Tolkien provides a theoretical justification for such portrayal, in a
letter to his son Michael. “The idea of lovers destined for one
another”, he says, “still dazzles us, catches us by the
throat”(52). “In such great inevitable love, often love at first
sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have
been in an unfallen world”(52). The idealized love of <i>Romeo and
Juliet</i> is set midst our fallen world, and the story tells how
this love is destroyed by the sinful world, including by the lovers’
own faults. But we don’t fully understand the play unless we see
that what is destroyed is something free from taint, a “great
inevitable love”(52).</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">WORKS
CITED</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. <i>The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas:
Representative</i> <i>Selections</i>. Ed. Dino Bigongiari. New York:
Hafner Press, 1953.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. <i>The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas: A Breviary
of</i> <i>Philosophy from the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas</i>.
Arranged by Josef Pieper. Trans. Drostan MacLaren, O.P.. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Chesterton, G.K.. <i>Chaucer</i>. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Kerr, Fergus. <i>After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism</i>. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2003.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Leavis, F.R.. <i>D.H.Lawrence: Novelist</i>. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1973.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Pearce, Joseph. <i>Shakespeare on Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence
in </i><i><u>Romeo and</u></i> <i><u>Juliet</u></i><i>.</i> San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013. Kindle e-book file.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Shakespeare, William. <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. New Penguin
Shakespeare. Ed. T.J.B.Spencer. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Shakespeare, William. <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. With Contemporary
Criticism. Ed. Joseph Pearce. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011.
Kindle e-book file.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Shakespeare, William. <i>The Sonnets</i>. A Signet Classic. Intro.
W.H.Auden. Ed. William Burto. New York: New American Library, 1965.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-AU" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
Tolkien, J.R.R.. <i>The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien</i>. Ed. Humphrey
Carpenter, With assistance of Christopher Tolkien. London: Unwin,
1990.</div>
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Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206675844059729470.post-86780837012846878612013-12-03T10:52:00.000-08:002013-12-03T10:52:59.466-08:00Essay on Translating ShakespeareBoris Pasternak writes vividly about many aspects of Shakespeare's writing.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<a name='more'></a><br />
Essay on Translating Shakespeare<br />
by<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/p/our-contributors.html">Boris Pasternak</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Essay on Translating Shakespeare,”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Published in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Literary Moscow,”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 1956.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Translated by Manya Harari.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Edited and Retyped by</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brendan D. King.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-260c73a3-b9c8-8169-cf9b-f6e2f6dd6436" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Over the years, I have translated several of Shakespeare’s plays:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, King Henry IV (Parts I and II), King Lear,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Macbeth.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The demand for simple and readable translations is great and seemingly inexhaustible. Every translator flatters himself with the hope that he, more than others, will succeed in meeting it. I have not escaped the common fate.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Nor are my opinions on the aims and problems of translating literary works exceptional. I believe, as do many others, that closeness to the original is not ensured only by literal exactness and similarity of form: the likeness, as in a portrait, cannot be achieved without a lively and natural method of expression. As much as the author, the translator must confine himself a vocabulary which is natural to him and avoid the literary artifice involved in stylization. Like the original text, the translator must create an impression of life and not of verbiage.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare’s Poetic Style.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare’s dramas are deeply realistic in their conception. In his prose passages and in those dialogues in verse which are combined with movement or action his style is conversational. For the rest, the flow of his blank verse is highly metaphorical, sometimes needlessly so and in some cases at the cost of some artificiality.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>His imagery is not always equal to itself. At times it is poetry at its highest, at others it falls plainly into rhetoric and is loaded with dozens of inadequate substitutes for the one right word which he had on the tip of his tongue and which escaped him in his hurry. Nevertheless, at its worst as at its best, his metaphorical speech conforms to the essentials of true allegory.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Metaphorical language is the result of the disproportion between man’s short life and the immense and long-term tasks he sets himself. Because of this, he needs to look at things as sharply as an eagle and convey his vision in flashes which can be immediately apprehended. This is just what poetry is. Outsize personalities use metaphors as a shorthand of the spirit.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The stormy quickness of the brushstrokes of a Rembrandt, a Michelangelo, or a Titian was not the fruit</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of their deliberate choice. Possessed by the need to paint the universe, they could not paint in any other way.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare’s style combines opposite extremes. His prose is finished and polished. It is the work of a genius in the art of comic detail, a master of conciseness, and a brilliant mimic of everything strange and curious in the world.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In complete contrast to this is his blank verse. Voltaire and Tolstoy were shocked by its inward and outward chaos.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare’s characters, who often go through several stages of completion, occasionally speak in poetry first and then in prose. In such cases, the scenes in verse produce the impression of being sketches and those in prose of being finished and conclusive.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Verse was Shakespeare’s most rapid and immediate method of expression. It was his quickest way of putting down his thoughts. So true is this that many of his verse passages read almost like rough drafts of his prose.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>His poetry draws its strength from its very quality of sketchiness, powerful, uncontrollable, disorderly, and abundant.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare’s Use of Rhythm.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare’s rhythm is the basic principle of his poetry. Its momentum determines the speed and sequence of questions and answers in his dialogues and the length of his periods and monologues.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is a rhythm which reflects the enviably laconic quality of English, a quality which makes it possible to compress a whole statement, made up of two or more contrasted propositions, into a single line of iambic verse. It is the rhythm of free speech, the language of a man who sets up no idols and is therefore honest and concise.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hamlet.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare’s use of rhythm is clearest in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where it serves a triple purpose. It is used as a method of characterization, it makes audible and sustains the prevailing mood, and it elevates the tone and softens the brutality of certain scenes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The characters are sharply differentiated by the rhythm of their speech. Polonius, the King, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz speak in one way, Laertes, Ophelia, Horatio, and the rest in another. The credulity of the Queen is shown not only by her words, but also by her singsong manner of drawing out her vowels.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So vivid is the rhythmic characterization of Hamlet himself that it creates the illusion of a leitmotif, as though a musical phrase were reiterated at his every appearance onstage, although in fact no such leitmotif exists. The very pulse of his being seems to be made audible. Everything is contained in it; his inconsistent gestures, his long, resolute stride and the proud half-turn of his head, as well as the way in which the thoughts he utters in his monologues leap and take flight, the mocking arrogance of his ripostes to the courtiers who mill around him, and his manner of staring into the distance of the unknown whence his father’s ghost once summoned him and where it may at any moment speak again.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Neither the music of Hamlet’s speech nor that of the play as a whole lends itself to quotation: it is impossible to give an impression of it by any one example. Yet, disembodied though it is, so ominously and so closely is it woven into the texture of the tragedy that, given the subject, one is tempted to describe it as Scandinavian and as suited to the climate of apparitions. It consists in a measured alternation of solemnity and disquiet and, by thickening the atmosphere to its utmost density, it brings out the dominant mood. What is this mood?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>According to the well-established view of critics,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a tragedy of the will. This is true. But in what sense is it to be understood? Absence of will power did not exist as a theme in Shakespeare’s time: it aroused no interest. Nor does Shakespeare’s portrait of Hamlet, drawn so clearly and in so much detail, suggest a neurotic. Hamlet is a prince of the blood who never, for a moment, ceases to be conscious of his rights as heir to the throne; he is the spoilt darling of an ancient court, and self assured in the awareness of his natural gifts. The sum of qualities in which he is endowed by Shakespeare leaves no room for flabbiness: it precludes it. Rather the opposite is true: the audience, impressed by his brilliant prospects, is left to judge of the greatness of his sacrifice in giving them up for a higher aim.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>From the moment of the Ghost’s appearance, Hamlet gives up his will in order to,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “do the Will of Him that sent him.” Hamlet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is not a drama of weakness, but of duty and self denial. It is immaterial that, when appearance and reality are shown to be at variance -- to be indeed separated by an abyss -- the message is conveyed by supernatural means and that the Ghost commands Hamlet to exact vengeance. What is important is that chance has allotted Hamlet the role of judge of his own time and servant of the future.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the drama of high destiny, of a life devoted and preordained to a heroic task.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is the overall tone of the play, so concentrated by the rhythm as to be almost palpable. But the rhythmic principle is applied in still another way. It has a softening effect on certain harsh scenes which would be intolerable without it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thus, for instance, in the scene in which he sends Ophelia to a nunnery, Hamlet speaks to the girl who loves him, and whom he tramples underfoot with the ruthlessness of a self-centered Byronic rebel. His irony is out of keeping with his own love for her, which he painfully suppresses in himself. But let us see how this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">heartless scene is introduced. Immediately before it comes the famous speech, “To be or not to be,” and the fresh music of the monologue still echoes in the opening verses which Hamlet and Ophelia exchange. The bitter and disorderly beauty of the monologue in which Hamlet’s perplexities crowd and overtake each other and remain unsolved recalls the sudden chords, abruptly cut off, tried out on the organ before the opening of a requiem.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No wonder that the monologue heralds the beginning of the cruel denouement. It precedes it as the funeral service precedes the burial. The way is opened for whatever is inevitable, and whatever follows is washes, redeemed and lent majesty not only by the spoken thoughts but by the ardor and purity of the tears which ring in it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Romeo and Juliet.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If such was the importance of rhythm in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> we might expect it to be greater still in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Romeo and Juliet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Where, if not in a drama of first love, should harmony and measure have free play. But Shakespeare puts them to an unexpected use. He shows us that lyricism is not what we imagined it to be. He composes no arias, no duets. His intuition leads him by a different path.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Music plays a negative role in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Romeo and Juliet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It is on the side of the forces which are hostile to the lovers, the forces of worldly hypocrisy and of the hustle of daily life.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Until he meets Juliet, Romeo is full of his imaginary passion for Rosalind, who never appears on the stage. His romantic pose is in the current fashion of his time. It drives him straight out on solitary walks at night and he makes up for lost sleep by day, shaded by closed shutters from the sun. All the time that this is going on, in the first scenes of the play, he speaks unnaturally in rhymed verse, melodiously declaiming his high-falutin nonsense in the affected drawing room manner of his day. But from the moment he sees Juliet at the ball and stops dead in front of her, not a trace is left of his tuneful mode of expression.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Compared to other feelings, love is an elemental cosmic force wearing a disguise of meekness. In itself, it is as simple and unconditional as consciousness and as death, as oxygen and uranium. It is not a state of mind, it is the foundation of the universe. Being thus basic and primordial, it is the equal of artistic creation. Its dignity is no less, and its expression has no need of art to polish it. The most that the artist can dream of is to overhear its voice, to catch its ever new, ever unprecedented language. Love has no need of euphony. Truth, not sound, dwells in its heart.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Like all Shakespeare’s plays,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Romeo and Juliet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is written for the most part in blank verse, and it is in blank verse that the hero and heroine address each other. But the measure is never stressed, it is never obvious. There is no declamation. The form never asserts itself at the expense of the infinitely discreet content. This is poetry at its best, and like all such poetry, it has the freshness and simplicity of prose. Romeo and Juliet speak in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">half tones, their conversation is guarded, interrupted, secret. It has the very sound of high emotion and mortal danger overhead at night.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The only noisy and emphatically rhythmic scenes are those in crowded rooms and streets. Out in the street, where the blood of Montagues and Capulets is shed, ring the daggers of the quarrelling clans. Cooks quarrel and clatter knives in the kitchen as they cook the endless dinners. And to the din of butchery and cooking, as to the brassy beat of a noisy band, the quiet tragedy of feeling develops, spoken for the most part in the soundless whispers of conspirators.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Othello.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The division of the plays into acts and scenes was not made by Shakespeare, but later, by his editors. Nevertheless, it was not forced on them: they lent themselves to it easily by virtue of inward structure.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The original texts, printed without a break, nevertheless stood out by a rigor of construction and development which is rare in our time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This applies particularly to the thematic development usually contained in the middle of the drama, that is to say in the third and some parts of the second and fourth acts. This section is, as it were, the box which holds the mainspring of the mechanism.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the beginning and conclusion of his plays Shakespeare freely improvises the details and, with as light a heart, disposes of the loose ends. The swiftly changing scenes are full of life, they are drawn from nature with the utmost freedom and with a staggering wealth of imagination.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But he denies himself this freedom in the middle section, where the threads have been tied up and must begin to be unraveled; here Shakespeare shows himself to be the child and slave of his age. His third acts are riveted to the mechanics of the plot in a measure unknown to the dramatic art of later centuries, though it was from him that it learned its honesty and daring. They are ruled by too blind a faith in the power of logic and in the real existence of ethical abstractions. The lively portraits drawn at the beginning, with their convincing light and shade, are replaced by personified virtues and vices. The sequence of actions and events ceases to be natural and has the suspect timing of tidiness of rational deductions, as syllogisms in an argument.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When Shakespeare was a child, moralities constructed in accordance with the formal rules of Medieval Scholasticism were still shown on the English provincial stage. He may well have seen them, and his old-fashioned industry in working out his plot may have been a remnant of the past which had fascinated him in his childhood.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Four-fifths of his writings are made up of his beginnings and endings. This is the part that made the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">audience laugh and cry; it is on this that his fame is based, and it accounts for all the talk about his truthfulness to life in opposition to the deadly soullessness of neo-classicism.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But a thing may be rightly observed, yet wrongly explained. One often hears extravagant praise of the “mousetrap” in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or of the iron necessity in the development of this or that passion or in the consequences of this or that crime in Shakespeare. Such admiration starts from false pretenses. It is not the mousetrap that deserves to be admired, but Shakespeare’s genius which shows itself even where his writing is artificial. What should cause wonder is that the third acts, which are often devitalized and contrived, do not circumvent his greatness. He survives, not because of, but in spite of them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For all the passion and the genius concentrated in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Othello</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and for all its popularity on the stage, what has been said above applies in considerable measure to this play.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here we have the dazzling quays of Venice, Brabantio’s house, the arsenal; the extraordinary night session of the Senate, and Othello’s account of the gradual beginnings of his and Desdemona’s feeling for each other. Then the storm at sea off the coast of Cyprus and the drunken brawl at night on the ramparts. And before the end, the famous scene of Desdemona preparing for the night, in which the still more famous “Willow,” song is sung, tragically natural before the dreadful illumination of the finale.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But what happens in between? With a few turns of the key, Iago winds up like an alarm clock the suspicions of his victim, and the course of jealousy, obvious and labored, unwinds, creaking and shuddering like a rusty mechanism. It will be said that such is the nature of jealousy or that such is the tribute paid to the convention of the stage with its insistence on excessive clarity. It may be so. But the damage would be less if the tribute were paid by an artist of less genius and less consistency. In our time, another aspect of the play has a topical interest.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Can it be an accident that the hero is Black, while all that he holds dear in life is White? What is the significance of this choice of colors? Does it mean only that all peoples have an equal right to human dignity? Shakespeare’s thought went much farther.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The concept of the equality of peoples did not exist in his time. What did exist was an equal and wider notion of their equal opportunities. Shakespeare was not interested in what a man had been at birth, but in the point he had reached, in what he had changed into, in what he had become. In Shakespeare's view, Othello, who was black, was a human being and a Christian who lived in historic times, and this interested him the more because living side by side with Othello was Iago, who was White, and who was an unconverted, Pre-Historical animal.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antony and Cleopatra.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There are tragedies in Shakespeare, such as</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Macbeth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which create their own worlds, unique of</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">their kind. There are comedies which belong to the realm of pure fantasy and are the cradle of romanticism. There are chronicles of English history, songs in praise of England sung by the greatest of her sons; some part of the events described in them had their counterpart in the circumstances of his time and so his attitude to them could not be sober and dispassionate.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thus, in spite of the realism in which his work is steeped, it would be vain to look to any of these plays for objectivity. We do, however, find it in his dramas of Roman life.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Julius Caesar</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was not written only for the sake of poetry and love of art, and still less was</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Antony and Cleopatra.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Both are the fruit of his study of plain everyday life. This study is pursued with passion by every representational artist. It was this pursuit which led to the naturalistic novel of the nineteenth century and which accounts for the even more convincing charm of Flaubert, Chekhov, and Tolstoy.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But why should Shakespeare seek the inspiration for his realism in such remote antiquity as Rome? The answer -- and there is nothing in it to surprise us -- is that just because the subject was remote it allowed Shakespeare to call things by their name. He could say whatever seemed good to him about politics, ethics, or any other thing he chose. He was dealing with an alien and distant world, a world which had long since ceased to exist and which was closed, accounted for, and passive. What desire could it arouse? He wished to portray it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antony and Cleopatra</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the story of a rake and a temptress. In describing them as they burn up their lives, Shakespeare uses the tones of mystery fitting to a genuine bacchanalia in the Classical sense.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Historians have written that neither Antony nor Cleopatra (nor his companions in his feasts, nor the courtiers who were in her confidence) expected any good to come of the debauchery which they had promoted to the status of a ritual. Foreseeing the end, they spoke of themselves, long before it came, as immortal suicides and promised to die together.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This indeed is the conclusion of the tragedy. At the decisive moment, death is the draughtsman who lends the story the connecting outline which it had so far lacked. Against the background of campaigns, fires, treason, and defeats, we take leave on two separate occasions of the two principle characters. In the fourth act, the hero stabs himself, and the heroine commits suicide in the fifth.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Audience.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare’s chronicles of English history abound in hints at the topical events of his day. There were no newspapers: to hear the news (as G. B. Harrison notes in his</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> England in Shakespeare’s Day</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) people gathered in taverns and in theaters. Drama spoke in hints. Nor is it surprising that the common people understood them since they concerned facts which were close to everyone.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The political open secret of the time was the difficulties of the war with Spain, started with enthusiasm, but which had soon become a bore. For fifteen years, it had been waged by land and sea, off the coast of Portugal and in the Netherlands and in Ireland.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Falstaff’s parodies of martial speeches amused the simple, peaceable public, which plainly understood what was meant, and laughed still more heartily at his recruiting scene (where the recruits bribe their way out) because they knew the truth of it by experience.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A great deal more astonishing is another example of the intelligence of the contemporary audience.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The works of Shakespeare, as of all Elizabethans, are full of appeals to history and ancient literature and full of mythological examples and names. To understand them nowadays, even reference book in hand, one needs to be a Classical scholar; yet we are told that the average Londoner of those days caught these flickering allusions in mid-air and digested them without the least trouble. How are we to believe this?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The explanation is that the school curriculum was very different from ours. A knowledge of Latin, which is now taken for a sign of higher education, was then the lowest step of learning, just as Church Slavonic used to be in Russia. In the primary, so-called grammar schools -- and Shakespeare went to one of them -- Latin was the spoken language and, according to the historian Trevelyan, the schoolboys were not allowed to use English even in their games. Those London apprentices and shop assistants who could read and write were just as much at home with Fortune, Heracles, and Niobe as a modern schoolboy with internal combustion and the elements of electricity.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare was born in time to find a well established, century-old way of life still in being. His age was a festive period in English history. By the end of the next reign, the balance of things had already been upset.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Authenticity of Shakespeare’s Authorship.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare’s work is a whole and he is everywhere true to himself. He is recognizable by his vocabulary. Certain of his characters appear under different names in play after play and he sings the same song over and over to different tunes. His habit of repeating and paraphrasing himself is particularly noticeable in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In a scene with Horatio, Hamlet tells him that he is a man and cannot be played upon like a pipe.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A few pages further on he asks Guildenstern, in the same allegorical sense, whether he would like to play the pipe.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the first players monologue about the cruelty of Fortune in allowing Priam to be killed, the gods are urged to punish her by breaking her on her wheel, the symbol of her power, and flinging the pieces down from heaven to Tartarus. A few pages further on Rosencrantz, speaking to the King, compares a monarch’s power to a wheel fixed on a mount which, if its foundations are shaken, destroys everything on its way as it hurtles down.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Juliet takes the dagger from dead Romeo’s side and stabs herself with the words, “This is thy sheath.” A few lines further on her father uses the same words about the dagger resting in Juliet’s breast instead of in the sheath on Romeo’s belt. And so on, almost at every step. What does this mean?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Translating Shakespeare is a task which takes time and effort. Once it is undertaken, it is best to divide into sections long enough for the work not to get stale and to complete one section each day. In thus daily progressing through the text, the translator finds himself reliving the circumstances of the author. Day by day he reproduces his actions and he is drawn into some of his secrets, not in theory, but practically, by experience.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Stumbling on such repetitions as I have mentioned and realizing how close together they are, he cannot help asking himself in surprise: “Who and in what conditions would remember so little of what he had put down only a few days earlier?”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Then, with a tangible certainty which is not given to the biographer or the scholar, the translator becomes aware of the personality of Shakespeare and of his genius. In twenty years, Shakespeare wrote thirty-six plays, not to speak of his poems and sonnets. Forced to write two plays a year on average, he had no time to revise and, constantly forgetting what he had written the day before, he repeated himself in this hurry.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At this point, the absurdity of the Baconian theory becomes more striking than ever. What need was there to replace the simple and in no way improbable account of Shakespeare’s life by a tangle of mysterious substitutions and their alleged discoveries?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Is it conceivable that Rutland, Bacon, or Southampton should have disguised himself so unsuccessfully; that, using a cipher or a faked identity, he should have hidden from Elizabeth and her time only to reveal himself so carelessly to later generations? What cunning, what ulterior purpose can be imagined in the mind of this highly reckless man who undoubtedly existed, who is not ashamed of slips of the pen, and who, yawning with fatigue in the face of history, remembered less of his own work than any high school pupil knows of it today? His strength shows itself in his weakness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is another puzzling thing. Why is it that ungifted people are so passionately interested in those who are great? They have their own conception of the artist, a conception which is idle, agreeable, and false. They start by assuming that Shakespeare was a genius in the way that they understand genius; they apply their yardstick to him and he fails to measure up to it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>His life, they find, was too obscure and workaday for his fame. He had no library of his own and his signature at the bottom of his will is a scrawl. It strikes them as suspicious that a man who knew the soil, the crops, the animals, and all the hours of the day and night as simple people knew them should also have been at home with law, history, diplomacy, and the ways and habits of courtiers. And so they are astonished, amazed, forgetting that so great an artist must inevitably sum up everything human in himself.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">King Henry IV.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The period of Shakespeare’s life about which there can be least doubt is his youth.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am thinking of the time when he had just come to London as an unknown young provincial from Stratford. Probably, he stayed for a while in the suburbs, further from the center of town than a cabby would take his fare. Probably, out there, there was a sort of Yamskie village. With travelers to and from London stopping on their way, the place must have had something of the bustling life of a modern railway station; there were probably lakes, woods, market gardens, stagecoach inns, booths, and amusement parks in the neighborhood. There may have been theaters. Smart people from London came to have a good time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was a world which had something about it of the Tverskie-Yamski of the middle of the last century when, on the outskirts of Moscow, beyond the river -- surrounded by the nine muses and by lofty theories, troikas, publicans, gypsy choirs, and educated merchants who patronized the arts -- lived and struggled the most distinguished Russian heirs of the young man from Stratford, Apollon Grigoriev and Ostrovsky.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The young man had no definite occupation but an unusually brilliant star. His belief in it had brought him to the capital. He did not yet know his future role, but his sense of life told him that he would play it unbelievably well.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Whatever he took up had been done before him: people had composed verses and plays, acted, obliged the visiting gentry, and tried as hard as they could to make their way in the world. But whatever this young man took up, he felt it was such an astonishing upsurge of strength that it was clearly best for him to break with all established habits and do everything in his own way.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Before him, only what was artificial and remote from life had been regarded as art. The artificiality was obligatory, and it was a convenient cloak for spiritual impotence and for inability to draw. But Shakespeare had so good an eye and so sure a hand that it was clearly to his advantage to upset the existing convention.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He realized how much he would gain if, instead of staying at the usual distance from life, he walked up to it -- not on stilts but on his own legs -- and, measuring himself against it, forced it to look down first before his stubbornly unblinking stare.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There was a company of actors, writers, and their patrons who went from pub to pub, baited strangers, and consistently risked their necks by laughing at everything in the world. The most reckless of them, who yet remained unharmed (he got away with everything), the least moderate and the most sober (drink never went to his head), the one who raised the loudest laugh and who was yet the most reserved, was this gloomy youth who was already striding into the future in his seven-league boots.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Perhaps there really was a fat Falstaff who went about with these young people. Or perhaps Shakespeare invented him later as an embodiment of that time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was not only as a gay memory that it became dear to him: this was the time which saw the birth of Shakespeare’s realism. It was not in the solitude of his study that he conceived it but in the early hours in an unmade room in an inn, a room as charged with life as a gun is with powder. Shakespeare’s realism is not the profundity of a reformed rake or the hackneyed “wisdom” of later experience. That which is most earnest, grave, tragic, and essential in his art arose out of his consciousness of success and strength in those wild early days of desperate fooling, inventiveness, and hourly mortal danger.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">King Lear.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The productions of</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> King Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are always too noisy. There is the willful, obstinate old man, there are the gatherings in the echoing palace hall, shouts, orders, and afterwards curses and sobs of despair merging with the rolls of thunder and the noises of the wind. But, in fact, the only stormy thing in the play is the tempest at night, while the people, huddled in the tent and terrified, speak in whispers.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is as quiet as</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Romeo</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and for the same reason. In</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Romeo</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it is the love of lovers which is persecuted and in hiding; in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it is filial love and, more widely, the love of one’s neighbor, the love of truth.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Only the criminals in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> wield the notions of duty and honor; they alone are sensible and eloquent, and logic and reason assist them in their frauds, cruelties, and murders. All the decent people are either silent to the point of being indistinguishable from each other or make obscure and contradictory statements which lead to misunderstandings. The positive heroes are the fools, the madmen, the dying, and the vanquished.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Such is the content of a play written in the language of the Old Testament prophet and situated in a legendary epoch of Pre-Christian barbarism.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Comedy and Tragedy in Shakespeare.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is no pure comedy or tragedy in Shakespeare. His style is between the two and made up of both; it is thus closer to the true face of life than either; for in life, too, horrors and delights are mixed. This has been accounted to him as a merit by all English critics, from Samuel Johnson to T.S. Eliot.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To Shakespeare, the difference between tragedy and comedy was not merely the difference between the lofty and the commonplace, the ideal and the real. He used them rather as the major and minor keys in music. In arranging his material he employed poetry and prose and the transitions from one to the other as variations in music.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>These transitions are the chief characteristic of his dramatic art; they are at the very heart of his stagecraft and they convey that hidden rhythm of though and mood which I referred to in my note on</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hamlet.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All his dramas are made up of swiftly alternating scenes of tragedy and tomfoolery. One aspect of this method is particularly marked.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the edge of Ophelia’s grave the audience is made to laugh at the philosophizing of the grave diggers. At the moment when Juliet’s corpse is carried out, the boy from the servant’s hall giggles at the musicians who have been invited to the wedding, and the musicians bargain with the nurse who is trying to get rid of them. Cleopatra’s suicide is preceded by the appearance of a half-wit Egyptian snake charmer with his absurd reflections on the uselessness of reptiles -- almost as in Maeterlinck or in Leonid Andreyev!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shakespeare was the father and the prophet of realism. His influence on Pushkin, Victor Hugo, and other poets is well known. He was studied by the German Romantics. One of the Schlegels translated him into German and the other drew on him for his theory of Romantic irony. Goethe, as the Symbolist author of</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Faust</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, was his descendant. Finally, to keep only to the essentials, as a dramatist he is the predecessor of Chekhov and Ibsen.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is in this same spirit, which he transmitted to his heirs, that he makes vulgar mediocrity snort and rush in on the funereal solemnity of his finales.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Its irruption makes the theory of death, already inaccessibly remote from us, withdraw still further. The respectful distance we keep between ourselves and the threshold of what is lofty and frightening grows a little longer still. No situation as seen by the artist or the thinker is final; every position is the last but one. It is as if Shakespeare were afraid lest the audience should believe too firmly in the seemingly unconditional finality of his denouements. By breaking up the rhythm at the end he reestablishes infinity. In keeping with the character of modern art and in contrast to the fatalism of the ancient world, he dissolves the mortal, temporal quality of the individual sign in its immortal, universal significance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Macbeth.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Macbeth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> might well be called</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Crime and Punishment</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. All the time I was translating it, I was haunted by its likeness to Dostoevsky’s novel.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Planning the murder of Banquo, Macbeth tells his hired murderers:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will advise you where to plant yourselves,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Acquaint you with the perfect spy o’ the time,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The moment on’t; for ‘t must be done tonight,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And something from the palace…</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A little further on, in the third scene of the third act, the murderers, lying in ambush for Banquo, watch the guests arriving through the park.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">SECOND MURDERER:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then t’is he; the rest</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That are within the note of expectation</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Already are in the court.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FIRST MURDERER:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His horses go about.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THIRD MURDERER:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Almost a mile: but he does usually--</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So all men do -- from hence to the palace gate</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Make it their walk…</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Murder is a desperate, dangerous business. Everything must be thought out, every possibility must be foreseen. Both Shakespeare and Dostoevsky endow their heroes with their own foresight and imagination, their own capacities in timeliness, detail, and precision. Both the novel and the play have the sharp heightened realism of detection and of detective fiction; the cautious wariness of the policeman who looks over his shoulder as often as the criminal himself.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In one case, the impetus is given by the prophecy of the witches who set the vanity of Macbeth ablaze. In the other, it comes from the extreme nihilistic proposition that, if there is no God, everything is allowed, and therefore a murder is in no way different from any other human act.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of the two, Macbeth feels particularly safe from retribution. Who could threaten him? A forest walking</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">across a plain? A man not born of woman? -- Such things don’t exist, they are blatant absurdities. And what, in any case, has he to fear from justice once he has seized kingly power and become the only source of law? It all seems so clear and logical! What could be more simple and obvious? And so the crimes follow in quick succession -- many crimes over a long time -- until the forest suddenly moves and sets out on its way and an avenger comes who is not born of woman.</span></div>
<br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Incidentally, about Lady Macbeth -- coolness and will power are not her predominant qualities. I think that what is strongest in her is something more generally feminine. She is one of those active, insistent wives, a woman who is her husband’s helper, his support, for whom her husband’s interests are her own and who takes his plans on faith once and for all. She neither discusses them nor judges nor selects among them. To reason, to doubt, to make plans -- that’s her husband’s business, its his lookout. She’s his executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself. Miscalculating her strength, she assumes the excessive burden and is destroyed, not by conscience, but by spiritual exhaustion, sadness, and fatigue.</span></div>
Kevin O'Brienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05557094020639034417noreply@blogger.com