From Tragic to Magic: Shakespeare & the Critics

The acceptance of Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies and sensibilities animates “Shakespeare: The Magician and the Healer,” by Annie-Paule de Prinsac, who argues that the Bard disguised himself and his meaning in a mannerist mask, which simultaneously and paradoxically revealed truths indirectly and allegorically which it was illegal for him to reveal candidly.

Times have changed and in someways they have changed for the better. This is certainly the case with respect to Shakespeare scholarship. There was a time, not so long ago, when few voices of reason, or even sanity, could be heard amidst the maelstrom of malevolent and maladroit nonsense that passed for scholarship on Shakespeare and his work. The nonsense continues, of course; such are the nonsensical times in which we find ourselves. The Bard is still beset by those who claim him as a fellow queer theorist or radical relativist; or by those who declaim him as a nihilistic proponent of deconstruction, centuries ahead of his time; or by those who denounce him for being a misogynist or a racist. But these voices, insofar as they are aware of the broader and deeper scholarly conversation, are now on the defensive. The tide is turning.

Recently published works have concentrated on the evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism and on the Catholic dimension of his work, or on his Christian humanism and his place within the tradition-oriented conversation which constitutes Christian civilization. No longer do we find ourselves in the dark days at the end of the last century in which Peter Milward ploughed a lonely furrow as the lone scholar advocating the Catholicism of Shakespeare’s plays. In the past ten years, a host of new books have been published, each of which illustrates that the works of Shakespeare are Catholic theologically and philosophically, either formally or at least in spirit. Clare Asquith followed her earlier book, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare (2005) with Shakespeare and the Resistance: The Earl of Southampton, The Essex Rebellion, and the Poems that Challenged Tudor Tyranny (2018). The great German scholar, Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, has published some groundbreaking volumes but perhaps her crowning achievement is The Life and Times of William Shakespeare (2007), in which she shows the abundance of evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism within the historical context of his life and times.

Other works do not necessarily argue for the Bard’s Catholicism but for his tradition-oriented Christianity in a broader, non-denominationally defined sense. Three such books were published in 2022 alone: Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature by Lee Oser; Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation: Literary Negotiation and Religious Difference by Dennis Taylor; and Shakespeare and the Idea of Western Civilization by R. V. Young. Last and hopefully not least are my own contributions to this scholarship: The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome (2008); Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays (2010); and Shakespeare On Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence in Romeo and Juliet (2013). As a means of indicating the extent of good scholarship related to the topic of Shakespeare’s Christian faith and philosophy, I provided at the end of The Quest for Shakespeare a five-page selected bibliography of other books connected to the topic.

The happy fact is that scholarship on Shakespeare’s religion, especially that which shows the abundance of evidence for his abiding Catholicism, has moved from the margins to the mainstream. This was made evident in an anecdote related personally to me by someone who had attended a talk by the director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC. During the questions following the talk, the director was asked what was known about Shakespeare’s religion. He answered that many people seem to believe that he was Catholic. The fact that this is the answer which instantly sprang to mind when the unexpected question was raised is evidence that the Bard’s Catholicism is now more widely accepted than at any time since the decades immediately following his death.

This acceptance of Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies and sensibilities animates a newly published volume, Shakespeare: The Magician and the Healer by Annie-Paule de Prinsac, a French Shakespeare scholar who has enjoyed a lifelong love affair with the Bard which is evident in the breadth and depth of her understanding of the man, his works and his times. What is unique about her approach is the way in which she places Shakespeare amongst the advocates and practitioners of mannerism, an aesthetic movement that straddled the period between the late Renaissance and the Baroque. As with the Baroque, it was an expression of the Catholic Counter-Reformation’s response to the austerity and aesthetic minimalism of the Protestant Reformation. The author argues that Shakespeare was a mannerist by both taste and necessity, mannerist technique enabling him both to reveal and conceal religious elements in his works with finesse and subtlety, both of which were necessary in the religious tensions of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. In essence, Shakespeare disguised himself and his meaning in a mannerist mask which simultaneously and paradoxically revealed truths indirectly and allegorically which it was illegal for him to reveal candidly. As the author explains: “Shakespeare could not displease the absolute power which provided for his and his company’s living, yet he could, by using indirections, various kinds of artistic contortion and subterfuge, manage to say what he meant and offer the audience a critical view which could at all times be deniable.” In other words, to put the whole matter and manner in blunt idiomatic form, Shakespeare felt contracted morally to telling the truth but told it in such a way that he always had a plausible get-out clause. Such an approach, such a manner of speaking, was a life-preserving necessity, not a nicety, in the perilous times in which he and his audience lived.

Concluding with my own get-out clause, I would say that I am not always in agreement with the author’s reading of some of the plays. I also question her reading of the historical context on occasion. Nonetheless, I am pleased to have read and am happy to recommend this fine addition to the burgeoning body of new and true Shakespeare scholarship.

Shakespeare: The Magician and the Healer by Annie-Paule de Prinsac is newly published by Angelico Press.

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The featured image is Prospero, Miranda and Ariel, from “The Tempest” (circa 1780), by Anonymous, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.