Shakespeare and Purgatory

[KyrieEleison17]

So there this controversy as to whether or not Shakespeare was Catholic. Personally I think he was at least raised Catholic. Anyways I wrote this based on my own interpretation of his classic/famous play, Hamlet. Would love feed back:

Let’s talk about Shakespeare’s ghosts (there’s a pun here if you have the patience to read the whole thing!).

Now his ghosts were extremely controversial then and now: especially then, because the England he lived in said that -no matter what- any appearance of anything not of this world was the devil; which meant, in practice (very, very soon), no such thing happened or you were a witch or, if lucky enough to have male genitalia, nuts.

But that was still “soon”. Not yet.

In Will’s day, the haunts of the dead were still a generation away from being the stuff of either pure fiction or categorically evil (hence the witch hunt craze). There was still this shadowy belief that the unseen world’s denizens could come back and interfere with us but -it must be remembered - that general belief was simply a ‘what if’; not yet a ‘stuff of fiction no matter what’. And no more than that.

Most of Shakespeare’s audience knew that officially they were supposed to ignore the dead. However, some were old enough to still remember when it was considered a terrible sign of negligence and even selfishness (indeed a sin!) to forget the dead; regardless, all of them still had parents (like Shakespeare’s own) - or at least grandparents - who were raised to both love and also fear the dearly –even if not always faithfully- departed.

So Shakespeare lives in this world of transition between an age that believed quite fervently that men could help the dead (the “old belief”) and also (importantly for Shakespeare’s plays) vice-versa. In other words, Will lived in an age where his mom and dad (literally) and a lot of other people still alive yet believed also that the dead could help (or even hurt!) us; but, already - and very, very soon (it must be remembered) - the dead were simply just dead. There was this “limbo” (so to speak) - a certain ‘what if?’ - that lingered in the air. And he exploited this lingering doubt to the max.

Shakespeare lived in a atmosphere that –while a real religious authority was in practice dead (i.e., there simply was no truly religious authority); notwithstanding, the authority of religion generally or per se still remained;- but in a sort of “to each their own” sense. Gone were the days of “the Church’s” authority; now began the days of this anonymous religion: each man, as he liked –and depending on a warrant from the Bible- could invent his own religion – but ONLY PRIVATELY and QUIETLY (at least under Elizabeth I; and that, VERY privately and VERY quietly).

Still, whatever that religion was (in Shakespeare’s day) it had – to be credible – to be grounded in the Bible. And it also needed a good deal of generic popular agreement or at least sympathy –combined necessarily with help from government ministers –to effect tolerance. Otherwise, even those who (according to England’s now “old religion” (i.e. Catholicism)) were “heretics” would also burn you, in turn, as a “heretic” or –as in Shakespeare’s England- have you tortured for months on end and (if you still didn’t recant, which (considering the circumstances) made heroes of both Catholics and “radical” Protestants) then have your guts torn out while you were still alive then have them burned in front of you, before finally cutting off your head. Sometimes –actually even frequently- the executioner (normally drunk because it was such a horrible job and lousy way to earn some extra money) would – at the first instance or excuse from the crowd – show you mercy and just cut off you head after pulling out your guts.

So it must be remembered that in this play what Shakespeare is doing is toying with ideas that could be either extremely –extremely!- bold or, at least, virtually suicidal. Ideas about death could seriously land you in prison for a long time (mercifully) or even possibly get you killed (hopefully with a measure of mercy) if you dared in the least defend them.

Still, in such a delicate and dangerous context, enter Shakespeare’s genius.

Let’s take a look at the entrance of Shakespeare’s character of the ghost in his famous play, “Hamlet”:

“SCENE V.

Enter GHOST and HAMLET

…

Ghost
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET
Alas, poor ghost!

Ghost
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

…

HAMLET
O God!

Ghost
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET
Murder! …] Haste me to know’t …

…

Ghost
…

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
… at once dispatch’d:
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin *,
Unhousel’d *, disappointed, unanel’d *,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account *
With all my imperfections on my head *:
…Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

(End quote)

---

 

[KyrieEleison17]

Now this amazing: Shakespeare lives in (for us English) the beginnings of the post-Christian age. Here he is quite emphatically “remembering” (“remember me”) the ideas of an age that were now (according to his government) dead; that is, the age just passed in which men were expected to “remember” the dead, or else they were in trouble with God.

In fact, elsewhere in the play Shakespeare will use the expression “marry” –still common then as a generic expression (like an atheist telling you to ‘go to hell’)- that simply meant “By the Blessed Virgin Mary” and was a reference to the famous Catholic prayer (the reference already almost already forgotten in Shakespeare’s day) to the self-same Virgin: “Hail Mary, full of grace” and ended with saying “… pray for us sinners now and at the our of our death”. Men would actually swear by this before Shakespeare’s time.

Now, for his audience, this whole idea was life or death (literally!!!). His audience was our earliest grandparents whom we could relate to in spirit and ideas; but their own parents, however, strongly believed that every human being was duty-bound to be grateful (and not just ceremonially, but religiously: i.e., in your private prayers thrice a day!) for the dead; otherwise (in their minds), you would be cursed in this life and quite possibly in the next by God.

Now that idea was (officially) dead: yet here Shakespeare is dangling it in his audience’s faces. Technically, in his day, he should (literally) have been at least censored for this or even had his head cut off (not joking). This idea was treason: it was, modernly, the now (officially) Catholic idea of “Purgatory”: a sort of middle-place where sinners will, notwithstanding their faults, still (after being mysteriously purified) go to heaven. Because of this, some of my fellow Catholics might claim Shakespeare as their own (in fact, the Vatican’s quasi-official Newspaper did; however, they are not Englishmen and didn’t bother to read the whole play obviously). However, anyone who has read it knows that Shakespeare makes this idea a source of wickedness and, therefore, hardly an endorsement of it. Then again, if he dared to, it would have been the end of his career or even his life if he refused to drop it. Such were our ancestors: men lived or died based on their opinions on the status of the dead: “Love them so? Fine, then join them!”

But Shakespeare could still –even in a negative light- get away with that idea after the fact if he got caught. Remember, in his day, religious authority – as a REAL authority – was not totally dead. It just had to be grounded in the Bible. And what is exceptional about this quote from Shakespeare is that he does just that: the whole thing is absolutely littered in Biblical language – smart if you are trying to keep the government (after approving) from trying to make a fuss about it later.

To make this obvious, the reference to the serpent is so plain that even the biblically illiterate will recognize it. The ghost says to Hamlet:

“… Now, Hamlet, hear:
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death”

The word “orchard” reminds us of a garden; and, in that context, a “serpent stings”. In the bible, “death” is the consequence of the “serpent’s sting”. The ghost is obviously trying to invoke religious ideas in Hamlet’s head: if we don’t catch on to the obvious Biblical allusions, Shakespeare’s audience (who loved reading the Bible) did.

Again, Shakespeare is trying to get his audience to “remember”.

That being settled, let’s move on to the biblical references to Purgatory. The first substantial thing the ghost says is:

“My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames, Must render up myself”

Now compare this to the New Testament:

“If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

There is no doubt that Shakespeare’s ghost is alluding to Purgatory; that is, to that place where some (“but he”) are supposed to “be saved; yet as by fire”.

Not only that, but Shakespeare (and this is literally treasonous in his day) has the ghost say:

“Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purged away.”

Note again the reference to fire (“burnt”) and remember Saint Paul’s talk about some being saved “as by fire”.

Now the word “purged” is where we get our word “Purgatory” from. This is blatantly a reference to the “old” idea of Purgatory; notwithstanding, Shakespeare was not censored. This alone for the modern Vatican at least was enough reason to claim Shakespeare was Catholic; however, of course, the Vatican is mostly Italian and any intelligent Englishmen knows that the whole concept is sullied in filth by all of the consequences: In the play it leads to murder and insanity. Still, no one else could have made such a blatant reference in public theatre to the Catholic concept of Purgatory – that was a forbidden idea and memory at the time because of its emotional power ( IS my dad in Heaven? If not, CAN I help him?). It would be like referencing November 11th after the government decided it’s illegal and punishable even by death to remember or recall the horrors of the first and second world wars.

 

[KyrieEleison17]

So how did Shakespeare get away with it?

In my opinion, it is not just because he sullies the whole concept by the consequences of it by the character of Hamlet; in fact, if you would like to read the play, Shakespeare deliberately makes believers of sceptics: a toilsome work if you don’t want your audience to play with the idea of the unseen, forbidden and known.

No: The sullying of the idea is not enough; especially because he goes out of his way to anchor the idea in the Bible, something no-one would take the care or time to do if they wanted in his day to do what was easy and popular and mock or deny Purgatory, already a popular thing to do.

No: He got away with it finally because –although he sullies the idea - he also drenches the whole scene in obvious references to the Bible, the last truly “authoritative” matter in belief. Now at this time a biblical warrant for the idea of Purgatory was universally, simply and boastfully denied by Protestants. The whole Protestant reformation started from a rejection of the ability to help those who were in Purgatory, then quickly lead to a general denial of the conceptr. Now to learn suddenly that there might be something in the Bible – even in the New Testament that both Catholics and Protestants accepted - to justify it would have caused at that time a massive religious controversy, which is certainly the last thing on earth Elizabeth I wanted. So Shakespeare slipped through and even if more witty and intelligent men discovered Shakespeare’s biblical references no one at that point would have wanted the general public to learn of it: Not Protestants, because officially the idea was supposed to not be there; and not Catholics, because Shakespeare deliberately makes the ghost of Hamlet look like someone not from Purgatory, but quite probably a demon from Hell at best pretending to be a soul in Purgatory.

For further proof, compare the following texts. The old English master has the ghost say,

“But that I am forbid / To tell the secrets of my prison-house”.

Now compare this to the Gospel:

"Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”

In other words, there is alluded to by Jesus a place of punishment (“prison”) where you are punished but you can be freed (“get out)” but not “until you have paid the last penny” (later Hamlet will call the ghost “truepenny”, which then meant authentic as in not counterfeit money). This is the Catholic idea of Purgatory and it was built on the idea of humans “paying” those “pennies” to release other Christians (out of love, pity and mercy, at least according to official doctrine) from this “prison-house”: it meant that I could help my dead loved ones. A powerful religious idea for we humans who – once our loved ones are gone – are so wracked with the possibility of our own guilt toward them on one hand, or fear for them on account of their living, on the other.

Thus, and exceptionally ingeniously, Shakespeare anchors Purgatory in his Hamlet to the Bible.

However, a good student of the play knows that –notwithstanding –though this would have frightened enough the authorities of his day out of risking a public trial or dispute (as the only rule in Shakespeare’s day in matters of the religion was the Bible) he was still smart enough to make the whole experience seem bad. In other words, he could have always claimed that the concept of Purgatory that the ghost claimed to be from ended up being the source of Hamlet’s madness and later murders (i.e. a bad thing). Still, it was a bold move at the time regardless, because Shakespeare – whose vocabulary had over 30,000 words in his works - used words from the Bible as a basis for Purgatory while –at the time – England’s official Church and government denied emphatically that there were any such words for it in the Bible .

Thus Shakespeare has the last laugh: he proved his government how and, thus, Protestants wrong but he gave no comfort to Catholics because his ghost still could have been a devil pretending to be from Purgatory; and, certainly at least, nothing good developed from this episode: “Ye shall know them by their fruits”. Shakespeare obviously loved English and everything written in it: he knew the then current Bibles (actually no one denies this because some of his references to the Bible are so translation-specific as to be obvious.

What Shakespeare does capture, however, is that haunting feeling that any man knows who has lived too long to know loved ones die and points to a rare but insatiable –when it arises- desire to pierce into the abyss of the impenetrable and unknown: Now God help and spare me because I do not know it, but I can imagine the man or woman who wants to say “sorry” for some harsh words after the person they only finally realize they loved or were loved-by departs and after some bad episode. But we are children of the latter-half of Shakespeare’s generation: our social policy is to bury the dead quickly and just as quickly forget about them. Therefore, I think a modern Halloween movie purely about a mysterious ghost saying “remember me” might be a thousand times scarier than a nightmarish monster trying to kill us or finally hacking off that annoying brunette (Yes, I confess: the blondes were way more fun).

While Hamlet’s ghost is deliberately left by Shakespeare a mystery; Shakespeare’s - at least for now - still lingers.

 

[Mount_Carmel]

I believe that Shakespeare was indeed a very remarkable writer, and most probably a ‘closet Catholic’, indeed a programme I saw on the telly some years back made a strong case in this direction - including a ‘cryptic note’ found years later in a roof joist.

I also feel that his fame and popularity may have shielded him some what, in addition to perhaps some issues Queen Elizabeth may have housed for her father, who after all had her mother Anne Boleyn beheaded, and she must have also pondered her father’s acts and motives regarding advent this new ‘English Protestant Church’. .

 

[thistle]

Does the OP really expect us to plough through 3 long posts?

 

[GEddie]

Does the OP really expect us to plough through 3 long posts?

Only if the topic interests you.

Personally, Shakespeare, old England and the afterlife are among my passions, so I will read it all although the format is somewhat inconvenient. But anybody is free to commit time-wastage elsewhere.

ICXC NIKA

 

[KyrieEleison17]

Only if the topic interests you.

Personally, Shakespeare, old England and the afterlife are among my passions, so I will read it all although the format is somewhat inconvenient. But anybody is free to commit time-wastage elsewhere.

ICXC NIKA

LOL yes I am banking heavily on a love of Shakespeare, old England and at least curiosity about ideas concerning an after-life.

I am quite riddled about Shakespeare -as we all usually are when we try to delve into his mind and personality- but especially here. It is not only that he is alluding to Purgatory quite obviously, but the mystery and enigma for me is why he took such pains to soak the whole affair in such ingeniously subtle - but once discovered almost painfully obvious - references to holy writ. I mean -and I am open to correction- I don’t think Catholics even started using the referenced scriptures popularly in apologetics to defend Purgatory until much later. At least one of them seems quite original (the reference to a “prison-house”). That, or Shakespeare was in on -so to speak- the “state of the art” of Catholic apologetics; but even so, the nature of the play is such that you can’t say he necessarily approved of it. For me, personally, the language and references employed here give a measure of credence to the idea that Shakespeare well might have actually been in Rome during his ‘missing years’. That coupled with setting so many of his plays in ‘exotic’ Italy (e.g. Venice); but again, that may well have been for dramatic or artistic effect.

Official Catholic doctrine from the Popes did anchor Purgatory in a reference to the Gospel (Matt. 12:30-32 and Lk. 12:8-10), but one that required a good deal of work to make sense of, coupled normally in later apologetics with a reference to Maccabees, works considered at best apocryphal by Protestants. But that specific reference is not used in Hamlet - no doubt because it would have been a rather dead give-away.