Was Shakespeare Catholic?

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William Shakespeare may have been Catholic. Catholicism still was an influence on the culture of Shakespeare’s times. When you read the plays, you will notice that many oaths are said according to the names of Mary and the saints. The oath “Zounds” also appears, meaning “by the wounds of Christ.” But of course, all this need not be exclusively Catholic. Many expressions may have passed into conventional usage while losing their ties to the Catholic religion.

Also to take into consideration, many of Shakespeare’s plays have their setting in the Renaissance or some other period apparently predating the time when Shakespeare was writing. The Historical Plays, for example, take place around the 15th century, at a time when Europe was still for the most part Catholic. The Montague and the Capulet families (from Romeo and Juliet) were the names of feuding families in the 13th century. And so on. In order to re-recreate this Catholic atmosphere, Shakespeare may have intentionally used Catholic ideas and terminology. But then again, I have not looked into this question in any depth. I’m just opening up the possibility.

Also, the views of the characters in the play are not necessarily the views of the playwright.

Now, if Shakespeare were to imbue his personal letters and writings with Catholic sentiments, then there may be something more to this.
 
For as long as anyone can remember Shakespeare has been claimed to be a Freemason.
This aspect to the life of William Shakespeare has been asserted from both within and without Freemasonry.
Significantly, the most numerous and loudest voices are those of the Masons themselves: they seem very sure that the bard was one of their own.

In the last century a Baconian enthusiast called Alfred Dodd wrote a book (no longer available) asserting that Shakespeare was actually ‘the founder’ of Freemasonry.
This folly aside, he did also provide a large body of evidence from the plays pointing to Shakespeare’s inside knowledge of Masonry. Dodd was a Freemason himself, although he doesn’t seem to have scrambled very high up the winding staircase.
The subject was more recently aired in the winter 1998 edition of the in-lodge journal Freemasonry Today (1). The author of the piece, Peter Dawkins (who claims not to be a Freemason) finds numerous cases of arcane Masonic knowledge in the plays; he cites examples in Loves Labour Lost, Henry V, Coriolanus, Measure For Measure, Julius Caesar, Henry VI, Pt. 2 and The Tempest.
A particularly spectacular indication of Masonic interest in Shakespeare occurred at the laying of the foundation stone of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in July 1929.
On this occasion there was a massive Masonic ceremony, presided over by the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England and attended by over 600 Masons in full regalia.
The scale of this jamboree points to the fact that the Craft takes the Bard very seriously indeed.

The play most likely to have a Masonic subtext is one actually not mentioned by Dawkins: this is the play set in the ancient Egypt of Masonic mythology, Antony and Cleopatra. In the following paper I seek to demonstrate that this play is profoundly Masonic, both in spirit and substance, and could only have been written by a Royal Arch Mason.
Just something to ponder over.
 
An article in Daily Express,5th.January,2009

Bard news for the Church
The church where William Shakespeare is buried could be forced to close for safety reasons.
Holy Trinity in Stratford upon Avon,Warwickshire,needs £2.5 million of repairs and restorations.
Works costing £400,000 will try to fix crumbling windows which date back to the 1490’s.
Vicar Martin Gorick said,if the work was not carried out,the church could have to shut its doors for all services and its 250,000
visitors a year.
That sounds like Shakespeare,if he was a catholic,kept it under wraps.
 
Caesar said:
I read an article recently which suggested that William Shakespeare was Roman Catholic, although secretly due to the supression of Catholicism by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and that he hid Catholic symbolism and messages in his plays (the “Shakespeare Code” ;)) :hmmm:

Has anyone else heard of this? Do you believe it?
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**Fr. Peter Milward S.J. wrote an entire book to support the idea that he was Catholic. Of course, if Will Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon is not the Bard in the first place, there is a problem. **​

**I doubt it very much. The Elizabethan Reformation took a while to “take”, and in the meantime probably quite a lot of people were not fully Protestant, but not fully Catholic either. Shakespeare, if the “usual” candidate for the identity,was born in 1564 - just five years after the Act of Uniformity abolished Catholic worship. So he may have been neither Protestant nor Catholic, but in between. **

**Just my guess. **
 
Contarini said:
There has been quite a bit of study of wills and their language, and indeed there is certain language that Catholics would tend to use and Protestants wouldn’t. “only merits of Jesus Christ” does sound Protestant, but I seem to remember Eamon Duffy arguing (in Stripping the Altars) that Catholics used this language too. (I may be remembering the source wrong–was it Cameron’s European Reformation? maybe) There is certainly nothing about that language that is incompatible with Catholic teaching. A Catholic free to use any language he chose (to indulge in, without impropriety)
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“**Trial by Jury”, I presume ? 🙂 G & S, anyway. :cool: Quite appropriate for an Elizabethan question. **​

would probably include mentions of the BVM and the other saints. But a person of Catholic sympathies living under a Protestant government would have no problems using this language, it seems to me. Shakespeare clearly was not a recusant–that’s not the question. He may well have used the language conventional in Elizabethan England without thinking twice about it. That doesn’t settle the question of his possible Catholic sympathies.

Edwin
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I have a question:
If Shakespeare was indeed Catholic, which was his most “Catholic” play?
Thanks
 
Geremia said:
I have a question:
If Shakespeare was indeed Catholic, which was his most “Catholic” play?
Thanks
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I am not so learned as Clare Asquith , in order to defend Catholicism of Shakespeare , but I can guess it using the intuition and I can guess that the Solomon of new era , and the King of play writer’s , could be a Catholic. 
And not only because his father John was fined by the Protestant Church in its time.
I am not a Shakespeare scholar , and I do not read Shakespeare in original , and hardly understand some thing of him in English.
I used to read the Shakespeare many times in Russian , and I understand him better in the translation of genius Boris Pasternak.
Because I can understand the ‘’Russiasness’’ of Russian.
But the Englishness of English , I probably will never achieve. :whacky:

But , look at the image of brother Lorenso , from Romeo and Julieth .
The Image of the father’s spirit in Hamlet.
Notice with what a beauty , in Measure for Measure , the activity of the nun’s order is described.
Is it just a sympathy to Catholicism or Shakespeare’s secret Catholicism ?

There was a time when , I used to study the works of Wilson Knight in English , and I was searching something different than his Catholicism , I was searching the hidden doctrines , I would say - Revelational doctrines in some of his thoughts , with the help of great scholar - Wilson Knight ! I even believed that those doctrines can enrich Christian apologetics of the 21-st century.
I planed to explore Shakespeare through his Bible knowledge , and after study the Thomas Carter , I decided that there will be no much help if I shall find the books of Shaheeb Naseed or Richmond Noble.
Well , again.
I apologize before the honorable scholars even for giving my opinion on this question .
I am as usually , always try to give my opinion about the things which are very far from my understanding , and don’t miss the opportunity again to be mocked .
May be for the beginning , I must learn to read in English first .😊
But , I do not know , I just see it by intuition , I see it through his wisdom that his was a Catholic.
As I see that C.S.Lewis could be a Catholic if he would live longer.
:yup:
I don’t know.
I can imagine , if my teacher of English in the secondary school , would find out today , what a topic I explore and in what company , she could probably fall down on the floor , loosing her consciousness , because in the school I was the worst pupil in her class.:rotfl:
at least , today , it could be the great opportunity to testify her , what a great power conversion to Jesus has !!
 
Of roughly half his plays I have seen and/or read (As You Like It, Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, King Leer, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Merchant of Venice, Othello, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, and Taming of the Shrew), I would say King Leer, called also his “secular gospel,” and Measure for Measure, for the novice nun character Isabella, are his most “Catholic” plays.
 
I read the complete works of Shakespeare twice.
And I read many many times some of his plays.
I tried to learn by heart Macbeth, Hamlet and Timon of Athens .
And I definitely must dedicate the time to study the tales.
But I can not say what work is the most Catholic.
But there is much Christian philosophy in some of his works.
 
It’s always fun to read speculation about Shakespeare’s life, considering the vast extent of what we don’t know about it. It all becomes an issue of defining our own beliefs rather than Shakespeare’s. Asking “Was he Catholic?” makes us define what we consider Catholic: Actively, but secretly, practicing? Raised Catholic, but lapsed? Including Catholic themes to further a message? Inserting Catholic themes because they were the background noise of the Warwickshire of his youth? The Ardens were certainly Catholic, and were punished as such, and Shakespeare’s father may have been a sort of “conscientious objector” Catholic, paying steep fines rather than attending mass, but this tells us nothing about the man himself.

Speculation about whether or not he was the true author of his plays, gay, female, a mason, or any other thing says much more about the speculator than Shakespeare. So little hard evidence of his life exists that any theory will likely be almost wholly conjecture; all we have are his plays, or rather the plays as remembered posthumously by friends and associates; a couple of long poems; and the sonnets. His six known signatures don’t even tell us how he spelled his own name. Also, his plays show such a complete depth of knowledge about the way people act and think that it is easy to project onto the man himself because of his characters. Reading Othello, you could easily say that he knew intimately what it is like to be jealous, hateful, wronged, forgiving, or sadistic; was Shakespeare himself any of these things? We can only guess.

I love reading about this stuff, but ultimately Shakespeare’s life has become what Alan Moore refers to as a Superposition, a construct that has little relation to the actual and instead serves as a reflection of the desires of the biographers.

That said, it is wickedly fun to do. My two cents about King Hamlet’s ghost as proof of Catholicism through the references to Purgatory: If he was in Purgatory, he couldn’t be allowed out to urge Hamlet to sin by murdering Claudius. Purgatory+sinning=no go for launch, right? This lends pretty good credence to the idea that Hamlet is being misled into doing some very bad things, even if they are to bad people and contain some kernel of truth.

Even then, the Purgatory thing could just be a convenient contrivance to get the plot going. At least he didn’t resort to the Winter’s Tale “Agh! A bear!” device (easily one of my favorite moments in drama!) 😃
 
Wouldn’t it be cool if he was & we could find out for sure?
Was there actually a written confession found?
 
At least 3 of his works demonstrate a very deep understanding of the Catholic Faith. And he certainly believed in God. But i’m not sure if he was or not… he certainly held a strong catholic view.

His plays “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet” and “The Taming of the Shrew” all demonstrate a strong catholic worldview, especially with the issue of morality, mortality and sin.

“The Taming of the Shrew” deals with the Sanctity of Married life, as well as the alternative view on “true Love” than “Romeo and Juliet”. Opposite in that it presents a lasting Marriage that works, rather than one that ends in tragedy. It presents “true love” as being two people who desire to work for a better life together despite obvious diffrences, rather than two people desiring each other out of a lusty love(which is what R and J presents).

Romeo and Juliet, not only contains the presence of Friar Laurence(Father Laurence in the '96 flick), who learns to be careful what he prays for, not realising that only tragedy would result in the families coming together and reconciling. But it also contains a strong story about Romeo delibratly tempting fate, and choosing to go against his better judgement at least thrice(before the costume party, after Mecutio’s murder, and when he recieves the letter in Mantua).

Hamlet is the most obvious of the three plays. Not only does it contain a famous scene where his father’s Ghost appears to him from Purgatory, but most modern scholars fail to realise that Hamlet is a devout Catholic, and he cannot go against his moral judgement and Murder someone. He knows it’s a Mortal Sin, and because of this reason he’s not sure about the Spirit and it’s advice, was it a demon? was it his father?

He is certain that the Uncle did kill his father especially after the play within a play scene, but hamlet is clearly shaken by the task the Spirit has asked him to complete, murder. It goes against his devout Catholic faith. The best scene which clearly shows this is the scene where Hamlet, holding the knife over the uncle(who is in repentant prayer in the chapel), ponders “do I kill him now and send him with wings to heaven”. This is why Hamlet waits for the moment when his Uncle tries to have him killed after the swordfight and the audience waits 4 hours with him. Thus freeing the Spirit of his father, and also freeing his own.
 
I have listened to some authors on Bookmark that say he was…I think it is possible
 
I always remember this little axiom.

Dante was Catholic; Milton was a Protestant; Shakespeare was a dramatist. 👍
 
It is important to note that Shakespear was only a generation or two after the split. Basic Catholic beliefs and concepts were still strong in society.
 
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