Clare Asquith's book
Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare claims Shakespeare was Catholic and included cryptic religious and political messages in his plays which those in the know would understand. EWTN recently aired a September episode of
The World Over where Raymond Arroyo conducted a fascinating interview of Asquith (archived audio of the show is available
here). Blogger Dad29 reviews the book
here. The Washington Post reviews it
here.
Asquith is not the first to say Shakespeare was Catholic, but she is the most convincing. Asquith is the wife of a British diplomat. She first suspected the existence of a coded subtext in Shakespeare after attending dissident plays in cold war Moscow which employed the same device.
As the
Guardian's review puts it: "As a result the Catholic resistance, which had been going for 70 years by the time Shakespeare was writing, had already developed its own secret code words; a subversive communication system which the playwright developed further in his work." Asquith says the Bard would use terms such as high to refer to Catholic characters and low to refer to the Protestant - referring to their altars, and light or fair to refer to Catholic and dark to refer to Protestant - a reference to certain clerical garb.
Asquith also detected in Shakespeare's work the use of an simple code used by the Jesuit underground in England which took the form of a mercantile terminology wherein priests were merchants and souls were jewels, the people pursuing them were creditors, and the Tyburn scaffold where the members of the underground died was called the place of much trading. The Jesuit underground used this code so their correspondences looked like innocuous commercial letters. Asquith says Shakespeare also used this code. She claims that, "Even the 'The Merchant of Venice' is a title which has deliberate resonance for those in the know." The use of the moon in Shakespeare references Elizabeth, as she adopted Diana or the moon goddess as her persona. Consider this from Romeo and Juliet:
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
The fair sun is the "old faith". Green and white were the color of Elizabeth's livery. But, according to Asquith, Shakespeare is not endorsing Romeo's view. Romeo was a "hothead" and his approach ended only in sorrow.
The use of earthquakes had a particular meaning. In 1581 England had its worst earthquake ever. In the same year
St. Edmund Campion the underground Jesuit priest and his cohorts spurred an immense charge to their movement.
Just as there were plays which were addressed to the Crown, Asquith says all the Roman plays are addressed to the Catholic Church. "Julius Caesar", which many believe to be the first which was performed at the Globe, holds out the sympathetic conspirators as the Reformers. Caesar, strikingly less than perfect, is the Papacy as seen through the eyes of the English reformers. The unreformed Church, imperfect as it was, like Caesar, left chaos in its absence. Caesar continues to haunt the conspirators. Asquith also tells of the inspiration for "A Winter's Tale", Magdalen Brown Montague, his benefactor and a stalwart of the English Catholic community.
The audio of the interview, linked above, is certainly worth a listen for those interested in this intriguing subject.
