In looking around for a Christian outlook on Shakespeare, and whether a literature professor at a Christian college might teach Shakespeare differently from a non-Christian, I came across this: “Why Shakespeare for Christian Students?” The author, Ralph Allan Smith says:
Well, first of all, and contrary to the opinion of some scholars, Shakespeare is profoundly moral. His plays, especially the tragedies, deal with the deepest moral themes and issues. Serious consideration of any of his plays forces one to think in ethical terms.
This does not mean that Shakespeare teaches morality in simple black and white. The literary critic Harold Bloom points to an important truth when he in error writes:
Shakespeare is to the world’s literature what Hamlet is to the imaginary domain of literary character: a spirit that permeates everywhere, that cannot be confined. A freedom from doctrine and simplistic morality is certainly one element in that spirit’s ease of transference, though the freedom made Dr. Johnson nervous and Tolstoy indignant. Shakespeare has the largeness of nature itself, and through that largeness he senses nature’s indifference. [2]
That Shakespeare is not a simplistic moralizer is true. His plays are not mere propaganda for do-gooders. But if we take the notion of “largeness of nature” and “freedom” in Shakespeare to imply that there is no doctrine and no moral structure in Shakespeare’s universe, we are missing the mark widely.
Imagine, for example, a version of Othello in which Iago altogether prevails, the play ending as Iago gloats over the dead bodies of Othello and Desdemona. Or a version of Hamlet in which the prince, driven to unholy revenge by the appearance of a demon impersonating his father, is able not only to destroy his enemies but rule Denmark “happily ever after.” Imagine King Lear’s evil daughters being able to love one another and cooperate successfully to steal the throne and rule the land. In real life, there may be men — there have been men — who attain their position in the world through the most nefarious Macbeth-like betrayal, if not murder, who nevertheless are able to keep their “thrones” without being tortured by guilt. In Shakespeare, however, this not only does not happen, it cannot happen.
What Bloom incorrectly labels is in fact the moral depth and the complexity that one finds in Shakespeare. No doubt this makes Shakespeare appear to some to be unconcerned with matters of morality, since these people assume that moral ambiguity in history contradicts moral clarity in religion. Ironically, this same moral complexity is one of the reasons that one “instinctively” associates Shakespeare and the Bible, for what other book combines ethical clarity in doctrine with historical narrative so brutally factual in its “deconstruction” of the heros? To this very day, approximately three thousand years after David reigned, the facts of his great faith and sincere love to God and his gross sins of murder and adultery confront the modern reader of the Bible with the unpleasant reality of the deep sinfulness of the very best men. The story also provides a weapon for the enemies of the faith, who ridicule Christians that regard an adulterous murderer as a wonderful Christian.
Smith goes on to make three more points. I am not particularly concerned about Smith’s reasons. His first point seems reasonable, even if his quotation of Harold Bloom is a bit dicey for a guy who thinks that Van Til and Kuyper shot the moon when it comes to epistemology:
I have to confess that for me it is exciting to see how Van Til shows not only that the Bible itself must be the presupposition for all thought, but more specifically how the Triune God is the focus and center of Christian epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. More than anyone I had encountered before him, I came to understand that Van Til depicts man as created to trust, worship and serve the one and only Triune God. Jordan shows hows this works out in Biblical theology, illumining every aspect of the history of the covenant in the light of the Trinitarian covenant. Jeffrey Meyers’ work on worship unites the doctrine of weekly worship with the doctrines of the Trinity and the covenant — or I should say with the reality of our covenant with the Triune God — when he expounds the Biblical idea of worship as covenant renewal. Peter Leithart, elaborating on themes in Jordan, ties in the doctrine of the sacraments with the doctrine of the Trinity. In addition, he takes his Van Tillian presuppositions with him into the world of literature, both ancient and modern, Christian and pagan.
In addition, it is a little curious to see such sweeping claims about the Trinitarian origins of knowledge being applied to a form of art that in 1924 the Christian Reformed Church, under the explicit influence of Kuyper, rejected, along with cards and dancing, as illegitimate for believers. (Where the followers of the nader reformatie made room for Shakespeare in the Free University is not a question I can readily answer.) And while I’m making asides, I’ll make one more — this fellow Smith has some fairly strong intellectual ties to the Federal Visionaries and has a string of essays critical of sundry critics of the Federal Vision.
Maybe that makes me guilty of committing the genetic fallacy, but I am going back on point to ask if Smith’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s value is THE Christian outlook? In other worlds, is there an orthodox W-W or is it simply a matter of someone trying to apply Christianity to literature and biology even if they come out wrong about the Trinitarian meaning of Othello or photosynthesis? And even more germane, do we have a body of Christian W-W officials who will determine which interpretations are orthodox and which aren’t? You might be tempted to answer that the assemblies of the church could decide this, but does anyone seriously want to let the Presbyterian Church of America determine the Christian W-W of George Washington?
Maybe too much sarcasm? But maybe the Christian educators have to take off the cheer leading uniforms and go back to the drawing board, which would include some basic distinctions about the differences between general and special revelation, church power, and even sphere sovereignty.
Old Life 
As You Like It. Or, As Christian Colleges Want to Keep It. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a w-view, and it’s a very important commodity that you should buy from us for your covenant children. And also yes, there is such a thing as “evangelical” and we are that also.
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/shakespeare-as-a-christian-writer.php
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I haven’t been keeping up with my reading, what is W-W?
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Thomas, here’s a clue, https://oldlife.org/2010/11/worldview-demagoguery/
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Bloom is the worst good critic to assess anything Christian in any work of literature or creator of literature. He doesn’t even think it’s worthwhile to mention the Christian theme in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He actually mocks it, so I guess he does mention it. I found though that literary critics can still be valuable even if they are atheists and dead blind to anything Christian in the works they write about. The generalist and very good critic Martin Seymour-Smith was similar.
Didn’t the Puritans have a thing for Shakespeare (and I know they were known for wanting to shut down playhouses and what not). But in the New World it was Puritans who set up the first Shakespeare societies, wasn’t it? I may have read that in Worldly Saints by Ryken.
A personal note: when I first read Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in its Fourfold State the first sections reminded me of the word ‘Shakespearian.’ In fact I think I called the book the ‘raw material’ of Shakespeare when I tried to get acquaintances to read it.
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I heard a great lecture by a Roman Catholic Shakespeare scholar recently (Frank Brownlow), arguing against the modern fad in English departments to study Shakespeare as if he had no political or theological opinions (I graduated with a degree in English in 2006, and it took me a year to figure out most of my professors did not appreciate my knowledge of 16th/17th century England when it came to writing Shakespeare papers).
I disagreed with some of Brownlow’s conclusions (he interpreted Hamlet as anti-Wittenberg/Reformation, read some Purgatory in other plays), but his main point was true. Whether RC, Reformed, Lutheran, gnostic, agnostic, or atheist, reading Shakespeare is important because current events (social, political, etc,) can usually be read through the lens of one of his plays. Since there is nothing new under the sun, and Ol’ Will captured his socio-political landscape arguably better than anyone since the Greeks and Romans, it’s important to read his work to understand our own times. Knowledge of theology, regardless of personal conviction, is important when reading Shakespeare. But knowledge does not equal worldview to the worldviewists, right? Maybe I could start saying I have a Shakespeare worldview when it comes to politics 🙂 And a bacon worldview when it comes to breakfast.
I grew up under the “worldview” flag (home schooled), and I think uneasiness about pagan themes and mythology played a big part of why lay folks wanted to read Shakespeare with a “Christian worldview.”
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Shakespeare really wrote about Catholic plots to end the Reformation. His works are full of hidden codes and secret messages. He was Catholic. That is, unless he wasn’t really Shakespeare. In which case someone else did that stuff. See Jo Sobran’s Alias Shakespeare.
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Based on the Bible he clearly favored (the Geneva) Shakespeare was clearly Protestant. It was the Calvinist movement within Elizabethan England that sparked the very golden age of creativity and cultural and civilizational energy that Shakespeare was a part of.
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Eliza, so would this mean that at a Reformed Protestant day school, students should not study Shakespeare, especially if he is suffers from the wrong W-W?
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Eliza, I’ll trade you Shakespeare for Renaissance polyphony. You know, Victoria, Palestrina, Ockeghem, Josquin, Dufay, et al…
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To all:
Just ordered Greenblatt’s “Will in the World” which argues that Will was a Romanist or Recusant. Greenblatt is a Harvard scholar on Shakespeare. We’ll see. Not sure am convinced, but we’ll see.
Will also rented quarters, allegedly, with a French Huguenot family during his residence in London. He left his wife, Anne, and 3 children at Stratford-on-Avon, 101 miles northwest of London…about 930 PM if 12 noon is due north. If this is true, he was informed of things like the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1572, Paris. There are questions. Did Will return to the homestead during summers? ??
There is some suggestion that his Sonnets reveal a homosexual or perhaps bi-sexual orientation. I rather suspect that Will is offering a Platonic view of love vice an erotic one. That’s before the jury and the jury is out.
Will was baptized at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Stratford-on-Avon, in 1564. The Elizabethan and Tudor Settlement had been passed in 1559. Will’s Dad was the Mayor and under Elizabethan orders–unquestionably–to effect the 1559 BCP. The Anglican registry for Will’s baptism cites “Guillemous Shakespeare,” an Anglicanization or Latinization of “William.” Undoubtedly, Will was reared on the old Cranmerian 1559 BCP. That is indisputable. Precisely what this scribe has personally known for 32 years, exactly. Will was bedding and fornicating with Anne Hatheway. Will as 18. Anne was 26ish and from an upper-end family. Will and Anne were married in Nov 1582ish while Anne was pregnant by three months. So much for the phrase in the old BCP that marriage, with several reasons asserted for the reasons of marriage…one was to “avoid fornication.” However, old Will was pumping Anne in the off season, if we may put it infelicitously. The wedding (which included BCP Churchmanship) was performed according to the vestry records at Holy Trinity Anglican. This includes the language about avoiding fornication. (BTW, CANTAUR used this 1662 service, including the fornication phrase, for for William and Kate Middleton’s marriage at Westminster in Apr 2011, but Kate dropped her eyes as old Rowan read the service…my view? Prince Will and Kate were doing some “pookie pookie” before the wedding, but the old BCP prevailed.) Furthermore, the baptism of Will and Anne’s child, six months later, is also in the vestry registry. Two more Shakespearean kiddoes are on the books for baptisms. Undoubtedly, Will was–like it or not–exposed to BCP Churchmanship. What did he believe and what did he not believe?
After an active life in London as an actor and writer, Will retired to Stratford-on-Avon in/on/around 1613ish. He died at age 52, 11 months, and about 27 days, three years shy of 53, and was buried in 1616, using Anglican rites, the 1559 BCP. Actually, the same rites used for my Dad two years ago in 2010. Will and Anne (who died in 1623) are buried near the nave at Holy Trinity Anglican, Stratford-on-Avon.
An odd quatrain is posted to Will’s tomb, to wit, something about “cursed be the man who removes these bones.” Will’s entombed at Holy Trinity, Stratford-on-Avon.
Also, Will’s brother, John, was buried at Southwark Cathedral, an Anglican Church. Southwark, like the Globe Theatre, was on the southern shore of the Thames River. London had outlawed Shakespearean plays.
Whatever one thinks of Shakespeare’s metaphysics or theology, he indubitably was a master interpreter of total depravity, corruption and enslavement to corruption. I hear profound echoes of the old Prayer Book as I read him.
More to follow.
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Typo, 52 years, 11 months, 27 days, three “days shy” of age 53. The burial registration in 1616 at Holy Trinity reads simply, “Will Shakespeare, Esq.” Eegads, the old service–the “Order for the Burial of the Dead”–still rings in the mind, soul and heart. What Will was buried with, this scribe knows. His wife and children heard these BCP prayers as he was laid to rest. Presumably, Will’s casket and body laid in state at Holy Trinity Anglican, Stratford-on-Avon. King James 1 was still on the throne. Elizabeth and James 1 liked Will’s plays. The rash Puritans in London prohibited the plays. Ergo, they met south of the Thames and south of London. Utlimately, the rash illiterates outlawed Globe productions entirely, I want to say, in 1649ish.
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Harold Bloom erred and strayed, like a lost sheep, divagatingly and presumptively about Iago’s moral, volitional, affectional and intellectual abilities. Where’s Luther when ya’ need im?’ Bloom, a vested and notable scholar on Shakespeare, erred significantly as noted. His approving citation of A.D. Nutall, another Shakespearean scholar, is presumptious and gratuitous. This goes to the “T” of TULIP.
An effort at reviewing Iago as totally depraved in Shakespeare’s Othello is offered at: http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2012/05/shakespeares-othello-iago-corrupted.html
While not a Shakespearean scholar…horrors, no, just an old retired Marine… it is eery to rebut the Harvardian and Shakespearean scholar on ontology, epistemology, praxis and ethics. Bloom is otherwise quite insightful.
Iago was corrupt, root, tree, tree trunk, branches and leaves. Dead in sins and trespasses. The old Reformation Confessions and the old Anglican Book of Common Prayer aver it so, but not Bloom or Nutall.
As usual, the readings and musings continue.
Regards to all.
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The “Shakespeare was Catholic” was tongue in cheek. There are so many theories floating around…this one is by Clare Asquith…you guessed it, a Roman Catholic.
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Uh…I still don’t know what W-W means. Even after following Thomas’ clue link.
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Nathaniel Ruland: Uh…I still don’t know what W-W means. Even after following Thomas’ clue link.
RS: Well, as a non-confessionalist in the ways of D.G. Hart, I may not be qualified to answer this mystery, though it may actually be a paradox. I think they mean something like a worldview, though they assert that this is not a good way to approach it. So worldview becomes W-W, or at least that is how I perceive this mysterious way of thinking.
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Richard, thanks for helping me out. I cannot write or say the word, much like certain Jews cannot say Jahweh.
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D. G. Hart: Richard, thanks for helping me out. I cannot write or say the word, much like certain Jews cannot say Jahweh.
RS: I know it must be tough and I feel for you. Wait, since I am a pietist, that may mean something that would be beyond confessionalism. Admittedly the word has been used far beyond what it should be and stretched to be virtually a savior of men. Sometimes people just develop allergies to certain things. Bless you.
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Right on. Now I feel like an insider. I agree that the term does get annoying.
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