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Title: Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare
ISBN: 1586483870
Author:
Clare Asquith
Publicate Date: 2006-06-26
Publish: 2006-06-26
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $0.97
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1: Unearthing A Secret History
You don't have to love Shakespeare's plays to find Clare Asquith's Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs And Coded Politics of William Shakespeare. In fact, it almost helps if you come to the book with little more than a passing familiarity with the plays themselves and, certainly, no familiarity with the countless books, papers, and articles that have been written interpreting The Bard's work.
The reason for that is that Shadowplay is less about the plays themselves than about a history that, until now, has been largely secret; the history of post-Reformation England and England's underground Catholic community.
With convincing clarity, Asquith's puts William Shakespeare right in the middle of a Catholic community that, with the rise of the Tudor's and ascension of Elizabeth I, was largely hidden from the rest of the country. Secretly, they hoped for the return of a monarch who would allow them to practice the old religion openly, and they developed a sophisticated coded literature to tell their story and communicate with each other.
Asquith uses this coded literature to examine in turn nearly all of Shakepeare's play, and certainly all of the important ones, placing each of them in an historical context that concentrates on this secret religious war and the efforts for a Counter-Reformation. I'm not a Shakespearean scholar and can't comment on the accuracy of Asquith's interpretation, but it certainly is a compelling story and, if it's true, it means that William Shakespeare wasn't just a great playwright, he was a hero in the fight for religious freedom too.
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2: Understanding Shakespeare
Ms. Asquith has obviously done an enormous amount of research and presents her material in such a way as to keep the reader's attention to the end. I could hardly put this book down. It was truly fascinating.
"Shadowplay" puts a spotlight on the overlooked fact that the Protestant Reformation was not a welcome or peaceful event in English history and unlike other European countries, the English monarchy, driven by Cecil and son, enforced this new religion with violence and persecution turning the country upside down. The average people in the pew were just trying to ride out the storm doing what they could to preserve their lives, faith and their culture until at last this strategy backfired on both the Catholics who remained silent to preserve their lives and living, and even Protestants who thought they'd be on the right side, but who also failed to agree with the Church of England on matters of doctrine.
Enter Shakespeare, whose father's statement of faith was found inside one of the walls of his home and who was raised a Catholic as was everyone else in England before Henry wanted to get rid of his first wife in favor of a younger second (third, fourth, fifth, etc) who might be able to give him the son he demanded. His world was a world of censorship and coersion, but he had a talent that helped him cleverly send messages not only to his fellow Catholics but even to the Queen herself and later King James and sons as well. His words encouraged his fellow Catholics to hold fast to the Faith and provided dramatic reasons for Queen Elizabeth to return to the "fair" Catholic religion or at least to allow all "fair" and "dark" Protestant people to worship freely as their conscience led them. Of especial interest is Sonnet 152 which when read through a political and religious lense means more than just a man railing against his unfaithful lover.
To see Shakespeare's plays through the lense of history is a fascinating journey, and one that would help people to grasp the urgency of the serious, life-or-death messages sent out into a confusing and dark time in European history. It is certainly not your average, boring, politically correct view of Shakespeare. It's better!
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3: In the last days, much is revealed indeed.
In a time when, having recently become Catholic myself, many of my former heroes now seem like dangerous morons and traitors, it is good to know that someone of the stature of Shakespeare was as great as his productions ( Melville and, surprisingly, Edgar Allan Poe also make the cut ).
The evidence is overwhelming that Shakespeare was a closet Catholic, but the good news is that this book robs him of none of his mystery or his humanity. These plays can hardly be reduced to dutiful transcriptions from an orthodox Catholic playbook and reach at a cosmic knowledge that blends Catholic morality and expectation with humanist learning, psychological insight, and also -- most importantly -- a knowledge of the Other Side, the occult, paganism, the devil, witchcraft, incomprehensibly evil natures like those of Shylock and Iago. What seems most Catholic about Shakespeare is his emphasis on the ultimate unreality of these dark forces, their imminent dissipation under the law of Jesus, which results in those troublesome fifth acts like the one in Merchant of Venice where people often complain that things work out too neatly, too perfectly -- well yeah, that's kinda what happens in heaven.
An even more fascinating book could be written on our own Shakespeare, Martin Scorsese, whose fabled career, if you are aware of who runs Hollywood ( hint hint ) is even more miraculous, not only surviving but even wresting an Oscar from the jaws of an atheist and increasingly Satanic propaganda machine that makes Elizabeth's Anglican reign seem comparatively innocent. Most people that still think we live in a free society probably never really comprehended that that Oscar win -- for a movie, The Departed, which is a coded message about the upcoming extermination of Christians -- was perhaps the last gasp of the Catholic faith and a quiet triumph for us to ride out on. For some reason when reading the name "Shakespeare" in this book I couldn't help mistaking it for "Scorsese," so similar are the lives and the talent of these two great men. Maybe that's why he puts that line in the beginning of The Departed, "F--k James Joyce, don't you know any Shakespeare?!"
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4: The Jesuit Mafia invades Greenland
Claire Asquith went absent from my GOGGLE search but managed to give me her e-mail adress and some other info i did not need. Already GREENLAND of modern times has begun to draw the ire of the military complex anxiuos to go after Daniel Ortega and the south of the border crowd once more.
Happily the Salam Hayek "boobie bunch" has taken over the Oscar nominations with "Babel".I think we can draw whatever conclusions we want from Shakespeare quotes whose name may be just as made up as Claire's. Shaking his spear is indeed not passive resistance but an obvious retaliation against the crown. Shakespear'es influence once discovered made him a definite candidate for the drawn and quartered contingent which was already a threat to his catholic daughter. The Jesuits have survived many scuffles and have created many martyrs outside the church. Henry Walpole or John Nobody from Asquith's discoveries could indeed be the underground movement of the 1960's of deep throat and the SDS (students for a democratic society,)which is now resurfacing on college campuses..
Mary Ward is yet another google hit which receives a cautious note on its sound byte, surviving also into the 21st century as the Jesuits have.
I was wondering where the tales of Shakespeare in ITALY went. Was he exiled to the "booted" country?
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5: The Passion of The Bard
This premise of this book is convincing 1) because of the absolute consistancy of the "code", once recognized, from play to play; 2) the chronological tenor of Shakespeare's themes is shown to accord with the changing contemporary political climate; 3) Shakespeare's poetry is now demonstrated to be a logical "commentary" on his career as playwright.
The one thing I do not want to be true (somewhat akin to hoping against hope that Anastasia "survived") is the pitiful snapshot of Shakespear's last years, "the dark night of the soul" of clinical depression easily diagnosed in the haunting allegorical portrait of his beloved mentor as observed by Ben Jonson in "Sad Shepherd". Alas. Shakespeare may have died after a drinking bout with friend Ben; but the true cause of death seems to have been a broken heart: the despairing Bard regarding the idealistic purpose of his career as playwright as frustrated and utterly futile. He seems now a Catholic martyr, no less than those hanged on Tyburn Tree.
An unxpected bonus of reading this book is 1) a new light on Ben Jonson's work and career 2) the realization that WRT the jingoistic play "Henry VIII" the answer to the ironic question "who wrote Shakespeare? --is the slimey master of pastiche, John Fletcher.
If you liked "Shadowplay" and are interested in the robust flavour of small-town sociology and anthropology of the generation before and the generation after the English Reformation, you will greatly enjoy reading "The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580" by Cambridge scholar Eamon Duffy, which is vastly more fascinating than its dry title would suggest. It is a masterly example of painstaking revisionist history at its best, and like "Shadowplay" brought tears to my eyes by the last page.
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