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Show ; f SHAKESPEARE'S RELIGION. In the middle of this century the assertion as-sertion was common that Shakespeare was an orthodox Protestant. Since that time critics have become less positive in their belief, and-nowadays the majority ma-jority of them rest satisfied in declaring that Shakespeare was the pioneer of modern thought. Both of these statements state-ments Mr. H. S. Bowden, in his volume "The Religion of Shakespeare," proves to be unfounded. In disproof of the first he uses the manuscript of the late Richard Simpson, an eminent student of the Elizabethian dramatists, who was well known about the middle of the century, and who, in his research had access to the best collections of documents docu-ments on Shakespeare. As both classes of critics above noticed believe that Shakespeare was a product of the Reformation. Mr. Simpson and Mr, Bowden enter at length into a discussion discus-sion for. the purpose of showing that Shakespeare was not only not in harmony har-mony with the spirit of the Reformation, Reforma-tion, but that he was antagonistic to it. Space dryes not permit us to give the quotations advanced to substantiate the statements; for those the reader if interested, will have to consult ' the work itself. Wc will rest content in outlining some of the arguments. Beginning Be-ginning with Shakespeare's use of imagery, im-agery, one of his chief poetical characteristics, charac-teristics, we find that most of his fig. ures and images are drawn from religious re-ligious subjects. Since Shakespeare was free to choose either the old creed or the new, never allowing himself to be hampered by dramatic conventionalities, convention-alities, and since, moreover, he would have been far more in harmony with the drarhatists and' the spirit of the day had he rejected the use of symbols drawn from Catholic subjects, the au thor naturally concludes.- that .refer-, ences to Catholic ritual and customs are extremely significant. .Shakespeare never used the ribaldry of the day regarding- priests and nuns and friars; and, moreover, in recasting anti-Catho-Hc plays, such as "King John," he carefully expunged adverse remarks about religious orders. bnakespeare's view of nature is essentially es-sentially Catholic and opposed to the Protestant view of Reformation times. Protestants believed that nature was discordant: that sin hadTuined the entire en-tire man; that in saint and sinner there were no outward distinctions, for sin had made "an intimate, ' profound, inscrutable in-scrutable and irreparable corruption of the entire nature, and'of all the powers, especially of the superior and principal powers of the soul.". ' This corruptness of the sinner extended to all his works. "His corruption is subjective and in trinsic; his justiflcaton:..is objective and extrinsic." sjn.Ce this is so. another an-other consideration arises. There is no use of sacrifice on the. part of man-Sacrifice man-Sacrifice is an intimate part of Shakespeare's Shake-speare's love, and hence is not Protestantbut Protest-antbut more nf that later. Shakespeare, Shake-speare, views nature as harmonious and beautiful and orderly. He is eminently a. nature .poet: nature to him is not accursed; it is the mirror which reflects all human interests joys, sorrows, vices, virtues. Nature furnishes great moral lessons to him In his treatment of love Shakespeare distinguishes closely between pagan love, which is dominated by the senses, and Christian love, which exalts the spiritual part. The object of such love is not the human body in itself, but beauty , of character and soul shining through the body. "Since the object of true love with him is the eternal truth, goodness and beauty, and is only to -be won by the renouncement, of all else for its sake, love and religion with Shakespeare become identified and re ligion like love bears an essentially sacrificial sac-rificial character. In what religion, re-ligion, then." is the idea of sacrifice shown?" Not in the Protestantism of the sixteenth century, for it. expressly declares that not in works, but in faith, is man justified. Growing out of this is. the theory of salvation by election alone, and the correlative idea of the worthlessness of works, which excludes utterly the sacrificial idea. Protestantism, so material and negative nega-tive in its tendencies, was unfitted to give birth to a great poet. It forbade mystery, and hence it is that when touching the mysterious, Puritanism's greatest poet. Milton, fails. His heaven is dull, flat and prosaic' God justifies himself, all the secrets cf heaven must be laid bare and explained according to human doctrines. M. Taine declares that Adam and Eve talk just like two provincials when, at dinner with the angel. "What dialogues! Dissertations capped by politeness, mutual sermons concluded by bows. What bows! Philosophical Phil-osophical compliments and moral smiles. Tlli's Adam entered Paraside via England." Now Dante j is just as precise and detailed in his accounts of the doing of supernatural ; beings as Milton, but his poetic descriptions descrip-tions are truly poetic and grand. This is because he deals .in mysteries, and leaves mysterious the ways of God to man. "It is because he works on the lines of dogma and mystery, the idea of the supernatural fixed for him by his faith. Tire Puritan poet, on the other hand, had to draw exclusively on his own human and utterly inadequate conceptions, and thus, instead of sub-' lime, he becomes grotesque. Milton brings down heaven to earth and makes spiritual things terrestrial. Dante transports earth to heaven and shows all transformed in the light of God's anger or of his love." Protestantism, in trying to explain everything, crushed the imaginations of. men and could not produce a pre-eminently great poet. Another point which Mr. Simpson accentuated was Shakespeare's adher- j ence to scholastic doctrines. The Reformation Ref-ormation was, if anything, an attack on the scholisls. Much of the moral teaching of Shakespeare is Thomist, i. e.,. his doctrine of the genesis of knowledge and its. strictly objective character; the power cf reflection as distinctive of rational creatures; the formation of habits intellectual and moral; -and his whole view of the operation op-eration of the imaginative faculty. He also insists upon the individual and permanent subsistence of each human being, and the law of subsistence flowing flow-ing therefrom tU' of which is in opposition oppo-sition to the pantheistic idea. He j ! teaches the eterna consequences of ! single acts and reprobates suicide. He is also a casuist, and in that one thing alone is diametrically opposed to. Protestant Pro-testant notions.. Mr. Bowden's volume also goes at length into external evidences of Shakespeare's Catholicity, such as church and court records in Warwickshire, Warwick-shire, evidence from contemporary writers, both of a negative ar.d positive character; he also discusses the objections objec-tions found by Protestants to arguments argu-ments that make Shakespeare appear a Catholic. |