1 Post-Shakespeare Chronology 1900-2010 History of Shakespeare-Catholic/Protestant interpretations, with chart of significant events in Protestant/Catholic relations (small print). Including American Contexts Continental Contexts Irish Contexts Asian, South American Contexts Home Page: Shakespeare and Religion Chronology by Dennis Taylor, Boston College Unedited notes, Revised March, 2013 **1900** William Gildea, “The Religion of Shakespeare” (American Catholic Quarterly Review), cites Bowden, on grace, King John, Catholic clerics, Henry VIII, Henry V’s piety. Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s Eleanor, redoing Helbeck plot, this time Puritan Lucy marries Lord Manisty (a disbeliever who argues for Catholicism, reflecting Chateaubriand), while Eleanor, Manisty’s soul mate, performs the ultimate self-sacrifice, a Catholic Pauline equivalent, of surrendering her own claim (forecast James’s Wings of the Dove). Chateaubriand praised for “re- creating a church, and regenerating a literature.” Gasquet, The Eve of the Reformation: Erasmus regretted Lutheranism as blocking reform within Catholic church; “part of the price paid [for the Reformation] was the destruction of a sense of corporate unity and common brotherhood, which was fostered by the religious unanimity of belief and practice in every village in the country, and which, as in the mainspring of its life and the very central point of its being, centred in the Church with its rites and ceremonies” (“if it is perilous to accept Gasquet noncritically, it is foolish utterly to neglect or despise him” -- David Knowles) (“now seems remarkably prescient,” N. Tyacke 1998). Wilfrid Ward letter to wife: “I have been reading a great deal of Dante ... I feel in him that independence of thought combined with reverence for the Church which the habits fostered by post-reformation Scholasticism have done much to destroy.” Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone) founded by Arthur Griffiths (Catholic) (in 1905 started United Irishman newspaper), replacing Home Rule movement with Independence movement, signaling nationalist revival, i.e. with Douglas Hyde’s revival of the Irish language (i.e. bypass Catholicism, invite in Anglo-Irish), “a constitutional, non- separatist association” (F. Shaw); had nothing to do with 1916 insurrection (a Fenian movement), but after 1916 looked to to lead democratic national aspirations (acc. to F. Shaw). G. Moore on Hyde: “By standing well with ... MP’s, priests, farmers, shopkeepers … Hyde has become the archetype of the Catholic Protestant, cunning, subtle, cajoling, superfieical and affable” (qu. Foster, “History and the Irish Question”). Griffith’s notion of the Gael was a linguistic historic construct, only incidentally Catholic, while D. P. Moran’s Gael (see attack on Countess Cathleen above) was pre-eminently Catholic (Moran authored The Philosophy of Irish Ireland in 1905). 1903 Land Purchase Act, enable transfer of land to tenants. National University act in 1907. Parnellite John Redmond (Catholic, Hiberno-Norman) in parliament. **1901** Edward VII begins reign. Edward VII’s Coronation speech, 1901, “in a low voice and with evident embarrassment” (Fewster, “Royal Declaration,” Recusant History 30 (1911): “I do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare that I do believe in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper there is not any transubstantiation … and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the Mass as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous”, greeted by complaints from Catholics in British empire, much to realm’s nervousness; 2 led to change in 1610 with George V’s coronation: “I do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify and declare that I am a faithful Protestant and that I will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne of my Realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments …” Yeats, “At Stratford-on-Avon”: “Shakespeare ... saw ... in Richard II the defeat that awaits all, whether they be artist or saint, who find themselves where men ask of them a rough energy and have nothing to give but some contemplative virtue ... The courtly and saintly ideals of the Middle Ages were fading, and the practical ideals of the modern age had begun to threaten the unuseful dome of the sky; Merry England was fading ...” Henry V, “the reverse of all that Richard was,” “is as remorseless and undistinguished as some natural force ... That boy he and Katherine were to ‘compound’ ... ‘that’ was to go ‘go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard,’ turns out a saint and loses all his father had built up at home and his own life.” John Churton Collins, “The Religion of Shakespeare,” in Ephemera Critica: review of Bowden. But Shakespeare was “an uncompromising and intolerant Royalist,” thus unlikely to be Catholic sympathizer. John Shakespeare listed absent for debt; Shakespeare “has no sympathy with pious recluses” etc. George Moore, Sister Teresa (continuation of Evelyn Innes, 1898): intense meditation on conflict between call of the world and call of the cloister; near fatal depression over disbelief in Eucharist; ends broken but resigned; inspired by perhaps by the conversion of Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes). **1902** Vincent McNabb, “Is Macbeth a Study of Queen Elizabeth?” (Dublin Review): execution of Queen Mary the inspiring source for the major murders in the tragedy (Julius Caesar, Desdemona, King Hamlet, Lear, Duncan); Lady Macbeth mirrors Elizabeth’s final agonized moments; proto-Milward interpretation (“it was from Fr McNabb’s article that I got the idea of Lady M as a proto-type of Elizabeth,” Milward private communication, Oct. 25, 2001). R. Warwick Bond, ed. Complete Works of John Lyly, vol. 3 with essay, “On the Allegory in Endimion”: Lyly no longer “impersonal allegory “of moral principles as before, but now “a personal allegory … of contemporary men and women,” reflecting court personalities: thus Endimion is Leicester, Cynthia Queen Elizabeth (widely agreed), and Tellus Mary Queen of Scots; Endimion finally faithful to Cynthia, while Mary marries her gaoler. [Compare masques.] Bond acknowledges N. J. Halpin, Oberon’s Vision in the Midsummer Night’s Dream. Illustrated by a comparison with Lylie’s Endymion (1843) for pioneering study of political allegory (Tellus is Countess of Sheffield). William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: on religion as contributing to mental health: “Protestantism has been too pessimistic as regards the natural man. Catholicism has been too legalistic and moralistic…” Today’s “Protestantism, however superior its spiritual profundity” is less attractive than Catholicism which “offers a so much richer pasturage and aid to the fancy, has so many cells with so many different kinds of honey, is so indulgent in its multiform appeals to human nature … To intellectual Catholics many of the antiquated beliefs are … as childish as they are to Protestants. But they are childish in the pleasing sense of ‘childlike.’—innocent and amiable, and worthy to be smiled on in consideration of the undeveloped … dear people’s intellects. To the Protestant … they are … idiotic falsehoods. He must stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Catholic to shudder at his literalness.” Earlier, “the annals of Catholic saintship … make us rub our Protestant eyes. Ritual worship in general appears to the modern transcendentalist … as if addressed to deity of an almost absurdly childish character … just as on the other hand the formless spaciousness of pantheism appears quite empty to ritualistic natures, and the gaunt theism of evangelical 3 sects seem intolerably bald and chalky and bleak.” Late chapter, ‘Mysticism,” includes many Catholic examples (John of the Cross, Teresa, Ignatius) along with Symonds, Whitman, Upanishads, etc. Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome: pilgrimage hike to Rome from Toul, France; implicitly invites English to reconnect with their European roots, and Europe’s Rabelasian pious Catholic community. Roads through beautiful natural scenes, with churches, daily mass-goers, taverns, cakes and ale, all imitated in Belloc’s reverential and rollicking and digressive style. Hills and towns “unroll themselves all in their order till I can see Europe, and Rome shining at the end.” “There were present here and there on the spurs lonely chapels, and these in Catholic countries are a mark of the mountains and of the end of the riches of a valley … They mark everywhere some strong emotion of supplication, thanks, or reverence, and they anchor these wild places to their own past …” (Also experiences “a sense of the terrible” in harsh nature scenes.) “To see all the men, women, and children of a place taking Catholicism for granted was a new sight.” The geography leans down toward Rome via the valley of the Elsa, “a very manifest proof of how Rome was intended to be the end and centre of all roads … as, indeed, it plainly is to this day, for all the world to deny at their peril, spiritual, geographical, historical, sociological, economic, and philosophical.” “It was the Hill of Venus. // There was no temple, nor no sacrifice, nor no ritual for the Divinity, save this solemn attitude of perennial silence; but under the influence which still remained and gave the place its savour, it was impossible to believe that the gods were dead … The mind released itself and was in touch with whatever survives of conquered but immortal Spirits.” Final tale: God sees “some not doing as the rest, or attending to their business, but throwing themselves into all manner of attitudes, making the most extraordinary sounds, and clothing themselves in the meanest of garments,” i.e. worshipping Him. “‘Continuez,’ said the Padre Eterno, ‘continuez!’ // And since then all has been well with the world; at least where ils continuent.” Final poem: “Two hundred leaguers and a half / Walked I, went I, paced I, tripped I … [for many lines] And … Let me not conceal it … Rode I … Drinking when I had a mind to, / Singing when I felt inclined to … Till I had slaked my heart at Rome.” **1903** Bertram Dobell, in Athenaeum, article on Alabaster.