All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII Is the world a stage? And are all of us merely players [...]
Heeding Shakespeare’s insistence that we need to heed the wisdom of the fool, it shocked me that a recent production of "King Lear" at a local Christian university had excised most of the key speeches of Poor Tom, which enunciate radical Christian wisdom, thus eviscerating Shakespeare's profound moral vision. For the wisdom of this world [...]
In the decades and centuries following his death, the pieces of the puzzle connecting Shakespeare to the Catholic faith were lost, or were forgotten or set aside. But there is little doubt that Shakespeare’s contemporaries heard the words spoken from the stage with the eyes that saw what he was saying. If we look back [...]
Should honor and fame no longer be ends of ambition in such a world? The ancient philosophers doubted the ultimate merit of fame, but they also looked for the most spirited students, those most inclined to “undertake extensive and arduous enterprises." In response to my essay about baptizing ambition, a friend from Boston College recommended [...]
Who would have thought that so much philosophy could be found in such little poetry? Who would have thought that so much could be said in so few words? Next time you read Shakespeare, read carefully, and you may find more philosophy than first meets the eye. We have recently celebrated the feast of Corpus [...]
If pride might be said to be the making of God in our own image, a lesser form of pride is the making of our gods, our idols, into our own image. This latter form of pride, what might be called pride in the lower key, is made manifest in the multifarious ways in which [...]
Joel Coen’s "The Tragedy of Macbeth" reminds us at a visceral level that the supernatural and the natural worlds are interwoven in a matrix of good and evil. When Macbeth dabbles in the occult, he lets loose the lords of darkness. A stark, new cinematic take on Macbeth is Joel Coen’s 2021 adaptation The Tragedy [...]
The first spark of genuine engagement with great writers most often comes from a teacher, and the ever-fresh immortality of the great work has its ironic contrast in the aging and death of those who made the introduction. So it is for me with Shakespeare, who was first truly impressed upon my imagination during my [...]
The whole “woke” agenda has become a delightful farce, warranting not so much bemusement as amusement. Take, for example, the recently announced decision by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to flagellate Shakespeare for his alleged role in promoting “white supremacist imperialism”. The SBT, which manages historical properties in Stratford-upon-Avon, has promised to “decolonize” its museum collections [...]
As for the so-called “insults” of Shakespeare, we see that they are all directed at conveying moral truth. They are not insults and naming them as such is an insult to Shakespeare and the truth he tells. Jane Austen, in her first published novel, shows how sense and sensibility need to be kept in a [...]
Get thee to a nunnery is a short but perplexing phrase. The Nunnery Scene (3.1) in Shakespeare’s Hamlet encompasses the spirit of the play as a whole. The themes and struggles that are revealed in Hamlet’s monitored conversation with Ophelia lay the foundation for the climax of Hamlet’s struggles. Although Hamlet’s attitude toward Ophelia in [...]
Many great writers have affirmed Shakespeare’s Catholicism. G.K. Chesterton asserted that “convergent common sense” pointed to the belief that the Bard of Avon was a Catholic and that such common sense was “supported by the few external and political facts we know”. Over a hundred years earlier, the French writer, François René de Chateaubriand, insisted [...]
The acceptance of Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies and sensibilities animates "Shakespeare: The Magician and the Healer," by Annie-Paule de Prinsac, who argues that the Bard disguised himself and his meaning in a mannerist mask, which simultaneously and paradoxically revealed truths indirectly and allegorically which it was illegal for him to reveal candidly. Times have changed and [...]
Why, one wonders, should one of the most famous people in history be featured as one of the unsung heroes of Christendom? This would seem to be a good question until we realize that most people do not perceive Shakespeare as a hero of Christendom. He is sung, to be sure. He is sung more widely [...]