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 [...]
Can we fail to see the significance of Hamlet’s last words, “the rest is silence,” uttered immediately before Horatio’s prayer from the Requiem Mass? Since "requiem" means “rest” in Latin, can we avoid the suspicion that Shakespeare is alluding to the “something rotten” in the state of England which has silenced the Requiem Mass and [...]
The same dynamic on display in Shakespeare's "Othello" plays out within the human heart. There is an inner Iago who lies to us, and we want to believe that liar and believe that he is honest and loves us. Do we swallow his lies, or challenge his deception with the astringent face-splash of truth? The [...]
Those who fail to share my profound admiration for William Shakespeare will no doubt query my apparent obsession with one author to the exclusion of all others, as I propose an ideal classical curriculum for the freshman and sophomore years of high school. In last week’s essay I presented the texts that I would include [...]
Beneath the politics, the power plays, and the sibling rivalry, darker currents are running in Shakespeare's plays. In showing these dark forces murmuring below the surface, was Shakespeare also hinting at the rumors of occult dabblings in the Tudor and Jacobean courts? Imaginative Conservative contributor Joseph Pearce has produced, with Ignatius Press, a series of [...]
The reconstructed Globe theater is a masterpiece, a beautiful dream-come-true and a wonderful contribution to the universal Shakespeare industry. If only the productions of the Bard’s plays were as authentic as the theater in which they are performed, instead of being the puerile pastiches that their producers foist upon us. It was a glorious June [...]
Shakespeare’s sisters come in all shapes and sizes, good, bad and ugly. So do his men. He believed in the mystical equality of the sexes and the inherent dignity of the human person because he knew that all men and women are made in the image of God. It’s almost a century since Virginia Woolf [...]
It is always a dangerous and potentially deadly error to consider the enemy of our enemies to be our friend, patting him on the back while he is stabbing us in ours. The truth is that Dr. Harold Bloom is himself a servant of dark forces, which are subtler by far than those politically oriented [...]
Shakespeare’s plays are an education in human nature, an encyclopedia of experience, to compare and contrast with all the people in our daily lives. What we see in Shakespeare’s plays are real persons, like the all flawed folks around us, coming to terms with their “backstories”—what they’ve built or destroyed—and being redeemed by love. Simply [...]
The scholarly debate over Shakespeare and his family, especially with respect to their Catholic sympathies, remains a hot topic. For those who don’t share these sympathies, or are positively antagonistic to them, the evidence that Shakespeare was a believing Catholic is unwelcome and, for some, simply unacceptable. The recent claim by Matthew Steggle, writing in [...]