Shakespeare stands as a colossus who straddles the centuries. It is not merely that he has survived the test of time; it is that his plays, and the truth and morality contained within them, transcend time. He was not of an age, but for all time! —Ben Jonson on William Shakespeare These famous words of [...]
We must decide and act, but because this process occurs in the metaxy—the experience of being itself, the experience of a tension between the poles of time and eternity—we, like Hamlet, find ourselves, more often than not, in highly equivocal circumstances. For both William Desmond and Eric Voegelin Plato’s concept of the metaxu or metaxy [...]
Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides… —Cordelia (King Lear, I.1.282) The quest for the real William Shakespeare is akin to a detective story in which the Shakespearian biographer is cast in the role of a literary sleuth, pursuing his quarry like a latter-day Sherlock Holmes. One of the problems is the presence of red [...]
In giving us Portia, Shakespeare has given us a holy woman who is the match for any of his male characters in terms of virtue, intelligence, wit and wisdom. He also shows us in his characterization of women their true dignity as human persons, as prone to weakness and wickedness as men but equally called [...]
As with many other charges brought against him, the claim that Shakespeare was somehow prejudiced against women is quite frankly absurd. A quick look at the Bard’s portrayal of the feminine half of the species will suffice to clear his name. Here I will look at the weak and the wicked among Shakespeare's women. Shakespeare [...]
When most of us think of Shakespeare we don’t immediately connect him with the saints. We might think of the play Sir Thomas More, on which he collaborated with other contemporary playwrights and which was banned during his lifetime for its volatile pro-Catholic perspective. We might connect him with the positive portrayal of Edward the [...]
Abstract law or the worship of a document is not sufficient for guidance of a people, nor are the paltry checks of public shame and dread enough to deter criminality. We stand a far greater chance of learning wisdom from William Shakespeare’s “Henry VI” than we do from listening to the countless talking heads and [...]
Without a natural order on which to build, the religious order has no solid foundation on which to teach charity, enrich culture, or refine civilization. Without the cardinal virtues in place, the theological virtues will not follow. “The fundamental heresy of our day is perhaps the denial of the natural order, of the very foundations [...]
In our own days, characterized by a narcissistic daze, the lessons that Romeo and Juliet teaches about “violent delights” and their “violent ends” are as relevant as ever. A few days ago, I gave a talk on Romeo and Juliet to a high school freshman class, after which I endeavoured to answer the many great [...]
The peace of God to be found in Paradise passes all our human understanding in this vale and veil of tears and in this cloud of unknowing that we call mortal life, but it doesn’t pass the perfected beatified human understanding of those who gain the beatific vision. Over the Christmas period I had time [...]
As I experienced the charm and enchantment of this local Shakespeare festival, it was easy to become forgetful in the best sense of the word, imagining a world of localism, free of globalist domination and unseen by the Eye of Sauron. A couple of years ago, I was driven by an atheist friend to the [...]
Having been forced into retirement by the old-school Puritans, Shakespeare is now being routinely abused by a new generation of puritans who are equally obsessed with censoring the goodness, truth and beauty of his Muse. Once upon a time, it was frowned upon to condone rape and rapists on the stage. Today it seems to [...]
Any attempt to mould Shakespeare into the image of what Evelyn Waugh called “our own deplorable epoch” is ridiculously absurd, and “queer theorists” who seek to do so should not be taken seriously as scholars or critics. If these critics were able to empathise with the past, they would see Shakespeare’s sonnets as they truly [...]
Rome does not occasionally become relevant in our understanding of political upheaval. Rather, it forms part of our very identity as Christians and heirs of the Western tradition that it helped shape. No one saw the essential drama of Rome more clearly than William Shakespeare. In the current issue of Atlantic magazine, editor-at-large Cullen Murphy [...]