What did Shakespeare think of religion?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on June 29, 2009 at 12:54pm

Hmmm...well, I'm certainly no expert, but I suspect that Shakespeare did not hold the church in high esteem. Oh sure, he was probably a Christian in a general sense (a Catholic I believe), but I don't think he was a Bible thumper.

You are correct, it is hard to read his own thoughts in his plays. Was he antisemetic and racist, or did he just portray people that way for plot developement? I suspect the latter to a large degree.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on August 8, 2009 at 12:36pm

Thanks for those links Ashton. I can't check them out at the moment, but I'll flag this comment and get back to it when I can.

Permalink Reply by Rikka on August 11, 2009 at 11:23pm

I thought he supposedly wasn't a Katholik because of the whole 'ghosts' thing, like in Julius Caesar etc.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on August 12, 2009 at 9:00am

It seems to me that in the book about him, Will in the World, of which I listened to about a third of on CD, the author says he was more than likely a Catholic, though I don't remember now the reasons given.

Permalink Reply by D'Holbach on August 12, 2009 at 9:45am

There has been some speculation that Shakespeare was Catholic because his father had been Catholic. In addition, ghosts suggest the existence of Purgatory or "Limbo," which only Catholics believed in.

Permalink Reply by D'Holbach on August 11, 2009 at 11:57pm

Thanks for the link--Huxley's "take" on Shakespeare's religion is measured and convincing.

Permalink Reply by Jaume on August 12, 2009 at 12:38pm

Huxley is obviously an expert on Shakespeare.

It's Huxley who introduced me to Shakespeare's sonnets. Point Counter Point partially quotes sonnet CXXX ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun..."), which is still the only sonnet I can recite entirely from memory.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on August 12, 2009 at 12:57pm

I have about 15 of them memorized, just for my own enjoyment.

Permalink Reply by Ralph Dumain on August 12, 2009 at 9:57am

I can't respond to this question, but here's what Shaw had to say about the matter:

I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or stint; but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life are not co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dickens's sentimental assumptions are violently contradicted by his observations; and Shakespear's pessimism is only his wounded humanity. Both have the specific genius of the fictionist and the common sympathies of human feeling and thought in pre-eminent degree. They are often saner and shrewder than the philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was often saner and shrewder than Don Quixote. They clear away vast masses of oppressive gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good humor. But they are concerned with the diversities of the world instead of with its unities: they are so irreligious that they exploit popular religion for professional purposes without delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney Carton and the ghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot balance their exposures of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr Tite Barnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or a worthy leader: they have no constructive ideas: they regard those who have them as dangerous fanatics: in all their fictions there is no leading thought or inspiration for which any man could conceivably risk the spoiling of his hat in a shower, much less his life.

SOURCE: Shaw, George Bernard. Man and Superman (1903), ed. Dan H. Laurence (London: Penguin Books, 1946), excerpt from the Epistle Dedicatory, To Arthur Bingham Walkley, pp. 28-29.

Permalink Reply by D'Holbach on August 12, 2009 at 10:07am

Another compelling reading--thank you for the post.