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A few years ago
I came across a book entitled Claudel thomiste? and
began it with some skepticism. For all of my life long love
of Claudel, I thought the book would be an exercise in far-fetched
interpretation. Not at all. The author made a strong case
for the continuing influence on the great French poet of his
early reading of the two summae of Thomas. Of late,
there has been a spate of books dealing with the Catholicism
of Shakespeare. Clare Asquith's Shadowplay is the most
detailed and convincing presentation of the bard in his relation
to the faith. Inspired by her experience watching Soviet readings
of Chekov and their coded political message, Asquith was inspired
to look for the same thing in Shakespeare. And she finds it.
Hers is a magnificent, painstaking and finally persuasive
book.
One had learned
from Belloc and Chesterton to suspect the official version
of what had happened under Henry VIII and Elizabeth; the real
story of how the faith had been repressed in England was ignored.
Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars is an earlier
detailed account of the confiscation of Church property and
the stifling of the Catholic reaction. One can almost think
that the reformers were even harsher on England than
they were on Ireland. There were martyrs, there were heroes
of resistance, and there were the more equivocal cases of
people like Shakespeare who trod a fine line between apostasy
and fidelity. Asquith enables us to read plays, early, middle
and late, in a new way. Her treatment of Julius Caesar
and Hamlet is particularly convincing.
It is ironic,
given the current state of religion in England, to be reminded
of days when the faith was taken seriously enough to
risk one's life for it. Perhaps in a few years, with the continuing
Islamification of the island kingdom, this story would again
be suppressed. Thank God the story is being told while there
is still time.
Ralph
McInerny |
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