Madeleine Robbins

Dr. Jerz

SEL 311 Shakespeare

7 December 2017

Catholicity and Authorship in Hamlet: Contextualizing the Playwright

Catholic undertones in Hamlet present a complex interpretive problem of context and authorship.

While scholars debate the Catholic or Protestant leaning of the play and clues in public records that could

indicate religious and social status, a separate question of authorship rocks the foundation of

Shakespearean studies and trivializes those nuanced explorations of the great playwrights work. Yet this

study of details - of plays and characters, speeches and lines - must not be disregarded but rather

integrated with authorship questions so that one may illuminate the other. The pursuit of biographical

information to support a Catholic reading of Hamlet guides and focuses authorship questions, and

demonstrates how the play itself is the most reliable resource for knowing the playwright and his context.

Both religious issues and the identity of the playwright are tense critical concerns, but despite

heated disagreements, scholars within literary disciplines ought to cooperate, unified by love of, devotion

to, or respect for Shakespeare - not the man, necessarily, but the legacy of the playwrights work in

Western civilization. In William Shakespeare: My New Best Friend?, Hadfield writes, If we want to

understand Shakespeare, we need to take his literary work seriously. In this obvious way biography and

literary output cannot be separated (67). Primarily concerned with accurate, pre-Romantic understanding

of Shakespeares collaborative writing process, Hadfield implies the relationship between biography,

context and the texts themselves. It is in this framework that the Catholicity of Hamlet must be

considered. The Protestant Reformation, the defining event of Shakespeares background, created a

turbulent religious climate for the people of Elizabethan England where political, social, economic and

spiritual forces clashed (Taylor 1). The dynamics of the period, combined with lack of public or theatre

records on Shakspere, establish an alarming sense of ambiguity and invite scholars to approach the
issue in different ways. Burrows remarks that to date, there is no single approach accepted by everybody

and applicable in every case (367). At stake is the identity and biography of the man praised as the

greatest English writer: Scholars must be willing to dive into contention and ambiguity. Supported by

scant biographical details, Catholic undertones of Hamlet give some indication of the playwrights

religious background, whether the author was the bard of Avon or not.

The argument for Hamlets Catholic slant is centered on the ghost of King Hamlet. Appearing to

his son, the ghost says, My hour is almost come, / When I to sulphrous and tormenting flames / Must

render up myself (1.5.2-4). The Complete Pelican Shakespeare is careful to include a footnote here to

indicate that tormenting flames refer to sufferings in purgatory, not hell (1355). The ghost later says

that he is for the day confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt

and purged away (1.5.11-13). Though religious differences were minimal at the time of Henry VIIIs

first Act of Supremacy in 1534 which established the king of England, not the pope in Rome, as the head

of the Church of England, divergent belief in purgatory surfaced early between Catholics and the new

Protestants in England, following the teachings of Luther, Zwingli and others in Europe. The ghosts

seemingly transitory position betrays a lingering Catholic view on life after death, suggesting that

Shakespeare clung to the Old Faith during his lifetime, at least at the time that Hamlet was written

(1603) and performed (1609).

Within the same exchange between the ghostly King Hamlet and his son, the ghost problematizes

the Catholic interpretation of his own previous lines. He urges young Hamlet to [r]evenge his foul and

most unnatural murder (1.5.31). In a Catholic mindset, a soul in purgatory is, by the ghosts own words,

working to purge away his crimes done in days of nature in order to be pure to enter heaven. A soul

in purgatory would not entreat another man to commit a mortal sin, even as revenge. Freeman points out

that the ghost does not appear as a penitent soul, confessing its sins, but gives Hamlet a command that

clearly violates Christian teaching (234). With this complication, the ghosts lines cannot be read as

undeniably Catholic. Some critics assert that the play is not Catholic but forcefully Protestant: For Rust,
Hamlet is not the image of recusant restlessness, but the image of Protestant anxiety (14), struggling to

make sense of the deteriorating Catholic but not yet fully Protestant climate of Elizabethan England.

Evidence for the Catholicity of the play and the author push back against pro-Protestant

arguments. In Shakespeare and the Catholic Spectrum, Oser organizes critical responses on a spectrum

with three main divisions: Recusant, Catholic humanist, and nominal Catholic (381). The spectrum ought

to be extended to include shades of indifference and Protestant convictions, in order to accommodate the

possible subtleties of the quickly changing social, political and religious climate. In response to the

implied Catholic view on purgatory, Honigmann find[s] it easier to imagine that a former Catholic might

slip into this way of thinking than that a Protestant writer who had never been a Catholic would do so

(123). Assuming that the Old Faith understandably lingered in Elizabethan England, Honigmann finds

most evidence for Catholicity in Shakespeares youth and in public records pertaining to the playwrights

father, John Shakespeare. In lost years between 1585 and 1592, when no public references were made

to William Shakespeare, most biographers place Shakespeare with the Houghtons, a family among

Englands most famous recusants, to be cared for and educated. Freeman points out that a father who

wished to avoid tarring his son William with recusant accusations and exposing him to their influences

might have chosen a more appropriate schoolmaster for him than . . . so many Catholics and that his

decision makes the recusant hypothesis . . . more than mere conjecture (231). Records of the Houghton

family during this period mention a person called Shakeshaft, perhaps a pseudonym or misspelling of

the budding actor and playwright. With nearly circular reasoning, Honigmann offers that a consequence

of the Shakeshaft theory . . . is, without doubt, the we would have to assume that young William

Shakespeare was a Catholic. [The Houghtons would not] have engaged him as a servant, in those

perilous times, unless they felt certain about this (114). The Houghton family is a tenuous explanation

for the Catholic background that appears in Hamlet.

Stronger than the Houghton connection is the playwrights own family, especially his father.

Business records of John Shakespeares dealings in Stratford suggest that he found himself in financial

difficulty. His name appears on a 1592 list of men in Stratford accused of not coming monthly to
church, according to her Majestys laws, John being one of nine that come not to church for fear of

being processed for debt (Honigmann 116). Apparently there are two possible explanations for this:

Either he was a recusant who used supposed fear of legal action as an excuse for not attending, or he truly

was truly under financial strain. Perhaps it is both: He had debts, but also failed to attend church because

of recusant beliefs. The list appeared in 1592, but according to Honigmann, many Catholics left the faith

toward the end of Elizabeths reign and during the years of the Spanish Armada, around 1588, as the

government . . . pinched many Catholic consciences that put England before the pope (114). Even with

patchy historical records, critics find support for a Catholic interpretation of Shakespeare and his works.

Though Honigmann and many others rely on the conjecture of the lost years to support the

Catholic hypothesis, Whalen unapologetically dismisses all attempts at accounting for those years. He

writes, What Will Shakspere [Whalens spelling] was doing as a boy, or adolescent, or young man in his

twenties is not known. Nothing has been found . . . There are no historical records or literary works that

support, or contradict, such speculations. The record is a blank (9). The years are called lost for a

reason. Whalen continues to say that only passing time secured Shakespeares claim on the plays, and that

general acceptance progressed to firmly entrenched belief and finally to impassioned Bardolatry by

the end of the eighteenth century (40-41). The assertions of Whalen, among others, undermine the

arguments for the Catholic hypothesis, and for all interpretive approaches that garner support from

biographical details. Whalen point sout that the only testimony to indicate that Shakespeare wrote any

plays was both posthumous and ambiguous (3). To some, such doubt is repulsive; on the bard lies a

foundation of Western literature and culture. Taylor calls Shakespeare the definer of English identity.

He writes, As Shakespeare goes, so goes the nation (13). To some, rejecting the bard from Stratford-on-

Avon is rejecting English identity and Western heritage; to others, doubt is encouraged by the desire to

truly know and understand the greatest of English playwrights.

Surveying the field of authorship studies, Whalen summarizes the dizzying result by stating that

the range of scholarly opinion . . . is dismaying: almost nothing is known about him . . . we know more

about him than almost any other dramatist . . . the facts are a little disappointing . . . what is known is
utterly useless . . . what is known is surprisingly large . . . theres a mystery . . . theres no special mystery

. . . theres ample room for speculation (Whalen 7). Searching for certainty, critics have identified

dozens of candidates from Francis Bacon to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, whose life may add more

assurance and clarity. Ridiculously, Tweedale claims to present the evidence [of the authorship issue]

without rhetoric or invective, yet the text reveals its bias in its dedication to the memory of Edward

deVere, 17th Earl of Oxford (preface). Whalen, too, after lamenting the dismaying number of

opinions, settles into an Oxfordian view and goes so far to assert that consensus has been formed in

favor of the earl of Oxford.

Whalen cites evidence in Oxfords life, in general and in the particulars (86) that aligns him

with what critics expect from the greatest of English playwrights. According to Whalen, the years of

Oxfords life (1550-1604) better fit the chronology of Shakespearean plays and performances. His social

background and education, of a higher class and quality than William Shakespeare, son of an alderman

from Stratford, justifies the accuracy of court scenes and verse in the plays. Whalen adds that Oxford may

have chosen the name Shakespeare as a pseudonym, drawing from his familys crest on which a lion

brandishes a lance, or shakes a spear (93, emphasis added). Oxfords social background, linguistic style,

and biographical chronology make sense with the body of nearly 40 completed plays.

The Catholic undertones of Hamlet help to contextualize Edward de Vere as an authorship

candidate. The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship refers to evidence that suggests Oxford was a recusant:

Although records indicate that he was raised Protestant, in 1580 he admitted to the Queen close

associations with a group of prominent Catholics. He revealed a plot among them to overthrow her and

form a government friendly to the Catholic King Philip of Spain. This detail could suffice to justify the

Catholic influences in Hamlet, but the brevity and tangential nature of Oxfords involvement seems to

stretch too thin.

Given the evidence, Oxford stands as a possibility in the authorship question because, reasonably,

he could have composed a play with Catholic influences. Hopefully, some of the dozens of other

authorship candidates could be eliminated by a similar process in which literary products indicate
background, disposition or linguistic style. Michell is not as hopeful: When the cases for each candidate

are compared together, it can be seen how subjective they all are (255). He suggests that no approach is

terminally satisfying. He makes an excellent point about the flexibility of literary interpretations:

The very same data, the same Shakespearian characters and passages, are interpreted by

different theorists as unique, compelling evidence for their respective candidates. Hamlet,

for example, was firmly identified by Freud and Looney as a self-portrait of Oxford . . .

Demblon found many points of comparison between the Prince of Denmark and the Earl

of Rutland. Stratfordian professors tell their students that Hamlet is very like Will

Shakspere, yet Lefranc . . . demonstrated that William Stanley filled the role far better

than anyone else . . . Henry Pemberton gave lengthy proof that in the figure of Hamlet,

[Sir Walter Raleigh] pictured his own character and experience. Every major candidate, it

seems, can be represented as the original of Hamlet. (255)

What are we to make of such subjectivity? As we work toward understanding the play, the playwright and

his context, the difficulty we have with reconciling so many conflicting viewpoints is actually what brings

us closer to the experience of the Elizabethans.

We can interpret, theorize and conjecture ad absurdum, but the unrelenting quest for clarity and

certainty neglects the reality of muddled contexts. The disheveled state of Elizabethan England as it

transitioned from Catholicism to socio-political Protestantism would have influenced any playwright

living in that turbulent time and place. Add to this the frustrating fact that Elizabethans did not keep

organized, technological, meticulous records to catalogue daily life and historical events. But the

authorship debate cannot change what is in the play: Taylor writes that the ghost of the old Catholicism

haunts Shakespeare and his Elizabethan world (12). Which of the dozens of authorship candidates would

not be haunted by such a dramatic change to English life and culture? Was William Shakeshaft raised

in a Catholic family and educated in secret before emerging in London? Was the earl of Oxford spiritually

invested in the political plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth? In the aftermath of the Protestant

Reformation, there is no clear line between Catholic and Protestant. In Hamlet, the greatest certainty is
ambiguity: the play is the medium through which a half-century of religious conflict and turmoil would

speak (Freeman 254). Countless critics, from Freud to Bloom, have celebrated Shakespeare for his

ability to represent human nature, personality and experience, of which ambiguity and uncertainty are

integral parts.
 WORKS CITED

About Edward de Vere. Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship: Research and Discussion of the Shakespeare

Authorship Question, Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, Dec. 2005.

Burrows, John. "A Second Opinion on 'Shakespeare and Authorship Studies in the Twenty-First

Century'." Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 3, 2012, pp. 355-392.

Freeman, John. This Side of Purgatory: Ghostly Fathers and the Recusant Legacy in Hamlet.

Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, edited by David M.

Beauregard and Dennis Taylor, Fordham University Press, 2003, 222-259.

Hadfield, Andrew. William Shakespeare, My New Best Friend? Journal of Early Modern Studies, vol.

5, 2016, pp. 53-68.

Honigmann, E. A. Shakespeare: the lost years. Manchester University Press, 1998.

Michell, John. Who Wrote Shakespeare? Thames and Hudson, 1996.

Milward, Peter. Five Full Years: Shakespeare and The Catholic Hypothesis Today. Religion and the

Arts 14 (2010): 448-458.

Oser, Lee. Shakespeare and the Catholic Spectrum. Religion and the Arts 16 (2012): 381-390.

Rudman, Joseph. "Non-Traditional Authorship Attribution Studies of William Shakespeare's Canon:

Some Caveats." Journal of Early Modern Studies, vol. 5, 2016, pp. 307-328.

Rust, Jennifer. Wittenberg and Melancholic Allegory: The Reformation and Its Discontents in Hamlet.

Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, edited by David M.

Beauregard and Dennis Taylor, Fordham University Press, 2003, 260-286.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Orgel and A. R.

Braunmuller, Penguin Books, 2002, pp. 1337-1391.

Taylor, Dennis. Introduction: Shakespeare and the Reformation. Shakespeare and the Culture of

Christianity in Early Modern England, edited by David N. Beauregard and Dennis Taylor,

Fordham University Press, 2003, p. 1-26.

Tweedale, Ralph L. Wasnt Shakespeare Someone Else? The Shakespeare Oxford Society, 1971.

Whalen, Richard F. Shakespeare: Who Was He? The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon. Praeger,

1994.