Through Shakepeare’s Eyes

Through Shakepeare’s Eyes.  By Joseph Pearce, Ignatius Press, 2010.

 

Joseph Pearce has become one of today’s leading literary biographers, specializing in the lives of Christian authors.  Early in his life, Pearce belonged to the National Front, a group promoting race hatred and separatism, but a jail sentence led him to discover the works of G.K. Chesterton, and Pearce jettisoned his old political and social beliefs, and went from angry agnostic to joyful and inquisitive Catholic.  His work includes biographies and analyses of G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis, among others.  Unafraid of Virginia Woolf, Pearce’s study of the mercurial poet Roy Campbell, was reviewed here in December 2011.

 

Recently, Pearce has been exploring the works of William Shakespeare, especially in The Quest for Shakespeare, an overview of Shakespeare’s life based on recently discovered evidence.  Shakespeare was traditionally viewed as a loyal Protestant, but Pearce argues that Shakespeare was actually a recusant Catholic during a time when the Catholic faith was being fiercely persecuted by the Protestant authorities.  Furthermore, Pearce believes that Shakespeare inserted his religious beliefs into the plots and morals of each of his plays.  Pearce wrote Through Shakespeare’s Eyes to illustrate this point, writing that:

 

“This volume differs significantly from its predecessor and companion, The Quest for Shakespeare, in the sense that the sources from which I have been working are the texts of the three plays The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and King Lear, along with some of the finer criticism of these plays.  I did not have to trawl through dozens of biographies and other studies of Shakespeare in order to bring together all the different threads of his life into one volume.  In this sense, the present volume might be said to have been easier to write than was its companion.  It was, in any event, easier to research.  I think, however, and in spite of such appearances to the contrary, that it was hardly easier to write.  Grappling with a genius of Shakespeare’s magnitude is never easy.  It is as exhausting as it is exhilarating!” (11).

 

Only the aforementioned three plays are studied here, although it the analysis is so intriguing that one wishes that he had covered more plays.  The critiques are fascinating, though the complexity of Shakespeare’s work means that they cannot be wholly definitive.  What this book succeeds at doing is presenting Shakespeare’s work from a Catholic and historical perspective.  The analyses of The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet are excellent.  For some reason, the critique of King Lear is much shorter than either of the other two, and it really could have used a lot more detail in order to flesh out the religious themes of the drama.

 

Pearce includes large quantities of background information about Shakespeare’s life and times, occasionally recovering ground from The Quest for Shakespeare, but this is necessary for people who have not read the previous book.

 

“Clearly the most reliable guide to a work is the author himself, who has the fullest grasp of all the contextual ingredients that inform and flavor the text.  It is, therefore, necessary to understand as much about the author as possible, and as much as possible about the time and culture in which he lived.  We need to know the author’s most important beliefs, which are those beliefs that inform every aspect of his life.  These are his theology and his philosophy.  At this juncture we should remind ourselves that everyone works from theological and philosophical presumptions.  Even atheism is theological, in the sense that the presumption that God does not exist informs the way that the atheist perceives everything else.  The “Real Absence” of God is as crucial to the atheist as is his Real Presence to the believer.  There is, therefore, no escaping God’s primal importance, regardless of whether it springs from the primal assumption that he is or the primal assumption that he is not.  It is one of the deepest paradoxes, and perhaps one of God’s funniest jokes, that God is always present even when he is absent.” (10).

 

It is intriguing that fans of Shakespeare are able to find exactly what they want to find in his work, and that critics tend to shape Shakespeare in their own desired image.  Pearce argues that previous conceptions of Shakespeare and the author’s interpretations have been based on caprice and pure theory, rather than any serious attempt to study the real man and his times.  Pearce therefore has to battle the accusation that he is attempting to impose his own vision of what Shakespeare ought to have been like, but for the most part, Pearce succeeds in defending his arguments by explaining the mindset of a Catholic in a suddenly Protestant England.  Pearce asks the reader to question both traditional historical narratives and literary perspectives in order to look at the material with a fresh attitude.   

 

“Every work of literature is the incarnation of the fruitful relationship between the artist and his Muse.  From a Christian perspective, the Muse is the gift of grace; from an atheistic perspective, it is the author’s subconscious.  In both cases, the work of literature remains an expression of the personhood of the author.  In the former case, the Christian believes that the gift of grace is freely given, like the talents in the Gospel parable, and can be used or abused by the artist according to the predilections of his will (much as the gift of life is freely given and can be used or abused).  In the latter case, the atheist believes that the subconscious “Muse” finds expression in the creative process.  It can be seen, therefore, that Christians and atheists share the essential belief that the work is the creative incarnation of the personhood of the author.  This being so, an author’s theological and philosophical beliefs will be the most important influence upon the work, simply because they are the most important influence on the way in which the author perceives reality.

 

Since the evidence shows that Shakespeare was a believing Catholic, it is clear that seeing his plays through his Catholic eyes is the best way, indeed the only way, of understanding the deepest meanings that they convey.  This book endeavors, therefore, to see the plays through Shakespeare’s eyes, giving us a “Bard’s-eye” view of their true meaning.” (13).

 

It is intriguing to see Pearce’s take on these plays.  For example, while Pearce condemns anti-Semitism, he also believes that it is improper to view Shylock as anything but a villain, even if he can be viewed sympathetically at times.  Another trope commonly used in productions and interpretations of The Merchant of Venice is that Portia brazenly cheats during the final casket scene.  Pearce argues that the oft-cited rhyming clue is actually nothing of the kind.  People who may have grown fond of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from the Stoppard play may be surprised to find Pearce arguing the reader that the two characters are meant to be villains, betraying their friend by spying upon him for a murderous king.  All of Pearce’s assertions come from a religious perspective.  He writes:

 

“If Shakespeare was a Catholic, and was greatly influenced by the Catholicism of his parents and the persecution that surrounded the practice of Catholicism in his day, it forces us to reread the plays in an entirely new light.  The more that historical evidence comes to light, the less able are the doyens of postmodernity to do what they like with the plats.  In the past, the lack of knowledge of the personhood of Shakespeare has enabled critics to treat him as a tabula rasaupon which they can write their own prejudiced agenda.  For the proponents of “queer theory,” he becomes conveniently homosexual; for secular fundamentalists, he is a protosecularist, ahead of his time; for “post-Christian” agnostics, he becomes a prophet of postmodernity.  It was all so easy to mold Shakespeare into our own image when the Bard was a myth, but now that he is emerging as a man, a living person with real beliefs, such distortion becomes more difficult.  For “postmodern” Shakespeare scholars, the emergence of tangible evidence for the Catholic Shakespeare is not only a challenge but a threat.  If he was a Catholic, he becomes irritatingly antimodern...  From the perspective of tradition-oriented scholars, the evident clarity of moral visions that they had always perceived in the plays becomes more explicable and more clearly defined.” (206-207).

 

Pearce’s analysis of Shakespeare presents the Bard as a man with a strong moral compass, as well as an unparalleled gift for crafting words.  By attempting to explore the soul and the worldview of the man, Pearce presents a very deep and profound perspective on Shakespeare’s work.  Pearce’s work in literary criticism is highly skilled, but reading Through Shakepeare’s Eyes made me realize that he needs to direct his talents in a different direction every once in a while.  Having read his thoughts on Shakespeare, I want to see him try his hand at directing Shakespeare.  It would be fascinating to see some of Shakespeare’s plays (especially The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and King Lear), directed by Pearce, possibly filmed with commentary as well.  One thing is for certain– one will never look at Shakespeare in the same way after reading Through Shakespeare’s Eyes.

 

 

–Chris Chan