From 1564 to 1616, during the reigns of two descendants of Henry VII  (Elizabeth Tudor and James, the first Stuart King of both England and Scotland), there lived a God fearing Christian named William Shakespeare.

His family connections were strongly Roman Catholic at a time far from propitious to “the old faith.” Two of the masters of the primary school which young William probably attended in Stratford upon Avon left England to become Jesuit priests. He wrote with  nostalgic affection of priests, nuns and members of religious orders decades after they had been driven from England. This he did at a time when his contemporaries of the London stages were systematically pillorying Catholics as monsters of public heresy and private iniquity.

Religion, getting it right and dealing with adversaries who got it wrong, was the preoccupation of Shakespeare’s England, as it was of Europe and all traditional Christendom. This thesis is the starting point of Peter Milward, S.J.’s 1973 SHAKESPEARE’S RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND. The Oxonian Milward, now nearing 80, is still  professor of English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo. He has written prolifically about Shakespeare for decades. In preparing to co-teach, with Frank Marvin, an adult education course on "Shakespeare and Religion" at Montreat College, NC in October - November, 2001, I found no better introduction to  our theme than Milward.

Most scholars seem to blind themselves to religion in Shakespeare. Their kernel of truth is that William Shakespeare was a secular writer, meaning that he did not consciously write catechisms, sermons or devotionals. But his moral assumptions  were straight conservative Catholic Christian. There is no play, not the most pagan,  without obvious allusions to either Catholic or Protestant Bible texts in English. Life’s purpose is to prepare well for death and union with a God and a Heaven utterly transcending earth’s limitations.

The Bard’s comedies focus on marriage and  draw  upon GENESIS, MATTHEW  and  EPHESIANS. The histories of England share SAMUEL’s view that kingship is sacred. The  problem plays (neither straight comedy nor tragedy) seem meditations with Paul on sin and redemption. The great tragedies invoke Adam’s fall and the redemptive passion of Jesus. Shakespeare’s brooding later plays seem dialogs with Christ on forgiveness and with Paul on mankind’s new life in Christ.

Shakespeare is deeply familiar with Anglican liturgy, the homilies prescribed by Queen Elizabeth and with early Anglicans Henry Smith and Richard Hooker. Milward also demonstrates the playwright’s humorous attention to “parsons and puritans” in LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST, THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, AS YOU LIKE IT  and TWELFTH NIGHT. “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” (Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3, 108-9).

Milward sees Shakespeare repeating himself, writing in play after play about  Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and how their innovations were undoing the old order personified by Henry VII.  He is also aware of the “atheism” and “school of night” associated with circles around Walter Raleigh, the Renaissance revival of paganism,  Platonism, Stoicism and Epicurus’s morality based on self love. Montaigne was translated around 1603. Is it Montaigne whose “words, words, words” Hamlet was reading?

Shakespeare’s morality is traditional and draws on realities beneath surface appearances. The soul is undying. Suicide is regularly treated with contempt. Humans do well to recognize personal sins, accept themselves as they are, then repent and forgive in order to be forgiven. His theology is practical: live your life to die well. He accepts “the four last things”: death, judgment, hell and heaven. God’s grace is all around us. Find grace and live. William Shakespeare was a believing Christian. His immortal works make that apparent.

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