When most of us think of William Shakespeare we don’t necessarily connect him with the saints. And yet there are a surprising number of saints who appeared in his plays or who had an influence upon his work.
Here are six of them:
“Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got?”
– William Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More
1
St. Thomas More
Let’s begin with a saint who had not yet been canonized in Shakespeare’s time. Saint Thomas More had been martyred for the Faith in 1535, twenty-nine years before Shakespeare was born, but he wouldn’t be canonized until 1935. Shakespeare collaborated with other contemporary playwrights in the writing of the play Sir Thomas More which was banned during his lifetime for its volatile pro-Catholic perspective.
“This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.”
– William Shakespeare, Henry V
2
St. Crispin
Shakespeare’s own pro-Catholic perspective can be gleaned from the way that he reveres those saints who had already been canonized when he was writing. One thinks immediately perhaps of Saint Crispin in Henry V’s famous speech before the Battle of Agincourt but there are many others.
“The son of Duncan
(From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth)
Lives in the English court and is received
Of the most pious Edward with such grace
That the malevolence of fortune nothing
Takes from his high respect.”
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth
3
St. Edward the Confessor
In Macbeth, Shakespeare shows Saint Edward the Confessor as the perfect exemplar of the Christian King, praising his miraculous powers of healing the sick, in contrast to the malevolent and maniacal Macbeth, who serves as an exemplar of the Machiavellian “Prince” and as a thinly veiled representation of the Machiavellian Scottish king, James I, who was on the throne when Macbeth was written.
4
St. Francis of Assisi
Another saint who makes an appearance in Shakespeare’s plays, at least allusively, is Saint Francis. He is present in the depiction of flawed but holy Friars, such as Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, Friar Francis in Much Ado About Nothing, Friars Laurence and Patrick in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and by several Franciscan friars and Poor Clare sisters in Measure for Measure. In the last of these, arguably the most overtly Catholic of Shakespeare’s plays, its having been written during a brief respite in the persecution of Catholics that followed the accession of James I, we are introduced to Isabella, a saintly Poor Clare novice, who rivals Cordelia and Portia as an icon of idealized femininity.
Saint Francis also makes an almost ubiquitous if ghostly appearance in King Lear. He is seen in the holy poverty of Poor Tom, whose singing of a Franciscan ballad accompanies his words of counter-intuitive and paradoxical wisdom, and he is present most dramatically in Lear’s stripping of his garments on the heath, the King’s shameless nakedness emulating Saint Francis’ own shedding of his clothes to announce to the world his marriage to Lady Poverty.
“Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon ’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies.”
– William Shakespeare, King Lear
5
St. Robert Southwell
There is, however, another saint, not destined to be canonized until 1970, who makes several allusive appearances in Shakespeare’s plays. This is Saint Robert Southwell, one of the greatest of English saints and one of the most neglected. He is an English martyr whose martyrdom is unknown to all but a few, a happy few, Englishmen. He is far less known than other English martyrs, such as Alban, Thomas Becket, John Fisher or the aforementioned Thomas More. He is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, with whom he shares a feast day and of whom the best known is probably Edmund Campion, whom the young Shakespeare might have known.
It is a sure sign of the distortions of what Hilaire Belloc called “tom-fool Protestant history” that this great saint, martyr and poet is not better known. One of the greatest of Metaphysical Poets, Southwell was a powerful influence on Shakespeare’s Muse, inspiring some of the Bard’s finest lines. The influence of Southwell’s poetry can be seen in Shakespeare’s deferential allusions to it in The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and King Lear.
In Hamlet, Southwell’s poem “Upon the Image of Death” is the allusive backdrop to the whole graveyard scene; in Lear, the King’s climactic speech (“Come, let’s away to prison”), refers to “God’s spies”, a coded nod in the direction of the Jesuits, which is reinforced by its punning echoing of Southwell’s reference to Catholic martyrs as “God’s spice” in his poem, “Decease Release”.
“Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'”
– William Shakespeare, Henry V
6
St. George
The final saint who should be mentioned is England’s patron saint, Saint George. The evidence suggests that Shakespeare was born on Saint George’s Day and that he died on Saint George’s Day, on his fifty-second birthday. It is surely providential that England’s greatest poet should have entered the world’s stage on the feast of England’s patron saint and that he should have taken his final bow on the same feast day. On this great feast of All Saints, may we celebrate Shakespeare’s celebration of the saints.
And today we celebrate...