USE OF SCRIPTURE 47 Rev. T. Carter in his "Shakespeare, a Puritan and Recusant." The use of the Bible was indeed a test question in the poet's time. The Reformers alleged that Rome had withheld the Bible from the laity or obscured its meaning. Luther was the first, they said, to place it within reach of the people by the translation he had prepared. Thus the Homilies exhort all "to diligently search the well of life in the Old and New Testaments, and not run to the stinking puddles of men's traditions," meaning thereby, of course, the Church's authority. The shibboleth, then, "the Bible only," signified both that the Bible was the sole rule of faith, and that each individual was its authorised interpreter, and was free to choose his own text and to put his own interpretation upon it; even though the sense selected was explicitly contradicted by other passages of the sacred volume. "I am Sir Oracle, And when I speak, let no dog ope his mouth." -Merchant of Venice, i. I fitly expresses the new mode of biblical Hermeneutics, and it is precisely in this manner that Shakespeare's Bible Christians use, or rather abuse, the Holy Scriptures. The characters conspicuous in this respect are Jack Cade and his followers, Costard and Holofernes, Quince and Bottom, Parson Evans, in a very mixed fashion, and above all Falstaff. All these, as will be seen, quote individual texts or apply scriptural references in some strained sense for their own ends, just as the Presbyterians or Covenanters do in the Waverley novels. The method of reasoning, then, used to prove Shakespeare a Protestant from this kind of biblical quotation would equally make Scott a Puritan. So evident is Shakespeare's satire that Bowdler repeatedly omits these biblical quotations because of their profaneness. Wordsworth takes him to task for so doing, and the point of many a speech and the individualisation of the speaker are undoubtedly lost by such omission. But though Shakespeare did not intend to be profane himself, for "Reverence," as he says, "is the angel of the world," he did intend the speaker to be so, and to show by his profanity the abuse which must result from "the Bible only" theory, and that "there is no damnèd error but a sober brow will write a text on," or that "the devil himself can quote Scripture." With this well-known power of irony, could he have chosen a more efficacious method of exposing the abuse of the new "Gospel method," than by making it the favourite weapon of canting fools, knaves, and hypocrites? With regard to the version employed by Shakespeare, we do not think any trustworthy argument can be drawn for either side; and we willingly concede to the followers of Bishop Wordsworth any consolation they may derive from Shakespeare's employment of the "Amen" sixty times, in proof of PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 49 his being a member of the Church of England. But could it be proved demonstrably that the poet had used exclusively a Protestant version, it would only be what we should expect. If he meant his Bible Christians to speak as Protestants did, he would naturally make them use the phrases proper to that body; and his doing so would show nothing as to his own religious belief. The foregoing pages will, we think, have shown that Shakespeare's ideas, whether philosophical or political, moral or religious, were in no way those of the Elizabethan era; and the opposition is enhanced if we consider the poet himself and some of his characteristics. We know how hard it is to speak of a character so silent and reserved as Shakespeare. Unlike Ben Jonson, who loved to talk himself, and to have his conversation reported, Shakespeare, though loving and loved, has left no record of himself or his friends. We can gather from his writings that constancy, fidelity, secrecy, truth, were the qualities he most esteemed. His ideal man is true to himself, true to his friends. He scorns to betray even the devil, and despises graceless spies" and "suborned informers." He hates "encounterers glib of tongue," "That wide unclasp the tables of their hearts To every ticklish reader!"-Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. The self-revelation made in the sonnets, though most obscure, is yet like personal pain, the "goring D his own thought," a sort of sacrilege, selling cheap by the fact of publicity "what was most dear." Others may win respect by truth of words; his thoughts should be dumb, "speak only in effect " (by facts). Nay, he would be dead to all else but to one dear friend, his own secret love. "None else to me, nor I to none alive." -Sonnet cxii. His was a soul, then, that dwelt apart, evoking out of its own depths his mighty works, but veiling its still greater self. This secrecy is consistent with his philosophical doctrine that the mind is nothing till it has gone out of itself and is "married" to its true object. It is consistent also with the kind of development his character would have taken, were his sympathies wholly with a proscribed religion whose followers knew each other by secret signs and communicated in passwords. But such a disposition, so reserved, sensitive, fastidious, bears no resemblance to certain modern portraitures of him. To our mind, Shakespeare, with his high and hidden ideals, was far more like a veiled prophet than the mere Hooker and Bacon combination of utilitarian common-sense and experimental science described by Professor Dowden. Had he been a "sort of Gradgrind," a man " wanting nothing but facts, who knows that two and two make four and nothing more," he would doubtless have been satisfied with the ecclesiastical compromise, the most concrete fact of his age, and he would not have satirised its originators under such personages as Polonius and Shallow, or its ministers in the figures of Sir Topas and Holofernes. It is strange, indeed, how prejudice may blind the eyes of otherwise acute critics to evident fact. The one indisputable characteristic of his writings, as manifested in his dramas and poems, is his deep discontent with, and contempt for, the world in which he lived. Reserved as he is about himself, of his age and its evils he speaks openly. The most sacred natural ties dissolved, oppression, falsehood, treachery, ingratitude, faith forsworn, imposture triumphant, truth and goodness held captive-these are the main features of his portrait of his times, and their originals are easily recognised. And this is the poet whom we are told to regard, not as a teacher of dry dogma, or a sayer of hard sayings, but "A priest to us all Of the wonder and bloom of the world." 1 Far from extolling the pride and pomp of earthly greatness, no poet more constantly reminds us how "mightiness meets with misery," that this world is not for aye, and that we all "owe a death to God." How solemnly he warns us that soon "The great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 1 Bagehot in Dowden, "Mind and Art," 40. |