The Unsung Shakespeare
Why should one of the most famous people in history be featured as one of the unsung heroes of Christendom? Perhaps because most people do not perceive Shakespeare as a hero of Christendom.
No, Shakespeare Was Not Gay
There is something truly rotten in the state of Shakespeare criticism. Take, for instance, All is True, a recent film produced by Sony Pictures Classics, which shows Shakespeare as a homosexual. Such nonsense has its rotting roots in pride and prejudice, both of which need to be exposed so that we can clear Shakespeare’s name … Read more
St. George, Shakespeare, and the Plague
Like many saints, George the dragon-slaying patron of England has murky origins, but he may go back to the Christian martyr soldier who refused to make a pagan sacrifice for the Emperor Diocletian’s bribe of wealth, and lost his head for it on April 23, 303. A millennium or so later, English Crusaders brought back … Read more
Shakespeare and the Gunpowder Plot
The fact that Shakespeare was a believing Catholic in very anti-Catholic times can be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. The evidence is convincing in terms of what is known about his life and from what can be seen in his plays and poems. Since this is so, it’s intriguing to consider Shakespeare’s response to the … Read more
Why Church Teachings on Chastity are Undeniably True
Many years ago, in one of the standard editions of The Tempest that I had ordered for my students, I read an angry little essay whose proximate target was the mage Prospero, and whose ultimate target was anyone alive, particularly men, who would uphold a view of sexual morality one or two steps higher than, … Read more
The Seven Ages of Man in Shakespeare’s As You Like It
In the famous speech from Shakespeare’s As You Like It that begins “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players,” the melancholic Jaques laments the passage of time in the human pilgrimage as a series of sad events that perpetuate the same mood of life’s dreariness that persists from … Read more
Medicines in Literature Not All Doctors Prescribe
The modern world approaches many problems with the outlook of a therapeutic society. For every ailment, complaint, or difficulty, it prescribes medication, some drug to change the mind, calm the nerves, stifle the energy, overcome depression, or control the appetite. An overmedicated society that depends on a pharmaceutical industry to provide for its happiness, peace, … Read more
The “Divine Comedy” in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale
While the words “Divine Comedy” naturally recall Dante’s classic poem in which the poet descends to the underworld of the Inferno, ascends Mount Purgatory, and rises to the heavenly Paradise, the phrase also applies to Shakespeare’s tragi-comedies (The Tempest, Cymbeline, Pericles, and The Winter’s Tale) that begin with a sudden fall from high to low … Read more
The Case for Catholic Shakespeare
Unlike the conspiracy theory that William Shakespeare was really the more educated Earl of Oxford, the rival Christopher Marlowe, or the polymath Francis Bacon, the story of the Catholic Shakespeare is now a mainstream if not a consensus view among scholars. Stretched to the edge of credulity, using arguments and speculations from scholars both Catholic … Read more
The Noblest Roman of Them All? On Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
What is most tragic in tragedies is that everything falls apart. Tragedies are always concerned with fate of a community, and a community cannot fall until its building blocks, individuals, have already begun to tumble themselves. Tragedies often seem inevitable from the their very beginning, and the reason for this is that we arrive at … Read more
The Merchant of Venice: Shakespearean Insincerity
Insincerity in people is recognized as a problem, which is why Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is recognized as the “problem play.” The Merchant of Venice is a play about insincere people and, therefore, it is problematic. It is a drama that has duped audiences for centuries, posing as full of pure lovers, wise women, … Read more
Seeing Love: A Reflection on King Lear
What do we see? And what does it matter? As an older father and educator of my youngest daughter, now sixteen years old, I have the joy of truly learning Shakespeare for the first time. In recent months we have tackled two Shakespeare plays, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. One is billed as the … Read more
On Shakespeare’s Hamlet
In the cosmic struggle between good and evil, Shakespeare presents the relentless conflict between two philosophies that shape the human condition. The philosophy of Claudius, the usurping tyrant who secretly poisoned his brother King Hamlet and married his wife Queen Gertrude, assumes that might is right, man is a god, and the end justifies the … Read more
Preparing for the Twelve Days of Christmas
About a hundred years ago, the usual jolly G.K. Chesterton can be found lamenting two things that are still a problem today: First, that as a writer, he has to write about Christmas long before Christmas in order for it to be published at Christmas. Second, the rest of the world seems to celebrate Christmas … Read more
Shakespeare’s King Lear
Lear’s loyal servant Kent advises the king to “see better,” when Lear unjustly banishes his beloved daughter Cordelia for not flattering him with the bombast of her sisters proclaiming they love their father “Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty./ Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare,/ No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, … Read more
Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Magic (art) is a part of daily life. Whenever parents raise children, teachers educate students, or rulers govern societies, they require the knowledge of the arts that teach these skills. They become magicians or artists by the masterpieces of their craft that evoke wonder and admiration for the beauty, goodness, or perfection their handiwork achieves. … Read more
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
In the cosmic struggle between good and evil, Shakespeare presents the relentless conflict between two philosophies that shape the human condition. The philosophy of Claudius, the usurping tyrant who secretly poisoned his brother King Hamlet and married his wife Queen Gertrude, assumes that might is right, man is a god, and the end justifies the … Read more
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Macbeth portrays the agony of a man’s soul in the throes of temptation as he hears the voices of the witches and the voice of Lady Macbeth luring him to commit murder to gain the power of kingship. After being addressed “Thane of Glamis” and then “Thane of Cawdor” as he rides home victorious after … Read more
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
A miser gains but never gives. A moneylender gives in order to receive. A friend gives generously and gladly but never charges interest. A lover gives without calculating the cost, takes a risk without any guarantees, and gives without any forethought of reward only to receive more than ever imagined. In Shakespeare’s play Shylock hoards … Read more
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Human problems lend themselves to many solutions, some of them with an oppressive heavy-hand and others with a gentle touch. Gravity easily oppresses and complicates problems whereas lightheartedness simplifies the complex and applies a magical gentleness that Shakespeare compares to the play of the fairies at night that perform their favors in the silence of … Read more
