Shakespeare and Religion
Alison Shell
The Arden Shakespeare £55
(978-1-904-27170-3)
Church Times Bookshop £49.50

THERE are several reasons why this is a subject of peculiar difficulty. Shakespeare is the most enigmatic of all the great European masters, except Homer. No character in the plays can be confidently identified as the voice of the author. The con­trast with Dante here is especially striking.

Then there is extraordinary con­trast and development in the plays themselves. Then the evidence of which the critic needs to take ac­count is so various: state history, puritan sermons, actors’ reminis­cences, Acts of Government, and many other kinds.

The critic needs, above all, what Keats attributed to Shakespeare himself: negative capability, the power to rest in uncertainty with-out anxious straining. Because she possesses this, and because she draws her evidence from such di­verse sources, Dr Alison Shell is finely equipped to write this book. She is, above all, judicious.

When he gives a scene represent­ing contemporary worship, Shakes­peare can take extraordinary liber­ties: In Much Ado About Nothing, v iii, there is a burial service for Hero, who is, of course, alive and well. The ceremony is as much pagan as Christian. A Christian court is credited with the desire to worship Diana and Christ at the same time, which almost any contemporary, Catholic or Protes­tant, would have thought blasphem­ous. Yet the scene passes off easily, perhaps because the audience subconsciously know that its funeral aspect is a pretence. The play re­mains a high-spirited comedy, dominated by Benedick and Beatrice.

Shell’s conclusion will be accep­table to most readers. “His writing treated all religions, including the Christian doctrine of his time, as subservient to artistic unity and closure.”

How complex, for instance, is the prayer scene in Hamlet. Because he sees the King praying, Hamlet as­sumes erroneously that he has re­pented. But is this the real reason why he spares him? There will never be general agreement about this. In this, as in other places, Shell pres­ents many alternative interpreta­tions in a lucid and balanced way.

It is a book without any important weak points.

A. O. J. Cockshut is an Emeritus Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.

EDITED by Francis J. McGrath from previously unpublished manu­scripts, Volume IV of John Henry Newman: Sermons 1823-43 has now appeared: The Church and miscellaneous sermons at St Mary’s and Littlemore (OUP, £110 (£99); 978-0-19-920091-7).