Page 88 - All About History - Issue 11-14

Shakespeare: Rebel with a cause?

The Armada was defeated but it had succeeded He would use opposing words such as ‘fair’ and The Essex faction had ordered a performance of the
in creating further religious and political divisions, ‘dark’ and ‘high’ and ‘low’: ‘fair’ and ‘high’ being ‘deposition’ play Richard II just before the rebellion
so the authorities were on even greater alert. Within indications of Catholicism while ‘dark’ and ‘low’ and Shakespeare’s company had their work cut out
this world Shakespeare got to work and, at first, kept would indicate Protestantism. Asquith takes this afterward denying complicity. The plan ended in
things simple. “My reading is that the early plays as reference to the black clothes worn by Puritans failure in 1601, but in that same year, Shakespeare
were light, comical, critical and oppositional, written and to the ‘high’ church services that would include wrote Hamlet, encouraging action against unjust
for Lord Strange’s Men”, asserts Asquith. The earliest mass as opposed to the ‘low’ services that didn’t. If rule. “His more critical work supported the cause of
plays addressed political reunion and spiritual this theory is true – a matter of some debate – then the Earl of Essex against the [William] Cecil regime”,
revival. Their plots related to divided families, it enabled Shakespeare to get specific messages says Asquith. If this is true, then Shakespeare really
parallels for an England cut in two. across, using characters to signify the two sides and was one of the defining rebels of the period.
Asquith believes the Bard placed certain markers by using words commonly associated with Catholic Critics have said for decades that the writer
in his texts that signalled a second, hidden meaning. codes. For example, according to the theory, ‘love’ is was against populist rebellions and supported
divided into human and spiritual and ‘tempest’ refers authority and the rule of law, “but with the recent
to the turbulence of the Reformation and Counter- reassessment of the extent of dissidence at the end
Reformation and the Bard used his own terms to of Elizabeth’s reign, Shakespeare’s Elizabethan work
disguise a message that was pro-Catholic. begins to seem more oppositional”, Asquith argues.
At the same time, Shakespeare was operating in “What if the authority he upholds was not that
establishment circles. “He was drawn into the orbit of the breakaway Tudor state, but of the European
of the court and wrote elegant pleas for toleration church against which Henry VIII rebelled?” she
to Elizabeth, in the elaborate allegorical language asks. “What if he sympathised with the intellectual
she was used to”, says Asquith. But England was Puritan reformers, who felt secular monarchs like
becoming more violent again. Shakespeare’s the Tudors had no business assuming spiritual
patron, the Earl of Southampton, rebelled authority over individual conscience?
against Elizabeth I, becoming Robert, Earl of What if he, like so many contemporaries,
Essex’s lieutenant in an attempt to raise the opposed the destruction of the old
people of London against the government. English landscape, from the hostels,
“ He devised a secret code,

inserting messages and double
meaning into his writing”

The religious upheaval before and during
RELIGIOUS Elizabeth I’s reign saw many people executed

COMPROMISE?

With the untimely death of King Edward VI in 1553,
struck with fever and cough that gradually worsened,
Mary I ascended to the throne and set about calling a
halt to the Reformation. She swung England firmly back
towards Catholicism, causing reformers to run scared
and flee. Among those displaced was civil servant
William Cecil, his relief of a lucky escape palpable
as he heard of the 273 Protestants burnt to death
under Mary’s reign. Terror had been brought on the
Protestants but Cecil had the ear of Elizabeth, who he
had known for years. She had embraced the Church
of England, so much that she had been imprisoned for
two months in the Tower of London by her half-sister
Mary, who feared she was part of a plot to depose her.
When Mary died in 1558, Cecil wanted to return to
a Protestant England. Queen Elizabeth succeeded the
throne since Mary had born no child and Cecil became
her advisor. Within the year, a uniform state religion
had returned. Elizabeth was confirmed as Supreme
Governor of the Church of England.
The Act of Uniformity in 1558 set the order of prayer
in the English Book of Common Prayer. Crucifixes and
candlesticks were to be allowed, although new bishops
protested. But Protestants who had fled returned and
wanted their religion to be supreme. Cecil ensured
Catholics would be excluded from public life although
he allowed them to worship as long as they did not
threaten the queen and did so discreetly. Catholics who
rose would be dealt with in the most serious of ways.

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