What was the Religion of Shakespeare? E-Book

M. M. Mangasarian

• Herausgeber: Force Majeure Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

It is by observing the frequency and emphasis with which certain views and expressions occur and reoccur in an author, and the consistency with which they are given the preference, that we may be able to generalize as to his philosophy or religion. As Shakespeare's works are neither a treatise on theology nor a manual of philosophy, our only means of discovering his attitude toward the problems of life and destiny is by reading, as it were, between the lines. A great mind can neither sophisticate nor suppress its earnest convictions. This does not mean that anyone with earnest convictions must necessarily be a propagandist. To think and to let think, represents a state of mind which is entirely consistent, both with enthusiasm and toleration, if not with proselytism. We believe that Shakespeare has unmistakably expressed himself on the subject of religion, as he has on that of patriotism, for instance, but without any missionary zeal, which fact has led not a few students of his works to the conclusion that of all the great poets Shakespeare is the only one without a religion.During his life Mangasarian wrote a number of books. His most popular, including The Truth About Jesus — Is He a Myth? (1909) andThe Bible Unveiled (1911), deal with the evidence against the existence of an historical Jesus. He also wrote hundreds of essays and lectures on questions of the times. His books and essays were translated into French, German, Spanish, and other foreign languages. The general subject of his writing was religious criticism and the philosophy of religion.

Leseprobe

WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE?

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M. M. Mangasarian

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE?

WHAT WAS THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE?

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IT IS BY OBSERVING THE frequency and emphasis with which certain views and expressions occur and reoccur in an author, and the consistency with which they are given the preference, that we may be able to generalize as to his philosophy or religion. As Shakespeare’s works are neither a treatise on theology nor a manual of philosophy, our only means of discovering his attitude toward the problems of life and destiny is by reading, as it were, between the lines.

A great mind can neither sophisticate nor suppress its earnest convictions. This does not mean that anyone with earnest convictions must necessarily be a propagandist. To think and to let think, represents a state of mind which is entirely consistent, both with enthusiasm and toleration, if not with proselytism. We believe that Shakespeare has unmistakably expressed himself on the subject of religion, as he has on that of patriotism, for instance, but without any missionary zeal, which fact has led not a few students of his works to the conclusion that of all the great poets Shakespeare is the only one without a religion.

Green, in his Short History of England, writes, that “It is difficult to say whether Shakespeare had any religious faith or no.” But this is not a fair way of stating the problem. If by “religious faith” Green means the Anglican, the Presbyterian, or the Unitarian faith, then it is true that we do not know to which of these he nominally belonged, and it does not much matter. But if he means that we have no means of knowing whether or not he accepted the Christian or any other supernatural interpretation of the Universe, the allegation is not true, so far as we are able to judge. It is difficult to read any one of Shakespeare’s tragedies without perceiving that its author is an anti-supernaturalist. In Shakespeare this world is all there is, and it is what men have made it. It is in terms of naturalism, pure and simple, that Shakespeare states the problem of human existence.

It is no objection to this to say that there are ghosts, witches, and apparitions on his stage, and that therefore he was a believer in the supernatural. We must not confound the machinery of the stage with the stage-master. Even Hamlet, when he exclaims that he sees his dead father and Horatio asks him “Where?” answers: “In my mind’s eye;” which shows how little the appurtenances of the theatre of those times affected the atmosphere of the author’s mind. This same Hamlet who in popular parlance has beheld his dead father revisit the glimpses of the moon, declares in the language of his own sober thought, that the beyond is an “undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.“ And if Macbeth, unlike Hamlet, puts faith in the supernatural, he does so to his own hurt. But even Macbeth recovers his senses sufficiently to exclaim:

And be these juggling fiends no more believed,

That palter with lies in a double sense;

and again:

Infected be the air whereon they ride;

And damned all those that trust them!

If it be objected that Shakespeare’s hostility to the supernatural is confined to what might be called the bogus variety, and not to the kind that is true, we reply that there is no evidence in the plays that Shakespeare ever made such a distinction. Without anywhere intimating that he believed in one kind of the supernatural and not in another (the kind people believe in is generally their own, and the kind they deny, that of somebody else), Shakespeare expresses his opinion of those who accept the supernatural in no uncertain way:—

Look how the world’s poor people are amazed

At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,

Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gaz’d

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies. *

Having just told us that “It is difficult to say whether Shakespeare had any religious faith or no,” Green intimates that Shakespeare was an agnostic, and probably a disciple of Montaigne. If he was an agnostic, it is not true that we do not know “whether he had any religious faith or no.” We can be sure that he was without religious faith of any kind, using the word “religious” in the sense of the supernatural—if he preferred agnosticism to the creeds. He was an agnostic, it is to be supposed, because he could not conscientiously profess any of the “religious faiths” of his day.

But to be an agnostic does not mean to be without a religion; it only means to be without a revealed religion. This very agnosticism, as the expression of a courageous, honest and rational protest against revealed religions, is a religion—more manly, certainly, than the popular religions, because while the latter are imitative to a large extent, the former is unconstrained and personal.