friend dared not in public acknowledge the acquaintance (36), it was, nevertheless, in the poet's power to confer unique and surpassing honour on that friend. Shakespeare was evidently aware that he held a patent of the very highest nobility. CHAPTER X. THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE. THE late Rev. J. R. Green remarked, with reference to Shakespeare's religious belief:-"It is hard indeed to say whether he had any religious belief or no. The religious phrases which are thinly scattered over his works are little more than expressions of a distant and imaginative reverence. But on the deeper grounds of religious faith his silence is significant. He is silent; and the doubt of Hamlet deepens his silence about the afterworld. 'To die,' it may be, was to him as it was to Claudio, 'to go we know X not whither.' Often as his questionings turn to the riddle of life and death, he leaves it a riddle to the last, without heeding the common theological solutions around him.”1 It can scarcely, however, be correct to say that Shakespeare did not heed any of "the common theological solutions around him," though it may be true that he accepted none of them, neither Puritanism, nor Anglicanism, nor Romanism. On account of the peculiar character of the Sonnets, the question as to Shakespeare's religious convictions here acquires a special interest. Questionings as to life and death are abundant; but the evidence to be found in these poems serves but to deepen the conclusion derived from the plays. There are two or three allusions to common theological tenets, which should certainly have all the weight to which they are entitled; but it may be doubted whether these allusions can be regarded as other than conventional, 1 History of the English People, vol. ii. pp. 479, 480. like the expressions of religious belief in Shakespeare's will, which were probably introduced by a country attorney as forming part of a customary and valid document. As such we may conclude with some probability are— and "So till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes" (55); "Then give me welcome, next my heaven, the best, When he speaks of "precious friends hid in death's dateless night" (30) there is no accompanying expression of hope that they will be restored to him in a future life. Again, the "surly sullen bell" is to announce the poet's departure from the world (71); but he will not then have gone to enjoy the felicity of saints and angels; on the contrary, he will have "fled from this vile world," "to dwell with vilest worms;" to be, "perhaps, compounded with clay." Still more important is 74, where the poet's "spirit," "the better part" of him, is contrasted with his body, consigned to earth, "the prey of worms,' ""too base to be remembered." But we find that the "spirit," this "better part," is still to live on, not, however, in Hades or Heaven, but in the verses which he has composed: "The worth of that (his body) is that which it contains (his spirit), And that is this (his verse), and this with thee remains." And here we come again to Shakespeare's expectation of a literary immortality. But this question has been just before discussed. Mr. C. Armitage Brown, however, asks, with reference to the subject we are now considering,-"Have we nothing in his volume of Poems where he willingly expresses his own religious feelings? Yes, one entire Sonnet, and no more, proving his strong faith in the immortality of the soul, and possibly, as a friend has observed, imbued with G arguments from St. Paul. It stands in his Poems, Sonnet 146th."1 I think, however, that a careful consideration of this Sonnet will cause us to question Mr. Brown's view, or possibly we may come to an opposite conclusion : "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [Why feed'st] these rebel powers that thee array ? 2 Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, If, however, as Mr. Armitage Brown says, this Sonnet stands alone as an expression of religious belief, there is obviously some ground for questioning whether the interpretation which Mr. Brown maintains to be true is the right one. No doubt, on a superficial view, the language employed may seem quite in harmony with such an explanation. But if the Sonnet have this religious significance, then it must mean that Shakespeare contemplated attaining eternal felicity by fasting and bodily mortification, gaining spiritual wealth by the pining of the emaciated body. But the supposition that Shakespeare seriously thought of adopting an ascetic or monastic life is scarcely to be entertained. Moreover, it is of great importance, with regard to the true 1 Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, pp. 221, 222. 2 The Quarto gives : " Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth, My sinfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array," &c. The repetition of "my sinfull earth " is obviously wrong. "Why feed'st" agrees with the context, and "feed'st" occurs in 1, line 6. meaning, that though in no other Sonnet is language used precisely identical or parallel, yet the conquest over death is elsewhere spoken of, and is so spoken of with reference to the immortality of the poet's verse. Thus, in the 55th Sonnet the friend is assured that through the poet's "powerful rhyme," which will be more enduring than marble or gilded monuments, he will still come fully forth in the gaze of men, "'Gainst Death and all oblivious enmity." Or, again, there is 107, where the poet speaks of Death as "subscribing" to him, as submissive to his power; but still this submission is brought about by the vital force of his literary compositions: "Death to me subscribes, Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme, Such being the case, it is reasonable to explain in a similar manner the "dying of death" and the "feeding on death" spoken of in the Sonnet we are now more particularly considering. Having in view the attainment of undying fame, the poet summons his powers to the composition of immortal works, even though the strain on the body, the servant of the soul, be such as to shorten life. Immortality is thus to be nourished while the body pines and dies. By an easy and not unprecedented metonymy the dying body is identified with death itself: "So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And, death once dead, there's no more dying then." If the reader thinks of the succession of immortal works which followed one another so rapidly from the poet's pen in the first years of the seventeenth century, and also of the fact that he died at the age of fifty-two, it may seem not quite unlikely that a very serious purpose was expressed in this remarkable Sonnet. 89452B |