Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592–1604 (review)

The cover of Beatrice Groves's Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592–1604 features the x-ray photograph of the Flower portrait of Shakespeare, which reveals that the portrait was painted over an earlier image of the Madonna and Child. While many scholars have mined the religious references in Shakespeare's works to discern his personal religious leanings (was he a closet Catholic?), Groves employs this image to illustrate her main assertion about Shakespeare's use of religious language and metaphors. Groves traces the influence of both Protestant and Catholic sensibilities in Shakespeare's work: Protestant ideology emphasizing direct engagement with the written Word of the Bible, Catholic tradition seeking to inspire an emotional response to the stories and themes of the Bible, manifested in visual spectacle and dramatized in the mystery-play tradition that was still influential in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. She concludes that it is only to be expected that Catholic sensibilities and traditions would survive into the Protestant era: "Catholicism lies behind Shakespeare as surely as it lies behind his image in the Flower portrait, but not because it can be proved to be what he truly believed. Catholicism was the faith of England's past and whatever Shakespeare's own doctrinal affiliations we should be neither shocked nor surprised to find Catholicism underlying his dramaturgy as well as his portrait" (6).

Chapters 1 ("Drama and the Word") and 2 ("Shakespeare's Incarnational Aesthetic") examine, respectively, the Protestant culture and the Catholic tradition that shaped Shakespeare's world. For the remainder of the book, Groves focuses her attention on close readings of the religious references in specific plays. Chapter 3 ("Comedic Form and Paschal Motif") is an original examination of Romeo and Juliet, as it echoes the Easter resurrection; Groves argues that the basic comedic impulse of the story of young love is given greater power and resonance through its allusive tragic ending. Chapter 4 ("Religious Imagery and the Succession") discusses King John in light of the Christic imagery, which in Shakespeare's sources surrounds the character of John, "the proto-Protestant martyr king" (7), but which he transfers to the character of Arthur: an innocent sacrificial lamb along the lines of Isaac and Christ, and true heir to the throne. The closing statement to this chapter is intriguing: "King John shares with the New Testament and the mystery plays a radical social agenda in which true royalty belongs to the dispossessed" (120): however, the political implications of this bold statement on the royal succession are not discussed.

Chapters 5 and 6 consider ways in which Shakespeare deals with the concept of divine right in 1 Henry IV and Measure for Measure. While "Hal stages his own redemption in Christian terms: a Lenten period of expectant, self-imposed exile is followed by a reconciliation between father and son through a decisive single combat with a rebellious enemy" (7), it is obvious that he is not a Christ figure but a Machiavellian prince crafting his public image. In Measure for Measure, which was performed before King James shortly after his accession, connections between the Duke and Christ abound (reflecting also upon James's pretensions to divine rule); however, Groves argues that in his problematic characterization of the Duke, Shakespeare also implicitly suggests the impossibility of human rule mirroring the divine.

In her conclusion, Groves investigates the visual spectacle of Hermione's miraculous resurrection at the end of The Winter's Tale. While Shakespeare's focus on the miraculous, pathetic, and mysterious — including the awakening of Juliet from death to life, the near-blinding of the innocent Arthur, and the reappearance of Claudio — would seem to reflect Catholic sensibilities, Groves argues that such is merely the stuff of drama. According to Groves, Shakespeare's drama centers equally on visual spectacle and "the rich verbal stimulus of Protestantism's focus on the Word"; to conclude her engaging and well...