Faith in Shakespeare by Richard C. McCoy (review)

Richard McCoy's Faith in Shakespeare, the title of which contains a clever pun, offers a refreshing approach to the subject of belief in his plays and poems that is particularly relevant to current interest in religion and Reformation controversies in Shakespeare. In the preface, and again in the introductory chapter to this accessible and convincing study of faith in the powers of figurative language and theatrical illusion, McCoy asserts that the fixation on religion in Shakespeare over the past ten years has prioritized contexts over the literary texts themselves and has led to speculation yielding little certainty about the playwright and poet's religious beliefs. Instead, he rightly dares to profess faith in literature during a postmodern age of interpretive skepticism and doubt. Discussing more than a dozen plays, ranging from The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet to Henry V and The Tempest, as well as a number of Sonnets, he argues that these works invoke the language of divinity, miracles, and magic but focus primarily on a secular kind of belief in the efficacy of artistry, trickery, and love. Following the lead of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Biographia Literaria, McCoy defines faith in Shakespeare as "fundamentally poetic faith" linked to the "willing suspension of disbelief" (4).

This eloquently written book includes five chapters and an epilogue dealing with Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and tragicomedies in relation to literary theory and criticism by Sir Philip Sidney as well as Coleridge. The chapter on The Comedy of Errors discusses the uncanny consequences of obvious mistakes; the ending of this play, which culminates with a vision of "Sweet recreation" and happiness, feels miraculous but affirms ordinary familial relationships (5.1.79).¹ One of McCoy's strongest chapters explores the fool Touchstone's statement that "the truest poetry is the most / feigning" in As You Like It (3.3.15-16), a notion allied with Sidney's defense of inventive writers and their ideal, yet fictive visions in his Apology for Poetry; in this section of Faith in Shakespeare, he argues that Rosalind's clever play-acting reveals true emotions while sustaining belief in "feigned illusions" (xiii), a paradox in keeping with Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's Sonnets. The next chapter concerns Othello and illustrates the lethal consequences of the Moor's failure to trust Desdemona; the compelling final chapter about The Winter's Tale showcases Leontes' recovery from Othello-like bad faith through belief in an improbable outcome that "should be hooted at / Like an old tale" (5.3.117-18). McCoy's learned study, which is well worth reading, concludes with an epilogue about how Prospero's magical art in The Tempest compels belief in the supernatural with its mood of wonder but is ultimately the creation of stagecraft, the pleasures of which have inspired faith in Shakespeare for over four centuries.

Chapter 2, "The Comedy of Errors and Illusion's Blessed Power," focuses on spectacles tied to family reunions that the audience supposes are providential and divine but that are poetical and theatrical instead. He links this early comedy to others such as Love's Labor's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Taming of the Shrew in terms of their showcasing of how mocked and scorned plays and players are vindicated by the transformative agency of illusion onstage. McCoy's argument throughout this book draws upon reception, performance, and speech act theory. Discussing Rosalind and Orlando's mock marriage in As You Like It in the next chapter, he disagrees with J. L. Austin's assertion in How To Do Things With Words that true speech acts are incompatible with joking, acting, or writing poetry and that they must be spoken seriously in order to be taken seriously (73). The topic of seriousness appears in his earlier claim in chapter 2 that "in contrast to Bacon and the other gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Shakespeare does not take himself or his work so seriously, and pleasure and play...