Shakespeare's Hybrid Faith: History, Religion and the Stage (review)

This book offers close readings of six of Shakespeare's English history plays against the background of the time they were likely composed and performed, with particular attention to religious issues. Jean-Christophe Mayer omits 3 Henry VI because he is interested in witchcraft in the early histories, and witchcraft is practiced only in 1 and 2 Henry VI. He omits three of the later histories because they have received a disproportionate share of critical attention (12). In addition to chapters on particular plays, he offers a chapter that carefully reconsiders the documentary evidence concerning the Chamberlain's Men's performance of a play about Richard II on the eve of Essex's rebellion in 1601.

The focus throughout is on what Mayer calls "hybrid faith," adapting Patrick Collinson's description of Elizabethan religion as "'mongrel'" (8). "Hybrid" is certainly more elegant than "mongrel," and Mayer is sensitively attuned to English usage, the more so as he is a scholar whose first language is French. Mayer's point is that the religion of the plays he discusses cannot be identified as distinctly Catholic or Protestant, that they "self-consciously harbour the old and the new, that they engage with many of the religious issues of their time, but-more fundamentally-that they not only have the power to pose pressing questions but also to allow potential contradictions to remain" (155).

At first blush, such a purpose would appear to run counter to the current interest in Shakespeare's sympathy for the "old faith," and Mayer explicitly distances his project from such recent books as Clare Asquith's Shadowplay (2005) and Richard Wilson's Secret Shakespeare (2004) (4), which assume that Shakespeare's recusant Catholic heritage is legible as allegory. On balance, however, this book is sympathetic to faith in the plays, including Catholic faith, while maintaining that other points of view are apparent as well. The important point, Mayer argues, is that the history plays he discusses are not merely secular, so materialist readings of them are inadequate. Shakespeare, in Mayer's view, engages actively and seriously with religious questions without being partisan.

Yet sensitivity to Catholic faith in particular frequently motivates Mayer's argument. Rehearsing the standard documentary evidence, Mayer asserts that "Shakespeare's father's Catholicism can almost certainly be proved" (5). "Proved" is a strong word, especially in view of Robert Bearman's recent examination of the documents.¹ Mayer points out that Bearman is "unable to prove his case definitively" (159n22), but Bearman has surely raised enough questions that the reverse case cannot be proven either. Mayer's attending to witchcraft in 1 and 2 Henry VI seems to invite its dismissal as a vestige of Catholic superstition, yet the plays take witchcraft seriously enough to raise questions about suspicion of it, while not demonizing the papacy and its influence as mere superstition. Mayer offers a similar argument for ghosts in Richard III, acknowledging Stephen Greenblatt's materialist reading of ghosts and Purgatory in his 2001 Hamlet in Purgatory (50-51) but insisting nonetheless that ghosts in Richard III have a religious vitality that defies denominational identity. In a play set before the Protestant Reformation, Mayer points out, an array of ghosts approves the very regime that would bring the Reformation to England (56).

The book's boldest move in defense of Shakespeare's sympathy for Catholicism is the chapter on Essex's rebellion and the Chamberlain's Men. Identifying the Catholic allegiance of several of Essex's followers (including those who commissioned the Chamberlain's Men's performance of a play about Richard II), Mayer argues that Essex's embrace of "oppositional social forces" was not "mere opportunism" (126) but a tolerant affirmation of various religious allegiances in support of "a dream of reform" (101)-an attitude that he thinks may tell us something about Shakespeare's company as well, because of the players' willingness to cooperate...