Shakespeare: Bard Of Love
By PAUL KRAUSE
William Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist of all-time. I said it. Admittedly, as a student, I didn’t give much consideration to the Bard of Stratford-Upon-Avon. We read Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth, but the plays weren’t entirely meaningful to me as a high school student. Now, however, I see the great wisdom of Shakespeare and why we should read, and love, and wrestle with, the greatest bard who ever lived.
If there is a single theme that Shakespeare’s many plays deal with, historical, tragic, and comedic, it is love. Perhaps it is unsurprising. We cannot go throughout our own lives without dealing with the reality of love in the world.
It becomes clear, upon reading Shakespeare’s reflections on love in his many plays, that the dramatist was exceedingly well-read. Touchstone, in As You Like It, espouses a materialistic, or Epicurean, view of love. Love is what the body needs and desires. This view of love is contrasted with the wholesome romantic ideal revealed by Rosalind and Orlando. And the romantic love of Rosalind and Orlando stands in stark contrast to the most famous romantic love duo in Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet.
Love is also tragic. Love is equally redemptive and hopeful. Scenes of marriage and courtship dominate Shakespeare’s corpus. In the midst of tragedy and destruction, death and bitterness, the hope of love appears as a shining light calling us home. Even if not all the characters necessarily experience that rapturous bliss offered in love.
The relevance of reading Shakespeare as a Christian is something that all should be aware of — whether adult or student.
As such, I will briefly touch on why we should read Shakespeare and why he is the most preeminent of Christian writers by examining the role and movement of love in several of his plays.
I have opted for the tragic romance of Romeo and Juliet because that is one of the universally read plays that has also seeped into popular culture in a myriad of ways and serves as a cautionary tale. I have also chosen what I consider the quality of redemptive love in Henry V wherein our supposedly Christian king embodies Christian charity in his encounter with Katherine. Finally, love as representing hope is the great spirit that governs The Merchant of Venice, though we don’t necessarily think of the tremendous importance of love in that play even though we should.
That Shakespeare was a Christian dramatist should not be shocking. It is only embarrassing to moderns who wish to divorce his otherwise wondrous themes and drama from the spirit that moved them — much like contemporary critics of religion who praise the ethics of Jesus while embarrassed by the Nazarene’s divinity.
Yet the love that Shakespeare inserted into his many plays were influenced by the Christian vision of love and meant for a Christian audience. The many references to Jove or Juno just underscore the point of Late Renaissance writers who infused into pagan names the ideals revealed by Holy Writ. Shakespeare doesn’t celebrate the pagan view of materialistic love — Touchstone, for example, does not bring the resolution to As You Like It. Antony and Cleopatra, likewise, die. As do our most infamous Shakespearean lovebirds.
Romeo and Juliet is, perhaps, the second most famous Shakespeare play after Hamlet. It is a teen favorite and has many cultural lives, living on in film and opera and serving as the basis for West Side Story and even The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride.
The ill-fated love of Romeo and Juliet is stated quite clearly when Romeo declares love a “madness,” implicitly revealing his enslavement to passion rather than rationality and sacrificial love. He wants. While we know the feuding families are also to blame, Shakespeare’s symbolism is on full display which is often missed. This is not a tale of love gone awry from ancient squabbles. This is a love gone awry that reminds us of the Fall.
Romeo seduces Juliet from below while she is above (on the balcony). Romeo is in a garden amongst fruit trees, an orchard reminiscent the Garden of Eden. He successfully captivates her. Later, rather than acknowledge the light of love, Juliet’s statement that “if love be blind it best agrees with night” signifies the darkness of the love (really, lust) that Romeo and Juliet are set on. Juliet falls for the madness of passions that has gripped Romeo.
Our adult characters who should provide wisdom to our young lovers also fail. Rather than shepherd them, Friar Lawrence hastily seeks to marry Romeo and Juliet — without telling anyone. Capulet sees his daughter as a tool for political gain, preferring an arranged marriage far away than possible healing in their hometown.
Shakespeare cautions against the rash of romance without sacrifice and rationality, something that we find in a stark contrast to the romantic love exhibited by Orlando and Rosalind in As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet experience their fall and the penalty of the fall is death as Shakespeare brilliantly crafts for us. Romeo and Juliet are not innocent of their fall and demise as most modern interpreters want you to believe. Hence the tragedy.
If the love of Romeo and Juliet cautions us against the “madness” of passion (a symbolic retelling of the Fall as mentioned), love serves as a redemptive force in Henry V. During the war in France, Henry says some of the most memorable lines in all Shakespeare. “Once more unto the breech dear friends,” “Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George,” and the Saint Crispin’s Day speech stand as some of the most recognizable lines in Shakespeare. All in a single play too.
Yet the memorable lines of Henry’s rhetoric come when Henry is at his worst. He is a warrior threatening to butcher thousands of innocent civilians in his conquest of town after town. His infamous St. Crispin’s Day speech combines inspiration with shame.
Those men of England still “in bed” (not on campaign) will look upon the veterans with shame and humiliation when they see the veterans’ scars and “hold their manhoods cheap” in the presence of those who fought with Harry at Agincourt.
Upon close inspection, King Harry isn’t a “Christian king” as he claims to be. He has unleashed “famine, sword, and fire” over the world. Bloodshed dominates most of the play.
But another side of Harry is revealed at the end of the play with his courtship and marriage to Princess Katherine which brings peace to the play. Conspiracy and war dominate the first four acts. Peace through love in marriage brings the play to its conclusion.
Henry offers no memorable speech. All he musters up is a simple “I love you.” The love of Harry and Kate, however, bind kingdoms together and ends the “famine, sword, and fire” unleashed by Henry earlier in the play. Love, here, is redemptive and brings peace to a world at war. Conquest cannot bring peace. Only love can.
Wonder And Wisdom
The Merchant of Venice also concerns itself with love. Portia and Bassanio are in love, but their love is troubled by larger sociopolitical issues that drives the plot of the play. The animosity between Shylock and Antonio, the lack of mercy and forgiveness, threatens to destabilize Venice and our lovers.
It takes the intervention of mercy, through Portia, to end the feuding that prevents love from flourishing in the social order. Without the “quality of mercy” that Portia extols in the famous court scene, a functioning civil society cannot exist. And if a functioning civil society doesn’t exist, the love that makes life worth living in civil society cannot be consummated.
The play ends, as we know, with Portia forgiving Bassanio who has given away the ring Portia gave him as a seal of their love. Forgiveness is key to reconciliation. And reconciliation is completed in the joy of marriage and the hope it offers the world.
Venice has been under a chaotic spell throughout the play. Our characters have been caught in that maelstrom. The love that Portia and Bassanio have for each other, consummated through marriage, brings the play to its conclusion offering a profound hope for our characters and the city at large. Only love in marriage offers that hope, just as it offers redemption (as it did to Henry in his eponymous play).
Reading Shakespeare is a must for Christians. Adults and students alike. As parents and teachers who have duties in education, as our Catechism states, we need to share the profound wonder and wisdom of Shakespeare and how he is most profoundly Christian writer and thinker. It might just open a whole new world to the famous bard from Stratford-Upon-Avon.
