Shakespeare

He also read an account of some spiritual malpractice by Jesuit priests in Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. It was an account that had some resonance after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, but for Shakespeare it had a specific interest. Among the Jesuit priests, who were accused of feigning ceremonies of exorcism on some impressionable chambermaids, were Thomas Cottam and Robert Debdale. Cottam was the brother of the Stratford schoolmaster, John Cottam, to whom, many years before, Shakespeare probably owed his introduction to the Lancastrian recusant families of Hoghton Tower and Rufford Hall. Robert Debdale had been a neighbour of the Hathaways at Shottery and, being of an age with Shakespeare, may well have attended the Stratford school with him. So it is likely that Shakespeare turned to Harsnett’s account for news of his contemporaries, and only by accident or indirection discovered material that would be of use in King Lear.

We may picture his mind and imagination as a vast assimilator, picking up trifles that were later polished until they glowed. He incorporates so many disparate elements, and conflates so many inconsistent sources, that it is impossible to gauge what attitude he takes towards the unfolding drama of King Lear. He is so absorbed by the matter to hand that there is neither opportunity nor occasion to dispense judgement except of the most blatant theatrical kind. The drama has no ultimate “meaning.” In a play filled with rage and death, this may be the hardest lesson of all. Yet it may contain redemption. To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning to life and that there are limits to human understanding. So we lay down a heavy burden and are made humble. That is what Shakespearian tragedy accomplishes for us.

We glimpse here the insistent and instinctive patterns of his imagination that have nothing to do with homilies or sermons. He moved forward quickly with chiming words and themes, parallel phrases and situations, contrasting characters and events, working out their destinies. He improvised; he was surprised by his characters. He picked material from anywhere and everywhere. The feigning of madness by “poor Tom,” for example, is amplified by allusions to Samuel Harsnett’s account of apparent diabolic possession; in front of large crowds the Jesuit priests summoned forth various unclean spirits from the bodies of the women. Shakespeare uses the names of the devils that were invoked on this occasion. He also borrows the language of possession. It was a way of intimating that Tom’s madness is feigned, just as the Jesuit priests are engaged in what Harsnett describes as “the feat of juggling and deluding the people by counterfeit miracles.” But is there not some deeper connection between the theatre and these rites of exorcism, in front of an awed and astonished crowd? It is as if the “mimic superstition” of the papists was somehow replicated or complemented by the illusions of the playhouse. The invocation of Roman Catholic superstition, far from lancing Tom’s folly, somehow increases the sacredness of Lear’s terror. It may also have led Shakespeare to contemplate the nature of illusion itself. Even when the powers of the Jesuit priests are feigned, they seem to be effective.

That is why many scholars have deemed King Lear to be a mystery play in all but name, an echo of Catholic ritual satisfying the liturgical and iconographic hunger of those who professed the old religion. The desire for ceremony mony outlives the faith that first employed it. In fact there may be grace and redemption in the ceremony itself. It is certainly true that in 1609 and 1610 a group of Catholic actors performed King Lear in various sympathetic houses in Yorkshire. It would be absurd to suggest that this was a deliberate strategy on Shakespeare’s part. It is more likely that the forces of his nature comprehended sacred, as well as secular, realities and that this reversion to old imagery was wholly instinctive.