In May 2004, the Register published “Did William Shakespeare Die a Papist?”

This column concerned recent scholarship that supports William Shakespeare’s likely Catholicism. Since the printing of my article, a profusion of new ink has been poured out on this fascinating topic. Much of that ink had to do with Clare Asquith’s book Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, published in 2005.

Not only does Asquith maintain in Shadowplay that Shakespeare was indeed Catholic, but she also asserts that almost all of his writings have concealed, nuanced references — secret code, if you will — that carefully cloak his devout belief in the Catholic Church. Asquith points out that these hidden messages are stealthily incorporated into the plot structure intentionally as a kind of buttress, if only in words, against the collapsing Catholic Church in 16th-century England. Undiscovered for centuries, Asquith claims to be the first to detect and decode Shakespeare’s secret meta-language.

Shadowplay represents a seismic shift toward understanding the greatest English-speaking writer, making it enormously important for Shakespeare studies.

What’s more, it reads like a suspense/mystery novel — but pulp fiction it is not. Asquith has plenty of facts to back up each claim, which is much more than I can report about Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. John Guy, fellow of history at Clare College, Cambridge, called it “the most visceral, challenging and compelling work on Shakespeare’s place in history in 20 years. I agree with this perspective: Clare Asquith’s insights are profound, and this book has the potential to fundamentally change how we view Shakespeare and the plays, in a way that only adds to their majesty.”

Historic Break

The major development Asquith puts forth in her new book is that Shakespeare’s main objectives as a dramatist were to address the religious and political crisis of his time: England’s historic break with the Pope.

This is a radical departure from the position held by many Shakespeare scholars. Some have felt that his plays addressed broad, universal themes, but did not focus on the current events of his day. On the contrary, Asquith demonstrates in her book that Shakespeare was seriously concerned about the religious crisis roiling Europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She writes: “The tempest is a fundamental term in the grammar of Shakespeare’s hidden plays. … In political terms, these plays are judiciously balanced: Though a return to the fold of universal Christendom is seen as England’s best hope, Shakespeare avoids demonizing Protestants or elevating Catholics. Both sides are equally faulty.”

As discussed in my prior article, the Catholic faith during Shakespeare’s era was strictly forbidden throughout England. Asquith points out that, in order to defend Catholicism, protect himself and get his work past government censors, Shakespeare was forced to utilize “a sophisticated allegorical tool kit.” She compares the playwright to many political dissidents who have employed subterfuge to elude censorship.

Asquith cites her and her diplomat husband’s experiences in Soviet Russia — specifically their attendance at a modern adaptation of a Chekhov play in Moscow that skillfully incorporated pro-West endorsements — as the genesis for her code-breaking work on Shakespeare.

According to Asquith, it was through Shakespeare’s ingenious playwriting that he subtly embedded criticism of Queen Elizabeth I and King James’s excessive Catholic persecution and declared his allegiance to Rome, albeit with extreme caution.

She posits that the veiled, double-entendre aspects in Shakespeare’s plays are, in fact, of much greater importance than the actual plots. Asquith suggests that, in many respects, the “surface play” entertains and teaches, while the “inner play” preaches and protects the truth. Fundamentally, these coded beliefs were to encourage the Catholic resistance.

Asquith’s theory focuses heavily on oft-repeated expressions, and she convincingly situates these phrases into the Catholic vs. Reformation debate. A glossary of words and expressions at the book’s close elucidates their meaning based on known aspects of the debate. Some of the more alluring examples include:

— Light against Dark, which associated light with the true, Catholic religion and dark with the new, somber religion.

— High looks down on Low, which describes the new “low Church” religion’s use of simple communion tables that replaced the elevated altars.

— Love opposes fickle Lust, which is marked by the inconstant moon and “shifting” time. Shakespeare uses what he called “the ever-fixed mark” of true love as an analogy for courageous allegiance to spiritual truth, and he directly appeals to the queen when referring to the moon.

— Moon and Sun: Shakespeare uses the time-honored image of inconstancy, the moon as a metaphor for Queen Elizabeth. Asquith writes, “The moon ruled over darkness; it was barren, it was eclipsed by heaven’s true light, the sun. Therefore, the Queen as the moon was distant, remote, hard to comprehend and forever changing. The sun and those tanned by the sun are the Catholic faithful.”

— Calendar as paradoxically marking accurate or inaccurate Calendar Time. During the Reformation, one of the chief points of contention between the Catholics and Protestants was the measurement of time. Asquith writes, “In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced the solution to inaccuracies in the calendar that had exercised mathematicians for centuries. In order to correct the gradually worsening chronological imbalance, it was declared that on Oct. 4, 1582, the calendar would jump 10 days to Oct. 14. But the anti-papal regime in England refused to conform. As a result, for the next 150 years the country was sometimes as much as five weeks out of step with the rest of Europe. A country where characters are muddled about times and dates is always, in Shakespearean terms, Protestant.”

— Merchants as Priests. Jesuits called souls “merchandise,” pursuivants “creditors” and sacraments “gems.”

— Rome — Asquith writes, “Classical Rome was the simplest cover for discussion of the Church of Rome, Caesar representing the papacy.”

— Shadow and Substance — When these words appear in Shakespeare’s works, they evoke one of the key theological debates concerning the true or symbolic presence of the body of Christ.

Love of Riddles

To support that the code is heavily used in Shakespeare’s writings, Asquith discusses Elizabethan culture’s love of riddles and allegories. Asquith calls to mind the once elaborate use of riddles, puns and allegories employed in painting, verse, ballads, costumes, heraldry, jewelry and even architecture.

Sixteenth-century society at large reveled in such showmanship of skill and the dance of the intellect. Queen Elizabeth delighted most of all in riddle and wordplay, and ultimately she should be pleased. Working within this framework Shakespeare easily employed these devices in his writing.

Asquith writes: “Authority for the prevalence of coded writing among Shakespeare’s contemporaries comes from the Christian humanist writers of the time, for whom civilized literature was coded by its very nature.”

If I had to lodge one complaint with the Asquith decoder, it is certainly minor: Reading Shakespeare after reading Shadowplay could develop into an automatic understanding configured by the impulse to use Asquith’s interpretations. In this light, perhaps Asquith’s decoder is at times overly employed. Nevertheless, her elaborate, overall achievement is groundbreaking.

Thanks to her, passages that were once considered awkward and enigmatic reveal entirely new possibilities of a profoundly poetic — and personally spiritual — language that, apparently, compelled Shakespeare to work.

Embracing this revolutionary concept of coded messages allows Asquith to unmask the inner motives of Shakespeare, suggesting that he operated on two levels. These were distinct, yet not mutually exclusive: the natural and the supernatural.

This book should receive wide mainstream attention. Many scholars have already given it their imprimatur in their reviews, and it’s prominently displayed in many bookstores. But there is none of the frenzy from the public at large that followed The Da Vinci Code, which has far less historical accuracy. Nevertheless, the book is getting its deserved critical acclaim from the scholars.

As Launcelot states in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice: “Truth will out.”

Jennifer Roche writes

from Brooklyn, New York.