The Quest for Shakespeare
by Joseph Pearce
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joseph PearceBrand: Ignatius Press
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04
ISBN: 1586172247
Number of pages: 216
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Book Reviews of The Quest for Shakespeare
Book Review: "The Play's The Thing"
Summary: 2 Stars
This book consists of three sections, an investigation into the religious allegiance of Shakespeare the man, a proposed theory for the best way to read his works, and an examination of "King Lear" in light of that theory. The first section, unfortunately, is too largely given over to a frankly tiresome rehashing of the conclusions of such recent journalists and scholars as Michael Wood, Peter Milward, Clare Asquith, and Mutschmann and Wentersdorf on Shakespeare and Catholicism. The evidence presented identifies Shakespeare's father and daughter clearly as recusant Catholics, but leaves Shakepeare's own position as a recusant Catholic pretty much a matter of likely supposition to the very end. Supposition, in fact, comes to play so heavy a part in this section of the book that one begins to suspect Pearce's wishes as much as anything else may be the father of his thoughts. Despite his welcome and pretty consistent qualifying, his tone in places resembles the too flat, eager certitude that used to distinguish the teaching style of grade school nuns. Still, I would call this the best part of the book. Pearce's skills as a historian, in my view, far outweigh his strengths later in the book as a literary critic.
Part Two, a proposal on how to read Shakespeare properly, while it convincingly rules the a-historical, post-modern relativists out of court, becomes itself equally preposterous in its claim that "if Shakespeare was a Catholic, or was greatly influenced by the Catholicism of his parents and the persecution that surrounded the practice of Catholicism in his day, it forces us to reread the plays in an entirely new light." This sounds like not much more than a publisher's blurb for Pearce's next book, which is already, I understand, in the planning stages. At the same time, Pearce himself recognizes "the perspective of tradition-oriented critics...[and] the evident clarity of moral vision that they had always perceived in the plays," so perhaps it's not yet necessary for us to toss the Shakespearean criticism of Maynard Mack, John Danby, David Bevington, or C.S.Lewis among others into the furnace after all. Pearce's suggested way of reading is to understand first an author's belief system so as better to discern what must necessarily be present in a specific literary work. Without denying the reality of an author grounded in history and beliefs, I submit that this procedure is to go about things just backwards. It is unfortunately a revival of what the New Critics rightly pilloried many years ago as the "intentional fallacy." They suggested as a much better mode of approach trying to render through close reading the highest possible justice to what the work itself demonstrably or implicitly contained, to be a reader on whom nothing was lost, rather than one so attuned to preconceptions about an author's belief system as to be in danger of reading things not actually present into a specific work of art, while perhaps simultaneously missing what is there.
Part Three, Pearce's reading of "King Lear" as an unlikely variant of the "divine comedy", in my view bypasses exactly what is essential and from a Christian perspective (Catholic, if you will) what in fact makes the tragedy shockingly and unbearably sad. Just as "Beowulf" is a pagan work retold by a Christian author, "Lear" is a work by a Christian author which is set is pre-Christian Britain. Cordelia and Edgar are what some learned Elizabethans would have identified ethically as "natural Christians." Theirs are the charitable works and "nature" upon which grace will later build. However important charitable human behavior is, though, the play argues that it alone is not enough finally to make our lives bearable in this world. What with its contradictory, disputable attitudes toward the gods, the world of "Lear" is a world desperately in need of an actual Redeemer, one who has yet to appear in human history. The play ends in unrelievable sadness, with the King, in an unrecognized prefiguring of the Pieta, holding the broken body of his virtuous child cradled in his arms. This shocking event is Shakespeare's own addition to the traditional tale - help comes by chance just moments too late to save Cordelia, and Lear experiences ultimate misery. If the heartbroken Lear dies of joy imagining his dead daughter is reviving, it's important to remember that he is mistaken in this assumption. In the pre-Christian world of the play, we are indeed the most miserable of creatures - the death of the wonderful Cordelia lacks any meaning deeper than misfortune nor provides any solid ground for patience in similar trials of affliction. If this is Catholic art after all, it is informed, I'd argue, by a much tougher vision than Joseph Pearce with his notion of a "divine comedy" oddly present in its ostensibly pagan world has recognized.
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