The quality of mercy is not strained
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The thronéd monarch better than his crown.
– The Merchant of Venice, Act 4 Scene 1
For those of us interested in current debates about English/British identity and modern culture and with a particular interest in how our national literary heritage is taught in British schools, it is not hard to be struck by the appropriateness of the timing of Pope Francis’s Jubilee Year of Mercy in the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare’s death.
During this time of debate about political sovereignty and spiritual reflection among Catholics, it is worth revisiting Shakespeare on the subject of mercy in his plays, in connection with an understanding of his religious identity.
Catholic educators should be aware that a number of modern scholars have argued that Shakespeare expressed a Catholic perspective in his work and that in all likelihood he was himself culturally a Catholic in dialogue with the oppression of the Elizabethan and Jacobean state, albeit in coded language, subtly expressed. This was touched upon by Michael Wood in the BBC TV series, In Search of Shakespeare, and the accompanying book (2003).
In addition, Fr Peter Milward has produced analyses of Shakespeare’s work in The Catholicism of Shakespeare’s Plays and Shakespeare the Papist, arguing that Shakespeare wrote as a recusant with Jesuit connections during a period of intense anti-Catholic persecution.
Similarly, Clare Asquith, author of Shadowplay: the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, has argued for an understanding of the plays that highlights coded messages for contemporary Catholics.
Contextual information makes the case overwhelming, highlighting a “sophisticated allegorical toolkit”. How true Shakespeare was to his Catholic faith throughout his life and how observant he was in its practice are questions to which the answers will never be fully known, for to be a Catholic in his era involved secrecy for the purpose of self-protection. However, we can trace Catholic themes within his work.
In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare provided a reminder of the necessity of New Testament morality, in opposition to its alternative: the punitive justice of the Old Testament. Set in Catholic Venice, the play focuses on the character of Shylock the Jew, but what he provides us with is an exploration of the style of justice that was determining the fate of Catholics, many of whom were being subjected to imprisonment and even execution for such offences as attending Mass and harbouring a priest.
Shylock uses language replete with biblical echoes and allusions from the New Testament, not the Old. Scholars have shown that Shakespeare combines Puritan elements with the depiction of Shylock as a Jew so that he can then move on to espouse the positive New Testament, Christian virtue of mercy.
Portia’s great speech quoted above explains how a spiritual approach to the question of justice sits above the “sceptred sway”, the sovereignty of kings; people come closest to the divine when they show mercy, “an attribute to God himself”.
As Shakespeare’s plays were performed at court, Portia’s appeal may well have been meant for Queen Elizabeth herself: “And earthly power doth then show likest God’s / When mercy seasons justice” (Act 4 Scene 1).
Mercy is an essential ingredient in justice in the Shakespearean worldview: “We do pray for mercy, / And that same prayer doth teach us all to render / The deeds of mercy.” Here we see a kind of wisdom that is echoed in recent statements of Pope Francis: “Sacred Scripture presents God to us as infinite mercy and as perfect justice. How do we reconcile the two? How does one reconcile the reality of mercy with the demands of justice? It might appear that the two contradict each other; but in fact it is not so, for it is the very mercy of God that brings true justice to fulfilment.”
Another of Shakespeare’s plays where the theme of mercy is touched upon is Measure for Measure, where the novice nun Isabella appeals desperately to the hypocrite ruler, Angelo, for the life of her brother, Claudio:
… Well believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones ’longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
Isabella’s appeal has a dramatic energy which extends across two scenes. They match in some ways the dramatic intensity of Shakespeare’s greatest scenes in the tragedies.
Shakespeare argues for justice to be administered with mercy as a spiritual imperative in his drama. His work argues for justice and tolerance. This is intrinsic to his religious and socio-political identity as a dramatist, just as for our current Pope, speaking four centuries later, there is a desire to remind the world of its moral obligations, with compassion being at the heart of Christianity.
“This is the heart of God,” Francis has said, “the heart of a Father who loves and wants his children to live in goodness and in justice, and thus that they might live to the fullest and be happy. The heart of a Father who goes beyond our little concept of justice to open us to the limitless horizons of his mercy.”
Human judgment is often fallible in Shakespeare. Justice must be done, but rulers should remind themselves that perfect judgment can only be found in God, where we also find limitless mercy.
In the United Kingdom in recent months, there has been a coarsening of the language of political debate, especially in the build-up to the Brexit vote. It is unfortunate that Shakespeare, our most English of writers, and his concern for tolerance and the position of the social outsider, have not been much referenced at this stage in our history.
A sense of justice based on mercy and a tolerance of difference are intrinsic to his Englishness and European-ness. The sympathy for the social outsider in the depiction of Othello, a great, flawed tragic hero, and in the characterisation of both Antonio and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, however harsh their fate, illustrates Shakespeare’s nuanced understanding of the complexity of life and its pressures.
Shakespeare often looked to European narratives to provide settings for his work. As we remember the importance of mercy in Christian life, as in Pope Francis’s injunctions, we must remember the role it should play in the drama at the heart of our nation’s lived Christian morality.
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