Given that his works contain more biblical references than
any of his Elizabethan contemporaries does this mean that Shakespeare was a “biblical
bard”?
By: Ringo Bones
Legend has it that a decade after his death, the authors of
the King James Bible had reached a consensus that Shakespeare could have
single-handedly written an English language version of the Holy Bible twenty
years before King James issued such edict. And when they’ve found out that Shakespeare’s
works contain more biblical references than any of his Elizabethan
contemporaries, had they’ve pondered too, that Shakespeare could be a “biblical
bard”?
It could be said that a certain philosophy of life is
implicit in Shakespeare’s plays. It was, in the main, an unconscious philosophy.
He has been called, indeed, the least moral of writers because he had no moral
lesson to proclaim, no sense of what is called “poetic justice”. Cordelia dies
in her father’s arms for no other reason than that she was the captive of a
strong and ruthless man. Such – Shakespeare seems to have thought – was the way
of the world; it was for him to declare that way as it was, not as he thought,
perhaps, it should be. A man or a woman’s life on earth was a mystery to
Shakespeare, and “the rest is silence.”
Taken as a whole – his works and what of his contemporaries
have thought of him – Shakespeare had neither the faith of the Catholic in the
doctrine of the Church nor the Puritan’s assurance of individual salvation. Yet
his unconscious philosophy was firmly based on Christian ethics, on charity
that endures all things, on the brotherhood of man that implies tolerance and
readiness to pardon. The Deadly Sins of Catholic theology were no mere
abstractions to Shakespeare, but active forces working for destruction, and
against these it was man’s task to contend to the uttermost. Shakespeare was no
fatalist to accept passive endurance of evil; again and again he urges that man’s
powers and virtues were given to him not to waste in idleness, but to shine
like torches giving light to others. And when the inevitable end comes, man
should meet it calmly.
It is not a comfortable philosophy; Shakespeare is not one
of those who sit at ease in Zion. Yet it is a wholesome and “manly” one.
Shakespeare – the Elizabethan dramatist – has still a word to say in behalf of
Christian Civilization.
