Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare [Hardcover]

The hidden beliefs and coded politics of William Shakespeare

Clare Asquith

This is without any doubt the most revolutionary book on Shakespeare to be published for a generation - or even for several generations. Its message is completely original. If it is correct, it completely transforms our understanding of Shakespeare. Looking below the surface of Shakespeare's works, Clare Asquith has discovered a hidden level of meaning. She shows how, from start to finish, his works can be read as a coded allegorical commentary on the political events of the time, aimed primarily at the Catholic dissident community but also embodying an appeal for tolerance addressed (with a hopefulness that seems almost touching, considering how little effect it had) to Elizabeth and later to James I.

Asquith hit upon the idea that Shakespeare's works might have a hidden message when living in Russia, where she encountered a form of dissident theatre that used coded messages. These were innocuous enough on the surface to escape censorship, but would have been instantly understood by those who were in the know. If Shakespeare did not address political events directly, there were sound reasons for it. Two of his most gifted contemporaries, Kyd and Marlowe, were less cautious. Kyd died after undergoing torture, and Marlowe was almost certainly murdered at the instigation of the government.

The message, then, had to be a coded one. And the basis of the code uncovered by Asquith is breathtakingly simple. 'High' and 'fair' stand for Catholic, 'low' and 'dark' for Protestant - terms used by Spenser, with equally patent allegorical intent, in The Shepheardes Calendar. Other characteristic and recurring symbols are tempest, and exile. Tempest and shipwreck are always meant to suggest the dire upheaval and destruction of traditional values that had been the Catholic experience of the Reformation. As for exile, the most cursory reading of the plays cannot fail to notice how often Shakespeare's plots feature the splitting up of a family or community. All these can be seen as allusions to the schism in the body politic of England that had resulted from the religious divide; and more specifically, to the plight of the English Catholic exiles on the Continent (of whom there were tens of thousands), their longing to return home and their hopes for the restoration of the old faith.

It is impossible in the space of a short review to do justice to the historical scholarship and persistence with which Asquith has delved into the background to Shakespeare's works, uncovering a wealth of forgotten detail. In play after play she demonstrates connections between the story and the immediate historical circumstances. Take Troilus and Cressida. Here the siege of Troy can be recognised (in view of the traditional association of Britain with Troy) as the standoff between Protestant and England and the Catholic powers led by Spain. The Greeks have failed to take Troy, as Spain failed with its Armada. Even individual characters can be identified. The gloomy and fatalistic Agamemnon suggests Philip II, old Nestor is the Pope, and the astute and diplomatic Ulysses is the Jesuit Robert Persons. Even Ulysses' famous speech - 'Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, / Wherein he puts scraps for oblivion' - is taken from an image in Persons' Christian Directory, an immensely popular work at the time.

Leaving code messages aside, the book reminds us of the dimension in Shakespeare that express a deeply Christian - and characteristically Catholic - spirituality. In The Winter's Tale we find a 'chapel' in the last act of the play, where something infinitely precious that was thought to have been lost forever has been preserved inviolate. And when the statue of Hermione comes to life, in response to Paulina's injunction 'It is required you do awake your faith', and Leontes exclaims 'If this be magic, let it be an act / Lawful as eating', we cannot be left in any doubt that this is an allusion to the Mass.

It is important to make clear that the allegorical reading of Shakespeare's work does not conflict with the traditional and literal reading. The existence of multiple levels of interpretation, existing in parallel and all equally valid - was taken for granted by Shakespeare's contemporaries. Shadowplay encourages us to rediscover the way in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries approached literature, and literary creation. His relevance to the events of his own day was veiled in his own lifetime, and since then has been obscured. This book rediscovers it. And it changes our experience of Shakespeare radically - not by substituting something different but by adding an extra dimension.

Asquith's scholarship is meticulous and painstaking, and her argument deserves to be taken very seriously indeed. I cannot urge you too strongly to look at the evidence she puts forward, and look at it carefully, before making up your mind.