Secret Shakespeare: Studies in theatre, religion and resistance

by Richard Wilson

Shakespeare's Catholic context was the most important literary discovery of the last century. No biography of the Bard is now complete without chapters on the paranoia and persecution in which he was educated, or the treason which engulfed his family. Whether to suffer outrageous fortune or take up arms in suicidal resistance was, as Hamlet says, 'the question' that fired Shakespeare's stage. In 'Secret Shakespeare' Richard Wilson asks why the dramatist remained so enigmatic about his own beliefs, and so silent on the atrocities he survived.

Shakespeare constructed a drama not of discovery, like his rivals, but of darkness, deferral, evasion and disguise, where, for all his hopes of a 'golden time' of future toleration, 'What's to come' is always unsure. Whether or not 'He died a papist', it is because we can never 'pluck out the heart' of his mystery that Shakespeare's plays retain their unique potential to resist.

This is a fascinating work, which will be essential reading for all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.

Genres: Shakespeare

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2004

About the author

RICHARD WILSON is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Lancaster and Visiting Professor of Shakespeare at The Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III). He is the author of Will Power: Essays in Shakespearean Authority and a study of Julius Caesar and has edited collections on New Historicism and Renaissance Drama and Christopher Marlow.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-researched, sometimes polemical, always interesting, and deeply original approach to the "Catholic Question" in Shakespeare. The argument: yes, Shakespeare grew up in a Catholic household and was exposed to the most radical elements in English recusant culture (Thomas Campion; the Throckmorton family), BUT he himself drew back from radicalization and chose a path more akin to Montaigne and the French politiques. The biographical chapters are rich in detail, with frequent references to the plays; the literary chapters are tour de force studies in topical allusion, taken in a Foucauldian vein.