Shakespeare In Love
Book IV: Brave New World
King Lear · Timon of Athens · Macbeth · Antony and Cleopatra · Coriolanus · The Winter’s Tale · Cymbeline · The Tempest · Henry VIII
Hope of a better world to come…
King Lear
WHICH OF YOU SHALL WE SAY DOTH LOVE GOVERNMENT MOST?
tragedy, ~1606, 1st published as Quarto
In King Lear, we see a story of how Britain’s Oath of Supremacy leads to America’s 1st Amendment (and America’s adoption of the Catholic principle of Religious Liberty). When a king demands a profession of love from his daughters and subjects — the liars, sycophants, and flatterers are given land and titles and a kingdom while, in contrast, Cordelia’s honest confession bars her from land and titles, and leads to her banishment and exile into France. During Shakespeare’s time, France was the locus point and training ground for Catholic priests who would lay down their lives to support the Catholic mission to England and bring the sacraments to the Catholic masses denied the mass and other divine graces.
Shakespeare’s masterful set up scene clues his Catholic audience into the underlying Catholic themes woven throughout King Lear. Ultimately, the play begs us to consider, who are the true lovers? Those who make a profession of faith and no more? Or those whose love can be seen in their words and works? Cordelia, innocent and maligned, symbolizes the bride of Christ in Jacobean England, castaway for her desire to love in truth, and not by false oaths or flattering words. The intertwined stories of Kent and Edgar likewise symbolize the varied experiences of Catholics, Kent banished for speaking truth to the king and Edgar framed by letters and conspiracies. Both heroes take on disguise to lovingly serve the people who persecuted them, and in doing so, both Kent and Edgar are representative of the experiences of Catholic priests and lay folks who had to hide their religion to remain in England and serve king and country.
By hearing Shakespeare, we’ll begin to understand America’s 1st Amendment in its proper context. Literally, Englishmen in Shakespeare’s England wouldn’t freely be Catholic until they declared themselves American. When our Founding Fathers declared independence, it wasn’t simply from an empire but also from a State church.
Yes, Englishman needed to become American to once again be Catholic. Yes, sustainable American values are actually Catholic values that were lost in England when Henry VIII created a State church that nationalized the universal Church, stole its lands, and martyred many saints. Yes, forced obedience thru the Oath of Supremacy was the justification of English tyrants to trample on the rights of England’s Catholic citizens.
So, Shakespeare’s King Lear asks us to consider the separation of Church and State in its proper context and origin. The separation of Church and State is originally a Catholic (and now also American) value that in its origin exists not to remove religion from politics or the public sphere, but to help preserve a State that will only be sustained and purified from corruption when the State finds itself in obedience to a higher power — God. In America, we used to say and must once again learn to proclaim what the psalmist sings and our currency bears stamped on our cash and coins, “In God we trust.”
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
— america’s 1st amendment