Читать книгу Shakespeare and the Jesuits - Andrea Campana - Страница 2

Shakespeare and the Jesuits

‘To Fight the Fight’

Andrea Campana

Copyright © 2012 Andrea Campana

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.

The Publisher makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any commercial damages.

2012-08-28

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the loves of my life, Ed and Giulia, my husband and daughter. I thank them from my heart for their patience and perseverance—the two sustaining qualities of the Jesuit mission—and for allowing me the indulgence of this project. Fortunately, the large doses of frustration handed to them were often met with large doses of humor.

Acknowledgments

This work began conceptually nine years ago at Lehman College under the tutelage of David Bady, who encouraged his students to explore Catholic themes in Shakespeare. A journey which began as a curiosity quickly segued into a passionate and intellectually enriching search for truth. Those of us who have been mentored along the way by Peter Milward SJ will surely agree he is the finest of Shakespeare scholars and an individual of the highest integrity. I am deeply grateful to him for his steady stream of assistance, support, and reality checks: “To me fair friend, you can never be old.” I am also grateful to Dennis Taylor for his willingness to read my work over the years, as well as for our conversations on “The Phoenix and the Turtle,” and to Stratford Caldecott for providing an electronic forum through which our group could explore Catholic readings of Shakespeare. In particular, I thank Patrice Thompson for bringing our attention to the Black Madonna. I thank Fred Tollini SJ, who along with Fr. Milward had enough patience to read through the manuscript. I am deeply indebted to John D’Angelo of Fordham University for allowing me to access the invaluable recusant literature collections at the William D. Walsh Library. Tom McCoog SJ patiently answered my unending questions on the English mission and generously provided documents from the Jesuit archives in Rome on the elaborate ciphers used by Jesuit leaders. Through the assistance of Maurice Whitehead, I was glad to find Philippe Moulis of l’Universite d’Artois, and I thank him for his help in searching for the gravesite of the English Jesuit John Floyd in Saint-Omer. Fr. Peter Harris graciously facilitated my research on John Floyd and passed along two paintings from the Jesuit College in Valladolid, Spain. I would also like to acknowledge the ground-breaking research of John Klause, Clare Asquith, Gerard Kilroy, Pat Martin, and John Finnis, upon which I have relied many times in the often maddening attempts to fit the pieces of the Shakespearean puzzle together.

Lastly, I would like to say that, despite my 20 years as a journalist with impartiality as a second nature, and despite the current trend to veer from hagiographical studies of the Catholic martyrs, I have found it virtually impossible to conduct this research without “floods of tears,” as John Floyd, punning on his own name, though not humorously, says of his grief for “the slain of my country.” And as Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc) says in Henry VI, Part I, “One drop of blood drawn from thy country’s bosom/Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore./Return thee therefore with a flood of tears,/And wash away thy country’s stained spots.”

Note: This book uses The Signet Classic Shakespeare versions of the plays and the 1609 Quarto sonnets reprinted in The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Helen Vendler.