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The writings of John Floyd not only include similar, if not identical, diction as the canon in some instances but deeply reflect hidden meanings of the plays and contain typically Shakespearean trademarks: the abundant use of parentheses; the use of wordplay, delighting in the double meanings of words; the abundant use of metaphors; a preference for sophisticated words; the reliance on the poetry and prose of Robert Southwell; the abundant use of exclamation points; the colloquial mixed with the figures of classical rhetoric; and the use of irony, parody, and even sarcasm. While Floyd clearly draws on Southwell, his writing is more often closer to the style of Shakespeare.

In the area of linguistics, recent studies of Shakespeare’s language have utilized software programs to scan different texts as a means to highlight instances in which the same words—as many as three consecutive words called “trigrams”—appear in both texts. These collocations show similarities in the arrangement of linguistic elements and can reveal Shakespeare as the sole author. On the other hand, the methodology can be especially telling when rare words are used together and found in both Shakespeare and another author. Mostly, this study will show similarity of thought between the work of Shakespeare and the Jesuits through interpretation of the text.

In another type of criticism, John Floyd seems to make appearances in the canon of Shakespeare as a character named “Flavius.” This name is a slight derivation of “Fluvius,” meaning “Fludd,” a name by which Floyd was known; Floyd has been identified as the character “Fluvius” in an early 17th century play written by Jesuit missionaries. In Measure for Measure, the Duke asks that letters be delivered, and he subsequently instructs Friar Peter, “Go call at Flavius’ house,/And tell him where I stay.” Then, invoking the alias of Richard Verstegan, “Rowland,” the spy and messenger employed by the Jesuit mission prefect Robert Persons, the Duke directs Friar Peter to do the same for the characters Valencius, Rowland, and Crassus. “But send me Flavius first,” the Duke says (4.5.10). A character named “Flavius” can also be found in Timon of Athens as a steward to Timon.

While these mentions hint at some sort of communiqué, perhaps directed to someone sitting in the audience who then knows to contact Floyd on behalf of Shakespeare, the Jesuit may appear in a more theologically substantive role in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as a republican tribune named Flavius, who seeks to disrupt the ceremonies of Caesar and calls for disrobing his statue. Although Shakespeare clearly draws on historical sources—Lucius Caesetius Flavus was a Roman politician and tribune of the people known for removing a decoration from the statue of Caesar and arresting those who saluted Caesar as King—Shakespeare changes the name of Flavus to the gentile name of Flavius. Shakespeare in general draws on his main sources of the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony in Plutarch’s Lives, which had been translated into English in 1579.

Floyd appears as Fluvius in a complex allegorical play entitled Hierarchomachia or The Anti-Bishop.¹This play, written around 1630, dramatizes issues related to the so-called approbation affair (1627-1631), the flare-up of a complicated controversy between Jesuits and secular Catholic clergy that involved the creation of an episcopal hierarchy to govern English Catholic clergy and to reconcile their duty and obedience to spiritual and temporal authorities. The origins of this affair can be traced to the beginnings of the so-called archpriest controversy in 1598, while the appointment by the Pope of the anti-Jesuit Richard Smith as Bishop of Chalcedon in 1625 reignited tensions. Floyd was given a role in the play because of his contributions to the pamphlet war over the controversy.

While the character of Fluvius in Hierarchomachia may seem coincidental to the character of Flavius in Julius Caesar, especially in view that Shakespeare appears to have named his character for the historical Roman person, it is more than noteworthy that the thought expressed by the fictional Flavius mirrors exactly a specific theological point made by Floyd in his tract of 1623 entitled A Word of Comfort. This point concerned the designs of God in relation to how princely rulers are perceived by men. Floyd in 1623 would have been recalling what had been conceived earlier; Shakespeare’s play was written around 1599 at the dawning of the archpriest controversy and close to the time Floyd likely arrived in England.

In Julius Caesar, the servant Flavius is the first character to speak, scolding idled workers for attending the triumphal parade of Caesar in celebration of his defeat of archrival Pompey. The fictional tribunes Flavius and Marullus seek to downplay the victory, suggesting that Caesar has failed to bring home a significant victory against a foreign enemy. The two tribunes scold disloyal plebeians for standing poised to celebrate Pompey’s defeat after previously cheering him in triumphant returns from battle.

The thoughts found in Julius Caesar neatly reflect the theology of John Floyd regarding the failure of men to properly show reverence for the designs of God in the human world. In A Word of Comfort, Floyd argued that men cannot act as a type of “Privy Council” and question why God decides to take a human life—especially a princely ruler—from the world. Instead, men must respect the mysteries of God’s ways and realize that an “accident” may have been permitted to occur as a way to steer their hearts toward the truth of the Catholic faith. If God takes the life of a wicked person, men should not begin to sentimentally view that person as good. Floyd also wrote of the inherent nature of men to envy innocent persons and downplay their virtues, while pitying the wicked, extenuating their faults, and easily recalling only minor attributes worthy of praise. As examples, Floyd cites the tears of remembrance shed by Alexander the Great of Macedon over the death of his former enemy Darius and by Caesar over the death of his adversary Pompey. In Hamlet, the literal remains of the great Alexander of Macedon and Julius Caesar are contemplated as dust utilized to plug a hole. Floyd scolds that “accident,” or the way life plays itself out through fateful circumstances, is part of a divine will aimed at reminding men of the sanctity of God’s holy church and a way for God to infuse nature with grace. He makes the theological point that God sometimes allows a good ruler to be slain by a tyrannical ruler, as a way to inform Christians that the prosperity of earthly life should not be gained by temporal comfort but by serving God.

Floyd seems to be additionally invoked in Julius Caesar through the word “flood” in a passage that reflects his views on how temporal rulers are perceived. Cassius, in a long speech on honor, attempts to persuade Brutus not to worship a temporal ruler who is merely an ordinary man, reversing the arguments of Protestant preachers that the Virgin Mary was no better than ordinary women, a claim against which Floyd consistently argued in his writings. Cassius recounts a time when, on a dare by Caesar, he and Caesar plunged into the roaring, cold Tiber River as it was crashing against its banks. A drowning Caesar cried out in fear, and Cassius rescued him.

“The troubledTiber chafing with her shores,/Caesar said to me, dar’st thou Cassius now/Leap in with me into this angry flood,/And swim to yonder point? Upon the word,/Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,/And bade him follow; so indeed he did./The torrent roared, and we did buffet it/With lusty sinews, throwing it aside,/And stemming it with hearts of controversy … And this man/Is now become a god, and Cassius is/A wretched creature … I did mark/How he did shake” (1.2.101-121) (boldface type added).

The passage also subtly evokes the message and wording of Psalm 46, which famously includes the words “shake” and “spear” exactly 46 words from its beginning and 46 words from its end in the King James Authorized Version of the Bible. “Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed,/And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;/Though the waters thereof roarand be troubled,/Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof… Come behold the works of the Lord,/What desolations he hath made in the earth./He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;/He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;/He burneth the chariot in the fire.”

The play’s evocation of Psalm 46, and its message of trust in the protection and providence of God at a time of imminent danger and trial, highlights the urgings of Floyd to trust in the designs of God, rather than those of temporal rulers. In effect, Julius Caesar subtly communicates the Jesuit message—resist the monarchy and endure persecution in this life in order to guarantee the salvation of your soul in the next—to Catholics in the audience. As the psalm attests, God will deliver the oppressed and punish the oppressors.

In Hamlet, an allusion to John Floyd is also evident through the word “flood” and in a passage that alludes to Richard Topcliffe, the agent of Queen Elizabeth who personally singled out the Jesuit Robert Southwell for unusually brutal torture.

Horatio, in speaking of the ghost of Hamlet’s father and whether it should be feared, asks, “What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,/or to the dreadful summit of the cliff/That beetles o’er his base into the sea,/And there assume some other horrible form,/Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason/And draw you into madness? Think of it./The very place puts toys of desperation,/Without more motive, into every brain/That looks so many fathoms to the sea/And hears it roar beneath” (1.4.69-78).

Horatio’s comments present to the Catholic recusant the dilemma of conscience: if you follow Floyd’s urgings to embrace the Catholic Church and Christ, you may find yourself a prisoner of the torturer Richard Topcliffe. Hamlet says the ghost cannot destroy his soul, which is immortal, and he will therefore not fear the ghost. There is nothing to fear, the play says, as the soul is immortal and cannot be destroyed by any human torturer. Horatio clearly equates “madness” with following Floyd and the ideals of Ignatius, depriving one of “reason.” In Ignatian spirituality, one mystically experiences God through perception, rather than reason, while Queen Elizabeth consistently said her monarchy was based on reason. Point-of-view must be considered here. Horatio is a rationalist associated with the Reformation, while Hamlet shrugs off torture and death and implies, according to the Jesuit message, that it is better to save one’s soul, given that the soul is immortal.

In 1623, Floyd would recall the thoughts behind Hamlet in penning A Word of Comfort to his co-religionists. This tract was written in the wake of a tragic accident that killed some 90 persons in London’s Blackfriars district on October 26. While the theology of Floyd’s tract and Hamlet also somewhat parallel that of TheTriumphs Over Death written by Robert Southwell, the similarity of the wording of Floyd and Shakespeare is more extensive and noticeable. The language used by Shakespeare and Southwell is vastly more similar than the language used by Floyd and Southwell. In other words, Shakespeare in terms of diction follows Southwell, but Floyd follows Shakespeare. For example, a common theme of Southwell in Triumphs and of Shakespeare in Hamlet centers on the need to prepare for death: “the readiness is all” (5.2.223), Hamlet says. Southwell says Philip Howard’s deceased sister, the subject of his prose piece, serves as a model for Catholics to emulate in how “mildly she accepted the check of fortune—fallen upon her without desert.” If one lives a pious life, and thereby has properly prepared for death, death constitutes a “return into a most blissful country.” In Hamlet, death introduces the “undiscovered country,” a place of uncertainty if one has turned away from Christ during earthly life.

In Floyd’s Word of Comfort, the author draws on language from Hamlet, allowing us to understand the play’s practical message: one must maintain presence of mind and not engage in excessive grieving over those who have been slain, but instead accept untimely death with patience and calmness in the realization of divine providence. Otherwise, excessive mourning will weaken the Catholic and the cause, strengthen the Protestant enemy, and lead to more misfortune. Hamlet, through his excessive mourning and rash judgments, which lead continuously throughout the play to accidental death, dramatizes the essential message of Floyd and Southwell: to act in a rash manner is counterproductive. In the final lines of the play, the character Fortinbras says of the slain bodies, “Such a sight as this/Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss” (5.2.402-403). In other words, while such a sight properly suits the battlefield in the contest between Christ and Satan, as delineated by Ignatius of Loyola, it shows that the battle has been fought improperly. Hamlet, the dedicated warrior for Christ, has devoted his will to serving God, although the course of his action, which goes against the Jesuit message to persevere in silence and hope of God, has failed and, as the Jesuit message predicts, led to more disaster.

In penning his tract of 1623, Floyd recalled a subtle theme in Hamlet on the workings of divine providence in the human world. Although the Blackfriars calamity resulted from a collapsed floor at the home of the French ambassador, where an audience had gathered to hear a sermon by the Jesuit Robert Drury, the accident was nevertheless termed the “fatal vesper” and the “doleful even-song” and attributed by Protestants to God’s punishment of Catholics. Protestants also lost no time in pointing out that it occurred in the new-style calendar on November 5, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. Floyd sought in his lengthy tract not only to comfort survivors and the families of victims but to refute those whom he believed had misinterpreted the designs of God, wrongfully shed tears over the accidental nature of the disaster, complained of the severity of God’s judgments against his own flock, and resigned themselves to the absence of God in the world. He refuted these “four” concerns with “four” arguments: comfort offered by scripture, biblical examples of patience and fortitude, comparison of more devastating accidents suffered by Catholic adversaries, and the revelation of God’s purposes in permitting such a calamity. Hamlet is described as sometimes walking “four hours together here in the lobby” (2.2.159), while at the end of Hamlet, Fortinbras orders “four” captains to “bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage” (5.2.397).

A primary theme of Hamlet centers on the notion of “accident” and “misfortune” in the human world in relation to the mystery of God, and the appropriate response of victims of persecution to such disaster. Hamlet can be seen as a didactic message to lay Catholics: the events of our lives no matter how filled with grief and sorrow are directed by divine providence, and one must show fortitude and obedience through patience and perseverance. Floyd cites the biblical examples of Job and Tobias as examples of the patience needed by recusants; in Shakespeare the Papist, the Jesuit scholar Peter Milward says that “we may find the anguish of Hamlet proceeding straight from the Book of Job, as if he has just been reading this book on entering the lobby.”

More than two decades after Hamlet was published, Floyd outlined with seeming ease Hamlet’s theme of misfortune, while using the exact diction of Shakespeare. Floyd argued that excessive grief over misfortune indicates weakness, and any show of weakness puts Catholics at the mercy of their enemies. Instead, he suggested, Catholics may find strength in patience, perseverance of suffering, trust in the providence of God, and in prayer—essentially all methods of silence. Take a proactive stance, Floyd insisted, and turn private sorrow into prayer for the end of ignorance and impiety, as well as a public defense of the Catholic cause.

Hamlet dramatizes the later message of Floyd and the Catholic’s moral struggle of conscience: whether to “act” in the wake of an “accident,” “mischance,” “mischief,” or “calamity,” terms used by both Floyd and Shakespeare. Nearly every death in Hamlet occurs by “accident” at the hands of Hamlet: Polonius is accidentally killed by Hamlet, and Gertrude accidentally drinks from the cup of poison, for example. In his tract, Floyd expands the definition of accident beyond what had occurred at Blackfriars and includes Catholic executions under the prior reign of Queen Elizabeth—“the slain of our country”—in the category of “accident.”

Floyd’s Word of Comfort of 1623 and Southwell’s Epistle of Comfort written shortly after his arrival in 1586, both composed as consolatory compositions to co-religionists with the message of hope in divine providence, reflect the directives of the mission prefect Robert Persons. In a letter to the General of the Society of Jesus, Claudio Acquaviva, written in 1584 after the capture of the lay brother Ralph Emerson, Persons writes: “The news of this happening has distressed us not a little; yet when we consider that this is the purpose of this mission of ours or at least an accident (italics added) obviously incidental to it, we console one another with that hope of things eternal which the kindness of God bestows on us.” Persons goes on to express his feelings of guilt in being denied the privilege of martyrdom, allegedly because of his “sins.” “Yet even in this matter, I have something to console me or to support me, when I consider the providence (italics added) of God.”²We may begin to see Hamlet as part of Jesuit efforts in regard to consolation and instruction to lay Catholics.

Hamlet’s excessive grief forms the backdrop for the central Jesuit message: prolonged grief and sorrow weaken the individual Catholic cause, giving Protestants a tactical advantage. As a reflection of this struggle, Hamlet asks whether “to be or not to be.” Should he persevere in “patient merit” and suffer “outrageous fortune” in the form of “the oppressor’s wrong” and “the proud man’s contumely” (i.e., persecution and Calvinist blame of Catholic victims for their own demise) or should he “take up arms against a sea of troubles” by taking matters into his own hands. The play equates this latter course of action with suicide and sleeping; Robert Persons in Reasons of Refusal, essentially a call to lapsed English Catholics to awaken from the “sleep” of inconstancy, equated conformity to Anglicanism with the sin of the betrayal of Christ, which he believed was essentially the sin of weakness and which he equated metaphorically with sleep. “Many of oure bad Catholiques in Ingland, may see in some parte, the miserable daungerous case wherein they stande, by sleeping so careless as they doe, in this sinne,” Persons writes of those who attended services of the national church.³

Hamlet imagines such a course of action as the play’s image of “the undiscovered country” of death, an image that “puzzles the will” and staves off action. While most critics view Hamlet’s famous soliloquy as a choice between bearing life’s ills and suicide, the subtlety of the passage’s language indicates that a course of action which does not include trusting in God presents to the Catholic the uncertainty of what lies ahead in the afterlife.

Essentially, Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy juxtaposes (1) persevering and remaining patient in a spirit of trust in the providence of God, a course of action that may mean martyrdom on earth but salvation of the soul for all eternity, and (2) turning away from faith in God by attempting to end persecution through either rash action or attendance of Anglican services, courses of action that will weaken the Catholic cause and invite more persecution. The Jesuit urgings to lay Catholics to restrain their “passions” in silent trust of God’s providence are perfectly encapsulated in the words of Hamlet: “Give me that man/That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him/In my heart’s core, ay in my heart of heart” (3.2.73-75).

On the other hand, Laertes, upon discovering his father’s death, acts in a manner that runs counter to the Jesuit message. He discards his vows of allegiance, says he does not care what happens to him in the next world, and promises to take revenge:

How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.

To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!

Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!

I dare damnation. To this point I stand

That both the worlds I give to negligence.

Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged

Most thoroughly for my father. (4.5.130-136)

In an important connection to Hamlet, Floyd, in a separate tract refuting various anti-Jesuit arguments by the Puritan preacher William Crashaw, cited St. Augustine’s belief in 38 as the number of “weakness and infirmity” in Christian number symbolism. “The number 38, which number doth signify weaknesse & infirmity, as St. Augustine noteth,” Floyd writes in The Overthrow of the Protestants Pulpit-Babels, noting that Augustine speaks of 38 in connection with the sick man in John 5 who lacks the two commandments to make the perfect number of 40. The Second Quarto of Hamlet, published in 1604, a time when Floyd likely was in England, comprises 3,800 lines. (The version of Hamlet published in 1623 in the First Folio contains an additional 80 lines not found in the Second Quarto. Additionally, the First Folio omits 230 lines of the Second Quarto’s 3,800 lines, making the 1623 version a total of 3,650 lines. Thus, the First Folio’s Hamlet is 150 lines shorter than that of the Second Quarto.)

The number 38 is incorporated into Southwell’s collection of 52 lyrical poems as well: the first 14 poems of the sequence are dedicated to the lives of Mary and Christ, while 38 poems remain. This silent numerical message juxtaposes the missionaries of the Society of Jesus (represented by “Jesus Maria,” as the English Jesuits referred to their mission in the wake of Campion’s execution) and the opposite stance of weakness, subtly setting up a choice and mirroring the Election for Christ in the Spiritual Exercises.

In A Word of Comfort, Floyd urged Catholic mourners to subordinate excessive grief and sorrow to a public defense of the Catholic cause. Engaging in excessive grief and sorrow strengthens the Protestant enemy and creates vulnerability, he wrote. Such grieving is counterproductive, putting the Catholic at the mercy and power of his adversaries and giving enemies a tactical advantage in their rhetorical wars against Catholic doctrine. He urged a type of action that can almost be seen—from the modern viewpoint—as a type of inaction: grief and sorrow should be limited to seven days, as stipulated by scripture, and subsequently redirected into prayer against ignorance and impiety to ensure their limitation and destruction as well. Shakespeare refers to these seven days of mourning in Hamlet, when an angry Laertes acknowledges his grief over Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia and calls for salty tears to burn his eyes: “Tears seven times salt/Burn out the sense and virtue [power] of mine eye!” (4.5.154-155). During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the leaders of the Jesuit mission consistently urged an end to tears in favor of Catholic resistance to the Crown in the form of perseverance, patience, and non-attendance of Anglican services.

Hamlet is a character who engages in prolonged and excessive grief—termed “madness” in the play—supposedly over the murder of his father but more so in regard to the adultery of his mother. He is full of purpose and resolves to seek revenge against his uncle Claudius for murder and adulterous marriage. But Hamlet consistently fails to act. When he does finally act, he places himself at the mercy of his enemy Claudius and is killed. The play dramatizes the Jesuit message that excessive mourning leads to more calamity.

In 1623, Floyd essentially was attempting to dispel the Protestant notion that the Blackfriars accident was not random but an act of God’s wrath. He observed that “dreadful mischance[s]” of this kind were simply miseries “indifferently incident unto mankind” and adversities to which Protestants were also continuously subject. While God was ultimately responsible for the disaster, Floyd said the Calvinists were mistaken for being “jolly and jocund, so puffed up with pride at the fall of a rotten chamber,” as the incident was a part of God’s plan to test the righteous through tribulation (boldface type added). The exact diction used by Floyd and Shakespeare, sometimes indicating similar thought, is palpable. Floyd’s exact choice of wording—“jocund”—can be found in a passage in Hamlet that also involves a “test.” Claudius “tests” Hamlet’s love in asking him to stay in Denmark. When Hamlet apparently passes the test, the evil and prideful Claudius expresses his content: “This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet/Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof/No jocund health that Denmark drinks today” (1.2.123-125). Claudius “plays God” so to speak, testing Hamlet’s love. The passage points to the dramatist’s belief in the monarchy as a usurper of Christ and ultimately God in eradicating the “true” Church.

Floyd noted that to equate suffering with sin or to interpret the “dark mists” (cf. “dim mists,” Rape of Lucrece, 547, 643) of God’s mysteries by seeing misfortune as a sign of “falsehood” is “to set Religion on the dice.” Similarly, Hamlet says that, as a result of his mother’s adulterous marriage to his uncle, her vows to Hamlet’s father have become nothing more than a gamble: “Such an act/That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,/Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose/From the fair forehead of an innocent love,/And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows/As false dicer’s oaths.” In The Triumphs Over Death, Robert Southwell says, “Let not her losses move you, who are acquainted with greater of your own, and are taught by experience to know how uncertain their change is, for whom inconstant Fortune throweth the dice.”

In these textual examples, we may see that Floyd’s language and thought are slightly closer to that of Shakespeare than to Southwell.

Below, diction common to both Floyd and Shakespeare often reveals similarity of thought.

Accident

The notion of accident figures prominently in both authors. Floyd writes, “Let the duty of weeping for the Dead, in this late dismall Accident, so rufull to flesh and blood, which from our hartes both common Humanity and private Friendship enforce; give place unto the duty of writing in the behalf of the living, which at our handes both Christian Charity, and Priestly obligation exact (To the Reader). He adds that, in the realization of God’s purpose in the “permission of this Accident,” Catholics “may make our Profit.” (Compare Shakespeare’s “Sweet are the uses of adversity in As You Like It, 2.1.12.) Further, Floyd writes, “Unto these Humanists, I say, this accident is worse, and causeth greater mischief then unto you.” Similarly, the adulterous Gertrude in Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been summoned to spy on Hamlet, “As to expend your time with us awhile for the supply and profit of our hope” (2.2.23-24). Importantly, what is being dramatized in Shakespeare is a lack of trust in God by the King and Queen, who represent the Elizabethan monarchy.

In Act 3, Scene 2, the Player King reflects on the weakening of our strongest intentions; while joy or grief often motivates one to take action, joy turns to grief and grief turns to joy upon the occurrence of even insignificant casualty. Love changes with the good or ill that befalls us, he says, in words that could easily be applied to Catholics-turned-apostate upon the witness of an execution, or conversely the attainment of worldly comfort (i.e., Claudius in prayer asks disingenuously if he may receive pardon for the sin of killing his brother but keep the spoils—his kingdom and his new wife.). “The violence of either grief or joy/Their own enactures [acts] with themselves destroy:/Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;/Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident./This world is not for aye/nor t’is not strange/That even our loves should with our fortunes change” (3.2.202-207). There will be no “profit” for those who attempt to control life and fail to trust in divine providence, the play says, paralleling the words of Floyd.

At the beginning of Act 4, Scene 7, Claudius urges Laertes to acknowledge the King’s innocence and consider him a friend on the grounds that the man who killed Laertes’ father, Hamlet, was now trying to kill Laertes. Claudius devises yet another secret plan, with this one aiming to result in Hamlet’s death. “And call it accident” (4.7.68), Claudius says, assuring that no one will be blamed. Later in the same scene, Claudius revisits the theme of weakened intentions and love that grows weak. He asks Laertes if he loved his father, suspecting that Laertes did not in recognition that with the passage of time, the flame of love dies. Claudius says we should follow through with our intentions, given that they are subject to as many weakening influences as there are accidents in life. “And hath abatements and delays as many/As there are tongues, are hands, are accident,/And this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh,/That hurts by easing” (4.7.120-123). For the lay Catholic, the passage of time may diminish even the love one may have felt for an executed priest or family member, the lines seem to suggest, causing one to lose interest in the Catholic cause.

In the final words of the play, Horatio attributes the carnage to violent and unnatural accident, carried out either by chance or intention that goes awry. In an odd foreshadowing of the Blackfriars debacle with its bodies piled not above but at the bottom of the building, Horatio calls for the slain bodies to be displayed on a high platform so that he may tell the world of how the events transpired. “So shall you hear/Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,/Of accidental judgments, casual [chance] slaughters,/Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,/And, in this upshot, purposes mistook/Fall’n on th’inventors’ heads” (5.2.381-386). Importantly, Horatio says he should quickly explain things, and he recommends proceeding with the funeral of Hamlet so that “more mischance” does not occur, as all are in a state of grief, lest any further “plots and mishaps” occur. This perfectly reflects Floyd’s message that excessive mourning will lead to further calamity.

Weakness

Floyd writes:“Let (I say) this weake inclination of Nature [excessive tears] yeeld unto Gods holy will, and unto the motion of heavenly Grace concurring with Obedience, to preferred before private sorrow for friendes, the publicke defence of our Catholike Cause, seeing ignorant zeale is ready upon any the least occasion to disgrace it” (To the Reader).

Polonius, speaking of his advice to Ophelia to “test” the love of the “mad” Hamlet, says the young prince “fell into a sadness, then into a fast,/Thence to a watch [wakefulness], thence into a weakness” (2.2.147-148), allowing his enemy Claudius to take advantage of him.

In a passage in which Claudius likens his sin of killing his brother to that of Cain, he says that, despite his egregious sin, and his inclination toward prayer and recognition of the need to repent, he is unable to truly repent: “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;/It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,/A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,/Though my inclination be as sharp as will” (3.3.36-39). Claudius’ weakness and sinful nature have overwhelmed his inclination toward piety and true repentance, dramatizing Floyd’s description of the weak inclination of human nature as separated from grace.

In a strong reflection of Floyd’s message, the evil Claudius speaks of the appropriate length of mourning for his dead brother, adding that it is now time to move forward. But Claudius’ words are spoken in a spirit of self-interest that runs counter to Ignatian intent. He says his mourning must be accompanied by taking steps to ensure his own well-being, including marriage to his brother’s wife. He notes that the mourning state of the kingdom has allowed young Fortinbras to underestimate Claudius’ strength and perceive the kingdom as one in disorder. “Now follows that you know young Fortinbras,/Holding a weak supposal of our worth,/Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death/Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,/Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage,/He hath not failed to pester us with his message,/Importing the surrender of those lands/Lost by his father, with all bands of law,/To our most valiant brother” (1.2.17-25). True to the Jesuit message, excessive grief and concern with material comforts have strengthened the enemy.

Indifference

The Ignatian quality of “indifference” relates to the attitude the Jesuit takes in guarding against being swayed by his attraction to some things and his distraction by others. The Jesuit must remain practically impartial, moved only by desire for his final end in God and perception of the divine will.

Floyd writes: “Dreadful mischance[s] of this kind” are simply miseries “indifferently incident unto mankind,” adversities “unto which their own sect” [Protestant] was “continually subject” as well. In other words, God tests the love of all men to keep the righteous on track in following God’s will. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, upon greeting Hamlet, describe themselves as the “indifferent children of the earth” in a passage that also speaks of the vicissitudes of Fortune (2.2.230). “Happy in that we are not overhappy. On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button,” Guildenstern says. Shakespeare also alludes to the attitude of indifference in Ignatian theology in a passage superficially concerning the training of actors. The passage emphasizes moderate gestures and temperance to give their acting “smoothness.” In an overt reference to the discretio spirituum, Hamlet says, “Let your own discretion be your tutor.” A player responds, “I hope we have reformed [not performed, as we would expect to read] that indifferently.” Southwell alludes to Ignatian indifference in Triumphs as well, postulating that while it is normal to mourn, “not to bear it with moderation is to want understanding.” In other words, passions must be kept in balance. All three authors introduce the notion of indifference into their writings, but only Floyd and Shakespeare use the word “indifference.”

Brotherly Obligation

Floyd writes (To the Reader): “Let the duty of weeping for the Dead, in this late dismall Accident, so rufull to flesh and blood, which from our hartes both common Humanity and private Friendship enforce, give place unto the duty of writing in the behalfe of the living, which at our handes both Christian Charity, and Priestly obligation exact.”

In the last scene of Hamlet, Fortinbras comes upon the carnage of the dead bodies: “This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,/What feast is toward in thine eternal cell/That thou so many princes at a shot/So bloodily has struck?” (5.2.364-368). The ambassador responds: “The sight is dismal” (5.2.368). Earlier, the King says in belittling Hamlet’s grief: “’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,/To give these mourning duties to your father,/But you must know your father lost a father,/That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound/In filial obligation for some term/To do obsequious sorrow” (1.2.87-93). The monarch, appearing to represent Elizabethan temporal authority in belittling Jesuit grief, calls for “obsequious” sorrow, the opposite of the Jesuit’s directive.

Ignorance, Impiety, and Grace

Floyd writes (To the Reader): Let mourning for corporall Death, which the Holy Ghost confines within the compasse of seaven [seven] dayes, Lucifer mortui septem dies, especially for them whose soules (as we with reason hope) do raigne in glory, be changed into mourning for blind Ignorance and Impiety, which the same Holy Spirit will have commeasured unto the length of their life, Luctus mortui septem dies, to wit, so long as there is hope by teares of instruction to reclayme them.” Here, Floyd says mourning is limited to seven days by God, according to scripture, and he urges against mourning for those in Heaven. Instead, it is more productive to mourn ignorance and impiety, so that God will set a limit on such unproductive actions as well. Floyd says excessive tears and grief—“this weake inclination of Nature”—should yield to “Gods holy will” and to “the motion of heavenly Grace concurring with obedience” so that private sorrow for friends is subordinated to the public defense of the Catholic cause. Defense of the Church is needed in recognition that “ignorant zeale is ready upon the least occasion to disgrace it.” Likewise, Southwell says in Triumphs Over Death, “The Scripture warneth us not to give our hearts to sadness, as men without hope, but rather, to reject it as a thing not beneficial to the dead, yea, prejudicial to ourselves. Ecclesiasticus alloweth but seven days to mourning, judging moderation in plaint to be a sufficient testimony of good-will and a needful office of wisdom.” In considering the “madness” of Hamlet, Southwell calls excessive grief “effeminate” and an “impotent softness” that “fitteth not sober minds.” If those in a state of passion send their thoughts into the “labyrinth” of prolonged mourning, what results is “weakness” that serves “to arm an enemy against ourselves—putting the sword in the rebel’s hand, when we are least able to withstand his treason.”

In failing to limit his grief to seven days, a mourning Laertes calls for salty tears to burn his eyes: Tears seven times salt/Burn out the sense and virtue [power] of mine eye!” (4.5.154-155). Conversely, Hamlet tells Gertrude his outward appearance of mourning—black clothing, sighs, and weeping—may seem like grief, but these outward signs fail to show the inner extent of his grief, to “denote me truly.” True to Floyd’s message, Hamlet urges his audience members to outwardly hide their grief, despite the suffering within. Using the same or similar language as Floyd—“ignorance” and “impiety”—Claudius says mourning runs counter to God’s will, makes one vulnerable, and reveals ignorance (an “understanding unschooled”), weakness, and impiety (“a will most incorrect to heaven”):

But to persever

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness. ‘Tis unmanly grief.

It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,

An understanding simple and unschooled (1.2.92-97).

Much as Floyd uses the words “disgrace,” “impiety,” and “ignorance” together in adjacent sentences, Shakespeare in Sonnet 67 includes the words “grace” and “impiety” in back-to-back lines, but he substitutes “infection” (meaning sin) for “ignorance” with the express implication that moral corruption can be caused by ignorance, a theme of Othello. “Ah, wherefore with infection should he live,/And with his presence grace impiety/That sin by him advantage should achieve,/And lace itself with his society?” In the sonnet, the speaker laments the “infection”—essentially the sin of heresy, which can be caused by ignorance, according to the OED—with which the beloved must live, gracing sinners with his presence so as to enable them to take advantage of him.

Floyd in his tract urges his co-religionists to discard private grief in favor of a public defense of the Catholic cause, noting that Protestant adversaries are continuously poised to strike a rhetorical blow against the Church, even upon the smallest incident. Sorrow and mourning over the executions of Jesuits and lay Catholics—the “slain of our country”—Floyd urges, should be redirected toward mourning ignorance and impiety so that adversaries do not gain the advantage. Sonnet 67 expresses this message succinctly: “That sin by him advantage should achieve/And lace itself with his society.” In other words, the heretics will take advantage of any occasion to denigrate, or “disgrace,” Catholics.

In a further example of “grace” and “ignorance” found together in Hamlet, Hamlet says, “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!/Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,/Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,/Be thy intents wicked or charitable,/Thou com’st in such a questionable shape/That I will speak to thee./I’ll call thee Hamlet,/King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me!/Let me not burst in ignorance” (1.4.39-46).

Crown of Patience as Silence

Floyd writes: “From his [God’s] goodness expect, in devout silence, the like reward of your constancy, not only a crowne of patience in the next world, but also increase of temporal comfort in the present.” Southwell, from whom Floyd obviously draws, also encourages English Catholics to remain constant, avoid attendance of Anglican services, and bear their suffering with patience. This was the official message of Robert Persons.

In The Triumphs Over Death, Southwell writes: “Without perseverance, neither does the champion obtain the conquest, nor the conqueror his crown. The accomplishing of virtue is the virtue of courage; she is the nurse to our merits; and the mediatrice to our need. She is the sister of patience, the daughter of constancy, and the lover of peace… In silence and hope shall be our strength.”

Hamlet’s final words are, “The rest is silence” (5.2.359). Earlier in the play, Polonius urges Gertrude to upbraid Hamlet for causing trouble, while Polonius says he will stand nearby and remain silent: “I’ll silent me even here” (3.4.4). Polonius though does not remain silent but makes a noise. Hamlet then realizes someone is hiding in Gertrude’s closet and stabs him through the drawn curtain; importantly, Polonius is killed when he breaks his silence.

Earlier, in pondering the Jesuit message to bear persecution with patience, Hamlet says: “To be, or not to be: that is the question:/Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/And by opposing end them” (3.1.56-60). He also speaks of the mistreatment that constant persons must bear with patience: “The insolence of office, and the spurns/That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,/When he himself might his quietus make/With a bare bodkin?” (3.1.74-76). Later, Gertrude urges her son to calm his troubled mind: “O gentle son,/Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper/Sprinkle cool patience” (3.4.123-25).

In the famous graveyard scene, Hamlet substitutes the word “crowner” for coroner. The gravedigger, who determines whether Ophelia has committed suicide or accidentally drowned, and whether she should receive a Christian burial, dramatizes Floyd’s point that limiting grief and “crowning” oneself with patience will fend off one’s enemies and thereby death. Shakespeare has the gravedigger announce the “point”: to drown one’s self (literally in tears) is an act of suicide. Such an act is not deserving of a Christian burial, according to the “crowner,” because engaging in excessive grief concerns itself with worldly vanities and self-love which the Ignatian servant must discard; instead, he must adopt “indifference” to the vanities of the world as a way to focus solely on Christ. “Ay marry, is’t—crowner’s quest law,” says the Clown (gravedigger), who continues to dig graves until the end of the world, essentially for those who fail to persevere and trust in God. An unnamed character says, “The crowner hath sate on her, and finds it a Christian burial” (5.1.4). In other words, Ophelia is a servant of Christ.

Sonnet 58 also urges one to express a calm temper in grief and suffering: “And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each cheek.” The sonnet is likely numbered according to 1558, the year in which Elizabeth I took office. Through the silent communication of number symbolism, the sonnet urges patience amidst Queen-sanctioned persecution.

Providence

Floyd writes: “Heere by God’s holy Word we are informed that such is his providence in this life, that an house or roome may fall, no lesse upon the just, as they are hearing his heavenly Doctrine, then upon the Wicked, as they are blaspheming his blessed Name. Why doth Fayth complayne or wonder at this course of God’s providence which he hath set down to himselfe in his Word, and which hath been still his ordinary since the world?” Here, Floyd says the course of life has been controlled by God since the beginning of time. Later, Floyd points to the example of Tobias from the Apocrypha, who was struck blind: “A strange and miserable accident scarce ever heard of before sent (as it might seem) by the hand of God’s providence upon him even in his most fervent exercise of Religion.” He also writes, “The stroke of chance, as it is in truth, so is it taken by the instinct of nature, as the stroke of God’s special providence, and hand.” Several pages later, he writes, “A Sparrow (though not worth a farthing) falles not to the ground without the heavenly Father; and could men desirous of saving truth for whom Christ dyed, fall with the sound therof in their eare, without the Heavenly Father working in their soules?”

Hamlet says: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,/Rough-hew them how we will” (5.2.10-11). And, “We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow” (5.2.220-21) (cf. Matthew 10.29, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”) Hamlet says that despite his intuition he may lose a fencing match to Laertes, he does not want to avoid the match and possible death in the belief that God controls the events of life, even the fall of a sparrow from its nest. Our lives defy prediction, he says; things happen exactly as they should, and what is important is being spiritually prepared.

Earlier, Shakespeare writes, “Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?/It will be laid to us, whose providence [foresight]/Should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt/This mad young man. But so much was our love/We would not understand what was most fit,/But, like the owner of a foul disease,/To keep it from divulging, let it feed/Even on the pith of life” (4.1.16-23). Claudius, in discussing the murder of Polonius by Hamlet, says Hamlet would have murdered Claudius had he been hiding behind the curtain. He predicts that he will be blamed for not having had the foresight to restrain and confine the “mad” young man. Claudius, falsely believing in his own power over death, and thinking his own life has been spared by “chance,” fails to recognize that “providence” belongs to God and not to man.

Mischance

Floyd writes: “There is not any greater affliction unto Gods servants in this life, nor any more sharpe corrasive unto their hart, then the happening of strange & dreadfull mischances, that carry a shew of his anger agaynst their Religion, wherby the enemies therof harden their soules as stone, agaynst it.” He says there is no greater wound than to hear Protestants attribute dreadful accidents to God’s anger against Catholics. Floyd said such mischance was simply misery “indifferently incident unto mankind,” adversity “unto which their own sect” was “continually subject.”

In Hamlet, after the Player Queen has sworn never to break her vow to not remarry, a hollow vow in light of the real Queen’s adulterous marriage to her slain husband’s brother, the Player King speaks of his sleepiness. The Player Queen prays that no mischance will come between them: “Sleep rock thy brain,/And never come mischance between us twain!” (3.2.233-34). All of this occurs during the play-within-the play, in which Hamlet attempts to engage the conscience of the King. Sleep in Jesuit writings was a metaphor for the sin of religious inconstancy. By breaking their vows, the Player King through sleeping and the Player Queen through her adulterous marriage attempt to avoid mischance, which here means persecution.

Southwell sums it up in Triumphs Over Death: “When the soldier in skirmish seeth his next fellow slain, he thinketh it better to look to himself, than to stand mourning a hapless mischance.” Southwell says that while death is inevitable, we, like “silly birds,” indulge in the weakness of excessive mourning and “counting losses.”

Mischief

Floyd tells Catholics that untimely and accidental death is worse for Protestants on the grounds that they fail to appreciate the subtleties and mysteries of God and instead falsely attribute the accident to God’s wrath. “The Holy Ghost doth acknowledge this kind of Crosses to be the greatest, the worst under the Sunne, yet not so ill unto you the children of the Church, as unto the sonnes of men; I meane them, whose Religion as different from the Catholike is humane, nothing but a denyall of high mysteries contrary to the seeming of flesh and blood: Unto these Humanists, I say, this accident is worse, and causeth greater mischief then unto you.”

In Hamlet during the “dumb show,” or pantomime within the drama, a King and Queen enter, embracing one another in a loving manner. The King falls asleep, and the Queen leaves him. While he is asleep, another man comes in, takes off the King’s crown, kisses it [as in Judas’ kiss of betrayal of Christ], and pours poison in the sleeper’s ears. The Queen returns to find her King dead. Hamlet says, “Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief” (3.2.144). Here, Shakespeare dramatizes apostasy as sleeping (associated by Robert Persons with the sin of conformity to Anglicanism, a betrayal of Christ), which is further equated with hearing “poisonous” words of heretical Protestant doctrine. Hamlet terms this “mischief,” while Floyd says that Protestants—because of their ungodly, man-centered, “humane” beliefs—are more prone to the effects of “mischief.” Furthermore, Floyd cites a scriptural example that succinctly mirrors Hamlet’s theme of poison in the ear: “These calamityes were the cause that he pined away with sorrow to the great griefe of all good men, particularly of Christians; his death being also hastened with poyson given him by Domitian his unnatural brother, whose cruelty he could never overcome with all kind of curtesies, clemencies, and tokens of more than brotherly love.”

What follows the passage in Hamlet is a long soliloquy by the Player King on how the strongest intentions often go awry, weakening one’s will as resolve turns to inaction. “Purpose is but the slave to memory,” he says (3.2.194). Shakespeare dramatizes the exact message of Floyd: turning away from the Church through apostasy only serves to weaken the individual and the cause.

The subject of inappropriately excessive grieving arises in Othello as well. In that play, the Duke says, “To mourn a mischief that is past and gone/Is the next way to draw new mischief on./What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,/Patience her injury a mockery makes./The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief;/He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief” (1.3.203-208). The lines echo Floyd’s message that prolonged mourning could result in more destruction.

The last scene of Hamlet sums up the message of Floyd that rash action leads to more calamity. The rational Horatio says: “But let this same be presently performed,/Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance/On plots and errors happen” (5.2.393-394).

Other Works

In other works, particularly The Overthrow of theProtestants Pulpit-Babels of English Ministers published in 1612, Floyd writes in language reminiscent of Shakespeare. Floyd was responding in this tract to “The Sermon Preached at the Cross” by the ardently anti-Papist Protestant preacher William Crashaw on February 14, 1607, as well as to Crashaw’s later sermon, The Jesuits Gospell, published in 1610. In his “Cross” sermon, Crashaw compared the Catholic Church to the mystical Babylon and its Tower of Babel, which confounded the languages of men. Floyd reverses the Protestant insult in the title of his tract and compares Protestant-sect pulpits to the confusion of Babel. He opens his rebuttal with a typically Shakespearean pun, substituting the word “babble” for “Babel”; in general, criticism of Puritan prayers before sermons had been called “beeble-babble.” (Shakespeare uses “babble” as a verb or noun in five plays, including “vain bibble babble” in Twelfth Night [4.2.105] and “pibble pabble” in Henry V [4.1.71]). Floyd writes, “If many seduced souls in our (in this respect) unhappy Kingdome, had no more need to read refutations of idle Babels, then any trayned up in true learning can take delight to refute frivolous falsehoods.” Floyd says he had been urged by a member of the Inns of Court, to which his tract is addressed, to refute the “babble” of Crashaw.

His language in The Overthrow is also reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. In writing of the method of contemplation practiced by the Jesuits, Floyd says that to apprehend something in order to understand it is not to judge it, “as when we apprehend (as S. Augustine did) God as an infinite light, or sea of glory, without bound, in which the world like a sponge floateth, though God be not indeed as we apprehend” (44). Likewise, the Christ-like Juliet (who is called a “lamb” and a “dove” and hails from the east, like the star of Bethlehem followed by the magi) says, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite” (2.2.133-135).

Floyd also writes, “If (I say) such were the felicity of our Country, I might to my great comfort have beene excused from the taske of this tedious labour of directing an Answere to this Bachelors [Crashaw’s] Babell, and have saved some peeces of a rich and irrecoverable Jewell to have imployed them in a more gaynefull, and comfortable purchase.” We are reminded of Juliet described as a “rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear” (1.5.48), while Juliet in the play is associated with Mary- and Gabriel-like figures in her description as a “winged messenger of Heaven” and an “angel.” This metaphor echoes the “toad ugly and venomous,/Wears yet a precious jewel in his head” (As You Like It, 2.2.13-14). Floyd seems quite fond of the metaphor in his repeated use of it: “First, this Treatise may serve for a compendiary answer to a good part of many Protestant books which ever comonly are parsed with these very slanders: That we thinke the Pope to be God; that he can deliver soules out of hell, and the rest, which this Mynister [Crashaw] to make them more vendible doth offer as rare Jewells, and no triviall things.” Floyd invokes the name behind his thought: the notable Protestant preacher John Jewell “to whose name I need add no other Epithete,” confirming his description of “rich jewel” as a pun on Jewell’s name. Floyd notes with sarcasm the untruths about Catholicism—“rich jewels”—spread by Protestant preachers such as Jewell. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s description of the Christ-like Juliet as a “rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear” is at once sarcastic and ironic and incorporates a double pun. Juliet is the “rich jewel” of Catholicism, while at the same time, the description of her as a “rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear” is a sarcastic description of the Protestant view of Catholics: the words of John Jewell are heard but not followed by ignorant Catholics. An “Ethiope” can be seen as one associated with what is dark or ignorant, which is how Protestants like Jewell described Catholics.

Moreover, the passage includes further lines that subtly imply an elevation of the Virgin Mary above ordinary women, a pervasive theme in Floyd. “Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear./So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows/As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows” (1.5.49-51), Romeo says of Juliet immediately after describing her as a “rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear.” Indeed, Protestant reformers associated the Catholic Church with the “Whore of Babylon” and the Antichrist. Protestant preachers such as Crashaw found Catholic devotion to the Virgin Mary as blasphemous through the elevation of Mary to what they considered to be a godlike status, a “goddess” who redeemed, saved, protected, defended, and ruled all earthly creatures. At issue was her relationship to God and to Jesus, seen by Protestants as standing between God and worshipper. Protestants attempted to lower the godlike status of Mary by comparing her to ordinary women. In this, we may find the basis for the irony contained within Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130.

Floyd, in Purgatories Triumph over Hell (1613), termed her “Pope Mary” in amused reference to the Protestant view. Crashaw in particular had rejected Mary as redeemer and mediator and worried that the common people, exposed to the cult of the infant Jesus, would see her as more powerful than Jesus. Crashaw objected to the maternal Mary as emphasizing the carnal rather than the spiritual.

Both Catholic apologists and Protestants viewed Mary’s resemblance to other women as disparagement, notes Frances Dolan in Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture. Floyd called it a “foule comparison” in his Overthrow of the Protestants Pulpit-Babels. In this phrase, “foule comparison,” we may find the near-exact diction of Shakespeare in Sonnet 130: “As any she belied with false compare.” Crashaw went as far as to depict Mary as a “shrew” and to say Mary’s powerful image as miracle-worker served to emasculate Jesus in the area of miracles. In response, Floyd amusingly imagined that Mary as shrew might “rappe him [Jesus] on the fingers,” if he attempted to perform any miracles. Despite Protestant attempts to deflate Mary’s image of power, including the image of the lactating Mary domineering over the helpless infant Jesus, Floyd suggested that “Crashaw’s irreverence for the Virgin’s breasts reveals more about his sexual fantasies than it does about her,” Dolan notes, with Floyd saying that “seeing her breasts in her conceit are no better, and so no more to be honoured and respected, then those of other women, which to play eyther imaginatively or indeed.”⁴

In Floyd’s response, we may find an echo of line three of Sonnet 130: “If snow be white, then her breasts are dun.” The speaker of the poem in a parodic voice defiantly, ironically, and even sarcastically affirms his devotion to Mary, despite Protestant attempts to deflate her status, and the breasts that nursed Jesus, to that of other women. In his tract, Floyd notes “how lavishly” Protestants compared the late Queen Elizabeth to a “great goddess” by praying to her to “grant them things that cannot be granted but by God only,” such as peace, plenty, and joy (boldface type added). Floyd uses the exact diction of Shakespeare in the sonnet: “I grant I never saw a goddess go.”

Similarly in Othello, a play that dramatizes Floyd’s message of impiety as sin caused by ignorance and leading to the loss of grace, an important theme of the play seeks to upend Protestant refutations of Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary, as demonstrated through the words of the evil Iago. Mary is personified in the character of Desdemona, evidenced as she is greeted with the words “hail” and called “the grace of heaven.” The entire play, which opens with the defeat of the Turks by forces led by the morally upright Othello, can be seen as inspired by the victory of the Christian military victory over Ottoman forces at Lepanto near western Greece in 1571, a victory attributed to the intercession of Mary. In the play, the evil Iago, as representative of the Protestant view, attempts to turn Othello away from Desdemona/Virgin Mary and the Church. Floyd’s subject matter—Protestant attempts to deflate the heavenly Virgin Mary to the status of ordinary women—is perfectly dramatized. In a long section in the first scene of the second act on the praise of women, evoking the subject of praise of the Virgin Mary, Iago fails to praise Desdemona adequately. She counters by accusing him of giving his praise to the worst type of women and asks how he would praise a deserving woman: “But what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed, one that, in the authority of her merit, did justly put on the vouch [compel approval] of very malice itself” (2.1.114). Iago provides an answer that clearly seeks to demote the Virgin Mary: a woman deserving of praise would be beautiful not proud, would not be overdressed, would never seek revenge, and would be restrained and full of wisdom. Shakespeare’s intent is clear through the word “wisdom,” evoking the Virgin Mary’s title of the “Seat of Wisdom,” as she is known. If such a woman existed, Iago says, she would exist in order to “suckle fools and chronicle small beer.” Floyd, in writing in his tract of the breasts of ordinary women as inferior to the breasts that nursed Jesus, appears to be reflecting Iago’s comments that an ordinary woman should be concerned with suckling ordinary men. Interestingly, the word “fools” alludes to the Jesuits through the words of Southwell, who called the Jesuits “God’s almighty fools” as a reflection of the words of Ignatius in referring to the Jesuits as “fools for Christ’s sake.” The evil Iago disparages the Jesuits by saying they should be suckled by the breasts of ordinary women, perfectly reflecting Protestant disdain for the elevation of the Virgin Mary by the Jesuits. What must be remembered is point of view, and Shakespeare puts these thoughts into the mind of a villain.

This theme of the play, and especially Emilia’s rebellion against her husband, the evil Iago, can also be seen as a reflection of the words of Henry Garnet in “A Treatise of Christian Renunciation.” In an address to Catholic women, Garnet writes, “Remember, you are the spouses of God. These men which now are your husbands, after the short space of this life, and the temporal cohabitation of this vale of misery, shall be your husbands no longer … These men after their death cannot forbid you to marry another: Even so let not them living still to cause you to be unfaithful to God … God formed your body, distinguished your members, gave life and soul unto them all. Let not them destroy your soul who could not give it.”

In Hamlet, Shakespeare’s mocking of lawyers—most likely those who argued against Jesuits at their trials for treason—parallels that of Protestant preachers by Floyd in The Overthrow, with both authors using the words “quiddity,” of medieval scholastic jargon, and “contumely.” Hamlet parodies the language of the medieval schools, assigning “quiddity” to the skulls imagined by the gravedigger to be the heads of dead lawyers. In asking what good their subtle arguments will do them now, the gravedigger asks, “Where be his quiddities now, his quillities [fine distinctions], his cases, his tenures [legal means of holding land], and his tricks” (5.1.100)? Likewise, Floyd mocks as falsely learned those Protestant preachers who are married, recalling an exposition of the Annunciation which imagined the angel Gabriel as a young “wooer” who enters the chamber of the young maid. “Do you perceave the curiosity of these Ghospellers, that will not rest with their thoughts, till they know the Quid fit, the very essence and quiddity of the locking up of a trym [trim] young woer, with a fayre yong virgin together alone in a chamber?” Hamlet includes four students—Hamlet, Horatio, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern—from the University of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther introduced his 95 theses, beginning the Protestant Reformation. Floyd sarcastically refers to the Puritan preachers as “owls,” the symbol of wisdom and universities, while Ophelia in Hamlet says, “The owl was a baker’s daughter” (4.5.42-43), alluding to the tale of a baker’s daughter who begrudged bread to Christ and was turned into an owl. The allusion to these preachers turning their backs on Christ could not be clearer.

In Hamlet, the main character speaks of enduring the “proud man’s contumely,” while Floyd writes of Crashaw’s writings adorned with “some such rare Jewell of contumelious termes.”

Other plays of Shakespeare reflect Floyd’s words. Floyd in writing of the “malice” and “contempt” of Protestants in A Word of Comfort says, “Unto these humanists, I say, this accident is worse, and causeth greater mischiefe then unto you [Catholics]. It doth grieve, and afflict your hart, it doth harden and obdurate their hart.” In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare writes, “Madam, if your heart be so obdurate,/Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love,/The picture that is hanging in your chamber.”

The question arises as to whether Floyd in 1623 was quoting Shakespeare or simply communicating the same general Jesuit message, or whether Floyd had known Shakespeare and assisted him with theological thought. The actual printing of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet, occurred between February 1621 and early November 1623. The First Folio was published in November, but the earliest record of a retail purchase is an account book entry for December 5, 1623. Accounts of the Blackfriars accident on October 26, 1623 circulated quickly, and pamphlets appeared within a matter of weeks. Floyd’s Word of Comfort was published in November, meaning that he could not have drawn on a purchased copy of the version of Hamlet published in the First Folio, given that the first copy was not purchased until early December. If Floyd had been quoting Hamlet, he would have been drawing on either the version of the play published in quarto in 1603 or the second quarto published in 1604-05. The second quarto is closest to the version printed in the First Folio of 1623, and it is in the second quarto that the language most closely related to the wording of Robert Southwell appears. Hamlet is thought to have been written sometime around 1599, near the time when Floyd likely crossed over into England.

In any case, we may see Shakespeare conveying the distinctly Jesuit directive given by the mission prefect Robert Persons: avoid conformity to Anglicanism in order to guarantee the salvation of your soul and find hope in the silent trust of God’s providence.

The material below shows the similarity of thought and language between Floyd’s Word of Comfort and Hamlet.

Quotations from AWord of Comfort are listed first, followed by those from Hamlet and when relevant from Southwell’s Triumphs Over Death:

Word of Comfort: “to make happy Event a note of the truth, or unlucky success a sign of falsehood is to set Religion on the dice” (27)

Hamlet: “such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty … makes marriage vows/As falsedicer’s oaths (3.4)

Triumphs Over Death: “for whom inconstant Fortune throweth the dice”

WC: “jolly and jocund, so puffed up with pride” (21)

H: “No jocund health that Denmark drinks today” (1.2)

WC: “this late dismallAccident” (3)

H: “The sight is dismal” (5.2)

WC: “this late dismall Accident” (3) “permission of this Accident” (4) “An accident common unto men (6) “this accident is worse” (7) “a strange and miserable accident” (7) “intentions of God in this accident” (38)

H: “That he, as ‘twere by accident” (3.1) “Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident” (3.2) “And call it accident” (4.7) “As there are tongues, are hands, are accident” (4.7) “of accidental judgments, casual slaughters” (5.3)

WC: “The cause of this slaughter was the same Satan in malice against the Religion of their Father” (9) “the whole most execrable spectacle of that rufull slaughter” (18)

H: “his canon [law] against self-slaughter” (1.2) “of accidental judgments, casual slaughters” (5.2)

WC: “Satan in malice against the Religion of their Father” (9)

H: “and our vain blows malicious mockery (1.1) “when she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport” (2.2)

WC: “lay before their eyes as it were upon a Theater, the whole most execrable spectacle of that rufull slaughter” (18)

H: “Give order that these bodies high on a stage be placed to the view ” (5.2)

WC: “the whole most execrable spectacle of that rufull slaughter” (18)

H: “There’s rue for you … O, you must wear your rue with a difference” (4.5)

WC: “these terrible casualties of mortall life” (5)

H: “of accidental judgments, casual [accidental] slaughters” (5.2)

WC: “strange & dreadfull mischances” (5) “dreadful mischances of mortality” (12) “We now are in the mist of sorrow and affliction for this mischance, that hath cast a mist of new darkness and ignorance over the eyes of some” (58)

H: “and never come mischance between us twain!” (3.2) “lest more mischance on plots and errors happen” (5.2)

TD: “mourning a hapless mischance”

WC: “causeth greater mischief” (7) “defence unto him against further mischief” (20) “the commiserable city set upon by a double mischief” (23)

H: “it means mischief” (3.2)

WC: “the commiserable city set upon by a double mischief” (23)

H: “a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers” (5.1) “like a man to double business bound” (3.3)

WC: “the Ends and Intentions of God in this accident” (38)

H: “my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent” (3.3)

WC: “for God to send strange disasters upon his servants hath been ever his custome” (8)

H: “As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, disasters in the sun” (1.1)

WC: “for God to send strange disasters upon his servants hath been ever his custome” (8) “cast away from you such needless vanities, as not the choice of your hart, but the custome of tyme hath put upon you” (56)

H: “Is it a custom?” (1.4) “Antiquity forgot, custom not known” (4.5) “lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises” (2.2) “Nor customary suits of solemn black” (1.2)

WC: “These calamityes were the cause” (14)

H: “That makes calamity of so long life” (3.1)

WC: “by shewing Gods ends in the permission of this accident, of which we may make our Profit” (4)

H: “As to expend your time with us awhile for the supply and profit of our hope” (2.2) “their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways” (2.2) “we go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name” (4.4)

WC: “Hereupon ensued horrible whirl-winds with such dreadful shaking of the ground” (18)

H: “for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind your passion” (3.2)

WC: “this weake inclination of Nature” (3)

H: “thence into a weakness” (2.2) “a weak supposal of our worth” (1.2)

WC: “this weake inclination of Nature” (3)

H: “my inclination be as sharp as will” (3.3); “observe his inclination in yourself” (2.1)

WC: “to divide indifferently amongst the good and bad” (5) “as a misery indifferently incident unto mankind” (11)

H: “indifferent children of the earth” (2.2) “reformed that indifferently” (3.2)

WC: “and Priestly obligation exact” (3)

H: “In filial obligation for some term” (1.2)

WC: “mourning for corporall Death, which the Holy Ghost confines” (4) “mourning for blind Ignorance and Impiety” (4)

H: “would have mourned longer” (1.2) “and all we mourn for” (2.2)

TD: “Ecclesiasticus alloweth but seven days to mourning”

WC: “within the compasse of Seven dayes” (4)

H: “You would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass” (3.2)

WC: “within the compasse of Seven dayes” (4)

H: “Tears seven times salt” (4.5)

TD: “Ecclesiasticus alloweth but seven days to mourning”

WC: “Who will give me water unto my head and fluds of tears unto mine eyes, that I may bewayle day and night the Slayne of my Country!” (1)

H: “she followed by poor father’s body/Like Niobe, all tears” (1.2); ”tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect” (2.2); “He would drown the stage with tears” (2.2); ”Tears seven times salt” (4.5); “I forbid my tears” (4.7)

WC: “Who will give me water unto my head and fluds of tears” (1)

H: “What if it tempt you toward the flood” (1.4)

WC: “mourning for blind Ignorance and Impiety” (4)

H: “Of impious stubbornness … simple and unschooled” (1.2)

WC: “the Badde, that feast and banquet, riot and rejoyce in their sins” (6) “nor have riotous feasters in a Taverne, a surer warrant of life” (54)

H: “Go to your rest; at night we’ll feast together.” (2.2) “The ocean, overpeering of his list [shore] eats not the flats with more impiteous haste than young Laertes, in a riotus head” (4.5)

WC: “These our antagonists [Protestant preachers] that are so jolly and jocund, so puffed up with pride” (21)

H: “Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, while like a puffed and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads” (1.3)

WC: “ignorant zeale is ready upon the least occasion to disgrace it” (4)

H: “Let me not burst in ignorance” (1.4)

WC: “ignorant zeale is ready upon the least occasion to disgrace it” (4)

H: “ministers of grace defend us!” (1.4)

WC: “Thus did ancient Infidelity speak in the Puritan language, which now dayly sounds in our ears.” (8)

H: “Pours poison in his ears” (stage direction during the play-within-the-play); “And in the porches of my ears did pour the leperous distilment” (1.5)

WC: “crowne of patience in the next world” (12)

H: “crowner’s quest law” (5.1) “The crowner hath sate on her” (5.1)

TD: “nor the conqueror his crown”

WC: “crowne of patience in the next world” (12)

H: “That patient merit of th’unworthy takes” (3.1) “Sprinkle cool patience” (3.1); “They stay upon your patience” (3.2); “Be you content to lend your patience to us” (4.5); “Till then in patience our proceeding be” (5.1)

TD: “the sister of patience”

WC: “as the stroake of God’s special providence” (44) “this course of God’s providence” (6) “such is his [God’s] providence in this life (6) “by the hand of God’s providence” (7) “sweet course of providence” (40)

H: “special providence in the fall of a sparrow” (5.2) “whose providence should have kept short” (4.1)

WC: “A Sparow (though not worth a farthing) falles not to the ground without the heavenly Father” (50)

H: “special providence in the fall of a sparrow” (5.2)

WC: “poyson given him by Domitian his unnaturalbrother, whose cruelty he could never overcome with all kind of curtesies, clemencies, and tokens of more than brotherly love” (14)

H: “They do but jest, poison in jest” (3.2) “’A poisons him i’ th’ garden for his estate” (3.2) “his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5) “Let me be cruel, not unnatural” (3.3) “My father’s brother, but no more like my father/Than I to Hercules.” (1.2)

WC: “taking the ghostly reflection of their soul” [Eucharist] (8)

H: “could force his soul so to his own conceit” (2.2) “Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice” (3.2) “May one be pardoned and retain th’ offense? … O limèd soul.” (3.3)

WC: “taking the ghostly reflection of their soul” [Eucharist] (8)

H: “Alas, poor ghost” (1.5) “Ay, thou poor ghost” (1.5) “There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this” (1.5) “It is an honest ghost” (1.5) “It is a damned ghost that we have seen” (3.2) “I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound” (3.2)

WC: “these earth-quakes were raysed by the inchantment and witchery of a woman professing herself a Christian and a Prophetesse” (17)

H: “O most pernicious [malicious] woman!” (1.5)

WC: “these earth-quakes were raysed by the inchantment and witchery of a woman professing herself a Christian and a Prophetesse” (17)

H: “that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts” (1.5) “‘Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.” (3.3) “but this gallant had witchcraft in it” (4.7)

WC: “these earth-quakes were raysed by the inchantment and witchery of a woman professing herself a Christian and a Prophetesse” (17)

H: “Now I could drink hot blood and do such bitter business the day would quake to look on.” (3.3)

WC: “we will bring them … out of Calvin’s closet into the sight of heaven and earth” (31)

H: “I was sewing in my closet” (2.1) “She desires to speak with you in her closet” (3.2) “he’s going to his mother’s closet” (3.3) “from his mother’s closet hath he dragged him” (4.1)

WC: “we would not so much Pitty, as envy such happy passages out of this life” (32)

H: “Your sum of parts did not altogether pluck such envy from him” (4.7)

WC: “we would not so much Pitty, as envy such happy passages out of this life” (32)

H: “I know love is begun by time, and that I see, in passages of proof” (4.7)

WC: “Who knows not the weeping of Alexander at the death of Darius? the teares of Casar upon the sight of Pompey his head through remembrance of his former high worthiness and state? (41)

H: “To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till ‘a find it stopping a bunghole?” … Alexander died, Alexander was buried Alexander returneth to Dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.” (5.1)

WC: “Upon they that depose their private conceytes gotten by their own inquisition into Gods word, to be the only Christian divine saving truth so filling the world with innumerable dissonant sects. For as what fancy thinketh, that the bell ringeth: so what Heresy imagineth, that in their conceyte the Scripture soundeth” (6)

H: “to make inquire of his behavior” (2.1) “could force his soul to his own conceit” (2.2) “three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very liberal conceit” (5.2) “Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, her maiden strewments, and the bringing home of bell and burial” (5.1)

WC: “her known immense wickedness could not hinder his hart from a compassionate remembrance of her worth, saying, she was a Queen, and a King’s daughter” (41)

H: “I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver.” (3.1) “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.” (4.5) “That we with wisest sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves.” (1.2)

WC: “let her be buried with honour” (41)

H: “The queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow? And with such maimèd rites?” (5.1)

WC: “We must with Holy Job and the auncient Christians, lay ourselves Prostrate at his feete, in the silence and sorrow of soule, drowning our Shallow selfe-humane wisdome in the bottomles depth of his [God’s] judgments” (17)

H: “He would drown the stage with tears” (2.2) “How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defense? … If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act … she drowned herself wittingly … If the man go to this water and drown himself … But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself.” (5.1)

WC: “by pittifull sight, men should be warned to remember her Sanctity, her Dignity, her inestimable Benefits in former times” (41)

H: “Her obsequies have been as far enlarged as we have warranty. Her death was doubtful, and, by that great command o’ersways the order, she should in ground unsanctified been lodged” (5.1)

WC: “This is the religion [Catholic] that did first Banish from our mouth the uncouth names of Panime [pagan] Gods” (41)

H: “Now pile your dust upon the quick and the dead till of this flat a mountain you have made t’o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head of blue Olympus.” (In Greek myth, Mt. Olympus is home to the gods, and giants piled Mt. Ossa on top of Mt. Pelion to climb to heaven.) “Let Hercules himself do what he may.” (5.1)

WC: “They must either want the comfort of the bread of life, or else resort to private Chambers for the same with danger of mischance, that the ancient cause of Jeremy his complaint may seem renewed in us: With losse of our lives we get the bread of our souls.” (40)

H: “’A took my father grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; and how this audit stands, who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought, ‘tis heavy with him; and am I then revenged, to take him in the purging of his soul” (3.3)

WC: “other examples strange and wonderfull” (21)

H: “But this is wondrous strange” (1.5)

WC: “incredible clemencyes of Titus toward his enemyes” (14)

H: “Here stooping to your clemency” (3.2)

WC: “moving their hands to leave monuments of their piety” (41)

H: “This grave shall have a monument.” (5.1)

WC: “the pious works & godly liberalityes thereof shining in the Princes. God doth by special Providence, honour and enrich these Princes for the benefit of his Church.” (26)

H: “Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star” (2.2)

WC: “These be deaths by which men fall not to the ground, but STARRES returne unto their heavenly home: those starres I meane, wherof Daniel fayth, They that informe men unto righteousness, shall shine as STARRES in the firmament for all eternity.” (32)

H: “Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres” (1.5) “Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star” (2.2) “the stamp of one defect, being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star” (1.4) (c.f. To the Memory of My Beloved William Shakespeare And What he Hath Left Us [by Ben Jonson]: “But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere,/Advanced, and made a constellation there!/Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage/Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,/Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,/And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.”)

WC: “and from his goodness expect, in devout silence, the like reward of your constancy” (12)

H: “The rest is silence.” (5.1)

TD: “In silence and hope shall be our strength.”

The following quotations are taken from The Overthrow of theProtestants Pulpit-Babels (1612) by John Floyd, based on the rarity of such words and thoughts, especially when found together in the same manner as in Hamlet.

O: “till they know the very essence and quiddity of the locking up of a trim young wooer, with a fair young virgin together? These owles, they do not harbour in the barn of their braynes” (56)

H: “Where be his quiddities now, his quillities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?” (5.1) “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter” (4.5)

O: “not having any lease or almost lyne not adorned with some such rare Jewell of contumelious terms” (56)

H: “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely” (3.1)

O: “But no where doth this Minister shew greater want of judgment, then in his Jesuits Ghospell, which in truth is such a peece of worke” (36)

H: “What a piece of work is a man! … And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me” (2.2)

O: “thinking himself perchance to be the Sampson of Protestants able to put to silence a thousand of such Doctours with the jaw-bone of an asse [Judges 15]” (131)

H: “as if t’were Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’erreaches, one that would circumvent God” (5.1)

The following quotation is taken from a separate tract (1617) written by Floyd against Marc Antonio de Dominis, the former Archbishop of Spilatro who had apostatized and become Protestant.

Floyd: “And nothing is stronger then the Truth, nothing more wholesome to a man then the knowledge of himselfe, the roote of all evill and errours being not to know oneself.”

Hamlet: “This above all, to thine own self be true.”

The following quotations are taken from Floyd’s Purgatories Triumph Over Hell (1613) and Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Floyd: “I hope you will not without cause be offended, that I likewise give you to understand the drift of my Purgatorie Letter, in a Parable of like nature” (2)

Two Gentlemen: “Thou shalt never get such a secret from me but by a parable” (2.5)