‘Shakespeare was a Catholic sympathiser’; ‘Shakespeare revealed as a “closet Catholic”’; ‘“Little doubt” William Shakespeare was Catholic’. Such sensationalist headlines regularly appear in British newspapers. However, why are Shakespeare’s supposed Catholic leanings so significant? Why is the discovery of his allegiance to the Roman Church deemed a newsworthy event? The answers to such questions no doubt lie in the popular perception of English Catholicism as a subversive and traitorous element in Tudor and early Stuart society – a perception coloured by well-known (and annually commemorated) events such as the Gunpowder Plot. Over a series of five sessions, this course will investigate and interrogate this perception, analysing a wide range of primary sources in order to develop a deeper and more balanced understanding of what it really meant to be Catholic in Tudor England.
Together we will explore the history of English Catholicism from the break with Rome in the early 1530s, to the accession of James I in 1603. After charting the experiences of English Catholics over the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, and interrogating the ways in which those experiences have been remembered and recorded by generations of historians, we will focus in on the reign of Elizabeth I. Using a range of primary evidence, both written and visual, we will probe the complex relationships that developed between English Catholics and the English state during Elizabeth’s reign – relationships that were always fraught, but never unambiguously oppositional.
We will investigate the nature of Catholic resistance to the religious changes of the English Reformation, exploring the diverse forms resistance took as well as the bitter disagreements that developed within the Catholic community over the wisdom of opposition. We will also examine the parallel phenomenon of Catholic conformity with the Elizabethan regime, uncovering the difficult compromises many individuals were forced to make, caught between conflicting imperatives issued by the English sovereign and the pope in Rome. Was it even possible to be both a loyal English citizen and a faithful Catholic?
Finally, we will explore the persecution of Elizabethan Catholics, focussing particularly on the large number of polemical works produced in this period attacking Catholics as seditious traitors and followers of the antichrist. Together we will assess the extent to which such works may have influenced modern interpretations of Tudor Catholicism, but also to which they have contributed to an understanding of English nationhood that survives to this day. Ultimately, this course hopes to reveal both the significance and reality of being Catholic in Shakespeare’s England.
Each session of this course will begin with a short lecture exploring a particular aspect of English Catholic experiences in Tudor England. We will then examine a range of primary sources, both written and visual, discussing their significance and examining how they might reinforce or challenge popular assumptions and received narratives about Tudor Catholicism.
Learning outcomes
- Understand the complex and multifaceted relationship between English Catholicism and the Tudor state, as well as the realities of life for Catholics in early modern England;
- Appreciate the extent to which modern understandings of Tudor Catholicism continue to be shaped by polemic produced during the English Reformation;
- Be able to use and analyse primary sources, both written and visual.
