A copy of the 1623 folio of Shakespeare’s collected plays has been discovered as part of a former Jesuit library in France. This has re-ingnited speculation that Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic. But, as Shakespeare scholar David Scott Kastan points out, that a Jesuit would own a copy of a Shakespeare book published after his death proves no such thing. In fact, another folio in another Jesuit library was heavily censored for what the owners back then considered anti-Catholic sentiments.
From David Scott Kastan, Will and Grace – The Conversation – Blogs – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
As a professional Shakespearean, I am interested in the discovery of the new copy of the First Folio. But I was more interested in why it became news.
It is not really one of the rarest books in the world. Two hundred and thirty two copies were already known to exist (out of a print run of almost certainly no more than 800 copies). So now we have 233. Many 16th- and 17th-century English books are much rarer than that. In fact very few books printed in the 16th or 17th centuries have survival rates of nearly 30 percent. Many published titles don’t survive at all. Only two copies of the earliest edition of Hamlet exist and only a single one of the earliest edition of his first tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Twelve copies of the First Folio exist—in the library of Japan’s Meisei University alone. The Folger Library in Washington, D.C., has 82 copies.
But no doubt the newly discovered one is precious. Everything associated with Shakespeare is. And the early editions of his works are particularly charged; they allow us to come as close as we can to his imagination. Since no manuscripts of his plays have survived, these early editions bear the burden of displaying the “authentic” Shakespeare to his readers. But this 233rd copy of the First Folio, though it has its own unique history, will not in fact tell us very much that we didn’t already know, at least about Shakespeare.
Much of the excitement over the recent discovery, however, is based on the idea that even if it doesn’t tell us something new, it might confirm something long suspected. This copy found its way to the public library in Saint-Omer from the library of a Jesuit college that had been established there in 1593 to educate English Catholics.
The Jesuit college continued in operation there until 1762, when it was shut down as part of larger attack on the Jesuit order that would end with the expulsion of all Jesuits from France in 1764. The abandoned college collection then provided the books for a public library established in the town. So the copy of the Shakespeare First Folio recently found in the Saint-Omer public library was almost certainly carried there by a 17th-century English Catholic. We even have a clue which one. The name “Nevill” is written on the first page of The Tempest.
But that is not quite enough. We want this to say more and mean more—not about fugitive Catholics during the Reformation, but about Shakespeare himself. That’s why the headline in The Independent reads: “Discovery of ‘lost’ Shakespeare First Folio revives claim playwright was a secret Catholic.”
Now we have something. “Now for the first time we have a connection between the Jesuit college network and Shakespeare,” said one scholar. Well, for one thing, it isn’t for the first time. A copy of the Second Folio (the second edition of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1632) was in the library of a similar Jesuit college—the seminary in Valladolid, Spain. It was purchased in 1928 by the Folger Library. It has a written authorization in Latin from the seminary head, William Sankey (signing Guillermo Sanchez, the Spanish form of his name), attesting to the fact that the volume has been officially expurgated and in that form is approved to be read. The expurgator, probably Sankey himself, who may well have provided the copy of the book, blots out in ink obvious anti-Catholic slurs and sexual innuendos. With King John and Henry VIII, he has to work a little harder to make these plays fit for his seminary readers because of their subject matter. The anti-Catholicism of the first play and the pro-Protestantism of the second force him to delete more to make these plays acceptable. For example, Henry VIII orders the nobles to treat the Protestant Archbishop Cranmer respectfully and “use him well,” adding, “he’s worthy of it.” But, for the Valladolid expurgator, even that relatively muted assertion of Cranmer’s merit is too much praise, and it is scored through.
Most interesting in the Valladolid folio is that Measure for Measure receives even more radical treatment. The entire play is razored out. With the play’s major plot line involving a Duke disguised as a friar and ministering to the community as if he is one, and that ends with him still in his friar’s robes proposing to a young woman wearing the habit of a novice nun, it is no wonder the head of a Jesuit seminary simply gave up on his task and reached for his razor.
So here in the Valladolid Folio we have an edition of Shakespeare that has made its way into “the Jesuit college network,” but one that shows a Catholic reader who admired Shakespeare, but who remained unconvinced of his Catholic sympathies.
None of this proves anything about what Shakespeare believed—any more than the presence of the First Folio newly discovered at Saint-Omer does. All this shows is that lots of people have loved Shakespeare, including some Jesuits. The new discovery at Saint-Omer became news because it might seem to allow us access to some intimate dimension of this most precious of authors. But it doesn’t. It is wonderful to have it. It is worth a lot of money. But it doesn’t tell us anything about what Shakespeare thought or believed.
HT: Jackie
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