Table Of ContentCRIME AND
GOD'S JUDGMENT
IN SHAKESPEARE
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CRIME AND
GOD'S JUDGMENT
IN SHAKESPEARE
ROBERT RENTOUL REED, ]R.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY
Copyright © 1984 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky
Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Reed, Robert Rentoul, 1911-
Crime and God's judgment in Shakespeare.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616-Political and
social views. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616-
Religion and ethics. 3. Justice in literature.
I. Title.
PR3017.R43 1983 833.3'3 83-19701
ISBN: 978-0-8131-5450-3
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
ONE: The Structure of Shakespeare's Eight-Part Epic 12
TWO: The Justice of God: Medieval and Renaissance 43
THREE: Thomas of Gloucester: The Sword of Retribution 66
FOUR: Richard II and the Delay of Providence 89
FIVE: The Later Gloucesters: Humphrey and Richard 103
SIX: Prince Hamlet and the Double Mission 129
SEVEN: Macbeth, the Devil, and God 165
CONCLUSION 199
NOTES 205
INDEX 221
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INTRODUCTION
The present book treats divine retribution both in Shakespeare's English
history plays and in several of his major tragedies, each of which has
satisfied the precondition that the retribution is a principal force-and
sometimes the main force-behind the play's tragic inevitability. In the
histories, God's judgments are motivated principally (but not entirely)
by the biblical doctrine of inherited guilt; in the tragedies, by the im
mediate guilt of a living man. The purpose of my introduction is to re
spond to those critics, most of them recent, who have repudiated the
presence of divine punishment in the histories-in particular, the two
tetralogies-and to whom, in my analyses of the plays, I have found no
appropriate place to respond. As for the tragedies, I find no urgent com
pulsion to respond, collectively, to readers who have dissented from af
firmations of divine retribution in them, for such affirmations, until
now, have not been recognized as a motif prominent enough to en
courage much adverse commentary.
My response is necessarily confined to the English history plays, and
even here the imperative behind it is not overriding: the most energetic
repudiations of the existence of divine retribution in these plays have
been, at best, periodic and in substance not unduly impressive. On the
other hand, even though E.M.W. Tillyard introduced the Tudor myth
theme as far back as 1944, little that can be termed both perceptive and
comprehensive has since been published in support of the providential
shaping of destiny within the history plays, in particular as determined
by God's judgment upon violations of the divine law. In short, the prin
cipal studies rejecting divine retribution in the English history plays are
approximately as numerous as those that affirm it and are, in general,
more concentrated in their focus. The Naysayers-and this is the crucial
point-have exhibited a persuasive talent, more evident in their arresting
phrases than in the substance of their arguments, not even approximated
in the scholarly and hence less evocative syntax of the Affirmers.
2 INTRODUCTION
When Shakespeare wrote the Henry VI plays in the early 1590s, his
interest in retribution was focused primarily on the "blood will have
blood" stimulus, or the vendetta, and only rarely (and then with a
somewhat misted clarity) on God's judgment upon the transgressor.
Richard III, by contrast, indicates an awakened awareness of God's
power of retribution, which had been a preoccupation more of the
Elizabethan pulpit than of the theater. Two or three critics of the past
twenty years-responding basically to Tillyard's insistence upon the
"Tudor myth"-have marked the relative absence of divine justice in
the Henry VI plays and have exploited this absence in rejecting Tillyard's
arguments. Others, a bit bolder, have focused their disagreements only
on Richard III. Of the former, David Frey, in a recent book (1976), cites
the "innocent human suffering" of Henry VI as proof of the absence
of God's justice of any kind. He finds "God's historical justice" both
in the Tudor chroniclers' accounts of Henry VI and in Shakespeare's
Henry VI plays "to be shockingly negligent in protecting [an] anointed
king, the innocent Henry VI." Frey then proceeds: "If Providence," as
recorded by the chroniclers, "did not protect Henry VI, was it likely
[Shakespeare seems to have asked] that it defeated Richard III and
planted Richmond on England's throne? Thus, at the same time that
he [Shakespeare] revivifies Henry VI to question the 'Tudor myth,' he
enlarges on Richard III to nullify it, and he diminishes Richmond to
demolish it. "1
This statement of thesis, in suggesting Shakespeare's total disavowal
of Providence, contains two flaws which Frey makes no later attempt
to correct. First, it does not take appropriate account of two notable af
firmations of God's supremacy over men on the occasion of Duke Hum
phrey's death in 2 Henry VI, namely, that Humphrey may be a victim
of "God's secret judgment" and Henry VI's statement: "If my suspect
[about Humphrey's murderers] be false, forgive me God, I For judg
ment only doth belong to Thee" (2 Hen 6, III.ii.139-40)-for the death
of Humphrey, the King's uncle and Lord Protector, is an event that no
critic can lightly bypass: it is to expose the weak-minded King to certain
destruction by the house of York, itself a claimant to the throne, and
more important in the present context, it brings God's judgment upon
Humphrey's murderers. Second, Frey's statement totally ignores the
divinely imposed Lancastrian affliction of inherited guilt (of which
Humphrey is one of the victims) as carefully established-indeed,
Introduction 3
planted with artful "foresight" -by Shakespeare in the historically
earlier play Richard II only a year or two after he had completed (in
Richard III) his first and historically later tetralogy. It is in this web of
inherited guilt (the deferred legacy of the usurper and murderer Henry
IV) that both Humphrey and Henry VI, however innocent themselves,
are caught up. Of these and other workings of Providence, Frey takes
no account.
In Humphrey's death there is only the indication of "God's secret
judgment" upon him. By contrast, if we are willing to give credence
to a single word-" ordain' d" -customarily used by Shakespeare with
God as the understood agent, Henry VI's untimely death, as shown late
in 3 Henry VI, can be justified, almost irrefutably, in terms of the in
herited guilt imposed by God upon Henry IV's heirs. Richard of Glou
cester, having heard himself painted by Henry, whose son he has recent
ly murdered, as a cutthroat incurably addicted to the shedding of English
blood, recoils in unbridled anger: "I'll hear no more. Die, prophet, in
thy speech. [Stabs him.] I For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain'd"
(3 Hen 6, V.vi.57-58).2 In view of the fact that the spoken word of a
character was the Tudor playwright's principal medium of instructing
his audience, Shakespeare, almost certainly, would not have put the
phrase "For this [the stabbing of Henry] was I ordain' d" in Richard's
mouth if he did not intend his audience to understand Richard as a
divinely appointed scourge; if we consider Richard's prideful in
dependence of worldly officialdom, by what high authority other than
God can he have been "ordain'd" to kill not only Henry VI but other
men as well? At the very least, Richard thinks himself ordained as a
scourge by a higher power, and if we hold in mind God's curse upon
Henry IV's heirs (a theme, as chapter 1 will show, enunciated in the
historically earlier plays), what Richard thinks about himself in terms
of a divine sanction to kill a Lancastrian heir-in this instance, Henry
VI-happens to fit in precisely with the judgment of "God omnipo
tent" upon the house of Lancaster as twice foretold in Richard II. The
task at hand authenticates Richard's boast.
Ignorant of providential matters or not, Frey seems to have been in
tent on exploding the "Tudor myth," first spelled out, although in a
somewhat patchwork format, by Tillyard in 1944. Tillyard, for exam
ple, in his chapter on the play Richard II, overlooks (as Frey has done)
the theme of inherited guilt which, first implanted in that play, does
