Chapter 9
POETRY PROMOTES THE NOTION OF MORAL PURIFICATION
“Poets to be Seers…” The vision behind that expression by the archaic Greeks became an unspoken but acted upon principle in Puritanism. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, its social application was to spread the idea of moral purification.
Writers, of course, are often the primary purveyors in society of new or newly challenging ideas. The spoken word and the written word propagate these ideas not only among the intelligentsia, but also among the general populace. What may have initially seemed strange or difficult or even abhorrent can be made to seem, through artistry, into something reasonable and acceptable.
Is There Any Puritanism in Shakespeare?
William Shakespeare wrote during the period in which the English Puritans were developing their political and theological might. That the concept of purification appeared in Shakespeare’s work should not be totally unexpected, since he lived and wrote in the Elizabethan period, at a time when Puritanism was gaining great strength in England.
George Bernard Shaw expressed a deep antagonism to Shakespeare’s mental acuity when he said:
Shakespeare’s weakness lies in his complete deficiency in that highest sphere of thought, in which poetry embraces religion, philosophy, morality, and the bearing of these on communities, which is sociology. His characters have no religion, no politics, no conscience, no hope, no convictions of any sort. 1
Actually, this anti-Stratfordian sentiment is not without some lineage; Samuel Taylor Coleridge had stated it in his highly celebrated Lectures on Shakespeare nearly two centuries ago (1811-12). These critics were descendants of Voltaire, in that they were fundamentally secular and anti-religious. 2 They were inherently ill-disposed to look for and appreciate any spiritual elements in Shakespeare’s writings.
I am not a laudator temporis acti; yet I have a disposition that appreciates Shakespeare’s artistry. I also believe that his thought and belief are closely associated with his era. Victor Hugo said: “England has two books: The Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare and the Bible made England.” Clearly, the cultural milieu had cardinal importance in shaping Shakespeare’s thought. He is far from having “no convictions of any sort.” As an author, he was bound to express them through some favored characters in his plays; and more intimately, he would reveal them in his poems.
We have no way to categorize Shakespeare as a religionist, much less a Puritan. Yet while he lived, the Puritan concept of purification was becoming the dominating thought of the age and the land. To my knowledge, no one has previously attempted to establish the proposition that Shakespeare could not avoid being influenced by it. The reason for this, I think, may be the belief that since “many of the playwrights were employed to write plays by noblemen; an obvious sympathy to degree and order might be expected”; therefore, the playwrights, including Shakespeare, “had every reason to be thoroughly out of humour with the rising group of Puritans so anxious to shut the theatres.” 3
There is evidence that Shakespeare might have ridiculed or detested Puritans, as in his depictions of Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Angelo in Measure for Measure. Nevertheless, he could not escape the penetrating and pervasive influence of Puritan thought that underlay and surrounded the ebullient Elizabethan spirit. After all, he was a fellow believer in the same basic religion of Christianity, used the same version of the Bible, 4 and shared some of the Puritans’ concerns.
As we shall examine in some detail in this chapter and the following one, though the Bard may have rejected specific doctrines of Puritanism, he definitely adopted Puritan themes. What seemed true or important to others may be equally true and important to Shakespeare: “No man can step clear of his time any more than he can leap over his own shadow.” 5 Even if he consciously rejected the Puritans’ ideology, it does not necessarily follow that he rejected all Puritan concepts.
Let us look, now, for ways in which Shakespeare may have dealt with the Puritans’ idea of moral purification in his own personal life.
The Concept of Purification in the “Dark Lady” Sonnets
William Shakespeare occupies a position above all other English writers and ranks as a prime luminary in world literature. Therefore, scholars the world over, year by year, examine every miniscule facet of his works, probe into what few remnants there are of his personal life, and speculate endlessly about who he was, what he really felt or meant by writing such-and-such, and indeed, whether he existed at all. Above all, inquirers try to make an intimate connection between the author’s identity and a particularly compelling character.
Among the most popular scholarly pursuits has been trying to catch the elusive female in some of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Sonnets 127-154 constitute a series which stands by itself. Known as the “Dark Lady” sonnets, 6 they show the poet’s internal discord. Shakespearean students have quite different opinions regarding this personage.
In the late eighteenth century, “The game of the identity of the dark lady began in earnest…. Mistress Davenant has, then, been proposed as the dark lady.” Among other candidates there are two maids of honor to Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Vernon and Mary Fitton. 7 Some stories even suggested that the dark lady was no other than Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I! But these are merely guesses which lack supporting evidence. Other scholars also believe that there was actually a dark lady but do not point their fingers at a specified person. As Philip Martin stated, “The dark woman indeed is everything the Petrarchan mistress is not, except in one particular: her capacity to obsess the poet’s imagination.” 8
Still others have gone even further, imagining that the “dark lady” in fact was a “dark lad.” Among them, Oscar Wilde maintained that the dark lady was a Mr. W. H., to whom Shakespeare’s sonnets were originally dedicated, “a wonderful boy actor of great beauty” whom Shakespeare loved, named Willie Hughes. 9 (Of course, this reflected Wilde’s own character rather than Shakespeare’s.)
The wild guesses have gone on and on, with the title of the “dark lady” falling upon the heads of William Herbert, William Hathaway, William Hall, and William Harvey. But the difficulty is that among the records of Elizabethan acting companies there is no trace of any actor named Willie Hughes, though the records are fairly complete. 10
As to other names linked to the “dark lady,” there has not been enough known connection between them and the Bard to establish a verdict of anything conclusive. D. Barnstorff even suggested, rather ingeniously, that the W. H. stands for “William Himself” (i.e., Shakespeare). 11
This kind of literary sleuthing also happens with other successful authors. When Gustave Flaubert was asked about the model for the tragic heroine in his famous novel, Madam Bovary, he uttered his famous statement: “Madam Bovary is me.” Actually, Flaubert was echoing one of his favorite authors, the Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes. According to the story, Cervantes was asked on his deathbed whom he meant to depict in Don Quixote. “Myself,” he answered. 12
It is quite possible, then, that if one asked Shakespeare the identity of this notorious “dark lady,” he might answer in the same way: William Himself. Thus we could regard these poems of his as soliloquies, much as we tend to quote Shakespearean monologues and attribute the ideas expressed as belonging to the Bard himself.
On the other hand, the great appeal and value of Shakespeare’s art, whether in his plays or poems, lie in their universality. So let us examine the “dark lady” sonnets first in terms of Shakespeare’s own life, as others may conjecture it. Then let us look at them in wider ways: as creative products of the era in which Shakespeare lived and, beyond that, in terms of human feeling and thinking through the ages -- elements that may exist in all people, at all times.
The Dark Lady: Who She Is and What She Does
In Sonnet 127, Shakespeare introduces his “dark lady”:
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name,
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
This shows that “black” is not the ideal of beauty of “the old age,” which hints that aesthetic values, along with the Christian value system, have degenerated. With a cynical tone one can hardly miss, Shakespeare connoted that “now” is a “dark” age, the “black beauty’s successive heir” rules. Thereby the typical Puritan reasoning pattern is set: while there is darkness, the light is needed; corruption calls for purification.
However, in Sonnet 132, Shakespeare even suggests that black is a mourner’s color, and speaks of “two mourning eyes.” Yet, he says, “Then will I swear beauty herself is black,” and “this black is fairest in my judgment’s place.” Obviously, this means he is haunted by the woman’s beauty -- an atypical beauty -- though it is at odds with the ideal of beauty, of course, in contrast with social and ethical norms.
According to Shakespeare’s own feeling, this “dark lady” is far from kind to him:
Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel.
For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. (Sonnet 131)
Indeed, this is a very strange love affair. More than that, Shakespeare knows her faults well enough:
Oh, call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart…
What need’st thou would with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o’erpressed defense can hide?…
Here, the Bard had a clear sense of right and wrong, but was overpowered by the lady’s strange power and had on way to defend himself. That is to say, “Will” (N.B., William) is defeated. Shakespeare even says, she “makes me sin, awards me pain” (Sonnet 141). This means he had done something immoral and he should have been rewarded with suffering; i.e., it was bound to cause remorse and inner conflicts.
That Shakespeare would have willingly put up with such an unbearable lover is problematic to me. Thus, we might search for some other explanation for his “dark lady.” Had the “dark lady” really existed, it would probably have been hard for Shakespeare to resist her temptations. In Sonnet 131 he gives us another clue:
In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
And thence this slander, as I think proceeds.
The “dark lady,” then, is not really black in color of skin, in appearance, nor in apparel; she is black in “deeds.” In other words, the reader should not take her black complexion literally. Her darkness is dark deeds. This is apparent also in Sonnet 147:
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as Hell, as dark as night.
Obviously, a lady, or a human being, should not be both “fair” and “black,” “bright” and “dark.” Therefore, the word “black” or “dark” really refers to ill influence or evil inclination. This will be discussed more fully later. If one could possibly miss these remarks, the Bard plainly pointed out the eternal and universal danger: “Hell” and “night.”
Then, we come to another basic question: what does “lady” mean? We assume it is simply defined as a woman. However, according to conventional Christian thought, woman is “the weaker vessel,” 13 and originally it was “the woman [who] was deceived, and was in the transgression.” 14 Moreover, in the Bible, the “whore” also means the temptation, by which “your minds shulde be corrupt from the simplicitie that is in Christ.” 15
Among Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Marlowe, in his play The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, used female figures to symbolize “The Seven Deadly Sins.” 16 If Marlowe employed woman as a metaphor for evil, there is at least an equal probability that the “dark lady” is also a metaphor in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Stephen Booth offered a provocative suggestion when he asserted that Sonnet 146 is “The Internal Dialogue between the Soule and Body.” 17 But he seemed reluctant to move further by extending the metaphor and carrying through the “Dark Lady” series as a whole. Booth was basically “concerned with the speaker’s relationship to a brunette.” 18
My conviction is that the “Dark Lady” sonnets series is a story of soul-body discord. It shows passions warring within the speaker -- Shakespeare. He chose a figurative woman to serve as his alter ego so that he could dramatize the ongoing turbulence.
The cause of this internal conflict in classic philosophical or theological terms is known as “duality.” It occurs when a person’s soul and body have lost their concordance, and are no longer in harmony. Such a condition, which is neither normal nor moral, is revealed in the “Dark Lady” sonnets.
I will narrow down this discussion of the “dark lady” of the sonnets to my assumption that she embodies the duality conflict. I do not regard her as a historical figure.
The Dark Lady and Dark Lust
The duality point of view establishes a basis for interpreting the “Dark Lady” sonnets. In them are successive portraits of conflict between the ideality and the reality of life. The ideal life is order and harmony; 19 the reality of life is disorder or chaos. This ambiguity is caused by the co-existence of duality.
The idea of right order, or harmony, is basic to the Christian thought which dominated European Christendom down to Shakespeare’s age. Briefly, it means reason guiding passion and spirit controlling body. This duality can be traced as far back as the ancient Hellenic age. In Christendom, it comes mainly from the thought of St. Augustine, who wrote:
… soul is not the whole man, but the better part of man; the body not the whole, but the inferior part of man; while a man is alive, and body and soul are united… speaking of the soul as the ‘inward man’ and of the body as the ‘outward man.’ 20
Unfortunately, the realities of the human situation make it hard to follow this ideal. Since the fall of man, “then began the flesh to lust against the spirit, in which strife we are born….” 21
This “strife,” and the discontent engendered by it, shows up as a continual struggle in Christian theological thought, culture, and literature. In civilization,
… every race which has deeply impressed itself on the human family has been the representative of some great idea -- one or more -- which gives direction to the nation’s life and form to its civilization… among the Hebrews it was purity…. The Anglo-Saxon is the representative of two great ideas, which are closely related. One of them is that of civil liberty… the other is that of a pure Spiritual Christianity. 22
In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare gave us a full description of his “mistress”:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,
Coral is far more red than her lips red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun,
If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks….
In the Song of Songs chapters 4 and 7, in the Bible, there is a picture of perfection, faultless beyond that which human beauty can reach. It is an idealistic description of human perfection. Here Shakespeare intentionally used similar terms but applied them ironically to their opposite: a brunette, according to the Renaissance standard, was far from ideal; furthermore, there is nothing which seems fair of her. Still, he seemed bewitched by his mistress, saying:
And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
That is to say, he became willing to deceive himself: to see the truth of the whole world as false in comparison to his passion and to deny all accepted aesthetic valuation. If one is blind to black and white, disregards moral norms and absolutes, then he is in real trouble indeed.
Shakespeare could not subject himself to the dark lady’s tyrannous rule forever. He was discontented with his situation. Moreover, the “dark lady” not only imprisoned and enslaved Shakespeare himself, but hurt the heart of his “friend” also (133, 11. 7-10). This means that the Christian enslaved by flesh grieves the Holy Spirit 23 at the same time. Therefore, he longed for freedom and a harmonious life.
This expectation of living in harmony is linked to the thought of Shakespeare’s age, as is the Christian’s ideal and obligation as well. It means that after redemption from sin by Christ, and having been free of sin, one should lead a life of righteousness and no longer for oneself, but for one’s savior. This state is shown in Sonnet 134:
So, now I have confessed that he is thine
And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,
Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine
Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still.
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
For thou art covetous, and he is kind.
He learned but surety-like to write for me,
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind….
The “dark lady” represents temptation to be resisted. In this sonnet “thou” and “he” get confused; both seem to fight to have ruling authority over the poet. Here is what the Bible says: “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contraries one to the other, so that ye cannot do the same things that ye wolde.” 24
In the poem, “he” (Christ Jesus) knows fully what the human condition is like: “He learned but surety-like to write for me,” means that he became the “mediator” and paid the ransom for atonement, but unfortunately, “He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.”
Then in Sonnets 135 and 136, a great “Will” conflict goes on. Even from the word alone, we can sense the feeling of confusion. Obviously “Will” is Shakespeare’s name, William. But it means Will’s will also. When it says, “thye will,” therefore, it could mean “Will, who belongs to thee”; yet there is “thy large will,” which makes me think it suggests the Will of Heaven, and “me” in that one “Will.” The most confusing part reads:
“Will” will fulfill the treasure of thy love --
Aye, fill it full with wills, and my will one…
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me, for my name is “Will”.
Apparently, the last line should clear the confusion; instead, it makes things even more confused. It can mean the dedication of the poet’s will to the Will of Heaven, or it can mean “my name” (i.e., myself) is “Will” -- self-willed desires and even lusts.
In Sonnet 144, Shakespeare took one step further in revealing the complexity of duality:
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colored ill.
To win me soon to Hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s Hell.
Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
The relationship is: both angels are friends to him; but they are enemies to each other at the same time -- coexistent, but not in peace. In this struggle, the “ill-colored” lady or “ill angel,” 25 seemed to triumph; the poet was deeply afraid that his friend would be overpowered by the “ill-colored woman,” and turned to a “fiend.” As Northrop Frye observes, “The dark lady is an incarnation of desire rather than love.” 26
Actually, this is a foreseeable bitter fruit, which the poet himself stated earlier in Sonnet 129:
… as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad…
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe.
Before, a joy proposed, behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the Heaven that leads men to this Hell.
The poet not only regards vain pleasure as a “dream,” but also “as swallowed bait,” which may result in his sufferings -- as of a fish that swallows bait and loses its life. Though he realizes that “the world well knows” this, he cannot resist this tragedy. It is repeated again and again: man rises to the bait of temptation, the “dark lady.” Then he pleads for a cure, to help to ease the pain.
In Sonnet 147, he begs for the remedy from “Reason”:
… My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic -- mad with evermore unrest.
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are….
Since “Reason” offers no help to him, angers him, and leaves him, this incurable disease drives the poet to and fro. In fact, it is not that he did not want to keep the “prescriptions,” but that he could not; the prescriptive moral rules, i.e., the letter of the law, simply do not help a person to purify or conquer his passion. In great pain, nearly mad, he desires death for release. In this mental state of anguish, he is “so vexed with watching and with tears” (Sonnet 148). That is to say, the Bard spent sleepless nights, with tears flowing down his cheeks, just like what Augustine did before his conversion in seeking for salvation. He struggles incessantly with his guilty conscience. It shows more explicitly in Sonnet 151:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My noble part to my gross body’s treason.
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason….
Of course, “My noble part” refers to St. Augustine’s “the better part,” and the body or “flesh” is the “inferior part of man.”
However, at last, in Sonnets 153 and 154, the solution comes:
Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep.
A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground,
Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
And drew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
Here, Diana, the goddess of virginity from mythology, has some ancient but continuing relationship with the image of the Virgin in the Catholic church. Therefore, her “maid” might represent an angel. 27 The “holy fire of love,” means the heavenly love coming from the Holy Spirit, which has the power of purifying. Finally, the one who was fond of causing the trouble of love affairs, Cupid, has been overcome by “a virgin hand.” The way of harmony is restored now.
And so the General of hot desire
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased. But I, my mistress’ thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.
Here the turning point of victory rests in the hands of a virgin -- the way leading to a chaste life. Instead of water-fire contradiction, comes love-sublimation. The fire heats up the water; the man immerses himself in the heated water. This is a religious ceremony of purifying, and it means going through the baptism of death and coming up as fresh as a new born babe -- becoming a new creation.
Thus the “dark lady” is ultimately resisted; the dark side of the poet’s nature is overcome through the Virgin (Christianity). Duality becomes unity and harmony -- the ideal chaste and beatific life.
Duality is the source of tragedy in human life, which causes disorders and pains, but it is the source in literature too. It gives aesthetic value to literature and gives ethical value in Shakespeare’s work, as is commonly believed. Therefore, one may say that because of Shakespeare’s greatness people’s curiosity about his “dark lady” is created; at the same time the existence of the “dark lady” created Shakespeare’s greatness. Shakespeare was not victimized by his “dark lady.” Instead, she became his benefactor -- by tormenting him to the degree that he learned to quell his lustful body and summon forth his spiritual side, she enabled him to resolve the duality.
The dark enables us to evaluate the light; we must have the one in order to understand the other, and only by God’s grace is the triumphal purification made possible. The ideal of purified love toward God was portrayed in the Bible, to serve as the Puritan conception dominating Shakespeare’s age:
Loue not the worlde, nether the things that are in the worlde. If any man loue the worlde, ye loue of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the worlde, (as the luste of the flesh, the luste of the eyes, and the pride of life) is not of ye Father, but is of the worlde. 28
To fight impure lusts is to purify one’s love toward God. This lifelong and universal war could also be seen in Shakespeare’s plays. These ideas of purity and spirituality, common to the literature of Shakespeare’s day, were hardly limited to him or to his time.
The Concept of Purification Among Other Poets
Although Shakespeare’s duality was metamorphically resolved in his “Dark Lady” sonnets, the duality of human nature as a whole remains. We can find the same problems existing in other poets’ works during Shakespeare’s time, well after it, and running down through the ages.
John Donne (1572-1631), a contemporary of Shakespeare, was the dean of the “metaphysical poets”; he then became Dean of the Anglican St. Paul’s Church. Donne was not at all pro-Puritan, yet he prescribed to the concept of moral purification.
He wrote in “A Hymne to God the Father”:
Wilt thou forgive those sinnes through which I runne,
And do them still: though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou has not done.
For I have more. 29
Here, obviously, is another prototype of duality. Donne led a restless life, perpetually wrestling with “another self.” This rise and fall not only shows the same miserable situation, but the poet even makes puns on his own name: a undone “Donne” (done), which is very similar in manner to Shakespeare’s use of “Will.”
Though an Anglican, John Donne often used the metaphor of purification in his poetry, especially purification of moral imperfections by fire, as in “Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward”:
Burn off my rusts and deformity,
Restore Thine image so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou may know me, and I’ll turn my face. 30
Again, in “Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditation X”:
… O’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make menew. 31
In this time period, educational institutions were largely run by the church; their primary purpose was to educate clerics for service. Ministers were aware that verse could be a more effective means than sermons to convey a message. They could draw upon a university background steeped in literary classics.
Hearken to a Verser, who may chance
Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.
A verse may find him, who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice. (“The Church-porch”) 32
The validity of the above statement, which was written by the parson-poet George Herbert (1593-1633), can hardly be doubted.
The idea of using poetry for moral purification was always conscious in scholarly clerics’ minds. Mankind, regarded by Christians as living under the bondage of sin; its state is so miserable that it will lead to perdition unless cleansed. Acknowledging the need to be purified from a state of pollution brought forth versification.
Herbert, for example, wrote a poem entitled “Sinnes Round” in The Temple. It states:
Sorrie I am, my God, sorrie I am,
That my offences course it in a ring.
My thoughts are working like a busie flame,
Until their cockatrice they hatch and bring:
And when they once have perfected their draughts,
My words take fire from my inflamed thoughts.
My words take fire from my inflamed thoughts,
Which spit it forth like the Sicilian Hill.
They vent the wares, and passé them with their faults,
And by their breathing ventilate the ill.
But words suffice not, where are lewd intentions:
My hands do joyn to finish the inventions.
My hands do joyn to finish the inventions:
And so my sinnes ascend three stories high,
As Babel grew, before there were dissensions.
Yet ill deeds loyter not: for they supplie
New thoughts of sinning: wherefore, to my shame,
Sorrie I am, my God, sorrie I am. 33
The poem is written in a circle form: the last line repeats the first line which symbolizes the cycle effect of sin; the last line of the first stanza begins the second stanza, the last line of the second stanza also starts the third, and the last line of the third stanza repeats the starting line of the first stanza. The poem is composed in three stanzas: the “inflamed thoughts” produce evil “words,” and “words take fire” and motivated “hands” -- thoughts, words and actions, or, spirit, soul and body. Thus built a tower of “Babel” 34 -- rebel against God, and “supplie / New thoughts of sinning.” This chain reaction of repeated sin is metaphorized as “cockatrice” -- i.e., “a fabulous creature hatched by a serpent from a cock’s egg.” The wicked “hatch cockatrice eggs… he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.” Here Herbert wittily applies the etymological hermeneutics, 35 taking “trice” literally, which means “hoist” or “lash,” that is to say, sin has an effect of binding man. This circle form also indicates the punishment of sin is suffering eternally.
With such a view in mind, Herbert’s demands on himself were never other than extreme, so much so that even he himself was conscious of the external severity of his conscience, scratching at him tooth and nail, as he says in “Conscience,” carping and catching at all his actions. 36
This aptly described the significance of a Puritan mind-set. However, George Herbert was not in the Puritan camp. From an English family of nobility, he studied at Cambridge and then became an Anglican country parson. Nevertheless, having no particular theological dogma, he was definitely influenced by the thought of his time.
Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), as he himself testified, was influenced by the “blessed man, Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained so many pious Converts of whom I am the least” (“Preface” to Silex Scintillans). Henry’s twin brother Thomas was a noted Hermetic philosopher (alchemist). Presumably, Henry Vaughan had the same sense of believing that man has to purify the baser part or dross in order to experience the transmutation and reach a higher and purer state, just as alchemists’ belief that they can transmute baser metals into gold.
In his poem “The World,” 37 he said:
I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,…
In contrast, he saw the temporal spheres and the world “like a vast shadow.” He saw “The doting Lover,” “The darksome Statesman” and “The fearful miser on a heap of rust” all are but silly enterprises, “snare of pleasure.” Those who try to prey on others will fall victims and enslave themselves. Thus it is necessary for one to purge “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” 38 to be counted worthy as partakers of Christ’s Bride, and to receive the “great Ring” -- i.e., inherit the everlasting new world, Eternity.
The Puritans’ Poet: John Milton
To gain the best possible portrayal of the quintessential Puritan poet’s ideas of purification, we should turn to John Milton. Milton (1608-1674) was a devoted Puritan. During the brief reign of Puritanism, when foreign visitors came to England, the people they most desire to meet were the Protector, Oliver Cromwell and John Milton. The leading literary monarch of the age, Milton remains indisputably the most notable poetic voice of Puritanism. His Paradise Lost is regarded as the crown jewel of English religious poetry.
Though written half a century after Shakespeare’s death, Paradise Lost contains the pattern of thought of moral purification. Milton’s point of view (as with the Angel Raphael he uses as mouthpiece), when human beings live in the world, they should obey the Spirit, but can enjoy temporal happiness as well.
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improv’d by tract of time, and wing’d ascend
Ethereal, as wee, or may at choice
Here or in Heav’nly Paradise dwell;
If ye be found obedient, and retain
Unalterably firm his love entire
Whose progeny you are. Meanwhile enjoy
Your fill what happiness this happy state
Can comprehend, incapable of more. 39
We need to pay attention to the above important conditional “if” clause. That is to say, in order to inherit the heavenly blessings, one must take moral responsibility for one’s deeds: “If you be found obedient, and retain / unalterably firm his love entire / Whose progeny you are.” In other words, one has to keep the “simplicity to Christ,” “the first loue,” 40 which leads to a chaste life and to remain morally pure.
Milton views Christians as “the Race of time” living in a “transient World” (XII, 554), who should lead a pure life in order to worship God with “Spirit and Truth,” and to maintain communion with God. This is evident in the very beginning of Paradise Lost:
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that does prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st;
… What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. (I, 17-26)
Here, Milton not only was invoking God’s blessing to write his epic, but he in general seemed to say that the purpose of human life is to know God and glorify Him; in order to reach this goal, one must be pure and holy, for the Holy Spirit dwells and guides one’s way.
There should be little wonder that Milton’s poetic masterpiece amply depicts the great concept of moral purification. Paradise Lost contains seven purges:
1. Purge in Heaven: as Raphael reveals to Adam, God decreed that “My only son, and on this Holy Hill / Him have anointed” as “great Vice-gerent” (V. 600-615). Then “Morning Star” (Lucifer), “fraught with envy,” gathered his armies to revolt against God. Thus the Messiah would “root them out of Heaven” (VI, 855), into “the bottomless pit” (VI, 864-866). 41 Thus Milton initially sets his position: religion must deal with moral issues.
2. Purge in Paradise: Eve yielded to the temptation from Satan, and Adam -- “fondly overcome with Female charm” -- ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge, with the result “that all was lost” (IX, 784). The act caused “the mortal Sin” (IX, 999-1004), and thus the pair were purged from Paradise, and all their descendants afterward. Yet “Death becomes / His final remedy” (XI, 61-66), which “refin’d man to second Life.” Therefore, though God did “purge him off / As a distemper” (XI, 52-53), God never actually forsakes man. Moreover, each new human being becomes potentially the Elect, because God promised “My Cov’nant in the woman’s seed renew’d” (XI, 116).
Furthermore, God sent Michael to show to Adam the oncoming human history and comprehensive plan of God. They view more purges, at the end of which comes a final triumph. These are:
3. Purge by Deluge: Evil grows rampant on Earth, and men become so morally corrupted that God’s wrath is aroused. Using the deluge, He destroys mankind and purges the earth. But Noah and family are the elect, and God establishes a Covenant with Noah: “For one man found so perfect and so just, [symbolizes Christ] / That God vouchsaves to raise another World / From him…” (XI, 867-900).
4. Purge of Canaan: the “faithful Abraham” and his “seeds” (offspring) are “the race elect” (XII,214), and through Moses God establishes “His Covenant” of law with Israel. By Joshua he purges the land and destroys the Gentiles because they are morally corrupt. He gives the land to Israel to dwell therein, as their inheritance.
5. Purge by Babylon: In Canaan, Israelites “dwell and prosper” (XII, 316) but then sin and pollute the land. Thus God lets them suffer in captivity for 70 years, for the purpose of refining them -- purifying them from their dross. Then, from His elect, “Rememb’ring mercy, and His Cov’nant sworn / To David…” (XII, 345-346), “the true Anointed King Messiah might be born” as David’s seed (XII, 358).
6. Purge by Atonement: Christ “coming in the flesh,” and on the cross accomplishes the Atonement and Salvation. To “them who shall believe / Baptizing in the profluent stream, the sign / Of washing them from guilt of sin to Life Pure…” (XII, 441-444). Thus the Christians are Elect of God, and have a purified new life of sanctification.
7. Purge by Fire: At the Last Day, the Earth shall be burned by fire. “Raise / From the conflagrant mass, purg’d and refin’d / New Heav’ns, new Earth,” and “wherein the just [Elect] shall dwell” (XII, 548-551; XI, 900-901).
The Elect are a new race under “a better Cov’nant” (XII, 302). Not because of any merit, but “first fruits on Earth are sprung / From thy [God’s] implanted Grace in Man” (XI, 22-23). That is to say, salvation, purification, and justification, coming to man are from God’s Prevenient Grace, which enables man to have the in-dwelling Holy Spirit: man thus attains a better state than before the fall. Therefore, the Angel consoles Adam by saying that,
… then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far. (XII, 585-587)
On the other hand, this refers to Adam as the progenitor of the saved race.
Milton’s view of Puritan corporeal life is not against reason and knowledge. He believes “the spirit of reason in man is the candle of the Lord, lighted by God, and lighting man to God.” 42 To Milton, as Adam said to Michael, the way of godly living should be:
Greatly in peace of thought, and have my fill
Of knowledge, what this Vessel can contain;
Beyond which was my folly to aspire.
Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God, to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His providence, and on him sole depend. (XII, 558-564)
To these guidelines, Michael said,
… only add
Deed to thy knowledge answerable, and Faith,
And Virtue, Patience, Temperance and Love,
By name to come call’d Charity, the soul
Of all the rest…. (XII, 581-585)
And these lines then resonate with the Bible exhortation:
… Give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for it ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 43
Milton shares St. Augustine’s progressive historic perspective -- which essentially is the Biblical view:
The World shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New Heav’n and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell
And after all their tribulations long
See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and Love triumphing,
and fair Truth. (III, 334-338)
This, then, is God’s plan: good coming out from evil, and good overcoming evil. Here, a principle can be seen: sin is not allowed in Heaven, so, it should not be allowed in the community of saints. They are the epitome of the Kingdom on Earth and heirs-to-be of the New Heaven and New Earth that shall be realized after the last purification.
The writers mentioned in this chapter, except for Milton, were all non-Puritans. Shakespeare and Donne were born before the Puritan Revolt and died before the Protectorate government was established. Yet the messages they conveyed here dealt with moral purification, in one way or another.
To fight on the side of the Puritan camp is one thing; to have the concept of moral purification is quite another. Yet a cultural milieu and a trend of thought often infiltrate into writers’ minds, so that similar works are produced. These evidences mentioned here are not mere coincidences, then, but the thought pattern of an age. Instilled into individuals’ minds, they can cause creative inspiration and thus increase their sphere of influence, to institute changes in the society that make positive contributions to the progress of civilization.
The concept of moral purification was of prime importance to Milton and his fellow Puritans. When freshly conceived and applied by English Protestants, it gave birth to the Puritan movement. Yet the idea was there long before the Puritan movement itself, and scarcely died with the Restoration. Some of its very forcefulness has continued on through the plays of the period, many of which are still alive and well. They are studied assiduously in universities and read devotedly in armchairs. And what would surprise and delight Shakespeare himself, immortalized as public entertainments, they are performed in their original English, in updated English, and in translations – in theaters and movie houses around the world, and on television sets within our very homes.
Let us look now at some of these classical dramas with an eye toward their messages regarding the need for moral purification.
Notes for Chapter 9
1. Q.V. George Bernard Shaw, Shaw on Shakespeare, ed. Edwin Wilson. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1961, p. 5.
2. Cf. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare.
3. J. Bronowski & Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition. New York: Harper & Row, 1960, p. 149.
4. The Geneva Bible, published in 1560, soon became very popular until the King James Authorized Bible was published in 1611. As Ben Johnson had mentioned that Shakespeare knew little of Latin and even less of Greek, then his knowledge of the Bible was certainly from the English version of the day, the Geneva Bible. Cf. F. F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978, p. 92.
5. William Barrett, Time of Need. New York: Harper & Row, 1972, p. 327, quoted Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
6. Edward Hubble, “The Sonnets and the Commentators,” in The Riddle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1962, pp. 16-17.
7. Hubble, pp. 17-18. “Mary Fitton is the heroin of Shaw’s The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, although Shaw did not believe that she had in fact been the lady.”
8. Philip Martin, Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Self, Love and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972, p. 85. Hilton Landry seems to believe also that there is a woman who has sexually enslaved the poet and his friend. Cf. Hilton Landry, Interpretation in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1963, p. 72.
9. Q.v. Oscar Wilde, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” in ed. Hubble, Riddle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, pp. 165-255.
10. B. G. Harrison, “Sonnets and A Loves Complaint” in Shakespeare: The Complete Works, p. 1594.
11. Hubble, “Sonnets and Commentators,” in Riddle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, p. 13.
12. Mildred Marmur, “Introduction” to Gustave Flaubert, Madam Bovary. New York: New American Library, Inc., 1964, p. vii.
13. I Peter 3:7.
14. I Timothy 2:14.
15. II Corinthians 11:3.
16. Q. v. Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus in English Drama, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke & Nathaniel Burton Paradise. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1933, pp. 171-191.
17. Stephen Booth in his “Commentary” to Sonnet 146 cited Michael West as having recently documented the kinship of “The Internal Dialogue of Sonnet 146” with a anonymous “Dialogue between the Soule and the Body” from Francis Davidson’s Poetical Rhapsody (1603). Cf. Stephen Booth, ed., Shakespeare’s Sonnets, with analytic commentary. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977, pp. 501-502.
18. Booth, p. 434.
19. Q.v. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” in Robert E. Spiller, ed., Five Essays on Man and Nature. Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Publishing Corp. 1954, pp. 1-40. “The ancient Greeks called the world KOSMOS (order, harmony), beauty…” This is a concept of human “well being” “spiritual perfection”, or “virtue” also. It implies reason and passion, soul and body, in good working order.
20. Augustine, City of God, p. 374.
21. Augustine, City of God, p. 366.
22. Q.v. Brian Tierney, et al., ed., Great Issues in Western Civilization. New York: Random House, 1972, vol. II, pp. 423-429.
23. Ephesians 4:30.
24. Cf. Galatians 5:17.
25. “Angel” from a Greek word Angelus literally meaning “messenger,” and also meaning “an attendant, spirit or guardian.” Cf. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1983. Therefore its extended meaning can be a counsellor or companion, e.g., in Henry IV, the Chief Justice said to Falstaff: “You follow the young prince up and down like his ‘ill angel.’” (Pt. II, I, ii, 186) also “good angel” (Pt. I, III, iii, 199). I believe these usages originally were from the Bible (cf. Mt. 18:10; Acts 12:15; Heb. 1:14) “Ill angels” can mean “devils” (cf. Jude:6). Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus also has “good angel” and “evil angel.”
26. Northrop Frye, “How True A Twain” in ed. Hubble, The Riddle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, p. 52.
27. Cf. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958, pp. 20-22, 257. W. G. Ingram & Theodore Redpath, ed. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965, pp. 354-355.
28. I John 2:15-17 (Geneva Bible).
29. John Donne’s Poetry, ed. A. L. Clements. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1966, pp. 94-95.
30. Donne, pp. 91-92.
31. John Donne: Poetry and Prose, ed. Frank J. Warnke. New York: Random House, Inc., 1967, p. 270.
There are also other lines having the same conception in “Resurrection, Imperfect,” etc., Donne, pp. 254-255.
32. George Herbert, The Works of, ed. F. E. Hutchinson. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953, p. 103.
33. Herbert, p. 122.
34. Genesis 9:1-9.
35. Cf. Isaiah 59:5.
36. Helen Vendler, The Poetry of George Herbert. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1975, pp. 47-48.
37. Mario A. Di Cesare, ed., George Herbert and the Seventeenth Century Religious Poets. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978, pp. 160-161.
38. The poet’s epigraph quoted II John 2:16-17.
39. A. G. George, Milton and the Nature of Man. New York: Asia Publishing House, 1974, pp. 49-50.
40. Revelation 2:4 (Geneva Bible).
41. In order to establish the antithesis of good and evil, Milton had gone far beyond his predecessors. St. Augustine established only the theory of “original sin,” but Milton established the origin of the original sin, the evil – Satan’s fall. Satan, in Hebrew, means “adversary” in general; the term is used in court of law or in war (Ps. 109:36; 38:20). Its root meaning is “hostility” or “hatred.” Cf. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. New York: Abingdon Press, 1962, vol. IV, pp. 224-228).
Peter Lombard (c. 1095-1160) was the first one who made systematic studies of demons and spirits and the rank of angels. St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned that the evil and sin of the fallen angels were “pride” and “envy,” and these caused their fall. Even Calvin and the theologians of the Reformation did not establish a theory of the fall of Satan. Cf. Encyclopaedia of Religions and Ethics. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928, vol. III, pp. 578-583.
42. Margaret James, Social Problem and Policy During the Puritan Revolution. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1966, p. 30.
43. II Peter 1:5-11.