[32] In the Sonnets, for example, there is an almost entire absence of definitely religious thought or feeling. The nearest approach to it is in Sonnet 146 (‘Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth’), where, however, there is no allusion to a divine law or judge. According to Sonnet 129, lust in action is
| The expense of spirit in a waste of shame; |
but no word shows that it is also felt as alienation from God. It must be added that in 108 and 110 there are references to the Lord’s Prayer and, perhaps, to the First Commandment, from which a decidedly religious Christian would perhaps have shrunk. Of course I am not saying that we can draw any necessary inference from these facts.
[33] It is only this ‘quiet but deep sense’ that is significant. No inference can be drawn from the fact that the mere belief in powers above seems to be taken as a matter of course in practically all the characters, good and bad alike. On the other hand there may well be something symptomatic in the apparent absence of interest in theoretical disbelief in such powers and in the immortality of the soul. I have observed elsewhere that the atheism of Aaron does not increase the probability that the conception of the character is Shakespeare’s.
[34] With the first compare, what to me has, though more faintly, the same ring, Hermione’s
| If powers divine Behold our human actions, as they do: |
with the second, Helena’s
| It is not so with Him that all things knows As ’tis with us that square our guess by shows; But most it is presumption in us when The help of heaven we count the act of men: |
followed soon after by Lafeu’s remark:
They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.