What Was the Religion of Shakespeare?

by M. M. Mangasarian

In religion,

What damned error, but some sober brow

Will bless it and approve it with a text.

We can imagine how a man who, kept apart from the great theological interest of the day, could make the above comment; but for a partisan of any one of the sects, such a characterization of the folly and wickedness of making a number of Bible texts the occasion for endless wrangles and bloodshed would have been impossible, for the very cogent reason that in condemning the practice of resorting to Scripture as the court of last appeal in all matters of religion, he would have undermined his own position. Such a passage as the above illustrates with what scant sympathy the leading mind of that age contemplated the warfare of rival faiths. And when it is remembered that what heated the religious sects, the one against the other, were subjects concerning which no one possessed any knowledge, we will appreciate Hamlet's amazement that we should make such fools of ourselves:—

So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.

A further condemnation of the claims, of religious organizations that they possess a Revelation which answers definitely and finally man's questions concerning the here and the hereafter, and a recommendation of the scientific attitude of modesty and openness of mind to fresh knowledge, is found in the lines, so frequently quoted, but with little understanding of its import:—

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Revelation may be closed, the Bibles and creeds may have no further use for study and investigation, but for a man of the rationality of Shakespeare, no revelation, no Bible, no creed, approached anywhere near covering the ever widening realm of truth. The books of the gods are sealed. Shakespeare believed in the open book.