Nor are we in any way justified in concluding that Shakespeare accepted the teaching of the Church of Rome in spiritual matters. Nothing could be more unwarranted than what is assumed by Father Bowden in the following passage. He is speaking of Shakespeare’s attitude in relation to death. “‘Ripeness is all’; and he shows us in all his penitents how that ripeness is secured, sin forgiven, and heaven won on the lines of Catholic dogma and by the Sacraments of the Church.”
What are the facts? Shakespeare’s reticence about a future state, and what may await man, in the form of reward and punishment hereafter, is one of his most striking characteristics. Neither Cordelia nor Desdemona, neither Constance nor Imogen in their darkest hours expresses any confidence in the final mercy and justice of Heaven. Othello, falling by a fate as terrible as it was undeserved, dies without a syllable of hope. “The rest is silence” are the ominous words with which Hamlet takes leave of life. When Gloucester believes himself to be standing on the brink of death, in the farewell which he takes of the world he has no anticipation of any other; all he contemplates is “to shake patiently his great affliction off.” So die Lear, Hotspur, Romeo, Antony, Eros, Enobarbus, Macbeth, Beaufort, Mercutio, Laertes. So die Brutus, Coriolanus, King John. In the Duke’s speech in _Measure for Measure_, where he is preparing Claudio to meet death, death is merely contemplated as an escape from the pains and discomforts of life. Macbeth would ‘jump’ the world to come if he could escape punishment in this. Prospero suggests no hope of any waking from the “rounding sleep.” Even Isabella, dedicated as she was to religion, in fortifying Claudio against his fate draws no weapon from the armoury of faith. It is just the same in the dirge in Cymbeline, in the soliloquy of Posthumus, in the consolations addressed by the gaoler to Posthumus.[53]
The last passage is perhaps more remarkable than any, because it shows the utter ambiguity of the directest expression which the poet has left on the subject.
_Gaol._--Look you, sir, you know not which way you go.
_Gaol._--Your death has eyes in ’s head then; I have not seen him so pictured: you must either be directed by some that take upon them to know, or take upon yourself, that which I am sure you do not know; or jump the after inquiry on your own peril; and how you shall speed in your journey’s end, I think you’ll never return to tell one.