What Was the Religion of Shakespeare? — Story, Setting & Ideas

Reading Between the Lines

Mangasarian opens by stating that Shakespeare's works are neither a treatise on theology nor a manual of philosophy, so the reader must infer the poet's attitude by reading between the lines. He quotes the historian Green, who wrote that it is difficult to say whether Shakespeare had any religious faith. Mangasarian reframes the question: if by religious faith one means a specific denomination, the answer is unknown and unimportant. But if it means acceptance of a supernatural interpretation of the universe, he argues the evidence is clear. He asserts that Shakespeare's tragedies consistently show an anti-supernaturalist stance, where this world is all there is and it is what men have made it. He anticipates the objection of ghosts and witches on stage, dismissing them as stage machinery that does not reflect the author's mind, citing Hamlet's line about seeing his father 'in my mind's eye.'

Death Without Consolation

The lecture examines death scenes as key evidence. Mangasarian points to Romeo and Juliet, who confront death without any thought of a future reunion, which he finds remarkable given their youth and love. Romeo knows no paradise but Juliet; for her, where Romeo is, there is heaven. Romeo's address to death ignores all revealed religions: 'Come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on / The dashing rocks, thy seasick weary bark!' Mangasarian notes that Romeo had a Catholic priest as a friend, yet his mind is clean from fantasies. Juliet dies without appeal to religion, crying 'Go, get thee hence' to the friar. Hamlet's last words, 'The rest is silence,' are taken as Shakespeare's own. These scenes, Mangasarian argues, show deliberate avoidance of religious language and a frank, honest naturalism.

The Law of Cause and Consequence

Mangasarian highlights how Shakespeare's plays operate on the law of action and reaction, with no angel or divine intervention. Characters rise or fall by their own acts: intemperance brings Timon to dust, folly ruins Othello, insolence cuts Coriolanus short, ambition and superstition strangle Macbeth, hypocrisy subjects Angelo to contempt, hatred blights Shylock. Heaven plays no part; man reaps as he sows. Mangasarian asks: if nature's laws defy human power, do they bend for gods? He argues that pride, shame, intemperance, greed, and hate cannot lead to happiness, all gods to the contrary. This consistent pattern, he claims, reveals Shakespeare's worldview as one of naturalistic cause and effect, not supernatural intervention.

The Stage-Master and the Machinery

Mangasarian addresses the presence of supernatural elements on Shakespeare's stage—ghosts, witches, apparitions—and argues they are mere theatrical devices, not evidence of the author's belief. He distinguishes between the machinery of the stage and the stage-master. Even Hamlet sees his father 'in my mind's eye,' showing how little the appurtenances of the theatre affected the author's mind. Mangasarian insists that Shakespeare's intellectual freedom from theological phraseology and method is clear. The lecture uses this distinction to reinforce the claim that Shakespeare was a naturalist, using supernatural trappings only as dramatic conventions while consistently presenting a world governed by natural laws and human agency.

The Consistency of Naturalism

Mangasarian returns to the idea that Shakespeare's works show a deliberate effort to avoid supernatural consolation. He contrasts Romeo and Juliet's deaths with typical religious deathbed scenes, where the dying turn their thoughts heavenward. Shakespeare prevents even these ardent lovers from dreaming of a life beyond. Mangasarian calls this 'frank, honest, free' but not how Mohammedan, Christian, or Jewish religions expect the dying to express themselves. He notes that Juliet, who often knelt before the priest, dies without one appeal to religion. The lecture concludes that this consistency across multiple plays—the absence of divine intervention, the focus on natural cause and effect, and the secular treatment of death—provides strong evidence of Shakespeare's anti-supernaturalist worldview.

Mangasarian's lecture is a tightly argued case built on textual patterns rather than biographical speculation. Readers should attend to how he uses repeated examples from different plays to build a cumulative argument, and note his careful distinction between stage conventions and authorial belief. The lecture itself is a product of its time—a rationalist critique from the early twentieth century—and invites reflection on how much of an author's worldview can be inferred from their works.

Reading Mangasarian’s quiet case for Shakespeare’s naturalism, I kept thinking how lonely his view must have felt—no cosmic hand, just human fates. It reminded me of another old argument, one about priestly authority in Kensington, which I found tucked away recently: Church Ministry in Kensington A Recent Case of Hieratical Teaching Scripturally Considered — A Closer Reading. Both feel like voices from a gentler, more doubting age.