About the Book
This book is the result of a life-long companionship with William Shakespeare. Annie-Paule de Prinsac has never been in doubt about his mannerism, whose many guises she reveals through close readings of selected plays. Such mannerism, however, in a kingdom torn by religious conflicts, violent oppression, and censorship raises questions. It seems out of step with the spirit of the Elizabethan Court, but also seems to belie the views of so many critics regarding his alleged social background and lack of education. How and why, then, did Shakespeare become a mannerist artist? In the end, it was his Catholic upbringing, long silenced or left aside by university scholarship, that provided the answer.
Before becoming a man for all times, Shakespeare was a man of his time; and so, we cannot hope to understand his mind if we are blind to the Catholic dimension of his work, and the Italian flavor (French aroma at times as well) he chose to give to most of his plays. Clearly, the Bard had absorbed Counter Reformation strategies in art, and in tandem invented his own dramatic practice to preserve his now forbidden faith, while yet speaking the truth even so. The complexities of mannerism in his hands proved a most propitious way to teach and heal his fellowmen for over twenty years without ever having to change course. He so refined and elevated this ploy of dissimulation that he never had to betray the deep moral content of his plays. His aim, like Michelangelo’s, certainly was “to move mortals to tears and devotion.”
“In Shakespeare, the Magician and the Healer, Annie-Paule de Prinsac offers an original and quite remarkable account of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Her interpretive strategy is to assess the meaning and method of his work by means of mannerist (and also baroque) æsthetics, but her wide-ranging knowledge of continental and, especially, French literature and culture also broadens and enriches her perspective. It is unlikely that anyone will agree with everything she says, but almost everyone will here find insights into Shakespeare’s works that both challenge and enhance their own insights—which is the purpose of literary criticism.”—R.V. YOUNG, author of Shakespeare and the Idea of Western Civilization
“This volume should interest anyone intrigued by recent claims that William Shakespeare was a life-long Catholic and that his religious beliefs directly and fruitfully affected both his art and his artistry. It should also interest readers who are curious to learn more about artistic ‘Mannerism’ and how that important aesthetic movement may have intricately influenced Shakespeare’s works. Finally, the author’s personal familiarity with French culture and literature allows her to see Shakespeare from an unusual and fresh vantage point.”—ROBERT C. EVANS, I. B. Young Professor of English, Auburn University at Montgomery
“Annie-Paule de Prinsac has given us a terrifically revealing, necessary, and exciting reading of Shakespeare—‘healer and magician’ indeed—along with rich servings of cultural history and artistic contexts from Renaissance Italy to the Baroque. Risking the religious jeopardies of his own time, we see the crypto-Catholic poet deploying the misdirections of mannerist tools (a fresh mode of ‘unusual couplings giving birth to surprise’) throughout the entire range of his poems and plays (Cymbeline will never be the same). This project, ever-beguiling and quite deliberate, united manner and matter as no other and probably saved his life.”—JAMES COMO, author of C. S. Lewis: A Very Short Introduction and Mystical Perelandra
“‘What religion wilt thou be of next?’ Malvole asks Pietro in John Marston’s Elizabethan play, The Malcontent, which is itself a fantasy of recusant Catholics in England. That question haunts the whole of the great age of English drama, especially in the life and work of William Shakespeare. In this ambitious and energetic study, Annie-Paule de Prinsac not only argues for the Catholic formation of Shakespeare’s dramas but also for their coded mannerism, wherein the Catholicism proscribed in the playwright’s England still finds voice and expression—voice and expression in the greatest plays of all time, Shakespeare’s late masterpieces.”—JAMES MATTHEW WILSON, author of Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds
“Shakespeare scholarship is emerging from its own dark age, and Annie-Paul de Prinsac’s detailed and extensive analysis of the Bard’s works is a bright star in that new constellation of analysis. Deftly weaving threads of theology, history, and aesthetics into her tapestry, de Prinsac provides a portrait of Shakespeare as an adroit conjuror whose spells reveal ever-new depths of religious and anthropological riches.”—STEPHEN MIRARCHI, Chair and Associate Professor, Benedictine College
“In the recent and growing body of criticism that examines Shakespeare as a Catholic author, this book, considering the Bard through a Mannerist lens, provides a fresh and intriguing perspective. Shakespeare’s Mannerism, the author argues, arose from the extreme religious and political complexities of his time, a moment in history that, given his Catholic sympathies, necessarily called for a style that conceals even as it reveals. I highly recommend this elegantly written work.”—MARY REICHARDT, Professor of Literature Emeritus, University of St. Thomas; editor of Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature
“Shakespeare, the Magician and the Healer is a provocative and enlightening contribution to Shakespeare studies. Annie Paul de Prinsac situates Shakespeare fully in the shifting and complex religious and cultural milieu of Early Modernity, forthrightly exploring the contested question of Shakespeare and Catholicism. The book’s unique contribution lies in connecting Shakespeare’s elusive religious convictions to emergent European aesthetic developments in painting, music, opera, architecture, and sculpture which emphasize indirection and competing perspectives. It is equally valuable as a compendium of brilliant, close readings of Shakespeare’s individual works sure to illuminate both the uninitiated and advanced student of the Bard.”—AARON URBANCZYK, Professor of English, Franciscan University
“Annie-Paule de Prinsac’s Shakespeare, the Magician and the Healer explores the religious tensions inhabiting the soul of the incognito Catholic William Shakespeare and his delicate sojourn through the politically and religiously dangerous ages of Elizabeth I and James VI and I. Along the way, she guides us through the psychology of England’s greatest playwright in a manner both edifying and illuminating.”—MICHAEL MARTIN, author of Sophia in Exile and Mythologies of the Wild of God
“The elegantly written Shakespeare, the Magician and the Healer blends deep scholarship with fascinating insights into the individual plays and the moral and stylistic currents that run through the long arc of Shakespeare’s works. It is a significant addition to the body of Shakespeare criticism.”—RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Former Head, International School of Boston
