Part 1, Chapters 1 thru 4

[Manny]

Part 1, Chapters 1 thru 4

Summary

We meet the Robin Audrey and Marjorie Manners, two seventeen year old Catholics who are in love and have secretly sworn to marry. Robin tells her that his father, frustrated with the taxes and difficulties and harassment of keeping Catholic, has decided to turn Protestant. It was a shock to both, and they decide that if he does Robin is to quietly go away. Robin goes away with Marjorie’s gift of a rosary and meets Anthony Babington, one year older than Robin, and passionate about his Catholic faith. Babington seems to understand the politics that has circled around the Catholic oppression. Robin, with “black shame,” tells Babington that his father intends to leave the Church.

On the next day, Robin on his way to Babington’s house meets a number of people who are also to meet with Anthony. They meet with a secret priest. When Robin returns home and his father and mentions of a Mass to be celebrated, his father asks where the Mass will be said, Robin refuses to tell him, and coldness comes between the two.

A few days later, his father confronts Robin at dinner. An argument ensues because Robin has refused to be open to his father. The argument escalates into a verbal confrontation, Robin admitting he loves Marjorie and that he told her of his plans to turn Protestant. Ashamed at confronting his father, Robin leaves a note of apology.

Robin meets with his Catholic friends again. He returns to find the note crumbled and tossed. He meets with Marjorie. He tells her what has happened between him and his father. He tells her about the traveling priest. It seems a person who is a fine horseman and knows the area would be best suited to be priest. Marjorie intimates of a coming sorrow and holds Robin close.

[Joseph]

I really enjoyed these opening chapters. We quite often read about the immediate back and forth under Henry VIII, Edward V, and Mary I but outside of knowing that Catholicism was illegal under Elizabeth I we don't usually read much about the persecutions. A few years ago I was game master for the Solomon Kane RPG and I tried to work some of this history into the play, but Robert E. Howard didn't discuss it much in his original stories so it's not well fleshed out in the setting itself even though the stories take place about the same time as this.

[Manny]

Yes, I particularly enjoyed the scenic descriptions. I went back to my comments on our first novel of Benson's we read, Lord of the World, and I particularly highlighted how good Benson was at drawing scenes and describing narrative. I did say his drawing of characters was a bit two dimensional, and while it is too early in the novel to tell I get the same impression. For instance, Robin's father's anger and confrontation seems a bit too out of nowhere. Here is a loving father of seventeen years and a good Catholic for all his life and he turns from Dr. Jeckyll to Mr. Hyde rather suddenly. There's no sense of depth to his flip, no compunction of his reaction to his son. But I'm being picayune. It's enjoyable.

[Joseph]

I would quibble with that as the first couple of chapters point out that the families have been selling off their estates in order to pay the penalty for not attending Anglican services. They're out in Derbyshire so their income is entirely from the rents paid by the farmers on their estates so we're talking about a few, small farming villages. If there are a couple of years of poor harvests then that income is going to take a major hit and it sounds like the penalties for land owners were pretty steep though I would need to do more research to be sure.

[Patrick]

There’s a Shakespearean aspect to all of this. Many times Benson alludes to the harmony or disharmony of nature around the characters, paralleling the personal, religious, and social tensions implicit to the story.

“So, by little and little, the breeze stirred like a waking man; cocks crew from over the hills one to the other; dogs barked far away, till the face of the world was itself again, and the smoke from Matstead rose above the trees in front.”

While the tension rises amongst fathers and sons (definitely see the link to the Gospel of Matthew that fathers will rise against sons too), nature rises amongst the original sin. It’s fascinating and beautiful.

[Manny]

I did get lost with some of the characters we meet in the scenes away from Robin’s home or his time with Marjorie. I’m going to list them, and where I can give a one line summary of who they are I will. On those I can’t, see if you can help out and provide that one line summary. I would like to keep a running list of the characters.

Mr. Barton – Protestant minister
Thomas FitzHerbert - ?
Anthony Babington – Young, Catholic man involved in the Catholic/Protestant politics.
John Merton – Owner of a farm in Dethick; Catholic.
Mr. Thomas – Is that the same person as Thomas FitzHerbeert?
Mistress Westley – Mr. Thomas’s wife.
Mr. Fenton - ?
Mr. Bassett - ?
Mr. Garlick - ?
Mr. Simpson – Secret Catholic priest.
Cuthbert Maine – Recently executed Catholic priest.
Dick Sampson - ?
John FitzHerbert – Thomas’s father.
Mr. Nelson - ?
Mr. Ludlam - ?

That’s all I can find for now. Were there others? Strange, I could not find Robin’s father’s first name. Did I miss it?

[Manny]

Joseph wrote: "I would quibble with that as the first couple of chapters point out that the families have been selling off their estates in order to pay the penalty for not attending Anglican services. They're ou..."

I wasn't criticizing the fact that he intends to convert - I understand that - but that there is no regret and that he has a total lack of understanding it seems for Robin refusing to follow in his conversion. If money were the sole reason for converting, then you would expect a person to have a sense of sadness over it all and he would have some empathy for Robin. If not mpathy, at least understanding.

[Manny]

Peej wrote: "There’s a Shakespearean aspect to all of this. Many times Benson alludes to the harmony or disharmony of nature around the characters, paralleling the personal, religious, and social tensions impli..."

That's very interesting Peej. I had not picked up on that. I'll look for it going out.

[Manny]

Peej reminded me that I wanted to mention Shakespeare, in a historical context rather than literary. These early scenes are set I think in the 1580s. Has anyone pinpointed a date or a marker that would indicate a rough time frame? Shakespeare was born in 1564 and did in 1616. His life overlaps the novel’s setting. He would have been sixteen in 1580 and twenty-three in 1587 when Mary Queen of Scots was executed. He was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is about an hour’s drive south from Derbyshire where these early scenes take place. This was the heart of the Catholic resistance, and Shakespeare lived through it, and I am convinced was a Catholic himself. Whether he actively participated in the resistance is hard to tell. So much of his personal life is unknown. There is no question that in his plays he frequently ridicules the Puritans and there are a number of sympathies to Catholic or Catholic themes. The fact that so many of his plays are set in Italy and France is startling when you think of the international politics going on. The fact that his histories glorify a pre-Protestant England is also telling. But it’s more than this. He had family members, including his in-laws, who were known recusants. The fact that as a playwright in England there is no record of him attending Anglican services is noticeable. Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna married a recusant. His father left a last will and testimony proclaiming he was Catholic. While there is no smoking gun evidence that Shakespeare himself was Catholic, there is no smoking gun evidence he was not, and there are just too many connections to Catholics and Catholicism for it to not be so. A book that pulls this all together, and which I highly recommend, is Joseph Pearce’s The Quest for Shakespeare. It is a great read and might be a nice complement to this novel.

Joseph Pearce summarizes the case for Shakespeare's Catholicism in this National Catholic Register article:
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/evide...

[Joseph]

I can't find it, probably because my copy is a facsimile reprint and has tiny type, but I seem to recall a passage which implied that Robin's father had started to buy into the argument that Anglicanism isn't really different from Catholicism and so the "Recusant" position was simply a manifestation of stubbornness. Realistically speaking, this is an argument that we hear all the time today and it can certainly be tempting for those who have some conflict or doubt in their mind, which may be Mr. Aubrey's motivation to buy into the argument and push Robin to take that stance as well.

[Frances]

This is a book I have only heard of, not read: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt. In one fascinating chapter, Greenblatt imagines that young Shakespeare met Edmund Campion (martyred in 1581). Is anyone in our group familiar with the book?

[Joseph]

I read Will in the World for my Shakespeare class in undergrad. It's very good and the chapter on Catholicism is pretty compelling. Joseph Pearce has also written a full book on Shakespeare and Catholicism.

[Manny]

I have not Frances. I have yet to find a book on Shakespeare that address the strong possibility of his Catholicism. It's as if they don't want to admit it because a heck of a lot of literary understanding of his plays would go out the window. For instance there are Catholic readings of King Lear and Hamlet which flies in the face of the existential, skeptical readings of those plays that has dominated secular criticism for the past hundred plus years. A lot of modern readings of his plays should go out the window. If the Greenblatt book addresses Shakespeare's Catholicism, then I might pick it up. Otherwise I'm done with secular misreadings of Shakespeare.

[Frances]

I haven’t read it, Manny. This week I did some reading about it. The NYTimes reviewer seems to conclude that speculation about Shakespeare’s religion is just that—speculation. I went to Amazon and read reviews of the book, made by people who thave read it. They’re very interesting reading; Shakespeare always seems to elude us, though.

References to a meeting between S. And Edmund Campion appear in several places in addition to Will in the World, but not — at least from what I read — definitively. One Jesuit who does stand out as a direct influence on Shakespeare was a surprise to me: Robert Southwell, also martyred. I have to go back and look but in one place I read direct comparisons between Southwell’s writing and scenes in King Lear.

I’m sorry not to be of more help. Joseph has read Will in the World. He’d undoubtedly be a better person to ask. What I find most interesting are the many mentions of Catholic influence on Shakespeare in a number of scholarly works.

Why not look at the reviews of Greenblatt’s book and see what you think?

[Manny]

Frances, do yourself a favor, read Joseph Pearce's The Quest for Shakespeare. Look at all the evidence from a Catholic's perspective. And by that, I mean by a perspective that has not been tainted by secularist and/or anti Catholic bias. Not only that, you will love the book.

[Frances]

I discovered this today: in the February 21, 2021 issue of The Catholic World Report (online), Joseph Pearce gives a striking interview concerning Robert Southwell and Shakespeare. Southwell, although he’s recognized as a Jesuit martyr, isn’t recognized nearly enough for the brilliant poet he was. And he died at age 33.

[Frances]

Manny, I think we crossed in cyberspace!

[Patrick]

Another tradition that links Shakespeare, Benson and Catholicism is the harmony of humanity and nature, a la “Lord of the Rings”. Tolkien focused on this as a primary theme.

That parallel between conflict and climatic environment shows up in CRCR, as the entire nation of England is in tension. You see this in “Midsummer’s Night Dream” as well with the fairy world and the human world.

CRCR focuses on a personal representation of a spiritual, political, moral and theological crisis. You get the impression that it’s a universal issue—an issue of the objective truth at odds with a heresy. And it’s a heresy in the fact of one single division of a whole elevating itself above the whole, above the Body of Christ. Whenever nature gets out of balance, it corrects itself over generations. The Church does the same.

But what happens when government silences the true church? What happens when man violates conscience and puts his own will into the place of God’s?

[Manny]

Excellent Peej. I like your connections between Benson and Shakespeare.

[Patrick]

I lean toward the fact that Shakespeare was Catholic. He didn’t fear the fairy tale and he had a healthy skepticism of rationalism. He also had a balanced understanding of the human person and its need for narrative and fact together. However, he never was explicit about it, and he created beautiful art through his worldview, which was certainly influenced by Catholicism.

[Frances]

Peej, Manny, and other members, please see the online issue of The Catholic World Report, August 27, 2022: “The Jesuit martyr who inspired Shakespeare,” by Joseph Pearce. In addition to mentioning that martyred Jesuit Saint Robert Southwell may have been a cousin of Shakespeare’s, Pearce says:
‘’Southwell might have been Shakespeare’s confessor. . . also there is undeniable textual evidence to illustrate Southwell’s influence on . . . Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and Merchant of Venice. . .
‘’The famous graveyard scene in Hamlet is influenced by Southwell’s ‘Upon the image of Death’ and Lear’s speech in which the contrite Lear says to Cordelia that they should be ‘God’s spies,’ is an intertextual engagement with Southwell’s poem, ‘Decease
Release.’ ‘’

You will find the entire online article fascinating. One thing is undeniable: the world lost a brilliant poet and exceptional human being when Robert Southwell was executed at age 33.

[Manny]

Frances, that is an excellent article. I highly recommend reading it. It really does pertain to our Come Rack! Come Rope! read in that it sketches the life of the secret priests in the day and of what hung, drawn, and quartered actually was. Here is a link to the article:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2...

[Casey]

I got through 2 chapters and just wasn't engaged. I paused and started over. Slow going, in chapter 3... hoping it grabs me soon so I can catch up.

[Gerri]

Frances wrote: "Peej, Manny, and other members, please see the online issue of The Catholic World Report, August 27, 2022: “The Jesuit martyr who inspired Shakespeare,” by Joseph Pearce. In addition to mentioning ..."

Frances, thank you so much for bringing this up. I'm not doing the group read but am following comments. Wasn't familiar with Southwell and look forward to learning more about him and his connection to Shakespeare.

[Kerstin]

Benson is such a good writer. He pulled me in right away.

I also felt the father/son spat a little harsh. The father gives Robin no wiggle room to adjust to the news. Masses were already held in secret, wouldn't a loving father at least communicate what his position is toward those who remain recusant? Up to now all of them were part of a tight community protecting one another. No wonder Robin sees himself in Limbo here and stumbles when his father could have prevented the fall-out with a few words.

[Kerstin]

The hunt is also a metaphor of what is happening in England at the time. The partridge hide in the moor and are stirred up by the dogs to be captured and killed by the hawks.

[Frances]

Kerstin, yes. I thought the description of the falcon hunt equaled anything that Hemingway or Faulkner wrote -- just exceptional prose (in my copy it's in Chapter Four). Casey, if you can read to that point, I think you'll be drawn into the novel.
As Kerstin mentioned, we see in the hunt a foretaste of the cruelty of the times and the times to come.

[Frances]

Gerri, Joseph Pearce and others have made credible suggestions that Shakespeare and Southwell were in fact cousins.

[Manny]

Robert Hugh Benson is such a fine writer of prose. I want to present a lovely written passage in each of the sections that we fragment for our reading purposes. In chapter two, I was struck by this passage as Robin goes to Dethick, John Merton’s estate. Here has dinner with Merton, Anthony Babington, and Thomas FitzHerbert, key members of the local Catholic families.

It was a great day for a yeoman when three gentlemen should take their dinners in his house; and the place was in a respectful uproar. From the kitchen vent went up a pillar of smoke, and through its door, in and out continually, fled maids with dishes. The yeoman himself, John Merton, a dried-looking, lean man, stood cap in hand to meet the gentlemen; and his wife, crimson-faced from the fire, peeped and smiled from the open door of the living-room that gave immediately upon the yard. For these gentlemen were from three of the principal estates here about. The Babingtons had their country house at Dethick and their town house in Derby; the Audreys owned a matter of fifteen hundred acres at least all about Matstead; and the FitzHerberts, it was said, scarcely knew themselves all that they owned, or rather all that had been theirs until the Queen’s Grace had begun to strip them of it little by little on account of their faith. The two Padleys, at least, were theirs, besides their principal house at Norbury; and now that Sir Thomas was in the Fleet Prison for his religion, young Mr. Thomas, his heir, was of more account than ever. (p. 22)

Not only is that lovely but I think it fills in the novel’s key characters. The Catholic characters come from rural families who own a good deal of property, and have a lot to lose by refusing to join the Protestant supremacy.

[Celia]

I had a hard time getting into this book but after reading the comments above and the Wikipedia article describing the book, I am starting to get involved. Just started Chapter 5 but hope to catch up with the rest of you by Sunday.

[Manny]

No problem Celia. I found it was getting more engaging as the novel progressed.

[Celia]

Manny wrote: "No problem Celia. I found it was getting more engaging as the novel progressed."

I have highlighted 9 quotes through what I have read. TY Manny.

[Kerstin]

Manny wrote: "Not only is that lovely but I think it fills in the novel’s key characters. The Catholic characters come from rural families who own a good deal of property, and have a lot to lose by refusing to join the Protestant supremacy."

The fines mean social decline and and loss of influence. If you stay Catholic you'll be a nobody - socially speaking - in no time. It is one way to neutralize the opposition.