Abstract
This chapter explores Shakespeare’s treatment of double predestination in comedy and tragedy. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare addresses the key dilemma of double predestination thought: absolving God of being ‘the author of sin.’ In short, Shakespeare shows that it is a good thing God is the author of sin, since if humans were its author, sin would be even worse. Turning to tragedy, Shakespeare explores in Macbeth some basic psychological consequences of a Protestant belief in double predestination, including a greater terror at the possibility of eternal damnation than would have characterized medieval thinkers, who believed in purgatorial cleansing. Macbeth’s Protestant mentality also causes him to think of life not as a journey toward heaven or hell but rather as an effort to find out into which category one has already been placed.
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Notes
- 1.
Andrew Willet, Synopsis Papismi (London: 1592), 553.
- 2.
There are many, varied readings of the significance of the cuckold’s horns in the Renaissance . Cuckolds are associated with bovine horns as early as 200 AD in the Oneirocritica (Interpretation of Dreams) of Artemidorus : a man “dreamt that he saw himself seated upon a ram but that he then fell off the front of it. The dream was interpreted as signifying that his wife would be a prostitute and she would, as it were, put horns on him”; qtd. in Robert Bates Graber and Gregory C. Richter , “The Capon theory of the Cuckold’s Horns : Confirmation or Conjecture,” Journal of American Folklore 100.395 (Jan–Mar 1987), 60. This reference was well-known in the Renaissance ; see for example Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel , in The Complete Works of François Rabelais, trans . Donald M. Frame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 297 (3.14). Cuckold horns are also associated with antler horns and even perhaps with the combs of capons; Graber and Richter cite a 1598 Italian source describing the grafting of the capon’s spurs onto its forehead at the time of caponization/castration (following removal of the comb), presumably in order to identify these birds more clearly as capons; see Graber and Richter , 59. If true, this explanation establishes an interesting connection between castration/ emasculation and the visible sign of it in the forehead, an association essential to representations of Renaissance cuckoldry . Additionally, as Claire McEachern stresses in her wide-ranging discussion of the topic, horns often have more positive associations, with light (via Moses’s ‘horns’ and through the ability of bovine horn to transmit light, as in lanthorns), and also as a perhaps encouraging sign of a shared human condition, seen for instance in the references to “the lusty horn” in As You Like It (4.2.18), “Why Do Cuckolds Have Horns?”, Huntington Library Quarterly 71.4 (2008), 607–31. For two additional explorations of the topic, see Francisco Vaz Da Silva , “Sexual Horns : The Anatomy and Metaphysics of Cuckoldry in European Folklore,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48.2 (2006), 396–418; and Desmond Morris, Peter Collett , Peter Marsh , and Marie O’Shaughnessy , “The Vertical Horn Sign,” in Gestures: Their Origin and Distribution (New York: Stein and Day, 1979), 119–34.
- 3.
As one anonymous treatise (the author may have been George Rogers [1618–1697]) phrased it, “Since they [men] then were called bulls, who abandoning their wives gave them matter to be unchast, one may consequently judge that they were mockt with horns .” “The Horn Exalted or Roome for Cuckolds.” (London: John Cadwel , 1661), 12.
- 4.
The association of devils and cuckolds is made explicit in Much Ado About Nothing , when Beatrice refers to “an old cuckold with horns on his head” (2.1.40). All quotations from Shakespeare are from The Arden Shakespeare: Complete Works, eds. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan (Surrey: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1998). Similarly, “there appeared to me a great diuell… he was a cuckoldly deuill, for he had hornes on his head,” Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene, A Looking Glass for London and England (1594), in The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, ed. Alexander B. Grosart . 15 vols. (London: Huth Library; Hazell, Watson, & Vincy, 1881–1886), 14:91 (line 2097).
- 5.
“The Horn Exalted,” 15–16 (page 15 misnumbered as page 11).
- 6.
The idea that many more are reprobate than elect was always a Christian commonplace, for instance, in Matthew 22.14: “Many are called, but few are chosen,” and Matthew 7.14: “narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
- 7.
Cox writes, plausibly, that Macbeth is an “exceptionally conscientious man” and audiences sympathize with his suffering, especially since much of it results from his “extraordinary awareness of goodness” – as seen, for instance, in Macbeth’s almost compassionate reference to the “poor heart” (5.3.28) of the man who serves him out of fear. John D. Cox , “Religion and Suffering in Macbeth,” Christianity and Literature 62.2 (2013), 232, 236.
- 8.
As explained further in my essay, “Macbeth and Protestant Predestination” (Reformation 18 [2013], 48–63), there is a sense in some literary criticism, perhaps especially seen in relation to this play, that it is possible to identify a ‘reprobate’ sensibility within a character such as the evil Macbeth. But particularly for Protestants who adopted a more fully double predestination theology, sin was not the cause of reprobation; consequently there would be no significant differences when it came to the sinfulness of the elect and reprobate .
- 9.
But of course, as Rebecca Lemon’s discussion of Macbeth shows, such scaffold repentances are often seen, in Shakespeare’s day, as an insult both to the convicted traitor, who makes his remarks to avoid torture, and the state, which tortures him. See Rebecca Lemon, Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 89.
- 10.
“The Lambeth Articles, 1595” 399.
- 11.
See Peter White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, 13–7.
- 12.
See, for instance, William Perkins, “A Golden Chaine,” in Workes, 1:24 (Chapter 15). Interestingly, a more moderate Protestant who resisted double predestination theology, Heinrich Bullinger, specifically denied there were two books or tablets, of the saved and damned, already written in heaven. See White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, 76.
- 13.
Augustine, “Nature and Grace”, in Works , I/23:247. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 1st release, 2001.
- 14.
Augustine wrote: “Finally, if the love of God by which alone a righteous person is truly righteous was present in the righteous Abel, it was still such that it could and ought to grow, for whatever was lacking in it stemmed from a defect,” “Nature and Grace,” in Works, I/23:248. Augustine also refers to Abel as the “first righteous human being” in his late “Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian,” Augustine, “Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian,” trans. Roland J. Teske , in The Works of Saint Augustine, eds. John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), I/25:190. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 1st release, 2001. However, Augustine also makes the same claim about Adam in this work, I/25:73. For a rich discussion of why ‘imputation’ is more significant to Luther than to Augustine, see James F. McCue , “Simul Iustus et Peccator in Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther: Toward Putting the Debate in Context,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48.1 (1980), 81–96. McCue points out how Augustine’s sense of human sinfulness involved “imperfections” and “trivialities,” a very different sense from “Luther’s conception of the ineradicable egoism of all human beings,” 84.
- 15.
For a discussion of the concept of ‘imputation’ in Christianity prior to Augustine, see Nick Needham, “Justification in the Early Church Fathers,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic; Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 2006), 25–54, especially 27–36.
- 16.
Augustine, “Marriage and Desire,” trans. Roland J. Teske , in The Works of Saint Augustine, eds. John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), I/24:51. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 1st release, 2001. The final phrase is from Psalms 32.1–2 (and translated in Romans 4.7–8), often cited in discussions of imputation.
- 17.
Augustine, “Marriage and Desire,” in Works , I/24:51. The frequently utilized Old Testament metaphor wherein God covers human sins with clothing can be read likewise, to mean that the sin persists beneath, even as God chooses not to see it.
- 18.
Augustine, “Marriage and Desire,” in Works , I/24:46.
- 19.
Martin Luther, “Lectures on Romans, Scholia [4:7],” trans . Jacob A.O. Preus, in Luther’s Works, American Edition, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan, Helmut T. Lehmann , Christopher Boyd Brown, et al. 79 vols. to date (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Press; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–), 25:261.
- 20.
Maurice Eugene Osterhaven, The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on its Historical Development (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans , 1982), 104.
- 21.
See R. Scott Clark, “Iustitia Imputata Christi: Alien or Proper to Luther’s Doctrine of Justification?” Concordia Theological Quarterly 70:3/4 (2006), 269–310; esp. 291. McGrath nicely quotes religious historian Walter Von Loewenich’s remark to the effect that, for Augustine, imputed righteousness means be made ever more righteous, while for Luther the concept means ‘ever to be justified anew.’ McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 227.
- 22.
See McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 208–26 and passim. Also, Heiko A. Oberman, “ ‘Iustitia ‘Christi’ and ‘Iustitia Dei’: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrines of Justification,” in Heiko A. Oberman, The Dawn of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans 1986; rpt. 1992), 104–25. Oberman argues that Luther’s major theological innovation was to make the (imputed) justice of God (iustitia dei) immediately accessible to the person of faith rather than a sought-after object to be attained only at the Last Judgment, 120.
- 23.
Fink, “Was There a ‘Reformation Doctrine of Justification?’,” 227–9. Timothy J. Wengert has argued that the challenges posed by the Protestant Andreas Osiander (1498–1552), who had asked “Whether God does what false judges do?” (by ‘forensically’ declaring sinners not guilty), were a major factor in causing the Reformers to clarify their positions on the workings of imputed grace. See Timothy J. Wengert, Defending Faith: Lutheran Responses to Andreas Osiander’s Doctrine of Justification, 1551–1559 (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 50.
- 24.
Fink, “Was There a ‘Reformation Doctrine of Justification?,’” 223.
- 25.
For an example of the “Finnish School” approach to imputation in Luther and other Protestants, see Olli-Pekka Vainio , Justification and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification From Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580) (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
- 26.
For the “Letter to Brenz” see Luther’s Correspondence in the Weimar Edition (WA), D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 121 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlhaus Nachfolger, 1888–2009), BR 6.98–101 (no. 1818). Alister E. McGrath , among others, attributes to Melanchthon the earliest systematic treatment of ‘forensic’ justification, at least from a legal perspective. Iustitia Dei , 240–1. Also see Gregory Graybill , Evangelical Free Will: Philipp Melanchthon’s Doctrinal Journey on the Origins of Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 171.
- 27.
Wengert, Defending Faith, 69. As Rolf Schäfer has shown, these efforts of Luther and Melanchthon to distinguish prevenient grace from the gifts that followed it were abetted by their (Erasmus indebted) reading of Romans 5.15; there Paul distinguished between “the grace of God” and the “gift by grace,”—the latter indicated, for Reformers , the gifts that followed God’s initial prevenient grace. Rolf Schäfer, “Melanchthon’s Interpretation of Romans 5.15: His Departure From the Augustinian Concept of Grace Compared to Luther’s,” in Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary, eds. Timothy J. Wengert and M. Patrick Graham (Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 79–104; esp. 95. It is in this context that Wengert notes Luther’s preface to Romans where he writes “grace and gift are two different things … grace does not divide or parcel itself out but instead takes us wholly and completely up into mercy,” Defending Faith, 77. For the passage in Luther, see “Preface to the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans,” trans. Charles. M. Jacobs , rev. E. Theodore Bachmann, in Luther’s Works, American Edition, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan , Helmut T. Lehmann , Christopher Boyd Brown, et al. 79 vols. to date (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Press; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–), 35:369–70. John Fesko argues that Bullinger likewise prioritized justification over sanctification and for similar reasons; as Fesko puts it, “For Bullinger, salvation is grounded upon Christ’s work for us, not Christ’s work in us.” Beyond Calvin, 184. Similarly, Calvin critiques Augustine, and especially the “Schoolmen ” (specifically Peter Lombard ) for subsuming “grace under sanctification” when it should be considered part of the earlier bestowal of justification. Institutes, 3.11.15, 746.
- 28.
For a discussion of Luther’s use of this phrase, see Thomas M. Winger, “Simul Justus et Peccator: Did Luther and the Confessions Get Paul Right?” Lutheran Theological Review XVII (2004–05), 90–108, esp. 91–5.
- 29.
McGrath , Iustitia Dei, 226. In “Against Latomus” (1521), Luther articulated this point carefully, insisting first on the power of imputed grace (which to Luther was equivalent to Augustinian ‘prevenient grace’) to fully destroy sin in humans: “It is therefore most godless to say that one who is baptized is still in sin, or that all his sins are not fully forgiven. For what sin is there where God is favorable and wills not to know any sin, and where he wholly accepts and sanctifies the whole man?” But Luther immediately continued his argument with a deliberate paradox: “Despite this, it is truly and by nature sin. Indeed, it is ingratitude and injury to the grace and gift of God to deny that it truly is sin. To be sure, for grace there is no sin, because the whole person pleases; yet for the gift there is sin which it purges away and overcomes.” Martin Luther, “Against Latomus 1521,” trans. George Lindbeck, in Luther’s Works, American Edition, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan , Helmut T. Lehmann , Christopher Boyd Brown, et al. 79 vols. to date (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Press; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–), 32:229. This point was not readily comprehensible to conventional Christian thinking. Carl E. Maxcey notes the incredulity of the Trent theologians, specifically Diego Laynez (1512–1565), at the thought of humans having a simultaneous, dual existence as imputed saints and inveterate sinners. Laynez pointed out that David was predestined but his sins were nonetheless displeasing to God. Carl E. Maxcey , “Double Justice, Diego Laynez, and the Council of Trent.” Church History 48 (1979), 275. Along similar lines, As David V.N. Bagchi points out, Henry VIII and his Catholic counselors also could not accept Luther’s logic; as Bagchi paraphrases Henry’s view in the 1521 anti-Luther tract, the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (Defence of the Seven Sacraments), “a just God could not be expected to restore anyone to baptismal grace proper who had willfully rejected it” through sin. David V.N. Bagchi , Luther’s Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518–1525. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 125. According to Henry VIII , representing the standard view, penance needed to be paid for sin (which was part of the logic supporting indulgences as well). But Luther’s point was that faith itself was penance, and that the purpose of the sacrament of baptism was to remind Christian sinners of that and hence relieve them of the need for penance.
- 30.
Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.11, 603. As might be expected, the sixteenth-century Catholic position on the nature of human sin was much different; the Council of Trent considered it anathema to believe that only the imputation of original sin, rather than the sin itself, was removed from believers through the sacrament of baptism. “Council of Trent-1545–1563: Session 5,” trans. Peter McIlhenny , in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner . 2 vols. (London: Sheed and Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:667.
- 31.
Melanchthon , “Loci Communes Theologici” (1521), trans. Lowell J. Satre , rev. Wilhelm Pauck , in Melanchthon and Bucer, ed. Wilhelm Pauck. Library of Christian Classics, vol. 19 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 79. Melanchthon is citing Isaiah 64.6 but applying its condemnation of Old Testament sinners to even the finest Christians.
- 32.
Kathleen McLuskie, “Humane Statute and the Gentle Weal: Historical Reading and Historical Allegory.” Shakespeare Survey 57 (2004), 8.
- 33.
McLuskie, “Humane Statute and the Gentle Weal,” 8.
- 34.
For comments on the possible staging of the ‘show of eight kings,’ see Gary Taylor , “Macbeth (Adaptation) (Autumn 1616)” (in the section ‘Works Included in this Edition: Canon and Chronology’), in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works, eds. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 392.
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Gleckman, J. (2019). Double Predestination in Shakespearean Comedy and Tragedy: The Merry Wives of Windsor and Macbeth . In: Shakespeare and Protestant Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9599-5_5
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