"Up and down, up and down:
"I will lead them up and down:
"I am fear'd in field and town;
"Goblin, lead them up and down." (Act III, Scene II, lines 418-421)
Poul Anderson must have expected readers familiar with the play to hear an echo of Puck when he wrote of Prince Rupert in A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975):
"His fist beat the cannon beside which he stood, up and down, up and down." (p. 145)
In this alternative history, Rupert was not only defeated but also captured by Roundheads at Marston Moor. He escapes with help from Oberon, Titania and a Puritan's ward, Jennifer. The Puritans interrogate Jennifer by sleep deprivation but she later wins one of them over. Again, some prose can be rendered as verse:
" 'And here at last a chance has come for thee.'
" 'To do what thing, my lady?' 'Set me free.' " (p. 154)
Later, she reflects:
" 'Oh, hard it is to use him heartlessly,
" 'And from its grave call forth knight-errantry.' " (p. 156)
With some humour but also with harrowing scenes of Jennifer pinched awake, Anderson vividly displays dreadful Puritan intolerance. When reminded that Protestants are tolerated in a Catholic country, one of Jennifer's captors complains that Catholics are tolerated there as well!
Anderson does not mention this here but John Milton in Paradise Lost describes Catholic monks entering the hereafter and ascending as they believe towards Paradise only to be blown around, and their religious symbols scattered, by whirlwinds in the Paradise of Fools. How can anyone be so certain, first, that there is a hereafter and, secondly, that he and his co-religionists will be well received and their opponents confounded on arrival there? Such unwarranted certainty, serving only to make its believers feel better about themselves, is with us still.
It would be an instructive exercise to design a hereafter where everyone (everyone) learned more than they had on Earth. Milton might receive a short taste of the Paradise of Fools, then be shown that there is more to life, and death, than intolerance and complacency.
St Paul preached a new message of universal salvation that made sense at the time to some Jews and many Gentiles, both master and slave. Hence, its success. "Blood sacrifice" resonated then if not with most of us now. Christianity, ie, Gentile Messianism, provided ruling ideas for three stages of social development: slave-owning, feudal and capitalist. It was endlessly adaptable. Pagan elements absorbed earlier could be jettisoned when appropriate at the Reformation although the ideas remained distinctively Christian. Hence, the intolerance of the Puritans who attributed their business success or failure not to aristocratic privilege but to inscrutable Predestination. If only England 1649-1660 had been a genuinely inclusive and tolerant Republic...
4 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Actually, the message preached by St. Paul was not his, but Christ's. And he was careful to insist that was the case, he checked with Peter and the other apostles to be certified as doing so.
Needless to say, I disagree that what I sometimes call the "Deformation" was in any sense a reform of Christianity. I would like to bring to your attention Eamon Duffy's THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS as a good study of the religious life of Catholic England before the "Reformation," warts and all.
The irony of a Protestant complaining about Catholics being tolerated in a Catholic nation did flit across my mind when I read that part of TEMPEST. I have sometimes wondered if one "background" reason for the unfortunate and wrong headed revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the 1680s was anger and irritation by French Catholics watching the vicious persecution of their co religionists in the British Isles under the Penal Laws and outbursts like the "Popish Plot" mania of 1678-81.
If so, the French regained their honor on this matter when Louis XVI again restored toleration and civil rights to Protestants in, I think, 1788. It took Great Britain another 41 years and the threat of civil war within the UK before Parliament would grudgingly pass Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
Sean
I think Jesus preached that God's kingdom on Earth was about to begin. After his death, Peter proclaimed that Jesus was risen and Paul taught that Jesus' death had been sacrificial. Thus, I see these three men as saying different things.
Hi, Paul!
Apologies, I still disagree. First, Our Lord warned no man knew the hour of his return. And St. Paul still insisted he taught the same Gospel as that of Peter and the other apostles. And was careful to be certified by them as doing so. Which means means the atoning and redeeming sacrifice and resurrection of Christ was proclaimed by all the apostles.
Sean
P and P had to work out a common position, one difficulty being whether to maintain the Jewish dietary laws. But was Paul's message the same as Jesus'? Paul definitely states that all that matters about Christ is his death and resurrection, not his life or teaching. A Pauline Christianity contains no reference to place of birth, parables or miracles, except the Resurrection.
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