Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural into some of his tragedies; he introduces ghosts, and witches who have supernatural knowledge.
Most people, even among those who know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, are inclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact.
So much of our fictional medievalism is distorted through a lens of Protestantism and the Reformation, slanted even further through Victorian anti-Catholicism. The depiction of actual medieval attitudes toward the Church is remarkably rare.
I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.
It doesn't seem Shakespeare works if you turn him into a religion.
There was a time when people liked to take Shakespeare and twist him around to make whatever social or political statement they wanted to make.
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Catholic fiction of the type we're publishing is stories that we know faithful Catholics will enjoy - stories they can escape with, laugh at, cry with; stories that will enrich their lives.
Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.
While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer - one haunted by Catholicism.