Letter of the Week
A saint's plea to a young Shakespeare
SIR – Joseph Pearce (Arts, May 10) writes of the Jesuit martyr St Robert Southwell as “serving as Shakespeare’s Muse”. That needs qualification. We find Southwell expressing a discreet dismay at the two elaborately sensuous narrative poems (Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece) that early made Shakespeare’s name, and remonstrating with the author to use his gifts to more sober (and more Catholic) advantage. And it seems that Shakespeare, while unwilling to risk his neck, did incorporate hints and suggestive features into his plays, and (riddlingly) into his allegorical threnody, The Phoenix and the Turtle (convincingly interpreted by John Finnis and others to treat of the martyr Anne Line and her husband Roger Line).
