mankind” and adversities to which Protestants were also continuously subject. While God was ultimately responsible for the disaster, Floyd said the Calvinists were mistaken for being “jolly and jocund, so puffed up with pride at the fall of a rotten chamber,” as the incident was a part of God’s plan to test the righteous through tribulation (boldface type added). The exact diction used by Floyd and Shakespeare, sometimes indicating similar thought, is palpable. Floyd’s exact choice of wording—“jocund”—can be found in a passage in Hamlet that also involves a “test.” Claudius “tests” Hamlet’s love in asking him to stay in Denmark. When Hamlet apparently passes the test, the evil and prideful Claudius expresses his content: “This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet/Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof/No jocund health that Denmark drinks today” (1.2.123-125). Claudius “plays God” so to speak, testing Hamlet’s love. The passage points to the dramatist’s belief in the monarchy as a usurper of Christ and ultimately God in eradicating the “true” Church.
Floyd noted that to equate suffering with sin or to interpret the “dark mists” (cf. “dim mists,” Rape of Lucrece, 547, 643) of God’s mysteries by seeing misfortune as a sign of “falsehood” is “to set Religion on the dice.” Similarly, Hamlet says that, as a result of his mother’s adulterous marriage to his uncle, her vows to Hamlet’s father have become nothing more than a gamble: “Such an act/That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,/Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose/From the fair forehead of an innocent love,/And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows/As false dicer’s oaths.” In The Triumphs Over Death, Robert Southwell says, “Let not her losses move you, who are acquainted with greater of your own, and are taught by experience to know how uncertain their change is, for whom inconstant Fortune throweth the dice.”
In these textual examples, we may see that Floyd’s language and thought are slightly closer to that of Shakespeare than to Southwell.
Below, diction common to both Floyd and Shakespeare often reveals similarity of thought.
Accident
The notion of accident figures prominently in both authors. Floyd writes, “Let the duty of weeping for the Dead, in this late dismall Accident, so rufull to flesh and blood, which from our hartes both common Humanity and private Friendship enforce; give place unto the duty of writing in the behalf of the living, which at our handes both Christian Charity, and Priestly obligation exact (To the Reader). He adds that, in the realization of God’s purpose in the “permission of this Accident,” Catholics “may make our Profit.” (Compare Shakespeare’s “Sweet are the uses of adversity in As You Like It, 2.1.12.) Further, Floyd writes, “Unto these Humanists, I say, this accident is worse, and causeth greater mischief then unto you.” Similarly, the adulterous Gertrude in Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been summoned to spy on Hamlet, “As to expend your time with us awhile for the supply and profit of our hope” (2.2.23-24). Importantly, what is being dramatized in Shakespeare is a lack of trust in God by the King and Queen, who represent the Elizabethan monarchy.
In Act 3, Scene 2, the Player King reflects on the weakening of our strongest intentions; while joy or grief often motivates one to take action, joy turns to grief and grief turns to joy upon the occurrence of even insignificant casualty. Love changes with the good or ill that befalls us, he says, in words that could easily be applied to Catholics-turned-apostate upon the witness of an execution, or conversely the attainment of worldly comfort (i.e., Claudius in prayer asks disingenuously if he may receive pardon for the sin of killing his brother but keep the spoils—his kingdom and his new wife.). “The violence of either grief or joy/Their own enactures [acts] with themselves destroy:/Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;/Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident./This world is not for aye/nor t’is not strange/That even our loves should with our fortunes change” (3.2.202-207). There will be no “profit” for those who attempt to control life and fail to trust in divine providence, the play says, paralleling the words of Floyd.
At the beginning of Act 4, Scene 7, Claudius urges Laertes to acknowledge the King’s innocence and consider him a friend on the grounds that the man who killed Laertes’ father, Hamlet, was now trying to kill Laertes. Claudius devises yet another secret plan, with this one aiming to result in Hamlet’s death. “And call it accident” (4.7.68), Claudius says, assuring that no one will be blamed. Later in the same scene, Claudius revisits the theme of weakened intentions and love that grows weak. He asks Laertes if he loved his father, suspecting that Laertes did not in recognition that with the passage of time, the flame of love dies. Claudius says we should follow through with our intentions, given that they are subject to as many weakening influences as there are accidents in life. “And hath abatements and delays as many/As there are tongues, are hands, are accident,/And this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh,/That hurts by easing” (4.7.120-123). For the lay Catholic, the passage of time may diminish even the love one may have felt for an executed priest or family member, the lines seem to suggest, causing one to lose interest in the Catholic cause.
In the final words of the play, Horatio attributes the carnage to violent and unnatural accident, carried out either by chance or intention that goes awry. In an odd foreshadowing of the Blackfriars debacle with its bodies piled not above but at the bottom of the building, Horatio calls for the slain bodies to be displayed on a high platform so that he may tell the world of how the events transpired. “So shall you hear/Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,/Of accidental judgments, casual [chance] slaughters,/Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,/And, in this upshot, purposes mistook/Fall’n on th’inventors’ heads” (5.2.381-386). Importantly, Horatio says he should quickly explain things, and he recommends proceeding with the funeral of Hamlet so that “more mischance” does not occur, as all are in a state of grief, lest any further “plots and mishaps” occur. This perfectly reflects Floyd’s message that excessive mourning will lead to further calamity.
Weakness
Floyd writes:“Let (I say) this weake inclination of Nature [excessive tears] yeeld unto Gods holy will, and unto the motion of heavenly Grace concurring with Obedience, to preferred before private sorrow for friendes, the publicke defence of our Catholike Cause, seeing ignorant zeale is ready upon any the least occasion to disgrace it” (To the Reader).
Polonius, speaking of his advice to Ophelia to “test” the love of the “mad” Hamlet, says the young prince “fell into a sadness, then into a fast,/Thence to a watch [wakefulness], thence into a weakness” (2.2.147-148), allowing his enemy Claudius to take advantage of him.
In a passage in which Claudius likens his sin of killing his brother to that of Cain, he says that, despite his egregious sin, and his inclination toward prayer and recognition of the need to repent, he is unable to truly repent: “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;/It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,/A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,/Though my inclination be as sharp as will” (3.3.36-39). Claudius’ weakness and sinful nature have overwhelmed his inclination toward piety and true repentance, dramatizing Floyd’s description of the weak inclination of human nature as separated from grace.
In a strong reflection of Floyd’s message, the evil Claudius speaks of the appropriate length of mourning for his dead brother, adding that it is now time to move forward. But Claudius’ words are spoken in a
