we have a problem with guilt. mostly it's my problem; I'm the one who converted to Catholicism, voluntarily, in adulthood, partly because by that time I already fully believed in "Catholic guilt".
before I started learning about guilt from Christian sources, however, there was Shakespeare, whose "Macbeth" might well be one of the most memorable depictions of how guilt can eat away at a human soul. I was late in arriving at a liking for Shakespeare, though—I think it's possible to say that a sense of guilt drove me, in our early 20s, to revisit Shakespearean tragedy after bouncing off his plays when they were presented to us in grade school. that was one of the effects that failing out of Caltech had on me: I belatedly realized that I'd missed out on a lot of human culture and learning in my earlier years when I'd focused so narrowly on being a STEM nerd. and to this day, we do new things primarily because we feel bad. the gaps and thin spots in our collective education and experience feel like evidence of personal failure and spiritual corruption—I wish I could say I was joking about that.
but what turned us around on Shakespeare? a grinding sense of guilt and failure about missing out on Shakespeare in grade school is one thing, but (as "Macbeth" arguably demonstrates) merely feeling guilty isn't much motivation to do better. we'd come to associate Shakespeare with painful high school literature classes, so what ever got us to thinking that Shakespeare could simply be enjoyed? I'm a little ashamed to say that it was Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. it's a bombastic and action-heavy interpretation of one of Shakespeare's weaker plays, but I didn't think about that when I was eighteen years old and watching this movie in a Caltech entertainment room. at the time, I was wowed by the music of the dialogue (and Patrick Doyle's unsubtle score), and all the Very Serious Acting from people I've come to admire in other material (Brian Blessed! Derek Jacobi! Ian Holm! Judi Dench!) and I was many decades away from fully grasping that I was watching a play about a historical crime. the play hints at it, at least: the Hundred Years' War between England and France had been in a lull, but Henry V thought he could take advantage of France's weaknesses and he invaded in C.E. 1415, and that's what Shakespeare's play and Branagh's movie is all about: this opportunistic invasion of France culminating in the Treaty of Troyes and Henry V forcing his own heirs to be acclaimed as the true successors to the French throne.
the tides of history had an answer for Henry V, a scintillating smackdown: Jeanne d'Arc effectively cancelled out "Henry V", all by herself. England took what revenge they could on her but the answer of history was decisive: England had no business trying to rule France.
which brings me to a line from "Henry V" that haunted me for a long time. it's a simple line...it's a pun in fact. early in the play we're informed that France tried to blunt England's ambitions in France with "pale policy", including the funding of a traitorous conspiracy against Henry V, the "Southampton Plot" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_Plot). the unmasking of this conspiracy is a dramatic scene indeed in Branagh's "Henry V", though it hits some weird notes (q.v. https://youtu.be/vIwfwyjbP4g) and the accusation of French subsidy may have been Shakespeare's invention. but Derek Jacobi, as the Chorus for the play, puts a lot of juice into his narration of the plot:
And three corrupted men—
one, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second,
Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,
Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland,
Have, for the gilt of France—O guilt indeed!—
Confirm'd conspiracy with fearful France;
And by their hands this grace of kings must die...
Ere he take ship for France.
it's such a simple pun, isn't it? gilt = guilt. accepting gold is spiritual crime. simple enough, right?
it is. it's too simple.
I do not think it was good that guilt got so firmly embedded in our mind, and hopelessly entangled with money. because now we can't seem to deal reasonably either with guilt or gilt.
~Chara of Pnictogen
