Spring Semester (2024-2025)

The Sea-Walled Garden of the Soul

As Peter Leithart notes in his Omnibus introduction, “For many in an older generation, The Bible and The Collected Works of Shakespeare were the two indispensable books, and thus their sense of life and history was shaped by the best and best-told stories.” This semester we read, discussed, and watched full performances of three of Shakespeare’s greatest works: Macbeth, Henry V, and Richard III.  My prayer is that the students discovered not only the greatness of Shakespeare but the goodness, truth, and beauty of Shakespeare’s theocentric vision of reality. Shakespeare believed that God is at the center of everything and that he has established an indelible order to the universe that cannot and will not be broken or taken away. When we live in accord with this good created order there is harmony, and when we reject it or fight against it, there is discord, in our souls and in our lives and in the lives of those around us. For at the heart of Shakespeare’s theocentric vision of reality and acknowledged created order is the clear teaching from God’s Word, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that will he also reap” (Gal. 6:7).

As we have also seen in Shakespeare, and as we know to be true from the Book of Job and Ecclesiastes, the faithful sower will  often find himself wading through scene after scene and act after act of chaos, disorder, and great suffering, when everything seems “out of joint” and his “pulse seems to step out of time.” But above it all, and in it all, and through it all, the King of Kings is seated on his unshakeable throne, with his scepter in his hand. He is in control, and he is a good king who loves his people. So in the end, as Julian of Norwich states, for the faithful sower, “all will be well and all manner of things will be well.” Knowing this to be true, and as one of his beloved subjects, “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9).

This school year we read about the successes and failures of Henry V, the king with the questionable anointing who sought, in his own way at times, to live in harmony with God’s created order. And we read about Richard III’s tragic struggle against God and his established order, a rebellion which ended with his mother’s prophecy coming true, “bloody thou art, bloody will be thou end” (IV.4.195). But we didn’t read about Richard II, the rightfully appointed King who looses his crown to Henry Bolingbrook.

Why? Why does the rightfully appointed Richard II fall from glory and lose his crown? We know, on the temporal earthly plain, that the throne was usurped by Henry Bolingbrook, but in Shakespeare’s theocentric universe, a divine hand lies behind it all. So we would do well to ask, “In what way did Richard II go against God and his established and unchanging created order?” It wasn’t because he was a usurper like  the father of Henry V. It wasn’t because he was a bloody tyrant like Richard III. Richard II lost his crown because… he was a negligent and inattentive gardener. As ruler of the sea-walled garden of England, he failed to sow good seed, and he failed to “root away the noisome weeds which without profit suck the soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers” (III.4.38-39).

In Act 3, of Shakespeare’s Richard II, Richard is under threat but still on the throne. As scene 4 opens, the audience observes the Queen walking with two of her attendants in the Duke of York’s garden, and we overhear one gardener saying to another:

Go bind thou up young dangling apricots, which, like unruly children, make their sire stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight. Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou and, like an executioner, cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays that look too lofty in our commonwealth. All must be even (or in order) in our government (or managing of affairs). You thus employed, I will go root away the noisome weeds which without profit suck the soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers (III.4.29–39).

As Peter Leithart notes, “A wise king cares for his realm like a gardener for his garden, cutting the ambitious down to size, rooting out parasites, supporting the stooping branches that bear the land’s fruits” (Leithart, Loc. 134). Richard II, however, is a negligent and inattentive gardener, and both he and England  are eventually overrun with weeds and wild beasts. The inattentive gardener of the see-walled garden of England is “deposed” (III.4.68).

So as we close out another school year and begin our halcyon summer days, let us learn from Richard II’s failures. May we be attentive gardeners of the sea-walled garden of our souls, sowing good seed and “rooting away the noisome weeds which without profit suck the soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers” (III.4.38-39). Let us commit ourself to diligently and faithfully sow to the Spirit and not to our own flesh.

For as the Apostle Paul says to the church in Galatia:

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will  from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up (Gal. 6:7-9).

Knowledge and Wisdom in Submission to God,

Chris M. Blackwell

• Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love. Oxford Classics

• Leithart, Peter. Greatest Stage of Fools. Cascade Books

• Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Richard the Second. Pelican Shakespeare

• Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Richard the Third. Pelican Shakespeare