‘But floods of tears will drown my oratory’: Shakespeare, the Jesuits, and the Power of Rhetoric

What is it about?

Sonnet 94 issues a stern warning in a moralizing voice: those graced with excellence—beauty, the power to persuade, discretion in the use of power, self-restraint, prudence, indifference, and self-knowledge—are expected to act virtuously; those who do not, and through their actions commit sin, are outranked by individuals in the same group whose status is considered lower. Both Shakespeare and the Jesuit missionary John Floyd, who issues a stern, moralizing warning in a 1617 treatise to Jesuits who apostatize, speak of a situation in which an excellent individual commits sin, plummets in status, and thereby ranks on a level equal to or below someone less worthy. Floyd’s treatise includes diction, syntax, writing style, and thought so similar to Sonnet 94 that it suggests the conclusion to the poem’s line one—“They that have pow’r to hurt, and will do none”—is in fact referring to Jesuits who do not apostatize and do not use their learning to write against the Jesuit order or the Catholic Church. Through the words “flower,” “sweet,” “infection” meaning sin, “deeds,” and “lilies,” Sonnet 94 speaks in the language of the Jesuits. Both Floyd and Shakespeare liberally employ the literary device of antithesis throughout their writings.

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Why is it important?

It shows how closely Jesuit writing is to the canon of Shakespeare.

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