"Every blackning Church appalls"

This essay was attempted under timed conditions and received full marks!

“Every blackning Church appalls”

In the light of this view explore the presentation of religion.

                Both William Shakespeare, a late 18^th century Romantic poet from industrialising London, and John Ford, the 17^th century post-Reformation Caroline era dramatist, lived in a society dominated by religion, and when tensions arose from its prominence. Blake, in his Song of Experience “London”, writes “How the Chimney-sweepers cry/Every blackning Church appalls”, one of his many blunt condemnations of contemporary religious institutions for condoning the social injustices he witnessed every day on the streets of London. However, in the case of Ford and his Revenge Tragedy “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore”, it remains ambiguous as to whether Ford intends to condemn the Catholicism that had been disgraced by Protestant England for its corrupt decadence, or, like contemporary religious institutions, uphold the divine interdictions against incest and adultery that are broken by his characters.

                Blake’s aforementioned poem “London” takes the form of a slight variation of the ballad, making his intention of spreading an outcry against social injustices explicitly clear. One of the institutions that Blake condemns for condoning such injustices is the “blackning Church” described, whose walls are “appalled” and stained as intangible woes like the sweep’s cries of soldier’s “hapless sigh” are transformed into tangible imprints on society. The drum-like beat of the iambic tetrameter reflects the indoctrination of the Church, in that it is able to oppress a population despite its woe, with the promise of a heaven if they conform to their reality. This theme reaches its climax through the metaphor of the “mind-forg’d manacles”, the accumulation of stresses used to emphasise this point. The “manacles” are shackles, a means of oppression and because they are “mind-forg’d” they act as a restriction of false consciousness that allow forces like the Church to imprison them in disadvantaged circumstances. This metaphor has caught the attention of many Marxist critics, including Althusser who notes “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence,” meaning that so long as religious ideology teaches people to acquiesce to the harsh conditions of their “existence”, that will be accepted by the indoctrinated as a “real existence”. Blake hoped that one day, people would be able to break through indoctrinated religion and seek their own emancipation from the exploitative society of the Industrial Revolution. As he wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” But so long as the “blackning Church” maintained its place in the societal structure of industrial England, oppression of the working-class would continue, much to Blake’s frustration.

                These “mind-forg’d manacles” are also presented in ‘Tis Pity as the result of religious oppression by Giovanni, who has been compared to Marlowe’s Faust by critic Cyrus Hoy, who describes Giovanni as “dabbling in forbidden love” like Faust dabbled in “forbidden knowledge”. In Ford’s contemporary society, sexuality was heavily regulated by the Church as marriage replaced celibacy as “the ethical norm for the virtuous Christian” and making sex outside of marriage illegitimate and sinful. In the opening scene of the play, Giovanni attempts to justify his desire to consecrate his love for Annabella through the language of debate, postulating:

                “Are we therefore not each to other bound

                So much the more by nature; by the links

                Of blood, of reason.”

Through the stresses of blank verse, the words “nature”, “blood” and “reason” are all emphasised, and thereby linked together to demonstrate that incest is rational and was nature’s intention, a point Giovanni reiterates to Annabella as he claims “Wise Nature” intended “to make you mine”. The noun “blood” becomes a structural component of the play because of its repetition and double meaning; the “blood” that is shed typically in a revenge tragedy, and the “blood” that serves as the familial ties of Annabella and Giovanni, the love that derives from this leading to their blood being shed in the physical sense of the word. In the light of the view expressed by Hartley Coleridge, that Ford “delighted in the sensation of intellectual power”, Ford may have been trying to justify incest in the language of rationality by Giovanni, which was only declared sinful by religion because it took place outside of marriage. Therefore Ford, in his “sympathetic attitude” towards the lovers, as Neilson notes, is critical of the divine interdiction against sexual transgression, and therefore critical of contemporary religious doctrine.

                This is only further extended through Ford’s presentation of religious figures of authority, namely The Cardinal, who critic Champion describes as a “morally compromised man” in his sheer and self-serving corrupt nature. Following Bergetto’s death, who was arguably the only innocent character of the play, the Cardinal refuses to give Donado his justice, by punishing Grimaldi for the reason that:

                “He is no common man, but nobly born”

The adjectives “common” and “nobly” are juxtaposed together to highlight the disparities between the two classes, as aristocracy and feudalism were heralded in Renaissance England. Grimaldi is thus placed under “God’s protection” and escapes justice, leaving an exasperated Donado to say:

                “Is this a Churchman’s voice? Dwells Justice here?”

“Justice” being personified in this instance to demonstrate its fleeting existence in the “Churchman’s” presence. However, this is only a taste of the Cardinal’s corruption; the Church blackens further in the final sense after Death has visited the banquet, and the Cardinal seeks to collect the leftover gold and jewels for “the Canons of the Church”. The Cardinal, like contemporary Catholic priests, is presented as ostentatious, alike with Charles I who promoted a decadent form of worship. Donado and Florio’s own suspicions of the Cardinal reflect societal, particularly Protestant suspicions of Catholicism, which despite having been weakened after the Reformation, remained a threat for many. However, because the Cardinal remains a symbol of the “blackning Church” until the end, the audience is left to question his closing couplet:

                “Of one so young, so rich in Nature’s store

                Who could not say, ‘Tis pity she’s a whore?”

Despite “whore” being stressed through the iambic pentameter of the heroic couplet, and being the final word heard in the play, although it is directed at Annabella, because the Cardinal is presented as “a morally compromised man”, the audience is led to emphasise with the abstract noun “pity” and sympathise with Annabella, who becomes a victim of patriarchal and religious restriction. Her victimisation has drawn the attention of feminist critics, including Jankowski who argues “their feminine condition marked them, paradoxically, as “deviant” as well.” Therefore, even if Annabella had pursued the chastity preached by the likes of the Cardinal and the Friar, Annabella could have still been branded a “deviant” by subverting the male-constructed social order. Therefore the ostentatious and misogynistic presentation of the Cardinal is as much a damnation of religion as a “blackning Church” as it is condemning patriarchally-determined roles imposed on women.

                While Blake also condemns the religious restrictions placed on female sexuality in poems like “The Sick Rose”, in which the oxymoronic metaphor of “crimson joy” explicitly links shame and sexuality together, the essence of religion being a corrupted “blackning Church” is exuded in his antitypes “The Chimney Sweeper” of both Innocence and Experience. The Innocence poem takes the contrary form of a monologue to fully encapsulate the naïve perspective of Tom Dacre, a young sweep who maintains relentless positivity despite his cruel circumstances. In Blake’s day, children as young as four were bartered and sold into the slavery of the climbing trade, grow into wizened old men with cancers and diseases, before dying a painful death. Blake did not live to see this injustice be abolished, and so calls on his reader to also condemn the trade. Tom dreams of metaphoric “coffins of black”, which could represent the living-death the sweeps had to endure that was the awful living conditions of the trade, or these coffins have been noted by critic Southey as “an emblem of the body itself, the coffin carried with us everywhere.” Southey explains that in Blake’s visionary imagination, the plight of the sweep becomes the plight of all humankind, trapped and longing to be free. This related back to the “mind-forg’d manacles” imposed by religion, and in breaking these “mind-forg’d manacles” that lead Tom to conclude “If all do their duty, they need not fear harm”, both the sweeps and others can emancipate themselves from the “blackning Church’s” control. The same conclusion is reached in the Experience antitype, only more bluntly as the naivety is lost when the sweep states “God and his Priest and his King/Who make up a heaven of our misery.”

                Another set of antitypes that condemn the Church for its self-serving exploitation of disadvantaged groups is the “Holy Thursday” pairing, in which the celebration of Ascension Day takes place, where thousands of almshouse children gathered in St Paul’s cathedral to demonstrate their piety. The concluding line of the Innocence poem, like in ‘Tis Pity, brings in “pity”:

                “Then cherish pity; lest you drive an angel from your door”

Encompassing the tone of Church preaching, once again asking the exploited to acquiesce in accepting a charity and self-serving “pity” that only exists because the Church condoned unjust practices against them in the first place. Once again the Church becomes what critic Freedman calls part of “a social and unjust system that upheld institutions teaching the fallacy of received wisdom”, and this “received wisdom” is exactly what this final line represents.

I understand that’s a lot to write in the space of an hour but just be sure you pack in enough language, form, structure, critical interpretation and context, you should be fine!