Shakespearean Personalism (Karol Wojtyla‪)‬

Literature was such a love of the young Karol Wojtyka that it nearly kept him from the priesthood. Describing the period of his life before his vocation matured, Wojtyla writes that it was not the desire for marriage that kept him from the seminary, but a different passion: "Certainly, I knew many girls from school and, involved as I was in the school drama club, I had many opportunities to get together with other young people. But this was not the issue. At that time I was completely absorbed by a passion for literature, especially dramatic literature, and the theater." (1) That passion for dramatic literature led to an interest in Shakespeare. Years after becoming a priest, as auxiliary bishop of Krakow, Wojtyla delivered a meditation to university students on the theme of conscience and conversion--one that included a brief, though telling, assessment of Shakespeare. In that meditation the future pontiff observed, "We know that most of the major works of world literature center around the question of the conscience.... Shakespeare's plays are all concerned with the conscience, because this force of nature is such a characteristic human feature." (2) After these comments, Wojtyla attempts to explain conscience and its significance in light of his unique understanding of the human person, but tantalizingly, the relationship between conscience, personhood, and Shakespearean drama is not developed, provoking the question of how his ideas of conscience may relate to Shakespeare's plays. Drawing upon the same retreat meditations, this article will attempt to describe how Wojtyla's notions of conscience might bear upon an understanding of drama and in particular Shakespeare's plays. By revisiting Wojtyla's definition of conscience, I believe one may reconstruct a plausible way of reading Shakespeare in light of Wojtyka's personalism. After explaining Wojtyla's conception of conscience, I will show how Wojtyla's personalism represents a unique literary hermeneutic, even if it emphasizes moral teachings that are similar to those found in older Shakespearean criticism and often ignored in more recent examinations of the plays. In hopes of showing how Wojtyla's personalism might advance our understanding of Shakespeare, I will conclude by examining Edmund from King Lear, paying particular attention to this character's striking reversal on the basis of conscience. I. Conscience and Personhood