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Soliloquy
Explanation and Analysis—God's Lament:
In the soliloquy that opens the play, God reflects unhappily upon his creation of humanity, chastising humans for the spiritually impoverished attitudes and conduct that he has observed on Earth:
How that all creatures be to me unkind,
Living without dread in worldly prosperity:
Of ghostly sight the people be so blind,
Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God;
In worldly riches is all their mind,
They fear not my rightwiseness, the sharp rod;
My law that I shewed, when I for them died,
They forget clean, and shedding of my blood red;
I hanged between two, it cannot be denied;
To get them life I suffered to be dead;
I healed their feet, with thorns hurt was my head.
God argues that humans are “unkind” to him, having lost their fear of eternal damnation and therefore failing to uphold his commandments. Because they are distracted by riches, or “worldly prosperity,” they have become “blind” to God and no longer worship him, nor do they even recognize him as their creator. In keeping with the Christian notion of the Trinity (made up of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), God notes that he and Jesus Christ are one in the same, reflecting upon the execution and resurrection of Christ as described in the Bible. “To get them life,” God states, “I suffered to be dead.” In this soliloquy, then, God argues that the painful crucifixion of Christ was a self-sacrifice for humanity that has been forgotten about by those currently living.
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