I've long wondered why I love Shakespeare's works so thoroughly. I tried to encapsulate that in some of the essays I've written, looking at some of his works as a study in what a writer can convey. For the last couple of weeks, I've been studying King Lear (again) and thinking about what it's trying to say…and that led me to conclude that part of what Shakespeare does so well is he seems keenly and intimately acquainted with being human.
I can't say that my thought is really too profound. After all, Harold Bloom wrote an entire book called Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. While his work is easy to mischaracterize--particularly since it's a tricky concept that Bloom is working with--there's a lot of worth to the way that Bloom considers a text. And for him, Shakespeare encapsulates in his writing (which, for Bloom, is crucial, since he's a Bardolator of the page more than the stage) the pieces of humanity that are most core and comprehensive. But this universality of the Bard isn't even what Lear was showing me this time around: The events of the play are quite specific and beyond easy identification--few people have had a kingdom, and fewer still have bequeathed it on younger strengths whilst they "crawl[ed] toward death", only to have the ingratitude and selfishness of their children turn around and spurn them into madness. In other words, it isn't what happens in the plays that matter, it's what matters in the plays that happens to us. This comes from the fact that Shakespeare's "point" isn't ever really there. Laurie Maguire's book Where There's A Will There's A Way does this. And though it's not necessarily a bad reading--Shakespeare's flexibility makes him endlessly rereadable--I get a touch antsy when she says things like "Shakespeare's advice? Do X, Y, and Z." It's not that clear cut, not that delineated. Within the shadows of the words we intuit more than we see, and Shakespeare's power is that the shadows can be teased out and solidified. Nevertheless, we run a risk of pursuing a point in the text when, in reality, the point is what we bring to the text. The fact that this happens with all great literature--maybe the way to define what great literature is, in part, is to rely on it not making a point but allowing a point to be seen--is also important to note; Shakespeare isn't the only game in town. But I keep returning to the Sweet Swan of Avon in large part because he always has something to say and will never need to step out and say it. He's never pedantic, because the points that he's making grown organically out of the way his characters perceive the world. His writing isn't utterly flawless--there are digressions and jokes that no longer hold up, inside jokes about sixteenth-century theater that only dramaturgs and English professors understand (or care to understand)--but he's always helping us (me?) to "see better", as Maguire points out in her introduction. When it comes to my own writing, I think about the way that I force my characters to behave a certain way, to go with the plot. Shakespeare has this issue, too--why else would storm-separated twins manage to find their way to the same town so often? But once the plot is moving forward, the characters have a chance to grow and flow and change and make observations of the world that are endlessly fulfilling. There's a Shakespearean difference to what he writes, something so intimately human, adorned and enhanced by the heightened language, that I can't help but relish returning to his words again and again. Sorry--I got distracted. I meant to put this idea onto my own writings, and I wonder if the reason that I don't feel that my books and characters matter as much in the fantasy/sci-fi stories I write is because I don't let them be fully human. I get so caught up in the fantastical world and the exciting adventure that I don't let them be (or not to be). I don't know how to fix this feeling (regardless of if it's a real malady of my stories or not). The genre demands a greater pacing--more action, more adventure, more danger--and using more words, while it would help approach a solution to this problem, leads into issues with too many words. In fact, I kind of tried doing that with my book Writ in Blood, and its pacing was laborious and too prone to lengthy introspections. It wasn't a particularly exciting book, I would argue. So what do I do with this? I'm not really sure, at this juncture, what I ought to do. I have my "mainstream fiction" book that I'm always picking at. If I strip away the fantasy and science fiction elements to my stories, will I have a stronger emotional core? Will my characters feel more vibrant and realistic? Will there be a point to their existence on the page? And would I want to write that story? I'm still such a kid in my interests that I am almost angry with myself that I haven't managed to write a book about dinosaurs yet. Can I be happy writing a story with smaller stakes, smaller implications, smaller roles? Shakespeare often focused on large movers-and-shakers: Julius Caesar and Brutus; Richards II (the usurped) and III (the usurper); lords and ladies of courts and kingdoms; and gentlemen and -women who had the options of being leisurely rich and interested in how to appropriately marry. The concerns were large, yes, but Shakespeare managed to make their goals large and compelling enough. Can I do the same? I suppose measuring myself against the greatest writer of history may not be a fair metric. But if I'm not learning from Lear or any of the other creatures of his capacious mind, why should I read him at all? The debate over who's the "better" writer among the anchors of the Western canon tend to devolve into arbitrary designations: Homer was first, therefore...; or, Milton was so allusive, therefore...; or, Shakespeare gave us a plethora of new words, therefore.... All of these claims are fine, but they're like having an academic debate whilst in line at Cold Stone to determine which gourmet ice cream is actually superior.*
Regardless of who is the Best, Shakespeare is in the running. But as a writer, what does Shakespeare provide that fellow writers can learn from? I've been asking myself this question for a long time, and though I'm sure there are additional reasons, I've figured out at least three: language as a tool, interior depth, and variation in consistency. I'll approach the first here. Language as a Tool One of the many paradoxes about Shakespeare is that he's simultaneously adored and feared for his robust language. It's not just the supposed vastness of his vocabulary that intimidates and inspires, it's how he uses them. Shakespeare would "verb" nouns to powerful effect. Check out this brilliant bit from Coriolanus (5.1, emphasis mine): ...Go, you that banish'd him; A mile before his tent fall down, and knee The way into his mercy: or from Hamlet (4.3, emphasis mine): But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby. Shakespeare, of courser, was a poet, so he used countless poetic devices to add a vibrancy and passion to his plays. As a result, he would be considered "overwritten" by most of our publishers today. Modern-day writers, particularly disciples of minimalism (I think of Chuck Palahniuk), tend to want to cut down the writing, making it lean and sharp. I think that's wonderful, and there are some fantastic minimalist writers out there. But Shakespeare points to the beauty of the language that can only be seen when allowed to marinate, to germinate, to flower. Alan Moore's recent book Jerusalem is one that wallows in its largess, often to effective degree. Like Shakespeare, Moore is in no hurry to get "to the point" of his imagery. For the Bard, part of the purpose of his play is to play with what his words can purpose. This is a description of the time of day, from Julius Caesar (2.1): Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises, Which is a great way growing on the south, Weighing the youthful season of the year. Some two months hence up higher toward the north He first presents his fire; I'm not saying that all writers need to have as florid or empurpled (?) prose as Moore, nor do ought they to invest every description of dawn with a note that the sun will be in a different part of the sky when it's summer time. Instead, I feel that too often writers remain in comfortable territory, places where the words turn transparent to the story. Brandon Sanderson noted his tendency to avoid rendering things poetically. His point is that telling a good story ought to be the focus, and purple prose interferes with that. Shakespeare disagrees. Now, again, I'm not encouraging all writers to write as Shakespeare did. His ability to turn a phrase or express a thought is unparalleled, but that doesn't mean that writers couldn't stand to improve how they write. Language ought to be more consciously and conscientiously constructed on the page, where it can be revised and rewritten and calculated for maximum impact. In contrast to Sanderson's points in his essay, I would like to point out that the phenomenal storyteller Patrick Rothfuss' work is as smooth and polished and well-wordsmithed as you could want. Consider this line of prose, taken at random from Sanderson and Rothfuss. Sanderson first (Way of Kings 441): He began to whistle softly to himself, inspecting his tattoos and ignoring those observant enough to gawk. I remember writing something somewhere....he thought, looking over his wrist, then twisting his arm over and trying to see if there were any new tattoos on the back. Like all Aimians, he could change the color and markings of his skin at will. There's nothing wrong with this segment. It does its job well and moves on with the story. I'm not criticizing that, especially because this is what Sanderson has consciously chosen to do. By making the verbiage limpid, he focuses on the story that he wishes to tell. By comparison, here's Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, 442) We settled on a bench beneath a great spreading willow, then abandoned it and found more comfortable seats on the ground at the foot of the tree. The bread was thick and dark, and tearing chunks of it gave us distraction for our hands. The wine was sweet and light, and after Denna kissed the bottle it left her lips wet for an hour. In general, there are more interesting verbs in Rothfuss' writing (tearing, kissed) and the descriptions are more vivid (spreading, sweet and light). These are small samples, of course, and I'm sure I could find Sanderson waxing poetic every once in a while. But Rothfuss keeps this tone throughout his books, demonstrating that an eye toward wordcraft can enhance fantastic stories (which Rothfuss does). Even early on, Shakespeare's ease with words was noticed. In the Second Folio, the young John Milton wrote a dedicatory, laudatory poem called "On Shakespeare" that includes this idea: For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow... Having read a lot of both Milton and Shakespeare, I can attest to Milton's claim here: Shakespeare has an effortlessness to his writing that is enviable. The idea of "slow-endeavouring art", in this case, is the loaded, laborious writing of others (with Marlowe, perhaps, being an exception). Even Ben Jonson had a problem with overburdening his lines. Shakespeare, however, rarely made that mistake--and much of it was in his earlier work. He creates a smoothness in his writing that ought to be emulated more often, though perhaps it is simply the work of genius. Milton, no slouch on the intelligence department (more so, it could be said, than Shakespeare), nevertheless knew that others' writings lacked that Shakespearean difference. The point I'm driving at is that writers ought not to be afraid of the language they're tasked to master in order to tell their story. I respectfully disagree with Brandon Sanderson's** opinion that writing should eschew linguistic beauty in favor of the story. I also would argue that Moore is not where most writers ought to be in terms of their prose. Somewhere in between is a likely Goldilocks-zone. Nevertheless, the Bard teaches an aspiring writer that there is beauty in the language and that ought to be embraced, rather than avoided. ---- * For the record, the sweet cream-raspberry-brownie-caramel in a waffle cone is the most superiorest of iced creams. So say we all. ** I know that I, an unpublished, aspirational-only writer whose most widely-read work was an essay on why I didn't like Trump, am hardly speaking with popular authority. Sanderson's books sell--and sell very well. Patrick Rothfuss' works have done very well, too. Besides, commercial viability isn't a particularly good barometer of quality. I'm not dismissing Sanderson--I use a lot of his advice and I really enjoy his work. But I disagree that story is paramount to delivery, particularly in the genres that I love the most: Fantasy and science-fiction. ---- This post was originally published here. Before I begin to finish my exploration of Shakespeare as a writer, I wanted to add a reminder/clarification: Shakespeare is a good writer. But there's a peril when looking at the Bard as an exemplar. "Shakespeare did it, so I can do it, too," is probably the wrong way to approach it. I feel like it isn't that Shakespeare wrote a particular way, therefore it's good writing; rather, good writing works a particular way, so Shakespeare utilized those techniques; therefore he wrote well.
It's also important to realize that understanding how something is done is not the same as being able to do that thing. I understand how Shakespeare wrote--I understand blank verse, classical allusion, and the difference between "thou" and "you"--but that doesn't mean I could create the same way he did. I find it similar to the guitar: I can learn how to play "Enter Sandman" or some other excellent piece of rock music, but I couldn't write a song of the same power and appeal. What we're exploring here is what good writing looks like, using Shakespeare as a guide. No more ado... The final analysis of Shakespeare's trifecta of advice for modern writers (having already explored Shakespeare's language and his interiority), I'll make assay with the final, knotty, paradoxical concept of consistent variability. Confining ConsistentNot every character in Shakespeare is worth the same. The world would be impoverished without Iago, but losing Peter (the manservant of the Capulet family in Romeo and Juliet) would matter significantly less. And losing out on Two Gentlemen of Verona would be a lesser tragedy than losing out on Richard II. It's important to remember the same thing as a writer: Some characters don't need the interiority nor the variability of the leads. Nevertheless, of the over 1,200 characters in the entire body of Shakespeare, many of them--a huge portion of them--have something in them that points toward a humanity that is beyond the stage and infuses themselves as individuals. The primary idea here is in two parts: the consistency and the variability. Pairing the ideas together is a paradox, but that's part of the point. Still, consistency within the text--a character behaves in a way that is predictable once the basic philosophy of the character is revealed--is something Shakespeare does well. It isn't a consistency that the character is the same at the end of the play as at the beginning (though that can be the case for some of the more minor and clown characters, the ones who aren't the focus of the story); it's a consistency of their personality. Jaques (the primary one, not the randomly inserted one with the same name near the end) from As You Like It is defined by his melancholy. He pursues that perception throughout the play. The same can be said of the malevolence of Iago (Othello), the goodness of Regan (King Lear), the irreverence of Gratiano (Merchant of Venice), and more. These characters have consistent, clear characteristics that imbue them with a sense of reality. We all have friends who are inherent Slytherins (like Richard III) or charming Hufflepufs (like Nick Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream). They have certain behaviors and worldviews that are natural to them and, while instrumental to the plot, don't have the feeling of a plot device. That is, Dogberry would be his malapropism-hurling self regardless of the goings on in Messina. Yes, he works well as the bumbling guard of the prince's watch, but we get the sense that his purview doesn't necessarily end or begin within the confines of the story. As a writer, I try to think of what my characters were doing before the story starts. What are they in their core, the pieces of themselves that comprise their most essential parts? By exploring the untold backstory and revealing to myself (as author, not reader) what my characters think and feel, I can start approaching that consistency of a character that Shakespeare modeled. Vagaries of VarietyVariety in characters is crucial. Shakespeare is not a "diverse" writer in our modern sense; he has a handful of non-White European characters, who vary between diabolically perverse (Aaron; Titus Andronicus) to stereotypically malevolent (Shylock; The Merchant of Venice) to stereotypically stereotypical (Prince of Morocco; The Merchant of Venice) to desperately insecure (Othello; Othello). These characters are almost never rendered in a sympathetic light, and the only one who is a protagonist is Othello, whose play ends in tragedy. There is something to be said for him attempting to add some color to his plays, particularly in a society and situation that didn't necessary demand that nor really permitted a lot of humanization of minorities. And, particularly in the case of Shylock, he goes to great lengths to create an ambiguous character--one who falls into the expected mores of behavior that an Elizabethan audience would understand while at the same time subverting those expectations. There's also something to be said about the women in Shakespeare. His female characters are surprisingly robust and thoughtful, but there are too few of them, and they all--no matter their wit and vivacity--capitulate to the expectations of their society. It should be said, however, that it's remarkable how many he put in. We all know about how the Elizabethan/Jacobean stage disallowed women from enacting any part. Despite the fact that it would be easier to write male-only plays (like Julius Caesar), Shakespeare still chose to incorporate females into his work as frequently as possible. He also has women running all sorts of desires, from the Machiavellian Lady Macbeth (Macbeth) to the thoughtlessly sluttish Phoebe (As You Like It) to the thoughtfully beneficent Regan (King Lear), he has a variety of women that populate his world. This kind of diversity, though not as robust as a modern readership might appreciate, is an example of how to continue progress. Some people read Antonio as being a closeted gay man, pining for Bassanio throughout The Merchant of Venice. There are instances of cross-dressing (usually played for laughs, of course) between both genders. Drunkards rub elbows with royalty; those with sagacious, magical powers give them up before the power of forgiveness. There are manifold examples of characters from sundry walks of life, each playing their part, each enhancing the story told. A modern writer could do worse than learn that lesson. Consistently Eclectic Despite analyzing the two terms separately, the thesis of this piece is that his characters themselves are "consistently variable". This doesn't apply to all of his characters, and in some ways it's about having a strong character arc. There is a consistent characteristic that comes under pressure and the character has to change as a result. These are the massive consequences of the plots of the plays--the story tells us how and why, for example, Macbeth is one way at the beginning of the play, yet different at the end. In fact, Macbeth is a great example of what I'm talking about. Macbeth is consistent in many things--skill, ambition, and reflection. That consistency shifts, with the same amount of attention, as his tragedy unfolds. He uses his skill for good--until he uses it for ill. He exercises his ambition in favor of Duncan and the quashing of a rebellion--until he exercises it against the same. He seeks others' opinions and ideas, requesting Banquo and his wife to advise him--until he seeks only the demoniacal advice of the Weird Sisters and then, ultimately, his own understanding. Part of the power of Macbeth is that all of his characteristics remain, but they change him. Hamlet's vacillation, one of the most perplexing puzzles of the play, is actually part of his consistent character. Not surprisingly, Hamlet becomes the paradox in and of himself: He is consistently at odds with himself and the world, an ambiguity which fuels the play and adds depth and complexity. It should be noted that Hamlet's ambivalence is a difficult task to do. One of the reasons that there aren't additional Hamlets in the world is, in part, because of how hard it is to make a character be sympathetic and odious, rash and thoughtful, wholesome and vile. FinThere are more lessons that can be learned from Shakespeare, as much in life normally as in writing. His love of language, his ability to craft and express human feelings, and the way in which he had variation, consistency, and diversity throughout his works are all pillars of his writing style and ability. While there is more to say (there is always more to say about Shakespeare), I think I'll leave it here with a quote from the Bard himself: ...so, of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. I wrote about how Shakespeare can teach modern writers a thing or two, saying that, at the very least, we can learn three things from Shax: embracing the language, understanding the interior, and having a consistent variety. This essay is focusing on the second concept, the interior mind, conceits, and expressions of a human being. I'm calling this effect interiority.
"The Inward Man"The subtitle of this essay is a quote to Hamlet 2.2, in which the King says of Hamlet, "Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man/ Resembles that it was." It's that idea I wish to explore. While the editors at Arden make a compelling argument that Hamlet's soliloquies in particular weren't originally understood as explorations of an inner feeling (25-32), our modern readings of the play are rife with this concept. And, since this is supposed to be an essay in which a modern writer could learn from Shakespeare, it seems like this is the best angle of instruction. The interiority of Shakespearean characters is always vocally expressed--a natural concession of the form. Nevertheless, there are ways that we, as an audience, can understand the internal considerations of a character. As novelists, this is usually shown through italics, which indicate the internal monologue. Shakespeare presaged this, using asides to expose the genuine feelings of the speaker. A small example from The Merchant of Venice (4.1) has Shylock inwardly stewing about the betrayal of his daughter by eloping with a Christian. No one but Shylock (and the audience) knows his thoughts, however: [Aside] These be the Christian husbands. I have a daughter; Would any of the stock of Barrabas Had been her husband rather than a Christian!-- We trifle time: I pray thee, pursue sentence. At the dash is where Shylock's inward ruminations cut free and he speaks the last line to the other actors on the stage. We can see the reason for his impatience: The gathered Christians have done something to remind him of a painful wound, one so profound that he utters what to Christians would be a blasphemy. The interiority of Shylock is exposed and his actions gain clarity and motivation. This is the key advice and shows the power of interiority: Motivations can become clear, along with the choices that the character makes. I'm not likely to be one who wants to carve up a person's chest because I dislike him, so I don't resonate with Shylock on that level. But the idea of being reminded of an injury and being short and impatient with others because of it? That makes sense. The general behavior is clearer thanks to the asides. Sole SpeakerThe idea of a soliloquy is that one speaks whilst alone. Elizabethan and Jacobean drama rested on this ability, and Shakespeare manages to "unpack [one's] heart with words" (Hamlet 2.2) by utilizing the soliloquy. Modern day writers have other tools at their disposal: I already mentioned the italics as being one, but diaries, first-person narratives, and epistolary motifs all help to bridge that gap that Shakespeare crossed with monologues. It's important to remember that learning from Shakespeare doesn't mean writing like him. Aside from the fact that no one could, it isn't the iambic pentameter or blank verse that made Shakespeare so powerful. It's how he used his tools to best effect. One of the traps that novelists fall into is the soliloquy on the page, a malady called "navel-gazing", as it invokes the idea of the character contemplating deeply whatever it is that troubles her while doing nothing else. Some Romantic novels (like Les Miserables) will spend pages deep in the thoughts of the character, rolling the ideas around in their mental hands like well-worn stones. Depending on the skill of the writer, these can be tedious or intriguing, but they're always trying the same thing: To leaven the interior and get it to rise to the exterior. Shakespeare has some speeches in his oeuvre, to be sure. People will wander, verbally, for lines before getting to a point--and sometimes not even then. But the best monologues, the best interiority, is always helping us to understand the story better. Think of the fantastic ruminations of Richard II from his play. At the end (5.5), imprisoned and usurped, Richard considers which is better: to be a king, or a beggar. ...Sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing... These musings are necessary to understand how broken Richard has become, of showing the consequences of the actions of others throughout the play. Richard's speech--which goes on for a good while--furthers his character while remaining tightly connected to the play's primary plot. This is a crucial piece to making interiority work. It demonstrates the way the "inward man" is affected by what is happening throughout the story. Move Shakespeare often folded his stage directions into what characters said. These give the lines a sense of movement and reality, that the words are mirroring what the actor is doing and the two are together, rather than separate entities. Novelists can do a similar thing, particularly when it comes to plumbing the depths of interiority. Brandon Sanderson does this well in his massive tome, The Way of Kings. In one part, a primary character, Dalinar, needs to do some heavy thinking. Rather than having him simply stare and think, he gets to work carving out a latrine. The action of this royal man doing something so debased causes ripple effects throughout those who observed him, we as readers are given something to imagine aside from the man's thoughts, and his deeper self emerges. The idea of Hamlet's, that one ought to "suit the action to the word, the word to the action" (3.2), applies to writers, too. Characters need to move about on the page as much as they do on the stage. Gestures, nods, blinks, and tics all help make a character feel more alive and real--but there's always a caveat. As Hamlet also says, Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness...Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor... His advice is to a player, but I think to a writer. Not every gesture must be described, not every quote must be exclaimed upon. I think this also goes a long way to encouraging novelists to avoid said bookisms, as it acts like a reminder that describing how dialogue ought to be read ("whispered", "rejoined", "giggled", "groused') can become tedious and over-done. As Hamlet points out, "let your own discretion be your tutor". Much of our communication is through body language and vocal inflections, none of which happens on the page without direct explanations from the writer. Shakespeare could rely on his actors to give voice to his lines, to rest assured that they would communicate clearly the story they were telling. Writers have to rely on their audience's intelligence--and, fortunately, that's something that's easy to do. Readers don't have to have every little nuance spelled out for them, but they also can't be watching static images. Finding a middle ground helps pull the character off of the st/page and into the minds of the audience. This is where the character will "feel alive", with an internal world of recognizable, if not perfectly applicable, thoughts and feelings. It's what makes the inward man visible. ---- This post was originally published here. Last year, Hogarth Press announced that they had commissioned novels by top-tier writers that were retellings and reimaginings of Shakespeare's works. The titles usually don't invoke Shakespeare (which seems to be missing a crucial component of their marketing strategy), save for Howard Jacobson's Shylock Is My Name. The rest that are currently published (Gap of Time, Hag Seed, Vinegar Girl) don't indicate the source material.
I have purchased two of these, and aim to finish out the collection later today (we'll see how my schedule shakes out). In typical me-fashion, I have these books because I wants them (precious) and so I buys them. I haven't actually read either of the two I have, but I feel like I need to buy them (and, though it's costlier, I ought to buy them new) to support the market for books like this. My biggest problem with them is that they're mostly mainstream fiction. I don't read a lot of mainstream fiction--I tend toward the fantastical and historical more than anything else. I read a handful of classics because it's part of my job (I'm thinking mostly of Les Miserables), and while I enjoy them immensely, I don't read modern day successes. I scored a copy of The Casual Vacancy for a dollar and, even though I love Rowling's fantasy series, I haven't even cracked the cover of her mainstream mystery. It isn't that I don't want to read it, it's that I'm busy reading other things...like a book about dinosaur knights (which are medieval-style knights who ride--surprise!--dinosaurs) or a million-word magical realism book by a comic book writer. (Which I'll blog about...if I ever finish it. The thing is huge.) The premise for Hogarth Press' publications is pretty great: Shakespeare wrote great stories, so why not adapt those great stories deliberately and openly. Not in theShe's the Man style, but make it overt? Again, the idea for this is great. It got me thinking: Considering how I tend to think fantastical, which story would I adapt if I were approached by them to make a novel around Shakespeare? I went first to The Tempest, since magic is kind of my bag, but then I saw Margaret Atwood was tackling that play, and I said, "Hahaha, lol, no." My other interest often lies in space, so I thought about what a science-fiction Shakespeare would look like, especially if it wasn't like that graphic novel ofMacbeth as a space opera. What story lends itself to a future world? And it took about three seconds to realize that A Comedy of Errors would be perfect. You have a mad scientist and her husband (I'd gender bend because it's the future, it's thoroughly Shakespearean, and I try to write women characters as often as possible) who have cloned their kid--and the first attempt at cloning--only to be attacked. Both parents flee with one of each of the clones, and, some twenty-five years later, the hilarity of mistaken identity ensues...but in outer space. Since Comedy is taken from the old Roman play, The Menaechmi, it again fits into the Shakespearean tradition to retell a story from a source and society much older than one's own. I tried a retelling last year for NaNoWriMo, setting Dante's Inferno on a colonized planet. There, the humans--mining for a precious resource--accidentally let loose a subterranean alien civilization that abducted the humans and dragged them into the bowels of the planet. Unwittingly, Dante (the main character) and his war-pal Virgil (I'm super creative about the names) end up working their way through a hellish night, trying to get to a communications tower so that they can let the authorities know what's happened. In the process, they descend lower and lower, meeting more aliens, more humans, and exposing more of their characters. By the end, they meet the "head alien" and have to shoot it a lot. Anyway, it's a similar conceit to Dante's Divine Comedy, complete with the last word of the book being "stars", and a plan (but no desire) to follow up the Inferno-based story with one that follows Purgatorio and, at the end, Paradiso. So I've actually done a little bit of this sort of writing, though that isn't to say that I'm willing to dive into a Comedy of Quasar or anything like that soon. Perhaps one day, though, I'll do something novel with Shakespeare. Note: This was originally published on 21 October 2016 About 2,400 years ago, a chap dismissed writing as being, at best, an unworthy successor to speech, and at worst a tool for reminding that gives people the feeling of being wise without distilling wisdom. While Socrates has a point--discussing writing, what is written, and why it was written are worthwhile aspects of my pedagogy and the way in which people live and learn--I think, in this case, Socrates underestimated the purpose, point, and power* of writing.
There are a lot of lessons to learn from Socrates' points--which is why he's still popular, still quoted, still discussed, still taught--but the takeaway from me is actually one of a cautionary tale. For Socrates--an illiterate--the concept of reading and writing was insufficient. In many ways, the latest technology had no immediate purpose to Socrates, and as a result, he insisted its flaws outweighed its benefits. Today I saw a TED talk about audience being held captive by the darkness. Part of Mr. Cohen's comments included a point that, for thousands of years--almost as long as since Socrates was last kicking up trouble--people have dealt with "ambient attention" of an audience, the idea that actors have had to compete with distractions in order to tell their dramatic story. I don't disagree that this was the case, though there seems to be some dismissing of history here. Ancient Greek plays happened during the day, for the most part, but the sun and its lighting were often necessary for how they were telling the story--in other words, deliberate lighting as a technique is an old aspect of the craft. Anyway, Cohen's point is that it's preferable for actors to be in house lighting, using cues from the audience on how to adapt their playing. Modern theaters that manipulate attention by dimming, changing, and modifying the lights, he argues, are doing a disservice to the actors, who will give superior performances if they can judge reactions. As a non-actor, I can't speak to that point. As a teacher--whose job involves theatricality, timing, pacing, and wordplay--I can see what he means. I do a better job as a teacher when I can see my audience, and I can provide a better lesson when I can see my students' faces. However, the counterpart to Cohen's observations is that, to reclaim the possibilities of these ostensibly superior performances, we must turn the lights back on. Indeed, much like Socrates (though without the same cachet), Cohen's argument relies upon the effect of technology that is but dimly seen**. The advent of electric lights--and, as he observes in his talk, cinema--changed the possibilities of the stage. To this technological overlord we now owe obeisance and these are the shackles he wishes us to remove. But I don't think that's the case. Experimentation is the lifeblood of theater (or so I'm told), and advances have always been around. Going from open fields to acoustically-beneficial amphitheaters was a departure from dramatic tradition. Putting actors on an elevated platform and allowing the million to mill about them was a departure from dramatic tradition. Even the Black Friars was the technological equivalent to 3-D theaters for Shakespeare's time: His play, The Tempest, contains special effects unseen in the rest of Shakespeare, done to take advantage of the Black Friars Theater in London. (James Shapiro explores this in his book The Year of Lear.) Some of the effects included specific lighting that only an indoor space could take advantage of. Advances in makeup, costuming, safety, and other aspects of stagecraft have been the theme of theater for millennia. Additionally, there's much to be said about accommodating modern sensibilities. Shakespeare wrote for the nonce; so did Tennessee Williams and Euripides. The fact that a lit theater will allow for private conversations, distracted texting, sleeping, catching up with friends, and other distractions are major detriments that Cohen chooses to view as strengths. But as I was watching his video, the students in the class were seated, lights on, and were involved in their own experiences. Indeed, we made an important announcement before the showing of the film--during which time the class was, indeed, distracted. At the end, when the announcement was repeated, a section of the class burst out in disbelief and excitement at it--they obviously hadn't paid attention. This "ambient attention" that Cohen discusses as being a part of theater throughout the ages is focusing on the bugs, not the features, of the past. In the end, we lose something and we gain something by flowing with technological changes. Some things are lost; some are changed. Despite Socrates' arguments, I'm glad that what he wrote was preserved. Without writing, Shakespeare would be lost to us. Actors may have to adapt to lights, but the audience will be justified in requesting the obnoxious teenager on row 3 stop chatting with her friend during the performance. That's the age we live in. --- * The irony, of course, is that we only know what Socrates felt about writing because Plato, his student, wrote it down. ** Pun intended. Yup, I put a footnote to tell you I was writing a pun. Note: This was originally posted on 10 October 2016 The most famous line in all of Shakespeare (and English letters) is Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech, found in Act 3 scene 1 of his play. It goes like this:
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. We were supposed to talk about it today in class, but I got so wrapped up in talking about the play, I missed the opportunity to really dive into this speech. While some of my students may appreciate the fact that they don't have to talk much about Shakespeare, I'm constantly frustrated by my own inability to shut up and listen to the students. Because of my own motor-mouth ways, we end up spending about 85 of the 100 minutes in class watching a film version of the play or listening to me speak. The final fifteen minutes opens up the dialogue a little bit. I've been trying for years to avoid this problem, but it always comes back to the fact that there's so much in the play and so little time to discuss it. So--naturally--I avoid talking about it hardly at all. This has nothing to do with the time dedicated to it, however: When I taught the play to my seniors last year, we spent one day discussing the first twenty or so lines of this speech--we never even finished it. This speech is a well that constantly replenishes. That seems impossible, and for those who already dis- (or won't) like Shakespeare, the speech can come across as...underwhelming. What's he even complaining about? To die or not? Why is he using weird words like "quietus" or "fardels"? In a lot of ways, the speech is just that: a speech. But it is layered with implications, both for Hamlet as a character, the plot of the play, and deeper meanings. The one thing I try to leave with my students, though, is less of existentialism (at this point in the play, Hamlet is considering suicide--"his quietus make/With a bare bodkin"--but he's not doubting that he exists...he's more worried that he will continue to exist) and one more of implication. I use Truman G. Madsen's version of "To be(come) or not to be(come)" as the crux of the argument. Are we--students and teacher alike--aware of the continual, lifelong, unending process of becoming something better? Or are we choosing not to become something greater? Seen from this angle, the speech is driving at the idea of suffering the "sea of troubles" in order to metamorphose into something different. And that something is the dread of the speech. What we may becomeought to both frighten (dread) and inspire (conscious) us. Hamlet is pessimistic, yes, but he's not wrong: If we do not act--"lose the name of action"--then we cannot become something more. What we become? That is, indeed, the question. Note: This was originally posted on 26 September 2016 Hamlet died today.
Every year, I dress all in black on the last day's discussion of Hamlet. Watch, tie, belt, shirt, pants--I'm dressed not only in mourning for the end of my unit on Shakespeare, but also for the end of the play, the death of Hamlet, and as an homage to the dark-clad prince of Denmark. Students who've passed my classes see me in the halls, offer condolences, yet smile to see doing that which I have done in other years. The final discussion revolves around a quote that for a long time puzzled me, but now that I've looked at it closely so often, it instead gives me great hope and purpose. I feel that this quote, in significant and worthwhile ways, provides the purpose in life: We defy augury: there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be. Augury is the idea of divination through watching birds, so there's an additional poignancy to adding the next bit of the line. Providence is not frequently used in Shakespeare or Elizabethan writing; it's a powerful word (part of the reason, no doubt, the Puritans used it for their home in Rhode Island), and used to great effect here. By calling out providence, associating it with the familiar refrain from Matthew about God being aware of a sparrow, Hamlet is in some ways rejecting the idea that God is in control. Instead, he asserts that the likelihood of "it" (meaning death) is absolute and inevitable. No matter how you look at it, death is the ultimate punctuation mark in the grammar of existence*. Thus the title of this post and the four words tucked into the middle of this short quote becomes a blueprint for the purpose of life: The readiness is all. The inevitability of death--regardless of an afterlife--is the motivation and resignation that Hamlet gestures at. We will all die. If, however, we listen to Hamlet (and, by extension, Shakespeare), we get a profound sense of what to do with the time we have here, whether it be now, or to come: To prepare for stepping off this mortal coil. By working toward the goal of dying, in some senses, on our own terms, we get a stronger sense of purpose and meaning. Like a day in which you've fully seized its possibilities, so, too, is a life made richer, more meaningful, and of greater scope by virtue of having the realization of death** be, not something to be feared, but prepared for. --- * Neal A. Maxwell: “In Gospel grammar, death is not an exclamation point, merely a comma.” This is the great hope that Christianity asserts, one that Hamlet does not include, despite his obvious Christian upbringing. One can read this as an apostasy on his part, or, as others do, the apotheosis of Hamlet in this moment. ** I don't know if it's this realization that has led nihilists and existentialists to embrace Hamlet as their Shakespearean poster child, but it's certainly possible. Still, I'm a Mormon and I find great meaning in this, so obviously it's not exclusively nihilistic. Then again, nothing is. Note: This was originally published on 4 October 2016 This post is extremely personal, in that it's not trying to modify itself to suit a diverse audience. It's my feelings that came from today's experience at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon where I saw Shakespeare's grave.
It was indescribable, but here's my best go: We pulled up in front of the Holy Trinity Church and there walked up through the short graveyard to the entrance. Moss-covered tombstones toothed their way through the grass. A feeling of transcendence began to float over me. Normally, when I enter a European church, I'm overwhelmed by the architecture and the piety that's plastered over the walls. That's how I felt in Saint Giles' Church at Cripplegate. Not so here. It's sacrilegious to say that I was almost irritated by having the Bible being read aloud by a little woman off on one side, but I think it was because it was background noise; the words of Holy Writ weren't penetrating my disbelieving fog: I was in the chapel of Shakespeare's resting place. Paying the four pounds admission wasn't even a thought--though Gayle kept trying to tease me about not being able to afford it--and then we were there. I listened with half an ear to the tour guide, Allen, explaining interesting things about the chapel and its most famous occupant, but I really only had eyes for the grave. Leaning against the thigh-high railing, I looked at the tomb, outlined with blue rope, a gleaming placard at the foot of it. Above the space, printed in the original spelling, was the epitaph--the last thing likely penned by the Bard--which encouraged none to disturb his 'dust'--his quintessence. Even thinking back on that moment fills me with an ineffable surge of proximity. I did feel a little light headed, and, when I thought of how close I was to whatever is left of him, I am not ashamed to admit I nearly wept. I don't know why it mattered so much, but it did. It wasn't a grieving sort of feeling--I'm totally over the fact that he and Milton are dead. It was almost...gratitude. I've been thinking about this a lot, lately, as to why I find belief in God so necessary. It's because I feel like having someone to feel grateful toward helps fulfill the experiences of my life. I really like saying thank you. So when it comes to Shakespeare--a man who has for seven years now definitively shaped my life, while also doing so less overtly for all of it--I feel a deep and certain gratitude for what he wrought. He has, more than any other writer, inspired my deepest thoughts and my greatest ambitions. He has fueled my imagination, sparked my vocabulary, and transported me to new levels of artistic craft. When I think of who I'd most like to write like, it's Shakespeare. I cut my poetic teeth on the juicy meats of Shakespearean sonnets; I have a job because of Shakespeare. Being so close to his quintessential dust was an opportunity to experience gratitude. I didn't mouth the words--in fact, I didn't process the experience until now, as I'm writing--but that's the emotion that I felt. And, in much the same way I feel an unexpressed gratitude to Peter's surgeons for saving his life--and in a lesser way to how I feel toward God for having saved (and given us) Peter's life--I expressed that by being there. Five thousand miles were not too many to traverse for this experience. In terms of gratitude, I will be forever grateful for what I felt and saw here today. It is sweet and nigh-on spiritual. I recognize that not everyone can understand or appreciate what happened. But that's what transcendence is: Beyond the pale of what we can literalize and conceptualize via language. And that is exactly what I feel toward Shakespeare now--it isn't a worshipful, deific kind of appreciation. I don't see Shakespeare in that way. I see him as a man who has helped me to understand the world and myself better. I see nothing wrong with being grateful for that. Note: This was originally posted on 13 January 2014 I saw the movie Anonymous last night. I'm sure the Internet has sounded off all over this thing, but, as an unabashed Bardolator, I feel like I ought to put down my thoughts. The movie has to be judged in two ways, and neither has anything to do with the other. On the one hand, it is a film--a piece of entertainment and fiction--and ought to be graded and regarded as such. On the other hand, it is a dramatized posit of a hare-brained (pun intended: Shakespeare coined that phrase) conspiracy that has real world parallels. The Film As a film, I liked it well enough. Then again, I like most every film I watch, as I love being able to relax and appreciate the entertainment, so that isn't really a glowing commendation. There were some problems with the acting--the young Queen Elizabeth, in particular, really bothered me. So did the Earl of Essex. There's a way to shout emotionally and there's a way to sound like a moron with a loud voice. Much like the Queen in Snow White and the Huntsman, this Queen (and her, apparently, bastard son Essex) can only yell like a moron with a loud voice. The scenes were infrequent, but whenever they occurred I remembered that I was watching a movie. De Vere's performance, on the other hand, I enjoyed quite a bit. While his character never--not even in his most oratorically pronounced moments--came close to having a voice like Shakespeare's, much of his character he portrayed through his eyes, which I thought was quite remarkable. Additionally, there were a handful of people whom I recognized as being from other Shakespearean productions, which put the film in very capable hands, for the most part. The plot, despite its criticism of being overly convoluted, was easy enough for me to follow. It reminded me of some of the things I had forgotten about the Elizabethan world (though it put girls on the stages on occasion, which really confused me), and the costumes and sets were stunning. If nothing else, one should watch the film in order to enjoy the beauty of it. Anyway, the story of the film needed only one half of it to really be compelling, and--probably to the writer and director's chagrin--it was not the half about the conspiracy. The story revolves around the extremely tense time at the end of Elizabeth I's reign, when she--without an heir--looked to be headed toward the undiscovered country. True to history, the movie depicts important nobles fretting and wringing hands over James I's potential claim to the crown and what to do about the Earl of Essex. Essex really did try to rally the common to his cause to claim the throne (done after a showing of Richard II, not Richard III as they show in the film) and there's quite a bit of speculation that Elizabeth was no virgin, despite her epithet. So in that sense, Anonymous works well. Where it starts to fall apart is the incorporation of Shakespeare. This isn't to do with the historicity of the man Shakespeare; it has to do with the fact that, in the face of all that's going on, de Vere's sole focus is on his plays. There is an incredibly important and moving part (for me, anyway), where Edward confesses his inability to be happy unless he's writing. I completely resonated with that, and I thought that was truly significant. But even I know that writing must be put aside for important things, and the care of his earldom and the political dramas unfolding in Buckingham were far more important than listening to his muse. (As a jab at the Oxfordians, I have to say that if de Vere is their Shakespeare, and this film version of de Vere is speaking the Oxfordian line for his motivation, they have picked a shallow, myopic, and selfish man indeed to ascribe the greatest works of English to.) To further this point, there is a scene at the end in which de Vere is told that he must do something in order to save his name. Then, as an 'insult to injury' comment, he's also commanded to forego any more drafting of plays or poems--that is, he must abandon his dreams. Now, again, as a writer I would rather lose my legs than not be able to write. But I'm just me, an average kind of guy with an eclectic taste in entertainment. I'm fully replaceable in almost every part of my life (save in relation to my family). But if I were a freakin' earl I would probably say, "You know what, you're right. I won't let this overwhelm my life." There were other things he had to do. Of course, some of the "things" he had to do included the Queen. I won't go into details, but the bedplay in the film added a bizarre twist that seemed unnecessary and did little except lower my regard of de Vere's character. Despite many of the parts of the film working well, they addled some parts too much to make for a viable or relateable story, which dampened the film somewhat. All that being said, I still enjoyed it, as I mentioned above, for what it was as far as a film goes. Some good acting, some fantastic set pieces, and some brilliant costumes, along with a political intrigue on top and you have a solid, fun film. But there's this one little bit... The History Yeah. Okay, so with the caveat aside that I know it's a piece of fiction, meant to entertain and, in a sense, create a fiction based on history, I have to say that it was extremely difficult for me to overlook the (to me, at least) sometimes blatant deceptions of the film from a historical basis. Having done more research than is normal (and hardly enough to speak authoritatively), I know just enough about the "conspiracy" of the authorship question to be able to see where subtle arguments are being made. Almost like sly winks to the conspiracy savvy members of the audience, characters would throw down little hints about the remarkable works 'by' de Vere while also belittling the man Shakespeare himself. These worked for the narrative, but for history they're dancing on even more tenuous ground than Stratfordians do when they argue about William's life. See, the whole reason this stuff is even around is because a few famous people decided that it was weird that we didn't know a whole lot about a man so important to our language and culture (or, as Harold Bloom argues, the "invention of the human"). I mean, we know he was born, christened, lived with his glove-maker father, acted, became a gentleman, owned a theater, once sued a guy, and then died. Much of what is left of this most remarkable man comes to us through happenstance, luck, and (probably) divine providence. Because let's face it: Who remembers the lives of playwrights? It's hard for a modern audience to think that Shakespeare wasn't in the tabloids of the times. When we have celebrities who are famous for being famous (I think of Paris Hilton and Snookie) who then go on to write books, we have an entire schema for how to conceive of their stories, careers, and writings. I can use Wikipedia and IMDB to figure out the birth date and parentage of any of the actors ofAnonymous before the credits roll. Even more now than any other time, we have information about just about everything, regardless of how trivial. I'm writing a blog about a book that may never get published, for goodness' sake! So it's logical (to us) to think that four centuries earlier, people thought the same way. The fact is, they didn't. They didn't care about Shakespeare's life so much as Shakespeare as a brand. He wrote good stuff (beyond good, but, well...) that entertained people and really turned their eyes to their napes. He could act--probably Hamlet's father in Hamlet and old Adam in As You Like It--but not terribly well. He was published--his sonnets were produced during his lifetime, as well as the epic poems. But no one bothered writing a biography on him. This is not a mystery, but the anti-Stratfordians insist it is. A perfect indication of this is found in the opening monologue of the film. A man (who played Claudius in Brannagh's version of Hamlet) stands on stage and points out that Shakespeare left behind almost nothing--no manuscripts, no books, barely even a signature. Again, it only seems suspicious to a modern audience, who leave digital fingerprints in manifold places of their lives--a binary attempt at immortality, perhaps. But the theaters owned the plays--Shakespeare's name being on the plays worked as great branding, as they knew it'd be a quality project--and manuscripts were kept by the theater owners. The actors had cues only and their lines, not the entire play in one spot, as we do today (in a world without copyright law, theater owners had to be careful not to let spies in to steal their work), making it only logical that a man who didn't own his plays wouldn't be privy to passing down manuscripts or libraries. Other historicity issues plague the film--Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare's greatest rival, not some villain in the shadows (who, incidentally, actually would have been dead during the events of the film, his brain supplanted with a dagger through his eye; additionally, he was a spy for the Queen, flaming gay, and an atheist to boot--a much more intriguing Elizabethan character than Will, but, since comparatively few know him, he never gets the silver-screen treatment). Ben Jonson was also considered a poet and playwright of no small talent himself. That he rejects the film's de Vere's offer for being the name on the plays makes sense--Jonson had his own ego to think of, after all--but that he would so bend to a still-living contemporary seems a stretch at best. His words--like John Milton's, a generation later--shine with praise for the Bard: ...Soul of the age! The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage! My SHAKSPEARE rise ! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room : Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read, and praise to give. I get the distinct feeling that he penned these words out of professional appreciation for what he came to see was the brilliance of the plays--though I should point out that, like all of the de Vere conspiracy, that's speculation on my part. The film shows this kind of devotion to de Vere on the part of Jonson, which is all well and good, but what the film only obliquely points to is that the only one who could publish the plays after de Vere's death would be Jonson. So, for a mastermind conspirator like de Vere, he's putting his entire reputation on the line in order to turn ink into gold, and his best plan is to put his oeuvre into the hands of a firebrand, trouble-with-the-law Ben Jonson--a man already shown to be "splenitive and rash" (as Hamlet might say)--and hope that Jonson outlives Shakespeare long enough to publish them? I have a hard time with that one. Another issue that they try to address is Shakespeare's illiteracy. Because we have nothing written in his hand, it's believed that the lack of evidence is its own type of evidence--we don't have them because they never existed. Of course, one can't prove this, and, in the film, the characters even dramatize this argument. In this scene, Shakespeare (the bumbling, drunken, lecherous actor who, though played well, I never actually saw as Shakespeare) is gloating over having a coat of arms made for himself. (This much is true; Shakespeare became a gentleman because of his success in the theater.) Jonson then demands of the fraudulent playwright to write "the letter I. It's just a straight line." In the film, Shakespeare manages to wiggle free of the request and the scene ends. My credulity ends when one says that Shakespeare, being saturated with writing--as an actor absolutely must be--cannot write. We have a pretty strong evidence base that William actually attended the grueling grammar school education in Stratford where he grew up, a place that would have given him exposure to the resources that he used throughout his playwrighting life. We have six or seven signatures that are confirmed (as far as anything can be) of Shakespeare in his own hand--and nothing else--but this doesn't prove his illiteracy. All it shows us is that what was handwritten by him is lost--though, (praise the Almighty) his works are not. I have more nits to pick with the film, but I'll end here. I think my final analysis is simply about why we have this conspiracy--or any, for that matter--in the first place. I would say, from what I've seen of many different types of conspiracies, that the vast majority of them come from that which Shakespeare provides in such boundless beauty--a story. Indeed, Shakespeare is the storyteller par excellence, and in a sense his own greatness works against his legitimacy. We have been trained since birth to recognize, appreciate, and enjoy a story. Some of the greatest works of human imagination and effort are framed as a story. Even the holy books of the four great monotheistic, Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism) are couched predominantly in the form of narratives. The best selling book in the world (the Bible) has a definitive, allegorical beginning in Genesis and a definitive, allegorical ending in Revelation. We expect stories to have certain structures, do certain things, and, above all, to make sense. But life, as I have seen in my studies of history, are none of those things. Life doesn't have predictable structures--catastrophes always foment and explode, the unexpected occurs, and "the best laid plans of mice and men..."--it doesn't do what we expect and, most emphatically, it doesn't make sense--especially in the moment. Yet we want history to be narratological. We want it to have the beginning, middle, and end that makes so much sense to us. And when there are gaps in the narrative, we feel like we're missing something--that something is omitted, that we've been fed a falsehood. That is not necessarily the case--and conspiracy is the fastest way for me to dismiss the argument (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). If the only way to put the narrative into a structure that "fits" is to require conspiracy, you're straining at gnats. It isn't the purpose of life to fit together seamlessly--as Oxfordians must do for their conspiracy to have validity--and that applies to Shakespeare as much as anyone. In order to believe the Oxfordian's position (I was going to say 'lie' but that's mean, so I won't), you have to first disbelieve that a person can be quiet, reserved, and a genius at the same time. One has to disbelieve in a system of education and combination of natural gifts and favorable environments that could allow the son of a glove maker to think beyond his station. In a sense, one has to deny that greatness can come from the bottom--and that if anything is to be wonderful and good and true, it must come from the highest echelons of society. I would go so far as to argue that any anti-Stratfordian position is de facto classist and of unremitting snobbery. Note: This post was originally published on 31 July 2012. |
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