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
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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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