As many of you know, I’m something of an actor. Currently, I’m rehearsing for two plays at the same time, and they are both Shakespearian tragedies: Hamlet and Macbeth. On a totally unrelated note, I’ve been really depressed lately for some reason.
So, anyway, I’m up to my eyeballs in Shakespeare, but then, being an English major, I’ve been deeper than that before. But, really, what is the deal with this guy Shakespeare? Why is he still so appealing to so many people after four hundred years? Is it the nifty vocabulary, the hypnotic iambic pentameter, the presentation of deeply essential human themes? Or is it the dirty jokes, the cod pieces, the silly banter? In my opinion, the secret is clearly the cod pieces, but a lot of other people think there's more to it.
My English professors taught that Shakespeare was part of the “holy trinity” of the mighty English writers, along with Milton and Chaucer. But wasn’t Shakespeare just some guy trying to write plays that pleased Londoners enough to keep giving him money? Didn’t he steal all the plots of his plays from other plays, stories, and books? Some of his characters are flat, his plot twists unbelievable and predictable. Husbands are always getting jealous, women are always dressing up like men, people are always stabbing themselves. I’ve met more than a few people who claim that Shakespeare is quite overrated.
Most of the members of my generation find the Bard to be mind-numbingly boring. This is, I think, due not only to the archaic language which impedes comprehension, but also because of the subconscious link between Shakespeare and that really boring old hag of an English teacher you had in high school. You know, the one who droned on and on monotonously about Stratford-upon-Avon and Elizabethean comedy, while you sat there wanting to stab your own eyes out and not realizing that you were as close as you were ever going to get in high school to condoned sexual humor and salicious references to various obscenities. Shakespeare is like a second language; once you get a hang of that language, its not at all hard to understand. But even then, there are lots of people who think he’s not as hot as the Western tradition has made him out to be. So why’s he still so popular today?
On the one hand, we cannot deny that Shakespeare has turned into something of a brand name for both humanities academia and high-brow theater. He is familiar and bears the reputation of the best of the best, whether you feel this is deserved or not. People know who he is, even if they aren't familiar with any of his work. He therefore has immense selling power amongst certain circles, and so its easy to understand why his plays are often performed, from a purely commercial sense. Theaters need money, and Shakespeare sells. Plays by Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, would not draw the same size of crowd (unless you are one of those who think that Jonson actually wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, but that theory is ruthless mocked by Shakespearean purists).
On the other hand, I must confess that I believe there is something more here than just tradition and capitalism. I think that Shakespeare has endured because his writing really works. Being something of a nerd, I enjoy how words sound, and what it feels like to say them. Shakespearean verse flows of the tongue in an extremely gratifying manner. I can’t get enough of it. His plots may not be of his own invention, and often are fairly ridiculous, but the shape of his words and sentences and speeches is something to be admired. He can express an emotion which I can understand perfectly from my own experience, and do so in more beautiful language than I could ever dream to come up with on my own. Take this speech from Hamlet:
What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.
I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't.
Is this not what I was feeling just last week, when I lamented that I wasn’t doing anything with my blog, with my life? When I was feeling that there is so much I could be doing, and should be doing, but wasn’t? Was, in fact, merely sleeping and feeding? And here Mr. Shakespeare has said it better than I ever could. Well played, Will. Bravo. And I could quote a million lines with a similar effect.
If you think you don’t like Shakespeare, or you’ve never been able to get into him, I really think you ought to give him a chance. Come to my house and I’ll introduce you to some fine plays and/or films based on those plays. And, better still, come see me in Hamlet and/or Macbeth in September! I’ll be posting my performance times later, once I have more information. And just in case the exquisite verse and world-class acting aren't enough to draw you, I’ll be wearing a cod piece!
Comments
The sexual suggestiveness was definitely a bit intimidating to all us in middle school (grade 7), especially for the very conservative country where I grew up.
But again that was the time, when we were expected to enrich our english language vocabularies and interestingly also the time when we were learning human anatomy. I think if it was not for my cultural peer pressure for every smart kids to pursue the sciences, I would have pursued a a liberal arts fields. After reading your blog, I have become jealous of English majors!!
You should definitely blog!