My long time fascination with Shakespeare
started a long time ago when I was attending the British Council. I won’t dwell on it again.
In this “Living with Shakespeare” I didn’t get
much on Hamlet, but I kept thinking about Hamlet's five soliloquies; the humour
and poignancy of Kent's words in King Lear; the horror of what happens to
Gloucester and the heart-rending ending of the same play. The mixed emotions of
the finale to Macbeth. Mark Antony's speeches in Julius Caesar. Iago's words in
Othello. Shakespeare gave the world a literary water-fountain around which to gather
when engaging with the great issues of each passing generation. His heroes and
villains, his comedies and his tragedies make up an unerringly eloquent
compendium of human frailties/motives as the world changes - and yet nothing
changes. And I've hardly scratched the surface of how Shakespeare's words have
the power to move and shock and create laughter like no one else has been able
to before or since. The naysayers should take the time to experience a play
performed live or, at the very least, watch a film version. It will hopefully
change their minds. And he is not just for 'middle class snobs'! Shakespeare's for
everybody. After having finished this book, I'm reminded of Harold Bloom's comments
about Marlowe in 'The Western Canon', when he says that Marlowe the man 'can be
meditated upon endlessly, as the plays not'; sometimes the writer's life -
especially with Marlowe - can be even more interesting than their work. If the
story of Shakespeare's life was that good he would have written a play about
himself... maybe that is what he did with "The Tempest". I remember
watching a video of the play "Cheapside" at The British Council in the 80s, wherein David Allen's brilliant play about Richard Greene has Shakespeare
darting on occasionally as a sharp-eyed (upstart?) magpie always on the lookout
for gleaming lines and plots to lift. In the closing scene he lets himself into
the dead Greene's room and rummages surreptitiously through the half-finished
manuscripts. "'Story for a Snowy Night'" he muses to himself.
"Mmm.... A Winter's Tale?'" It's such a cheeky cameo - lovely
stuff.
Shakespeare remains relevant because his
understanding of universals was profound, and his language remains piercingly
fresh. He was a genius living at a time when the English language was still
wonderfully malleable. It was an age in which the known world was expanding
with the discovery of the Americas, when England was a centre of growing
prosperity and technological advance - and the headiness of living in a country
in such flux is palpable in the texts too. That Shakespeare was a brilliant
literary innovator just isn't in doubt; you have only to read Spenser, Marlowe and Jonson to see it. They are all stupendous in different ways (I recently
reread Jonson's “The Alchemist” and was astonished all over again), but the
acuity of Shakespeare's phrases, the penetrating psychological insights in
Macbeth, Lear and Hamlet, the sheer beauty and strangeness of the language and
the thinking set him apart. To say Shakespeare remains an icon for
English-speaking people all over the world contradicts the well-known idea that
Shakespeare is a 'universal soul'. All of my friends whose first language is
not English regard Shakespeare as a great. The poet transcends not only time
but culture and language. I've always
wondered how it can be possible to translate
Shakespeare into modern foreign languages, especially languages which are linguistically
remote from English like the Portuguese Language, yet people do it, amazingly.
As Ian Dury once wrote - 'There ain't
half been some clever bastards'.
Politicians have done much to undermine a
common set of values among us human beings. Thatcher's "there is no such
thing as society" comes to mind. In the Bard we find touchstones that are
timeless and inform our basic values - simply as people. In many situations the
words Macbeth, Brutus, Cordelia, Shylock or Malvolio are all that is needed to
set the tone or the scene. Good point about politicians. People get suckered by
them, child-like, time after time. I'm sure Shakespeare had something to say
about gullibility. Must check it out when Benfica’s team is not on...
NB: We should not overlook Shakespeare's
influence on the development of German drama via the translations of Gottfried
Herder. But Herder to Goethe in a letter: "Shakespeare hat Euch ganz verdorben"! The same happened to some Portuguese people...
