Shakespeare

In these dark times I’ve retreated into the wonder that is William Shakespeare. I was prompted to do so by discovering (via Twitter) a substack by Shakespeare expert Sir Jonathon Bate. He’s posting small videos from a course on Shakespeare he delivered at Warwick University some years ago; along with pieces he has had published over the years. These include book reviews and essays on a range of writers as well as William. I’m not sure whether you’ll be able to accesss it, but one of his little talks can be seen here You can subscribe to his substack for free here. And if you enjoy those he makes freely available as much as I have, you can pay the princely sum of $100 and get more of the same. Which I did after a few months. He has become quite familiar through his little videos so I’ll refer to him as Jonathon in this blog. I’ve had his book by Soul of the Age since 2008, a gift from Joe for Christmas. I didn’t remember reading it before or during what I discovered was actually a re-read via this blog. In which I give an extensive review of it. I was amused to find I was describing it now in exactly the same terms as in what I wrote then. All of this is written beautifully and is very accessible. I know more about the works of Virgil, Cicero, Seneca, Erasmus, Montaigne etc after reading this (or I would if I could remember it all!) This is like other books I’ve read, so full of information I could have re-read it the minute I finished it and been just as engaged. As I have just proved.

Having really enjoyed Soul of the Age all over again, I embarked on a programme of reading the plays. Choosing the comedies about which I am less familiar than the tragedies and histories. Along with the plays I’d re-read what the critics I admire ,and whose works I have, thought of them. First Jonathon’s views in the short introductions to each play that are included in this Cambridge edition of Shakespeare’s Complete Works which he co-edited. Having already read his very long introduction – almost a book in itself. He’s a lovely writer.

I also re-read relevant chapters from this critical analysis of the plays by the controversial American Shakespeare scholar, Harold Bloom. He’s roundly condemned by progressive literati especially feminists and producers of modern versions of the plays but I love his forthright opinions and find myself agreeing with a lot!

I also enjoyed the more urbane analysis of the plays by the famous English critic, Frank Kermode.

It was a hefty undertaking as I had to be continually lumping these three tomes from room to room. The Cambridge Collected Works is terrific but doesn’t lend itself to reading in bed. Nor does Bloom.

The Merry Wives of Windsor. I loved it. The merry wives are terrific characters and I found the language full of lively witticisms and funny. Shakespeare was thirty-three when he wrote it. There’s a story that Elizabeth I asked for a play about Falstaff in love although this is, like much with Shakespeare, not confirmed. Jonathon calls it a celebration of the English language and the most autobiographical of the plays, being set in a town very like Stratford-upon-Avon. He likens it to a sitcom – a domestic drama with people rushing in and out of doors. There’s a scene with a schoolboy being tested on his Latin which would have been exactly as Shakespeare was taught. Bloom calls it one of Shakespeare’s slightest comedies. That’s because he loves the character Falstaff – in fact calls the character a pseudo-Falstaff. He claims feminists think the play is a castration pageant with the merry wives vastly enjoying their labors of emasculation. About which he eschews comment.

The Tempest. I loved it. Much shorter than I expected. You have to read the speeches ery slowly to see the beauty in the language. This is Shakespeare’s last solo-authored play written when he was forty-seven. It’s regarded as the finest of his works. And as such is given first place in the Cambridge Collected Works. Coleridge, Shelley, Henry James, W.H. Auden have all written about it. Jonathon says it has come to be regarded as the touchstone of Shakespearean interpretation. It’s about mastery and rule. Prospero’s art is likened to the playwright’s. The study of the arts versus the rule of power, establishment of tyranny. Ariel is fire and air, concord and music, loyal service. Caliban is of the earth … discord, drunkenness, rebellion. He gives some credence to the anti-colonial interpretation. Bloom says this play shares the sad distinction, along with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, of being the worst interpreted and performed of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s neither a discourse on colonialism nor a mystical testament. Propero’s play rather than Caliban’s. Auden said of Caliban, approved by Bloom ‘the love nothing , the fear all.’ Both he and Kermode bemoan the absence of comedy in most productions. Kermode says the new dramatic language, the pervasiveness of music, the quiet verbal insistence on dream, on spirit on sea, give The Tempest qualities that are in the end beyond description.

Love’s Labour’s Lost. I didn’t like it. The language is full of double entendres and I think to properly appreciate it you’d have to study it properly. Reading backwards and forwards from footnotes explaining the double meanings didn’t work for me. All the critics say this is the best of the comedies. Jonathon says it’s a play for Shakespeare’s connoisseurs … a feast of linguistic sophistication on the theme of the inadequacy of linguistic sophistication … full of poetry. Bloom says I take more unmixed pleasure from [it] than from any other Shakespearean play. To him it’s a festival of language, an exuberant fireworks display. He’s never seen a production that adequately delivers its vocal magnificence and is waiting for a director of genius to do it. Despite all this praise Jonathon tells us that in the 18th and 19th century it was Shakespeare’s least performed play. There is also a companion play – Love’s Labour Found that has been lost.

The Winter’s Tale. I enjoyed everything about this, the story, the characters, the language. It’s very accessible. It reminded me of King Lear at the start, Lear having been written before this one. As with Lear we move quite suddenly into the King’s mental fragmentation. I think that’s hard to pull off in a production. Jonathon speaks mostly about the earlier English plays on the same themes noting how Shakespeare added and altered them. In particular providing a happier ending. He notes again Shakespeare’s skill in using language to convey psychological emotions. For instance using syntax and semantics and fragmented sentences to show Leontes mental disintegration and the importance of language in creating more than mere theatricality in Hermione’s revival. Bloom believes it’s one of Shakespeare’s richest plays, surging with his full power. It’s a vast pastoral lyric and also a psychological novel. Leontes is another Othello. Kermode invites us to see it as a Greek romance signposted by the Greek names of the characters, including Autolycus, in mythology the son of Hermes under one aspect the god of thieves. It’s in this play we get the famous stage direction exit pursued by bear. Kermode explains the title: it’s a winter’s tale … a sad tale certainly, the onset of a long winter that ends in renovation in the spring of the young couple and the autumn of the old people. He praises the sense of reverent awe that accompanies the revelation scene.

The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, James Shapiro

I then read another hefty book about Shakespeare that I found in a terrific second-hand bookshop in Ballarat a few years age. This one I had not read before. It was good though, as it says in the title more about Shakespeare’s environment – mostly the turbulent political changes occurring – than about the actual writing of the play. Which I was a bit sorry about. Though I found it very interesting and very lively in the descriptions about the events that happened that year. There’s a lot about the Gunpowder plot and why it was so enmeshed in the national psyche that we have a nursery rhyme about it. Also how lucky Shakespeare was to avoid involvement. And even more lucky to escape involvement with the Essex uprising agains Elizabeth I. Shakespeare scholarship never stops – in the last few weeks someone has found something that is said to show Shakespeare was more involved in that escapade than previously thought. Who knows. So little is known about the life – so people make it up! Like Hamnet. Anyway this was great and explained the challenges faced by Shakespeare and others in the transition from the Tudor to the Jacobean age. Lear and Macbeth – both of which were written in 1606 – being prime examples of Shakespeare’s adroitness in managing up as it’s called in the public service. Both plays addressed kay concerns of the new King James – the unification of his kingdoms, his belief in witchcraft.

So after that I had to read the play, full title, The Tragedy of King Lear. Jonathon explains, as did Shapiro in the book above, that the new King James wanted to unite his Scottish and English Kingdoms. So what more topical a play could Shakespeare write than one about the dangers of a Kingdom divided. He also notes we have two plot lines running along together in a way not seen before. I discovered, not having known it before, that there are two different texts for this play. The one in the First Folio, which is the one usually used, excludes sections that are included in the Quarto version – and these are appended at the end of the play in the Cambridge Completed Works. I didn’t bother reading them. There is also an earlier version of the story in The True Chronicle History od King Leir, and his three daughters, Goneril, Ragan , and Cordelia. As it hath bene diuers and fundry times lately acted. This facsimile of the printed play was in the Shapiro. In the earlier story Cordelia survives and she and Lear go off together. A much happier outcome. Shakespeare’s version is notable for the cruelty of the ending. Especially in that all looks as though it will end well and we have that expectation cruelly dashed. I agree with Ben Johnson who found it so cruel he couldn’t bear it. Jonathon says, King Lear is a play full of questions. The big ones go unanswered. The biggest of all is Lear’s ‘Why should a dog a horse, a rat have life, / And thou not breath at all?‘ The earlier play had Christian providence prevailing. Shakespeare reimagines his material in a bleak pagan world. In this, he not only looks back to the past, but also anticipates a future that is ours – a time when old religious hierarchies and moral certainties have been stripped away. We are truly human only when we experience things feelingly rather than falling back on easy moralizing – we will be judged by our fellow feeling for the dispossessed not our status in society. Harold Bloom believes it is Edgar’s play rather than Lear’s – it is Edgar who is the moral centre. He also controversially says it’s a play best read rather than watched in production. That’s because he basically hates modern interpretations. I actually found that to be true. I’ve always been underwhelmed by the productions I’ve seen. No I realise it is because they focus too much on Lear. I found reading the play much more moving than seeing it performed. I shared this view with a fellow on Twitter whose cultural tasted I mostly share – Wagner, Thomas Mann, etc. But he’s always disagreed with Bloom on the matter he tells me.

Further Reading

If you’re interested there are two other books from my library that I recommend. First, the first one of this sort I ever read and was swept away by is Shakespeare’s Kings by John Julius Norwich. This sets out the true stories of the kings about whom Shakespeare wrote his histories and compares this to how they were presented by the playwright.

Then we have Germaine Greer’s wonderful Shakespeare’s Wife which takes issue with how Anne Hathaway has been represented – or as she says, misrepresented – by Shakespearean scholars. I haven’t seen Hamnet but I wonder whether the wife in that made up tale accords with Germaine’s vision.