SHAKESPEARE: A POET FOR ALL TIME!
By Stephen Wilson
'He was not of an age, but for all time' declared the actor Ben Jonson when paying homage to the famous poet and playwright in the First Folio of his works in 1623. On April 23rd, the anniversary of the birth of the great poet, endless praise, and performances are presented all over the World. The universal appeal of Shakespeare seems beyond controversy as so many people from different cultures can readily identify with the dilemmas faced by characters such as Hamlet, Cassio or Brutus. For Shakespeare confronts all the things which matter most in our lives, love, death, loss of face and grief in a gripping and arresting way which few dramatists can hope to surpass. However, not everyone agrees that Shakespeare has and will retain universal meaning. For in Scotland, some bluntly state: "Shakespeare is just for those folk down in England." And the writer Yuval Noah Harari has gone so far to claim that many of the problems the heroes of Shakespeare confront will become increasingly irrelevant in a new age which technology determines the fate of people. Algorithms will decide everything!
There is a view that Shakespeare is too deep to be appreciated by the ordinary person in the street. The theater is mainly for either intellectuals or those who can afford to pay for it. The archaic and almost obsolete language makes it
more remote from the everyday lives of 21st century people. And in Scotland, some people even state Shakespeare is only for the English and not for the Scots. In Scotland, the theater was practically banned until 1764 and one playwright who wrote and performed a successful play 'Douglas', in 1756, was forced to flee to England because of the intolerant reaction. But when his play was performed some Scots were so enraptured by the performance they uttered the famous line 'Whaur's yer Wullie Shakespeare Noo'? In other words, the Scots had surpassed the achievements of Shakespeare through the playwright John Home. It proved a wishful conceit. Ask your average Scot if he has heard of Home and you'll get a "Who was he?" response. But people can still readily identify Shakespeare. The notion that Shakespeare is purely for England is as absurd as Claiming Robert Burns' relevance remains within Scotland. It is worth noting that Shakespeare was one of the main influences on the work of Robert Burns. Although a biographer of Burns, Hans Hecht, claims that the influence of Shakespeare was superficial on his work you can find as many as a dozen references to him in his biography alone. For example, Hecht records how Burns' school teacher William Murdoch gave a play by Shakespeare as a farewell present and in one poem of Burns you'll find the lines 'Or, for a Shakespeare, or an Otway scene to paint the lovely, hapless Scottish Queen'. Even some of the songs of Burns might betray an influence of Shakespeare. For example, compare the famous opening line of Anthony's speech in Julius Caesar where he thunders 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears :....' and Burns' line from the song Ye Jacobites by Name ' which reads 'Ye Jacobites by Name, give an ear, give an ear'.
Burns even insisted that his children be taught the works of Shakespeare. Both Burns and Shakespeare were humanists and admirers of the renaissance where the often hidden beauty of the human soul was actively affirmed.
A second argument questioning the universal relevance to Shakespeare comes from Yuval Noah Harari, in his book, 21 lessons for the 21st century,' 2018. In one chapter he argues that the drama surrounding making a decision will be swiftly resolved by algorithms. He writes 'but once we begin to count on AI to decide to study, where to
work and who to marry, human life will cease to be a drama of decision making.'
Surely such a view flatters the achievements of technology. Artificial intelligence has become more pervasive in our lives, but it will hardly determine the most important decisions people make because machines commit errors. They are hardly as efficient and effective as Harari imagines. The agony experienced by a Hamlet or Brutus won't go away because some decisions are too important to be left to machines.
In another chapter of this book Harari offers a curious interpretation of the character of John the Savage, the rebel who defies authority with humanistic values and virtues he has learnt from Shakespeare in Huxley's book 'Brave New World'. He stated that Savage almost does not have a mind of his own when he writes, 'Years of living on an Indian reservation and of being brainwashed by Shakespeare and religion have conditioned him to reject all the blessings of modernity'. This begs the question, "How can Shakespeare brainwash John the Savage?' Quite apart from the fact that
Shakespeare is dead and never set out to develop any dogmatic philosophy or system it seems an absurd claim. The word brainwash should not be used lightly as a term of abuse regardless of what you think might construe as the negative influence of Shakespeare or religion. The meaning of brainwash is when someone uses a degree of force, compulsion and one sided attention to induce someone to believe in a point of view. And this is mainly accomplished by denying the subject of brainwashing alternative and opposing ideas. If you read the works of Shakespeare you'll find that the main characters as well as ideas are often ambiguous and open to interpretation. Attempts to develop a coherent philosophy in Shakespeare have often failed. The Russian philosopher Leon Shestov attempted to do this. Firstly, he developed a philosophy based on the decisiveness, virtues and values personified by Brutus of Shakespeare in contrast to the weak-willed and terrible Hamlet. Then years later, he wrote that Hamlet now represented his new existentialist philosophy. What an abrupt about turn! It shows that Shakespeare is more likely to confuse than brainwash you into accepting a dogma. This was something which the author Huxley admitted in his reflections of the poet on his deathbed. In a word, Shakespeare can not be reduced to any crude ideology or narrow religious determination. Shakespeare is not Hegel or Hamlet but simply tells a story well. The fact that Shakespeare was trained in the art of rhetoric enabled him to perceive acute problems and people from many perspectives. Characters are larger than life in the sense they question not only the authority of others, but also their own conscience. John the Savage might have been addicted to Shakespeare,
but he was not brainwashed by him. And when machines break down, the drama of decision making returns again and again. Hamlet haunts us all!
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