Shakespeare and the Rubes

One of the interesting--and highly problematic--aspects of art during  the past century and a half, or so, is the multiple fragmentations among "high" art, "low" art, "popular" art, "folk" art, and so on. Art forms like opera or theater, for instance, are now taken to be the purview only of the elites of society. Who goes to see a Shakespeare play willingly? If it isn't for a high school assignment, then who in his right mind would pay money for such boring stuff? Only geeky college educated, progressive, urban elites, right?   

Unfortunately, this has become all too real; the stereotype has arisen from growing aesthetic bifurcations between social groups, bifurcations that either didn't exist at one time or that were not nearly as  difficult to bridge then as they are now.  

Take Shakespeare, for example. On the American frontier (keeping in mind that this meant different things at different times--e.g., Illinois was once the Wild West), scenes from Shakespeare's plays were one of the most popular forms of entertainment--right up there with juggling, magic tricks, and stand-up comedy (as it was practiced then). 

This short article, "Shakespeare in America," gives a good overview of how popular Shakespeare was in various venues--from fully produced stage plays to reconfigured scenes  that were full of puns and comedy for the entertainment of ruffians in small mining towns. 

This longer and more footnoted article goes into much more depth about the way the Bard was played, often with purposefully hilarious results. But the point of both articles is the same--Shakespeare was massively popular at one time in America, regardless of urban or rural locations, or upper or lower class, ruling elites or workers, mayors, trappers, cowboys, ranch owners, factory workers, or factory owners.

On Love in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

What genius to create a love triangle that serves as a love circle! Three people each loves the next: A loves B, B loves C, and C loves A! Impossible you say? Not if A is a girl posing as a boy. Viola can love the Duke, who loves Olivia, but Olivia can close the circle and love Viola because Viola appears in the guise of the man, Cessario. This makes for some wonderful comedy both onstage and off, that is, among the critics.

Recently it has become fashionable to think in ideological terms about Shakespeare’s plays, often reinterpreting characters and situations with a homosexual or feminist slant (among others). Twelfth Night, with its “gender-bending,” is ripe fruit for such interpretations.

The feminist complaint, that women have no significant power unless it is through a man, finds traction in Twelfth Night in two ways. First, the fact that Viola is powerless and insignificant until she takes up the livery of a man, and second that Olivia, empowered now as head of her household, scorns the Duke’s proposals and resists the attempts by Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Malvolio to tame her to their wishes. She then pursues her own love interest, and her heart leads her toward Cessario.

The homosexual perspective, that men and women have latent tendencies toward loving their own genders, finds support in Olivia’s open love for Cessario (not knowing she is a girl), and simultaneously the sparks of attraction the Duke seems to feel toward Cessario (again not knowing she is a girl). Then there is also the open love of Antonio for Sebastian without any mistaken identity, that becomes all the more poignant when Viola/Cessario (Sebastian’s twin) denies that love when Antonio mistakes her for Sebastian.

The feminist argument loses traction, when we dig into the play a little farther. Viola may gain power and position when she is taken for a man, but her decision to dress and act like a man was not to gain power as such, but to gain security. She thought it was dangerous for a woman to go around in an unknown territory alone, a problem that is timeless. While she IS a man, pining for the Duke and avoiding Olivia’s advances, she wishes she were NOT a man, and we know that she won’t be satisfied until she can again safely appear in public as a woman. Sad is an empowerment that grants security but makes love impossible. How many women have listened to that siren call, pursuing security over love by competing with men in the marketplace, only to find that married love and family is what they wanted? They may realize too late the real power that women have: the power to bear and shape the next generation.

The homosexual argument falls apart by simply recalling the biblical distinctions between erotic love and brotherly love. In fact, the comedy in Twelfth Night is possible only for those who take such categories seriously. Olivia’s attraction to Viola is humorous only when it is taken as misguided eros, and the Duke’s attraction to Cessario is likewise funny when it is seen as misguided philia. If either had known what both Viola and the audience know, it would no longer be funny. Additionally, the love of Antonio for Sebastian is proper philia (as is that of Jonathan and David in the bible) and, if mistaken for eros, spoils the happy ending we want for Olivia, namely a happy marriage to Sebastian, Viola’s twin.

So, feminist and homosexual interpretations, when taken to their logical ends, fail to account for the play as a play, or for its humor, and would have confused and irritated both the playwright and his audience. The biblical categories of love and gender again give clarity, delight, and meaning.

John Hodges

Director

Shakespeare Resources

This site for Shakespeare essays (that is, essays on Shakespeare, not essays by Shakespeare) is an example of the good and the bad side of the Internet. On the one hand, it is good because many of these essays are genuinely helpful and come from a variety of backgrounds and serve a variety of purposes. On the other hand, many of the links are dead.

One could go to a traditional library and find a fifty year old essay stowed away somewhere in a bound collection of journals or on microfiche. Today, the 'net is hit and miss. Something that might last for five years suddenly disappears one day and you can't find it anymore.

The 'net brings us some good stuff, but it is also curiously impermanent in some ways. It is transitory like the computer technology itself that has to be updated every five years (or less) at enormous expense, whereas the books waiting in the library can be cracked open even if they haven't been touched in decades. Can one ever expect a server, a hard drive, or a cd-rom of today to be accessible in fifty years? They will all be in a landfill or an attic or a museum somewhere.

Just some thoughts.

Russian Lear

Even though we are pretty much finished with our study of Shakespeare, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out one version some of you might want to watch.

This Russian version does some pretty amazing things visually with the story, such as in this scene; here, the storm scene is re-envisioned as a collection of the powerless among whom Lear falls in. The film is full of these interesting variations on what we normally assume Lear should look like.

The Cordelia in this version is one of the best I've seen. It seems that Cordelia is a hard part to play without going overboard. Portraying love and mercy is hard to do in film ,a medium that is better at displaying evil and horror since those are visually more appealing than goodness.

The stark black and white colors also serve the story well.

Finally, this version is a testimony to how much power Shakespeare has on even non-English speakers. The number of film, operas, and plays based on Shakespeare in other languages suggests that his power is not just in his amazing use of language.

New Semester

Well, we aren't exactly measuring our time in terms of semesters, but it's a roughly accurate way of keeping to some kind of schedule.

We begin this new year with Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Shakespeare is simply unavoidable, but in today's academy, the Bard is usually taught through the lens of some fashionable critical theory, such as Marxism or feminism. The joy and the darkness one finds in the plays are explained away as one "interrogates" the "text" instead of discovering the pleasure of the human in it.

A well known web site called I-Monk has a nice essay on this dimension of Shakespeare titled "Why I Love the Bard" . This is a fairly bland title, but the content is anything but--the author tells us how Shakespeare saved him from a white trash existence and expanded his Christian vision of human beings in all their strange, wonderful, fallen diversity. Hopefully, we too can expand on this humanizing aspect of Shakespeare's plays, widening our own vision of humanity and our relationship to God as we go.