The Genius of Shakespeare

I spent today in DC, watching the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Twelfth Night. Anyone who’s read the play knows that its an over the top ode to love, as well as a comedy of twins, mistaken identity, and practical jokes. Apparently its supposed to be one of Shakespeare’s silliest plays, and yet it too has its moments where one must pause and simply marvel at Shakespeare’s genius.

But for me that genius doesn’t come out as much in Twelfth Night, even though certain lines such as Olivia proclaiming, “Oh Time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me to untie” stick with me long after watching or reading the play. Personally I think that if I want to get at what exactly I personally mean by Shakespeare's genius, its best done using his play Hamlet.

First I want to show that Shakespeare is quite a poor storyteller when we judge his work in the usual way of literature. Why? Because he never takes a stance on what the good news is and what the bad news is. Take Hamlet. His father has just died. He’s despondent. And right away his mother marries his uncle, who he hates. So Hamlet is pretty low when his friend tells him there is this thing on the parapet that might be his dad. And of course this thing says, “I’m your father. I was murdered by your uncle. Avenge me.”

Well was this good news or bad news? To this day we don’t really know if that ghost was Hamlet’s father. If you have messed around with Ouiji boards you know that there are hundreds of spirits floating around, most of them malicious, liable to tell you anything. And you shouldn’t listen. But Hamlet decides to check it out. He puts on this play to trick his uncle into confessing. It flops. Neither good news nor bad news. So he goes to talk to his mother, and sees the drapes moving. Hamlet, now tired of being indecisive, sticks his sword through the drapes and kills our good friend Polonius.

A quick aside. Most parents think the advice that Polonius gives his children is good advice that every child should hear. Shakespeare regarded him as a fool and quite disposable. It’s the dumbest advice possible, and even Shakespeare thought it was hilarious. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Um, what else is life but endless borrowing and lending, giving and taking? “This above all, to thine own self be true.” Be an egomaniac??

Again, neither good news nor bad news. Finally Hamlet gets in a duel and gets killed. Did he go to heaven or hell? Quite a difference, and we don’t know. Neither good news or bad news.

So all in all, a pretty poor storyteller. But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in their stories. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is. Despite what we may think at the time, things have a way of coming full circle in ways we could never expect.

When I die, I’d like the opportunity to ask someone up there, “So what was the good news and what was the bad news?” Because despite what we may think at the time, things have a way of coming full circle and ending in ways we could never predict.

I also came across one other line years ago that I now realize in a single sentence describes life as lived by human beings so completely that no writer after him need ever have written another word:

"All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”