Tenth grade
introduced me to a new school, a new English teacher, and a real appreciation
for the Bard. It was while in Mrs. White's class that I finally connected with
the stories that were hidden in the mishmash of iambic pentameter and
reputation. In large part, I finally understood
the story.
The first play
we attempted that year was The Merchant
of Venice. Perhaps it is because of this comprehension that I still, to
this day, consider it one of Shakespeare's most fertile and ambiguous of plays.
Perhaps it is because my friends and I, whilst adapting the story into a
children's book (per the requirements of the class), I had a lot of fun drawing
Nerissa and Portia in a faux-anime style that gives me nostalgic feelings toward
it. Or maybe it's the fact that I still think of the Prince of Aragon as a
red-faced smiley sticker with spikey shoulder pads and an afro--as we depicted
him in our book--that makes me think that Merchant
of Venice deserves a lot more attention than it gets.
While working
on the project, we had a great deal of fun shrieking Portia's friend's name: "Neriiiisssaaaa!" we'd cackle,
doing our best impressions of banshees. A fellow classmate had the unfortunate
luck of being named "Merissa", and we had a hard time not treating
her the same way that we did Shakespeare's creation.
Mrs.
White--in an emblematic, Shylockian way--bore our insanity "with a patient
shrug" and even laughed at our exuberance.
Reverence for
the source material was not something I much cared for at that point in my
life.
Mrs. White
added Macbeth to the
curriculum--whether it was planned from the beginning or it sprung up on her, I
don't know. I'm certainly glad, however, that the Scottish play finally made it
into my mind. I know why it did, too: It's a play filled with stabbing, murder,
and blood. Save the lamentable lack of zombies (bloody ghosts would have to
suffice), it was pretty much just like my favorite video games.
More than
that, however, was the graphical organizer Mrs. White used. The action of a
decidedly complex play was lain out in cartoonish drawings. This helped my
hyperactive brain to piece together what the words couldn't do. As I saw the
shape of the tragedy take form, I felt it was, actually, kind of cool.
And with
Shakespeare, the admission of any "kind of cool" sentiment is the
first step to a glorious addiction.
***
Eleventh
grade was American literature, so we didn't approach Shakespeare the way a
responsible teacher would. After all, Shakespeare has been coopted by America
in fundamental ways. American involvement in England has led to the
reconstruction of the Globe Theatre just a few blocks from the site of the
original Globe--as well as the discovery of the location of the old Globe--and
the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
In a less
humblebrag way, there's a cultural appropriation that happens when Shakespeare
takes over. "Shakespeare is American," said one of my fellow teachers
once, only partially joking. He is
American, as well as African, Latin, Asian, and Middle Eastern. What he
discusses and transmutes from language to living is a touchstone of humankind,
a way of charting our humanity. Of course, he's quintessentially European
and--without question--English.
There's a
counterpoint to this that Laura Bohannan asserts due to her own experience of
trying to teach African bushmen about Hamlet.
In it, she recounts how every plot twist of the play was met with bewilderment
or agreement--but in all the wrong places. In the end, Bohannan concludes with the
elders' correction about the stories, as if their reinterpretation somehow
undoes the universality of the Bard.
What Bohannan
misses is that it is not the particulars of the plays that makes them echo
through humanity. Indeed, it never has been. George Bernard Shaw has been credited
as saying "Shakespeare was a wonderful teller of stories so long as
someone else had told them first" (though I can't seem to find the source
of the quote; it is a typical bit of Shavian condescension, however, from a man
who hated Shakespeare so fully), which is to say that plotting is not what the
Swan of Avon accomplished. To mistake the vessel of his thinking for his thinking is the exact error that
Bohannan makes.
We aren't
saying that the parts of life that Shakespeare dramatizes are universal; were
that the case, we'd all be psychotic murderers, besotted lovers (or drunks),
and queens of the Nile. It isn't what they do, it's how they unfold their inner
selves that gives us the understanding of who we are--it is the map by which we
can tread our own lives and thereby learn more of what it means to be.
Additionally,
saying that the universalism of Shakespeare is sound doesn't necessarily mean
that all of the universe appreciates Shakespeare. His power doesn't come from
the appreciation of subsequent generations. We recognize ourselves in the
mirror that his art has held up to us--and we sometimes cringe at what we see.
Titus Andronicus is often
dismissed--and, frankly, ought to be, in terms of the play itself--as too
violent, too sensational, and too lacking of anything "of worth".
Yes, of
course. That's true. It's about rape, mutilation, revenge, and forced cannibalism.
Hardly the stuff for Sunday School.
But it is
also true that humans must deal with atrocities--done to us, by us, or (most
commonly) in our names--and see which path for coping leads toward madness.
America--with all its promises, flaws, beauties, and mistakes--is the country
that can most learn from Shakespeare's insights.
Shakespeare
may not have ever been to America--I suppose it's possible, but I find it
unlikely; a trip to Italy is more persuasive, though even that is a scarcely tenable
position--but he is, in some fundamental and important senses, American.
No, I correct
myself: His works speak as deeply to Americanism as it does to the Empire from
which it comes. Shakespeare the person is almost irrelevant in the sense of
cultural appropriation--just look at the Japanese and their infatuation with
his plays. There's an undying interest in the plays of the man from Stratford,
and ignoring the power there simply because the curriculum calls for attention
to be paid to one side of the Atlantic ocean instead of another is
fallacious--and folly.
Indeed, if
nothing else, the recent push toward a country-wide standardization of English
education that specifically invokes Shakespeare's works is a step in the right
direction.
Comments