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Guest post: “We should all read Shakespeare to gain an insight into the humanity we all share”

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MumsnetGuestPosts · 01/10/2019 13:05

There have been relatively few anthologies made of Shakespeare’s work. Perhaps the task was ill-omened since an early anthologist, William Dodd, was executed in 1777 for forgery! Luckily for me, Shakespeare is out of copyright, and my anthology, Shakespeare For Every Day of the Year, is unlikely to lead me to such a fate.

Shakespeare never has been to everybody’s tastes. In his day, he was famously referred to as an “upstart crow” by Robert Greene, an early critic and fellow Elizabethan playwright. Samuel Pepys was equally unimpressed by Romeo and Juliet, calling the play “the worst that I ever heard in my life”, while Voltaire called his work “an enormous dunghill.” Even T. S. Eliot described Titus Andronicus, as “one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written.”

However, those who thought, like Byron, that “Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high, and will go down”, have, of course, been embarrassed out of all credibility. Since then there have been many more readers who would join Keats in saying, “Thank God I can read and, perhaps, understand his depths.” We should all read Shakespeare to gain an insight into the humanity we share, but sometimes forget.

During the course of my research, I have witnessed the many ways in which Shakespeare has endured, and still has something to say to us today. There is a moment in his narrative poem, ‘The Rape of Lucrece' that strikes me as so evocative that it could have been written today for the #Metoo movement.

Lucretia’s tragic story is taken from the Ovid (barely a single plot of Shakespeare’s is original). In Shakespeare’s version, following the violent assault by her husband’s friend Tarquin, Lucrece refuses to be silent, and instead defiantly and fearlessly vows to denounce him. I chose this extract for International Women’s Day in the book:

“For me, I am the mistress of my fate,
And with my trespass never will dispense,
Till life to death acquit my forced offence.

‘I will not poison thee with my attaint,
Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coined excuses;
My sable ground of sin I will not paint
To hide the truth of this false night’s abuses.
My tongue shall utter all; mine eyes, like sluices,
As from a mountain spring that feeds a dale,
Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.”

Shakespeare has even contributed to news events he could never have foreseen. For example, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Puck claims he can, “put a girdle around the earth / in forty minutes”. The sole British satellite that was launched by a rocket, in 1971, after the funding for the British space programme had already been cancelled, was originally called Puck for this reason. However, fearing that the name might be misheard in Parliament, the ministry involved called it Prospero instead.

Not only does Shakespeare seep into our daily news cycle, we have him to thank for the very words we speak. He used a lot of words – 31,534, to be precise – and of the many he coined himself, half were only used once. Some you might be surprised to see that he made up, such as “eyeball”, “bedazzled”, “fortune-teller”, “unreal” and “well-read”, to name but a few. He also coined many phrases, including “brave new world”, “blinking idiot”, “brevity is the soul of wit”, “neither rhyme nor reason”, “own flesh and blood”, “too much of a good thing”, and “what’s done is done”. Not to mention the many words of advice which entered common usage from his plays: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; “The fault … is not in our stars, but in ourselves”; “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart, and bids it break” and “Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none” and “This above all: to thine own self be true”. After all this, you might feel like Orson Wells did, when he said “now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognise the quotations.”

Of course, Shakespeare might be most famous for his inimitable writing on love. Arguably the most successful marriage in Shakespeare’s works is the Macbeths’, in so far as they feed off each other’s strengths in securing their mutual ambitions, although this turns out to be their downfall. In contrast, the fleeting courtship of Hamlet and Ophelia is a poor example of a successful courtship. She ends up maddened by his inconstancy. Nevertheless, in the salad days of their courtship he is capable of one great love poem. (I put this around Valentine’s Day for anyone searching for the perfect thing to put in a card.) Although he turns out to be a terrible boyfriend, Hamlet does compose a very good love poem:

Doubt thou the stars are fire.
Doubt that the sun doth move.
Doubt truth to be a liar.
But never doubt I love.

Whether you are a lover, a mother, a cosmonaut or a campaigner, Shakespeare has something to say to all of us. On National Poetry Day this week, we are reminded that poetry is not just for the big things in life, but can be for anything we might encounter every day.

Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year by Allie Esiri is published in hardback. The audiobook is available for digital download and as 12 CDS on 31 October.

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Sooverthemill · 01/10/2019 17:18

Shakespeare is fine. But honestly there are so many other writers of more relevance to today. I studied Shakespeare to degree level and your 'blog' sounds like an essay to me. Yes, he writes beautifully, but he's racist, antisemitiic, misogynistic, and a little bit rants. A few good speeches, some good characters but not the finest writer ever in the English language