That Shakespeare Thing

I'm bumping this to the top of the queue for several reasons, general principle among them. The opinion I offer in the last half or so requires a proper argument and, while I've written various things in that direction, I haven't gotten around to such an argument. Nor can I see putting it high on the agenda now. Consider it a stake in the ground, or a promissory note.

 

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It is a truth fervently believed, at least among those who have beliefs about such things, that Shakespeare is the greatest writer the world has ever seen. Without question. Period. End of story. So help me god. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Bollocks!

It’s not that I doubt Shakespeare’s excellence. Of course he’s good. But not that good. No mortal human is, or could possibly be, that good. For THAT good is not about history, it’s about mythology.

And that mythology has got to stop. We can’t treat our literary culture as though it were but an appendage to Shakespeare’s large, various, and excellent output. Debts are owed, certainly. But appendages to, certainly not.

It’s simple: We can’t enter into the 21st century as long as we keep swearing fealty to The Bard, even if we cross our fingers behind our backs while so swearing. The world’s changing, it’s been changing since Shakespeare’s time. The old guy can no longer keep up. It’s time to put him on a raft, and cut the raft free. Let him float out to sea.

Who’s this WE you’re talking about?

Good question. Tricky question. I suppose I could say Harold Bloom and the Bloomistas and be done with it. In fact, that’s what I will say: Bloom and the Bloomistas!

Call it a figure.

Though Harold Bloom is real enough. His admiration for Shakespeare is well known – didn’t he write a fat book explaining how we’re all Shakespeare’s children? And he’s set himself up as the Defender of the Western Literary Canon, the Finger in the Dike that Protects Western Civ from the Sea.

Give the finger a rest. Let the water flow. Life goes on.

What brought this on, you ask?

It’s been a long time coming. At least since late 1989 when The New Republic published a special 75th anniversary issue in which their long-term film critic, Stanley Kauffmann, reflected on film’s history and accomplishments. Toward the middle he had a Big Paragraph:

After we have at the beginnings [of film], what can we say today about the results? What has film accomplished since then? Once, after a meeting in which films were glowingly discussed, a well-known poet challenged me to name one film that was the equal of the greatest work in other arts, the work of Sophocles or Dante or Michelangelo or Bach or Tolstoy. The answer was, is, double. First, there is no such film. There may never be such a film. Second, who is the Sophocles or Bach of the 20th century? Great artists there have certainly been in our time, and I would not blithely equate even the best films I know with the work of Joyce or Picasso. But few would rank Joyce or Picasso or the other masters of our time with the greatest artists in history; and the overwhelming fact is that, arriving in this century that has been stormy even for the oldest arts, film has created hundreds of works that are now part of the cultural legacy of every civilized human being.

He’s got that last clause right: Film HAS created hundreds of works that are now part of the cultural legacy of every civilized human being. The rest of it is pious nonsense, spun from the same thread as Bloomistavision.

That’s what set me on this line of thought. What set me off is Apocalypse Now. I didn’t see it when it first came out. Don’t know exactly why. Perhaps because it was a Hollywood film, so how could it be Really Good? Saw the Redux version; don’t remember what I thought. But then the DVD set came out, Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier.

I was stunned. Watching it on my small computer monitor with the add-on speakers – decent sound, but not as good as my stereo system, and certainly not theatrical – I was stunned. Thought I to myself: Shakespeare couldn’t do this.

Shakespeare couldn’t do this.

It’s not simply that he didn’t have the technology, though he didn’t, and that’s not irrelevant. Whatever Coppola was saying, Shakespeare couldn’t say it, because he didn’t know it. He didn’t know it.

Shakespeare didn’t know it. It’s not his fault. Our world isn’t his world. Our world makes its own demands, and Shakespeare’s knowledge cannot be equal to them, no more.

Let him rest.