Why Shakespeare?
Why this weekend, everywhere around the world, will this man, with but a
seventh grade education, be heralded 400 years after his death? He died in 1616
on his birthday (according to best evidence) on April 23rd. While many poetplaywrights
of his era were easily forgotten 400 days after their passing-- and
most within 400 hours-- William Shakespeare remains a box-office sensation
400 years later.
But why?
Because Shakespeare appeals to all three strata of his, and our current society.
For the masses are vibrant plots, chock-a-bloc with conspiracies and
maneuverings, wooings and poetry; sword fights and murders; ghosts and
goblins and witches; good guys with faults and God-awful bad apples with fine
traits.
Take Macbeth, just one of Shakespeare's 37 plays. It centers on love and blood --
so what's not to like?
Just like today's film sensations, it's filled with passion and violence. Some
supermarket-checkout tabloid could run a photo of two hot sexy youngsters
below a red-lettered headline: "THEY'RE YOUNG!! THEY'RE IN LOVE!!
THEY'RE THE MACBETHS!!"
Second, for the middle brow, Shakespeare portrays fascinating people. As
Dame Judi Dench once observed, Shakespeare doesn't create characters;
Shakespeare creates real people. Hamlet, Rosaline, Falstaff, Portia, Macbeth,
Shylock, and others live beyond their scenes. They've grown bigger than their
stage appearance, and somehow live beyond the framework of Shakespeare.
And third, for the intellectual, Shakespeare furnishes glorious poetry, incidents
of riveting history, insights into philosophy, case studies of psychology and so
much more.
While commoners laugh at rollicking scenes and gasp at rivers of blood on stage,
and while professionals try to figure out what makes these folks tick, scholars
analyze the scenes for insights into psychology, history, epistemology, ascetics,
family dynamics, court manners, falconry, linguistics, you-name-it.
That's why for me it was such a joy to teach Shakespeare at Georgetown
University and then for honor students at George Washington University. That's
why it's still a joy to teach Shakespeare to companies and organizations which
want a novel way to teach leadership, as my wife Carol and I do in Movers and
Shakespeares.
Dr. Samuel Johnson once quipped that if you don't love London, you don't love
life. Likewise, if you don't love Shakespeare -- even with his language, harder to
understand than London cockney -- you don't love life.
That's why the Bard has been, and remains, the rage -- at the top of the charts
for ah!! these 400 years. So enduring is he that Hollywood types can truly say,
"Shakespeare has legs."