Where are we to find wisdom in a world that is obsessed with technology? I do not believe that we will find it in electronic gadgets, which for all of their cachet and hipness have done little more than improve convenience for us. Yes, it is true that Twitter and Facebook helped dissident groups in autocratic countries, as we saw in the Arab Spring. But Twitter, Facebook, texting and all of the other apps are saturating us with too much stimuli.
While it is helpful for all of us to be connected to the Internet, we should not be tethered to our electronic devices all day long, when we could be reading, spending time in nature, having a good meal and engaging in conversation with loved ones. These activities should not be subjected to frequent interruption by electronics.
The overloading of stimuli may very well be ruining our powers of concentration, contributing to various health disorders, and perhaps deadening our minds.
Harold Bloom, the greatest literary critic of our time and my former professor, has accrued so much wisdom because he is our foremost reader with a deep, deep love for poetry. Sadly, many of the comments on my last piece, in which I critiqued David Brooks' superficial reading of Shakespeare, showed me that a number of people lack the wisdom of Bloom.
As I pointed out in a reply to one particularly obtuse comment, I am not alone in thinking that Hamlet and Falstaff are sublime. Bloom, a Bardolator of the highest order, reveres Falstaff and recognizes the genius of Hamlet.
It baffles me when commenters essentially say, "How can you like Hamlet and Falstaff, Robert. Hamlet causes his girlfriend's suicide, and Falstaff is a criminal."
Obviously, I am not condoning Falstaff's larceny or Hamlet's cruelty to Ophelia. But what I and others such as Professor Bloom love about Falstaff and Hamlet is their zest for life, their vitality, their love for play.
That is what makes Hamlet and Falstaff so special, such a blessing to all of us. The same can be said of Rosalind and Cleopatra. They love to play.
Conversely, Prince Hal, as I argued in my previous piece, is a calculating pol with no loyalty to his boon companion and mentor, Falstaff. That is not to say that I don't relish the moment when Hal engages Falstaff by saying, "Do thou stand for my father!"
Falstaff is absolutely delighted and replies, "Shall I? Content."
Yet, even in that instant, in his bid for play, Hal is probably still calculating because he, like Mitt Romney for instance, is trying to size up his competition in a debate. Of course, like so many recent pols, that competition involves not Hotspur, a contemporary, so much as Hal's daddy. (George W. Bush and Andrew Cuomo famously come to mind as other politicians with daddy complexes.)
David Brooks is right that one cannot turn a young Prince Hal into Hamlet by giving him meds. But the truth is that Hal can never be Hamlet. Hal is and always will be a politician, ruthlessly ambitious and lacking the depth of the Prince of Denmark.
One might ask why some of us revere Hamlet so much. Part of it is because he does not seek the crown. He is completely apolitical, so that even though his father has been murdered, he does not attempt to take the crown for himself.
Hamlet, in that respect, is not unlike other truly sublime figures like Albert Einstein, who was offered the presidency of Israel but declined. Why? Because the greatest impact that an eminent artist or scientist can have is in creating new art and new ways of looking at the world.
As for specific suggestions on education, I would recommend that some of the commenters read Professor Bloom's books. They might start with Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.
And we might all advocate in favor of a more qualitative approach to education. One cannot quantify genius, just as one cannot quantify a human being, creativity or imagination.
It strikes me that both political parties have been relying too much on test scores. When I was in public, elementary school, we had an open classroom with no grades. Instead, we got comments.
If I were running the public schools, I would favor that approach, a Bank Street School, child-centered approach. Yes, we can introduce kids to the military, as Brooks has said, though I don't think school should be run like a boot camp. We want to pique the curiosity of kids so that they can become independent thinkers. Boot camps are not like that. Boot camps tend to break people down so that they lose their uniqueness.
And an over-reliance on testing and quantification of kids will do nothing other than traumatize them.
When I was in junior high and high school, our English teachers for the most part had a policy of not putting grades on our papers. That remains a good idea.
I recognize that we need some kind of grading and standardized testing for high school kids in order for colleges to have a seemingly objective means of assessing applicants. But we should not rely on those statistics to the detriment of comments from teachers, recommendations, interviews and other non-measurable but more salient attributes such as character, imagination, wit and honesty.
I might have gotten a little heated in my last post, but that is very Hotspurian. It might not surprise anyone that I played Hotspur in a class on the bildungsroman when I was a senior in high school. And it might not surprise anyone that I wrote my senior thesis in college for Harold Bloom on Rosalind and Hamlet, both of whom love to play.
thanks
Jina
I will say, though, that I'm glad you so well grasp Hamlet as a character. Hamlet is one of my favorite works of literature, much because I consider it to be a parody of the "hero" story. By all rights of Scandinavian story-telling, Fortinbras should be the protagonist, yet it is Hamlet we follow. I haven't read any of the Henrys but I probably will now after reading your critique. Anyway, that's my 11 1/2 cents.
Firstly, your idolization of reading books. I've been an avid reader for much of my life, but I also worked for a year at a Borders bookstore. While perhaps once the printed word alone held a position of lofty information sharing, no longer can it be seen as such. There are simply too many kinds of books, and certainly too many with almost no intellectual merit, to merely say "Go read a book" anymore and have it impart useful knowledge.
Thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate them.
All the best,
Robert
I'm not a Shakespearean scholar so I can't speak to the relative merits of Falstaff and Hamlet over Prince Hal as human beings. But I can worry that the coming generation of writers will churn out works more reminiscent of Ogden Nash than Shakespeare...IMHO...LOL.
the guy is a generation out of date. his veneration of the western canon is almost adorable in its naivete, and his fellating of high art is simply nauseating. his school of criticism died 50 years ago, and nobody bothered to let him in on the news. he's an ethnocentric white male with a thesaurus and little else.
in short, he is the opposite of every major critical movement of the last half-century. that doesn't make him great. it makes him a dinosaur.
literally the only thing to gain from reading harold bloom is a more specific understanding of what not to do.
I shouldn't have to point out that Hamlet, Falstaff, etc. are fictional roles written to be portrayed by players who prepared for that task in vastly different ways than those used by the modern actor - and yes, that matters immensely in developing a genuine understanding of the plays. Attempting to "psychoanalyze" a Shakespearean character as though he/she were a living human being is nothing more than an exercise in mental masturbation.
Try consulting Greenblatt, or Shapiro, or Bate. Unless opening your mind to a differing viewpoint is too difficult for you, Jaffee - then by all means continue to simply insult those who disagree with you. It is, after all, the easy way out.
Is Shakespeare's Falstaff really more important to the world than Sir John Oldcastle who was Falstaff's model and a religious martyr? Or, perhaps, Thomas Mallory whose character seems to have been quite complex.
Shakespeare was a splendid poet - especially if you like to recite poetry aloud. BUT just how important are poets anyway ?
also, for bonus historical relevance points, shakespeare was one of the main tools of cultural assimilation during england's colonial area. in the same way that the greeks used their drama to "civilize" conquered and surrendering nations, the british used shakespeare to assimilate their colonial populations. so in order to understand why colonialism turned out the way it did and the cultural strife in british-held colonies, you have to understand shakespeare.
And while I'm sure there is an argument for why the two people you referenced are hugely important to the whole of humanity, I guarantee most people do not know who they are which says something. I know not the first one, so I'll say nothing about him, but Oldcastle's greatest claim to fame was being modeled into Falstaff and then in no realistic portrayal of the original. He is famous (if you could dare call him so) because of the fictional character, it is not the other way around. I know fame is not the only mark of importance, but if you are not remembered then your influence is limited.
Poetry is alive and well in ways perhaps we don't recognize, but it is there. You have never seen a weather report that is not droll poetry. All of acting, is a form of poetry. American's watch so many hours of TV every day, infested much of it, with bad poetry.
The prison house enfolded Hal. He had responsibility to and for others. He took it, and did well with it.
Hamlet, for all his witty pondering, rejected maturity.
Falstaff was a bloviating fraud.
I believe Shakespeare would agree with those assessments.
The divine is the single metaphysical concept which has done the most to lead man astray.
David Brooks is a knob, but you might be worse than that.