Shakespeare, prisoner of British Empire
August 11, 2014 <http://www.herald.co.zw/author/wmurape/> Wenceslaus Murape
<http://www.herald.co.zw/category/articles/opinion-a-analysis/> Opinion &
Analysis
Pete Dudink
INTELLIGENT high school students often ask me, with genuine bewilderment,
why Shakespeare garners so much respect. They watch productions of
Shakespeares plays and they read the texts, and they dutifully listen to
their teachers fawn over the bard, but they remain stubbornly
unconverted.Admittedly, I too remain unconverted even after reading how
Bloom, Greenblatt, and Bate expound on the virtuosity of the bard. Whats
wrong with us? Are we corrupted by the media and by a few inept teachers?
Well, after a decade or two of musing and re-evaluating, Ive come to the
conclusion that Shakespeares scholars and promoters give little thought to
the fact that he was a prisoner of an intolerant age.
He was not a free, independent author or freelancer; his job was to
entertain his rich patrons with clever diversions; his job was never to
enlighten anyone. After all, he lived in a time when freedom and autonomy
only belonged to the heads of state.
While these points are commonly accepted, we rarely draw the conclusion that
Shakespeare did not have the freedom to write anything that challenged the
status quo or the beliefs, vices and prejudices of his rulers. Somehow,
scholars continue to imagine a Shakespeare who communicates enlightened
ideas instead of a man condemned to entertain tyrants and gloss over the
darkness of his era.
In a recent article on Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate rightly dismissed Harold
Blooms hyperbolic assessment of Shakespeares positive influence on
progressive values, and yet I must also dismiss Bates supposedly more
modest and more plausible claim for Shakespeares progressive influence.
I quote: Ludicrously, the critic Harold Bloom once proposed that
Shakespeare invented our idea of what it is to be human. Far more plausibly,
one could argue that Montaigne and Shakespeare between them effected a
seismic shift in our sense of the autonomy of the individual, the sense of
the self, and the western traditions acknowledgement of cultural difference
and relativity of values. (The Statesman, July 10, 2014)
Bates assessment of Shakespeares influence on our culture is half a degree
less hyperbolic than Blooms. He claims that Shakespeares works effected a
seismic shift in our sense of the autonomy of the individual. If this were
true, slaves, suffragettes, civil rights activists and political
revolutionaries would be in the habit of quoting Shakespeare, but they are
not, and for good reason.
Shakespeare was in no position to promote autonomy (freedom) or justice for
the common person. His patrons and his paying audiences were largely sexist
and racist elites, nobles, snobs and other greedy, calculating,
war-mongering jingoists. They would have preferred to see the whole world
bow to their queen and become slaves to their budding empire.
Its precisely because Shakespeares works contain no obvious traces of a
progressive mind that Hollywood remains in love with the bard. Hollywood
loves Macbeth for its violence and immorality. In sensationalising the
lowest qualities of the play, Hollywood should not be blamed, for like all
of Shakespeares plays Macbeth was not written to enlighten audiences;
in fact, Macbeth was written to cater to the fears and prejudices of King
James, the fool who suffered from an irrational fear of witches and
traitors.
The play also stoops to propaganda by tactlessly contrasting the evil and
stupid Scottish King Duncan to the unbelievably pure, good and divine
English king. In short, Macbeth does not promote autonomy it promotes
the English monarchy, misogyny and it promotes false and dangerous
stereotypes about pagans.
Back to Bate: what about his claim that Shakespeare was crucial to
developing the Western traditions acknowledgement of cultural difference
and relativity of values?
Again, this claim amounts to a daydream.
Macbeth does not teach us to understand the value of other cultures or to
accept that our values are relative. Instead, the play perpetuates such 16th
century English prejudices as the belief that pagan cultures are practiced
by evil witches, that good women are passive and that foreign kings are
incompetent.
And the foreign characters in Othello and The Merchant of Venice are not
portrayed as intelligent, generous or virtuous characters. Even generous
Antonio does nothing to compensate Shylock for his losses.
As for mad King Lear, well, he might be English, but hes not really
English, not by Elizabethan standards, since hes irredeemably pagan and
ignorant of his duty to keep his country united under one monarch.
Did Shakespeare set most of his tragedies in foreign countries because he
respected their cultural differences? No. He set them abroad because his
audiences considered foreign countries inferior and either deserving of
tragedy or doomed to tragedy.
And the reality is much, much worse. You see, Shakespeares tragedies are
not genuine tragedies designed to make us pity for foreign kings, princes,
commanders, money lenders and so on.
Shakespeares wealthy snobbish English patrons were for the most part
incapable of feeling pity for foreigners. If this seems harsh, imagine
Hollywood screening movies depicting the humanity of foreign rulers
especially those who reject the dominant, capitalist culture and instead
support communism or anarchy.
Or, imagine Hollywood producing a movie about the tragic fate of the
civilian victims of NATOs violence in Libya. No one dares to expect such
bravery from Hollywood, so why do we expect it from a mere court dramatist
like William Shakespeare?
What about our beloved Romeo and Juliet? Does it acknowledge cultural
difference? Well, if it did, its Italian characters would be cast in a
positive light; instead, Romeo and Juliet exaggerates old stereotypes of
women and Italians, portraying the one as weak and meddling, and portraying
Italian men as belligerent, argumentative, lustful and vain. Hows that for
promoting tolerance for cultural difference?
Furthermore, Romeo and Juliet makes a mockery of the Catholic Church.
Honestly, if the play acknowledges cultural differences it does so only to
mock these differences.
This leaves only the claim that Shakespeare communicated the supposedly
enlightened view that values are relative. I cannot seriously believe that
Shakespeare used any of his plays to introduce the notion of relativism to
audiences; his audiences were proud Anglophiles cultural relativism was
the furthest idea from their minds.
Yes, admittedly Hamlet does hint at relativism when he says nothing is but
thinking makes it so, but the sulking, morbid, inept and murderous Hamlet
is hardly held up to audiences as a model thinker let alone as a model
Englishman.
What about Hamlets final decision to voluntarily give his kingdom to
Fortinbras, the Norwegian conqueror? Could this surrender of his kingdom
mean that Hamlet understood that a foreign ruler is as a good as a local one
because all values are relative? More likely, Hamlets voluntary surrender
of his kingdom to a foreigner was intended to highlight his madness with an
act of virtual treason.
While respecting Shakespeares obvious talent as writer, we should
acknowledge that he was not free to use the stage to promote enlightened or
even semi-enlightened views. He was a prisoner of a world that left him no
choice but to echo and peddle its despicable prejudices and illusions. -
Counterpunch.
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in
anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni
katika machafuko"
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