The Internet Monk 

"the power of opinion, the phenomenon of speech, the impact of truth"

A Webjournal edited by Michael Spencer

Why I Love The Bard 

(Or How Will Shakespeare Changed my Life)

by Michael Spencer

I was in the fifth grade at Lincoln elementary school. 1965. My little world consisted of our extremely lower class neighborhood in a western Kentucky town, my family and friends, my school and a bit of morning television. There were no books in my house. My parents weren't readers and what interest in books I had came from teacher's like my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Craig, introducing me to the library. The power of literature and drama was absent in my life.

Until Will showed up. Will Shakespeare.

Will came to my school one afternoon disguised as a group of traveling players. They were performing parts of Romeo and Juliet, and something called MacBeth. I had no idea what was going on, except there was a fight in the first play, and something in the second I will never forget. Blood. Lots of it. Dripping from the hands of the most frightening couple I'd ever seen. It was better than the movies. I had bad dreams for a week. I couldn't explain it to anyone because I didn't really get the story. But it was powerful, special, and only the beginning.

Will followed me to junior high, where in the eighth grade he met me in Mrs. Abbott's English class where we read, in parts, and in their entirety, Julius Caesar and, most memorably, Romeo and Juliet. This time I was ready, the subject matter being of more interest to thirteen year olds. It was, much like C.S. Lewis's account of his first view of a garden, the discovery of beauty in a world beyond my own. It was the discovery of words heard in a new way, a first encounter with the primeval power of the the word to create a reality more appealing than the reality of the senses. And, of course, romantic love in its wildness, wonder and weeping.

We were treated to the Zefferelli film at a local theater. Again, Will took us to another world. This time the words and images combined to forever banish from the mind any notion that Shakespeare might be boring. He might be far beyond us, but he would never be boring. 

And then, Will disappeared from my education. High School was trendy in the seventies and Will was an elective I avoided. College was too busy introducing me to the rot of contemporary literature to introduce me to Hamlet. Yes, I did not read Hamlet until I was 42 years old. But I can't get ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, Shakespeare was not on my mind for the next several years- decades, actually.

Then, in 1982, I was living in Louisville and we somehow scraped together enough money to buy back row, Saturday Matinee tickets to a season at Actor's Theater, one of America's great city theater companies. And that first year, I saw the Tempest, and later, Anthony and Cleopatra. I was drawn back to Shakespeare, this time with more confidence that I could understand him.

So over the next two decades, I slowly became friends with Will Shakespeare. With the well known plays, and then with the histories and lesser works. I discovered Shakespeare on film, read biographies, discovered the Sonnets and became somewhat of an addict when it came to Hamlet. I befriended Will's other friends, and found that there is no fraternity that goes throughout the years and cultures like those who admire Shakespeare. Except maybe people who admire Jesus.

Shakespeare taught me the possibilities of language and the complexity of character. Under his guidance, I found the lines between comedy and tragedy and drama were not what I at first thought. Those lines were the lines holding together every human life.

I discovered that Will tended to make poets of those who spent time with him, and I surprised myself at times. I found that Will knew his Bible, but didn't necessarily believe it, but its lessons impressed him anyway. In his characters I found the greatest examples of the glory and grief of fallen human beings.

Somehow, I transmitted my love of Shakespeare to my family. My daughter saw King Lear at the Globe in London this summer. My son loves Twelfth Night. I cry at Shakespeare in Love. I am a card carrying Shakespeare fool.

Yes, I have noticed that Shakespeare is probably not a Christian. I remind myself that he lived in turbulent times, when the label of Christian was mightily abused, and he experienced some of that abuse himself. What is he? I find him rather the existentialist, but in his heart, I find a compassionate observer of the human play. And, in his words and characters and poems, I frequently find myself. For we are all Lear. All Hamlet. All Falstaff. All lost in the woods looking for someone to love. We are all living lives of mistaken identity and we are all fortune's fools. Just as I find myself in the pages of Holy Scripture and in the parables of Jesus.

Most of my friends chaff at his Elizabethan English. I tell them it quickly becomes second nature, and it is actually a good idea to pay attention to punctuation. They question whether an uneducated man could write these things. How absurd. They say he was gay. How predictable. Christians find him classic, but profane. The contemporary spirit finds him too....contemporary. Yet all these critics are less than ants in the greatness of Shakespeare's influence. They are pebbles in his Grand Canyon.

Greatness, as a human measurement, can be totally insignificant. No one knew this better than Shakespeare. Yet, at the same time, Shakespeare's greatness is in his universality. His words of human experience, tragedy, comedy and love reach beyond his time, our time and any time to reach what is timeless in us. Were we the empty accidents of fortune Will worried we might be, we would never recognize his greatness. But we are not accidents, but intentional. And Will Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived. Like God, he created a universe of men, women, choices and consequences whose glory illuminates God's own ways, for those who will turn on the lights to see.

Michael@internetmonk.com                                                                             Post a Comment