Shakespeare Lied

Copyright © 2024, Sky Gilbert and Guernica Editions Inc.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2023952541

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Shakespeare lied / Sky Gilbert.

Names: Gilbert, Sky, 1952- author.

Series: Essential essays series ; 85.

Description: Series statement: Essential essays ; 85

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230620205 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230621929

ISBN 9781771839037 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771839044 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Criticism and interpretation. |

LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Philosophy.

LCGFT: Literary criticism.

Classification: LCC PR2986 .G55 2024 | DDC 822.3/3—dc23

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Prologue:

Art

Chapter One:

Skepticism

Chapter Two:

Gorgias

Chapter Three:

Camp

Chapter Four:

Didacticism

Chapter Five:

Ovid

Chapter Six:

Pain

Epilogue:

Lies

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Landmarks

Cover

Half Title Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Prologue

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Prologue: Art

Modern art has rejected the mystical and the intuitive for the discursive and logical. Just go to any gallery these days and read the befuddling explanations that accompany the often ugly or boring creations. Conceptual art necessitates intellectual understanding — articulation that is quasi-scientific analysis. Serial composers like Arnold Schoenberg have made musical composition a function of mathematics. The 20th century has witnessed the much vaunted ‘demise of the novel.’ Of course people are still reading and writing popular fiction, but ex-novelist David Shields’ book Reality Hunger (2010) celebrates his abandonment of narrative for writing that is more ‘real.’ Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-part opus My Struggle (he is considered by many to be the successor to both Joyce and Hemingway) is autobiographical fiction, describing ordinary daily occurrences in minute detail, using the real names of friends and family. Also significant is the recent rise of the neologism ‘creative non-fiction’: artists write creatively about actual people and events.

Today theatre collectives and directors produce works in which ‘real people’ (often non-actors, not playing ‘characters’) speak directly about their own social and political ideas, preaching noble notions about the environment, transphobia or anti-racism, in an endless array of one-person shows that resemble university lectures. Jordan Tannahill’s recent book, Theatre of the Unimpressed, speaks approvingly of plays in which actors play themselves. Such plays have no plots, sets or costumes. Tannahill quotes theatre director Jacob Zimmer’s contempt for traditional stage illusion: ‘House to half. Stage to half. House out. Stage out. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. Lights up. I’m done! I’m done entirely!’ (29)¹ In contrast, this new avant-garde ‘reality theatre’ rarely tries to deceive us with artifice, and many modern theatre artists regard such attempts with contempt.

Universities now provide students practical information that will make them more employable, and more and more humanities courses are being cut. Since the 1930s, the humanities have felt the pressure to be more ‘scientific.’ In literature, this resulted in the ‘New Criticism,’ distancing literary theory from surmise, and excising speculation about the author’s life and beliefs. The study of literature has given way to a literary science called semiotics. It’s notable that Foucault (one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century) began as a novelist, but eventually became a philosopher obsessed with the scientific analysis of language and words.

Our right brain is concerned with intuition and the ‘big picture’; the left brain is obsessed with logic and detail. In The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist theorizes that we have left right brain function behind. We live in a scientific world dominated by the left brain. His theory is predicated on the notion that the left brain and the right were designed to work together, but the right brain — which was originally intended to be the master — has gradually ceded its power to the left (originally intended to be its emissary). For nearly four centuries western culture has rejected intuition, metaphor, and magic in favour of certainty, truth, and scientific knowledge. McGilchrist posits that, in the necessary partnership between the two sectors of the brain, the right side must always be the master. If it is not, we will come to relish the substitution of information, and information gathering, for knowledge … accompanied by a vast expansion of bureaucracy, systems of abstraction and control (429).² Inevitably there will be increasing focus on material things at the expense of the living. Social cohesion, and the bonds between person and person … would be disconnected, perhaps actively disrupted. (431)³

The left brain cultural takeover began halfway through Shakespeare’s life. Shakespeare wove fantastical narratives of magic, ghosts, and chivalric knights and their ladies during a general movement away from the sacred studies of grammar and rhetoric which had dominated the curriculum since the Middle Ages. Grammar (which does not have the same meaning in our modern use of the word) entailed studying life through poetry, not scientific observation. Poetry was considered truer than truth. Rhetoric theorized that language itself was noble, and that practical articulation of beautiful speech would make men better. But the beginning of the 17th century saw the popularization of the teachings of philosopher Petrus Ramus and the foundation of The Royal Society. In his Dialecticae partitiones, Ramus removed rhetoric from its pride of place in the academic curriculum. The Royal Society was instituted in 1660 to facilitate scientific experimentation and the logical propagation of knowledge. Shakespeare was at the centre of a culture war. His sympathies were with the medieval obsession with magic and mystery, over the rising philosophical tide of logic and fact.

Shakespeare’s work often seems today to be written in another language, thus making it incomprehensible to many. But there is another aspect of Shakespeare’s work that befuddles us. It is pure fiction, fantastical fantasy. For many young people — trained to nurture and respect their left brain function — this is a stumbling block. For though they may nurture a guilty passion for entertainment — in the form of super-hero movies, the fantasy world of video games, and Harry Potter — they expect more from art. Recently, when teaching Hamlet to a first year university class, I asked students: ‘Is Hamlet mad?’ The response was: ‘It’s not right to question whether or not Hamlet is mad. If people self-identify as having a mental illness, we must respect that and not challenge them.’ As fiction itself becomes somewhat of an anachronism, students find it increasingly difficult to understand what it is.

What is valuable about Shakespeare is not only the essential beauty of his work, but his obsession with art, poetry, and representation. And though Shakespeare is certainly more than aware of the dangers of representation, the most eloquent argument he makes in favour of art is evident in the style of his work. Shakespeare lied. Shakespeare’s plays and poems do not constitute a record of his time or cogent, useful historical analysis, and they certainly do not offer a prescription for a better life: They are significantly morally ambivalent. Thus, those who live in a world dominated by left brain activity might wonder — why bother? But Shakespeare’s work is immensely valuable because the prevailing modern obsession with science would have us abjure lying. Picasso is reported to have said that ‘art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.’ But it would be more accurate to say that art creates another reality — one that is different than the world we know from day to day. Oscar Wilde said: ‘Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art’ (55).⁴ Art, in this way, is valuable to us — more valuable to us perhaps than life — because it is a ‘thing-in-itself’ and, as such, it does not stand for something else.

***

In 1979 I founded a theatre — Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. I came bursting out of the closet, trumpets blaring, at age 29. Soon I was a small-time celebrity in Toronto after writing Drag Queens on Trial. A photo of me, dressed as Tarzan’s Jane, was on the front page of the entertainment section of the Toronto Star. (I wore nothing but leopardskin rags, artfully placed.) I ran Buddies for seventeen years. After Buddies acquired a 350-seat theatre in downtown Toronto and grew into Canada’s pre-eminent gay and lesbian theatre, I left.

Since then I have been writing and teaching. During Buddies’ 40th anniversary season, I was delighted when artistic director Evalyn Parry announced a reading of my 1986 hit play Drag Queens in Outer Space. A week before the reading I wrote a controversial poem for my blog. I received an email from Evalyn Parry saying the ‘community’ was up in arms about my poem. I politely suggested Evalyn ignore the hysteria. In a return email she stated that, due to the offensive nature of my poem, the reading of my play would be cancelled. I was thus forced to remove myself from any association with the company that I founded many years ago.

The objection to my poem came from those who have very different notions about art than I do. Increasingly, people are not able to differentiate between rhetorical speech and daily conversation. My poem was treated as conversation and analyzed for its truthfulness. Yes, it was somewhat banal in style and not poetic in the traditional sense, so it might not appear to have been a poem; or, it might have been judged by some to be a bad poem. But the fact that my poem was unpoetic, or a lousy poem, is not why it outraged so many. They were engaged because they disagreed with what they perceived to be its message. But rhetoric can and must be differentiated from daily speech — or from scientific discovery — by the author’s intentions. The purpose of art and rhetoric is only to be beautiful; poetry must be judged on its beauty alone.

Everyday speech is denotative language, utilizing words to express ideas, opinions, and information. Rhetoric, on the other hand, does not aspire to clarity. Rhetoric utilizes connotative language carefully crafted in a certain way in order to achieve a desired effect. In the best poetry, the style is the meaning. And rather than truth, we are presented with warring — yet engaging — visions.

Instead of judging the beauty of my poem, the critics treated it as a container for ideas. For them, the job of the audience is to tease out the specific meaning the author intended; the form is treated merely as a disguise. My