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Dynamic Shakespeare
Hugh M. Richmond is professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley and author of numerous works on Shakespeare. Here is an extract of an address for Southern California English faculty and other educators.
Shakespeare's three plays Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline cover the period of the coming of Christianity to the west.
One of the reasons Shakespeare chose to write the three plays was to have us see what was wrong with pagan classical society in Julius Caesar, and the intuitions of the need for a new order, clearly present in Antony and Cleopatra.
in Cymbeline, a much neglected and misunderstood play, are the beginnings of the new order, which repudiates Roman law and recognizes the fallibility and mercy. The climactic line for me in Cymbeline is the phrase "pardon's the word to all," the idea that everybody needs forgiveness and mercy. That set of plays serves as a kind of epitome of what's wrong with the pagan civilization and what is to characterize the two millennia that follow.
But of course, Shakespeare is not tied to that historical moment. Later, talking about Dark Ages, Hamlet is probably a figure who occurred in pagan Scandinavia just about the time of the coming of Christianity. It's interesting to watch, as you read or see the play Hamlet, the evolution or overt Christian imagery. By the end of the play, the climate has become wholly Christian. Hamlet, for example, has perceived the inadequacy or revenge and the need for tolerance.
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| THE BIBLE AND SHAKESPEARE |
Classic literary works of universal value.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. His personal life remains largely a mystery, but his thoughts have had an enduring effect on the Anglo-Saxon people----and not only Anglo-Saxons, but on minds worldwide.
Shakespeare's characters span the breadth of human life and emotion----love, ambition, revenge, loyalty. So much are his character studies accepted that the works of William Shakespeare along with the Bible are basic mental furniture for many British homes. (Others often must read Shakespeare in translation.)
Why Shakespeare Is Classic
The primary definition of a classic piece of literature is it must have outlived the context of the time of its writing. It must have universal value. It must also express these themes with beauty or in language which conveys emotion or has the power to stir. Both the Bible and Shakespeare live up to this definition----more so than any two bodies of work ever written. The Bible and Shakespeare are in many ways the yard stick against other works are judged.
It follows almost without saying that great writers must also have keen insight into their own contemporary world of events and thoughts. Shakespeare possessed understanding of the times in which he lived, but far beyond that he is honored for his deeper timeless themes of human nature.
This is the real appeal of Shakespeare in a world obsessed with business, technology and the pursuit of material gain. This is why his works have persisted well more than 350 years after the death of their author.
Whether by a unique gift or hereditary and environmental factors, William Shakespeare possessed a rare understanding into the human condition----into man's nature and all the aspects of mind that make men and women both good and evil.
The comparison with the Bible is obvious. It's strength, too is in its timeless, universal value. A theme that dominates the Bible from beginning to end is the struggle of loyal, brave, fatally flawed or merely weak characters---- a gallery of human varieties. Shakespeare's most profound understanding did not emerge all at once. The wisdom and understanding of his plays, written over a period of some 20 years, took time to flourish.
First were the comedies----intriguing stories, commenting brilliantly on human interaction. Next the tragedies----the analysis of man's character, its fatal flaws and their effects. Finally The Tempest. Here the players are in the context of a much bigger picture. The central idea is of someone behind the scenes pulling the strings: We are all actors and actress performing on a world stage with an unseen director.
The characters never fully understand why their part was written like it was. Life as well as the theater is summed up: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
Shakespeare and the Bible
In The Tempest Shakespeare recognized that as he controlled the destiny of his characters, so control of life was beyond individual human power. Recognizing the transient nature of the actors in a play, Shakespeare parallels the Psalmist: "He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust." (Ps. 103:14, NKJ). Thoughts found in Shakespeare mesh with those of the Bible.
William Shakespeare also wrestled, through his characters, with the nature of man----good and evil. His tragedies show the flawed nature of human beings and how we often carry the seeds of our own destruction----pride, ambition, vanity.
But even with his insight, only in his final writings does Shakespeare begin to glimpse a controlling hand. And then his framework of understanding of the mystery of existence remains in poetic metaphor. He has, however, like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, turned our minds to the timeless questions. He went as far as he knew, but the resolution to such a search for the mind of God lies in the converted----enlightened----reading of the divinely inspired words of the Bible.
William Shakespeare put these words into Hamlet's mouth: "What a piece of work is a man; how noble in reason; how infinite in faculty...in apprehension how like a God." A reader of the Bible will consider David's similar words in Psalm 8 and his conclusions about the incredible potential of man.
Shakespeare, like many others, was questioning in a time of great change, an age of discovery.
In the Elizabethan age, people believed in "a great chain of being." The Shakespearean scholar, E.M.W. Tillyard wrote: "The chain stretched form the foot of God's throne to the meanest of inanimate objects. Every speck of creation was a link in the chain."
Today, cut loose from the chain, people feel abandoned and helpless in the universe. Something tangible in Shakespeare shows even modern man can have a place in an ordered world. It's an order we seem to have lost.
The Bible also speaks of such an ordered world----one soon to appear. This biblical message contains a great plan and purpose to the plot of human life. It tells of the mystery of man on earth and his ultimate role into the universe. The Bible sheds a clear light on good and evil, and why we were born into a world Shakespeare so brilliantly portrayed.
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e-Book Will Christ Return?
