|
|
Shakespeare, Cervantes and St. George all have one thing in
common - April 23rd.
That date marks St. George's Day. It is also, by general consent,
the date in 1616 when both Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare
died. And - with a historical neatness almost too good to be credible
- it is claimed as the date, in 1564, when Shakespeare was born.
St. George is the patron saint of several states, provinces, regions
and cities, including Catalunya and England. Though now widely accepted
by theologians as a purely legendary figure, he is reputed to have
come from a variety of places including modern-day Israel/Palestine,
Libya and Germany. The popular story is that he lived around the fourth
century and saved the virginal daughter of a local ruler by slaying
the dragon that was holding her captive. At the point where the dying
beast's blood soaked into the soil, a bush of red roses miraculously
sprang up, and St. George has ever since been closely associated with
red roses and fire-breathing dragons - the latter surely a clear indication
that he must be a few sword-lengths away from reality.
His cult grew in England and was adopted by the then anglophile Catalans
ten years after Shakespeare's birth; in 1667 his feast day officially
became a holiday throughout Catalunya. Quite when he became the patron
saint of England is not clear, though we know that Shakespeare's King
Henry V exhorted his troops to reattack during the siege of Harfleur
in 1515 with the words: "Cry 'God for Harry, England and Saint
George!'"
If we know little for certain about St. George, then we know little
more about Shakespeare himself. But does it matter? The validity of
a national and/or religious icon is important. If we find - and can
prove - that he or she did not exist, then we must also discount the
deeds associated with that icon. Many, of course, will not - which
is the shining triumph of belief over knowledge.
But the validity of a writer's life is a different matter . . . for
the texts remain - and, excepting those people whose interest in the
author is purely biographical - it is the texts that are of prime
importance.
Did William Shakespeare write 37 plays (plus at least two attributed
to him which do not survive)? Or more? Or less? There are considerable
doubts, for example, about his authorship of the three parts of King
Henry VI (and, frankly, were I Shakespeare I'd be quite happy
to disown them).
Until - and even when - he and his contemporaries established the
worth of their 'modern' English playwriting, the author was considered
less important than the play or the leading actors. Copyright did
not exist and nobody balked at lifting words, plots and ideas from
other sources - classical, historical or modern. The Merchant of
Venice was based on a story called "Il Pecorone", in
The Adventures of Giannetto by Giovanni Fiorentino, about a
Jewish creditor demanding a pound of flesh from a defaulting Christian
debtor, who is saved by the advocacy of a 'lady of Belmont', the wife
of his friend. Also, in the mediaeval collection of tales, Gesta
Romanorum (new English translation, 1577), there appears the trial
of a lover's character by choosing between three caskets of gold,
silver and lead. These two sources gave Shakespeare his entire story.
 The
Elizabethan writers' 'finished' works were also liberally altered
during rehearsal. It is no fanciful caprice to imagine a breathless
Shakespeare rushing into The Globe with his latest play and, say,
Richard Burbage (the theatre's major shareholder and its leading tragic
actor) scanning his own key scenes and saying: "Look, Will, how
about instead of 'Should I live or should I die', we put 'To be, or
not to be'?" Further, we know that the written plays (collected
from various sources) were then edited - often very heavily - by their
subsequent printers.
Who really wrote 'Shakespeare'? If we simply mean the poems and plays
widely attributed to someone called 'Shakespeare', it surely doesn't
matter . . . except, of course, that it's more convenient to refer
to "William Shakespeare" than to "the person(s) who
wrote (or allegedly wrote), partly or wholly, those works such as
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, etc. etc."
So what about the plays themselves that were written by, er . . .
Shakespeare?
The new reader or playgoer will possibly first be struck by their
sharp perception of human character. Even when writing about kings
and princes and peers, Shakespeare presents them as 'ordinary' people
with complex actions and reactions to their circumstances. And, though
not perhaps a proto-feminist, his ability to examine and observe all
people enabled him to present strong and interesting women while also
concentrating on the poor and disadvantaged. In short - with some
exceptions, particularly in the earlier plays - his characters were
not 'cardboard' but, like you and me, multi-dimensional. (Even the
'evil' Richard III of Tudor propaganda is shown as intelligent, charming,
courageous and with a sharp sense of humour.) Not surprisingly, his
plays thus still have a relevance and vital immediacy today: a production
of Coriolanus in Paris in the 1930s caused the fall of the
Daladier government; Richard II, which deals with the deposition
of a monarch, was taken off the London theatre during the abdication
crisis of King Edward VIII; the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia
frequently staged Shakespeare as a propaganda argument against the
capitalist West.
Startling, too, is Shakespeare's language. He wrote in English at
a time when Latin was still considered the language of 'serious' academic
works; as such, he was understood by all classes. And, in the then
brand-new medium of theatre, he appropriated the fast-developing language
of English with breath-taking inventiveness, single-handedly testing
its grammatical flexibility, changing its pronunciation and vastly
enriching its vocabulary with hundreds of new phrases and nearly 2,000
new words. Thanks to 'the immortal bard' we now have, for example:
snow-white, fragrant, frugal, fretful, hurry, and dwindle.
Shakespeare's story lines and broad range of subject matter, his effective
mix of verse and prose, the keen observation of human nature, the
dramatic energy and his bold use of language all mark a canon of literature
which was - and is - exciting, intellectually challenging and thoroughly
entertaining. What more do you want . . .? Well, if you really do
want something more, here is a short quiz
for bardolaters everywhere.
|
|
|