What Would Shakespeare Blog

Recently, I accept the challenge to imagine what Shakespeare, the greatest writer in our language that ever was, would blog about if he were alive today. I found the experience both amusing and profound. I'm sure he would have laughed at the same pretensions and lunacy as we do, just as I am sure he would be just as depressed at how little we have learned from those before us. We are still the same people, just in different times and settings and, unfortunately, armed with better and more destructive technology.

Here is what I wrote:

One thing about William Shakespeare, he never met a human being he couldn’t bump up into an archetype. His characters were never just people. That’s not how his brain worked. He looked for meaning and played with life by asking questions. What if Aristotle’s idea of the tragic hero could be tweaked, maybe turned upside down, and used to show how we grubby human beings fall short of anything like true heroism? What if a sociopath were to be dropped into the middle of unreflective, morally complacent people—who would win? What if an ambitious man were suddenly shown a short-cut to real power, how would he handle it? Shakespeare populated his world with people faced with moral, ethical, and emotional problems and moved them on his chessboard while he worked out his answers.


In the end, his “answers” had to be partial because unknowable things can be resolved only in the acceptance that “the rest is silence.” But what a journey he took us on.

Shakespeare took his characters where he found them: from history books, from the ranks of the royal courtiers, from everyday people around him. He turned every one into a moral or intellectual lesson. He found no shortage of material in sixteenth-century England, just as he would find no shortage now. The world is still populated by the same greedy, unaware, willfully ignorant, morally complacent, and unreflective types. He would understand modern politics because he had seen it all before.

For example, he wrote about a king who confused the power of his position with his personal authority. “A dog’s obeyed in office,” was the sad lesson that king had to learn. He could have been writing about George Bush. But the lesson he might have drawn from the Bush administration is that just because one has the power to do something (like invade another country) does not mean one should. At the end of the Shakespeare play, the stage is littered with the bodies of the king’s family (you can never just remove a targeted piece of evil like Saddam Hussein, Shakespeare told us, everyone must suffer in the process). The stage at the end of the Bush drama is littered with the deaths of thousands of people who gave their lives abroad and the near death of our economy. A dram of evil, indeed.

What would he have made of Bill Clinton? Here was a man capable of doing good and admirable in so many ways, yet brought down by his own weaknesses. The tragic flaw, Shakespeare might have pointed out, just as Aristotle described it. The rueful Clinton, apparently having learned his lesson, now says he indulged in a sordid affair “because he could.” Prime Shakespeare material. He might have said the same about Representative Weiner.

Or how about the swath of Tea Party candidates? “A flag upon the waters,” Shakespeare would have said. He never liked popular movements anyway. He didn’t trust the people not to be ignorant and just go for popularity.

All in all, Shakespeare wrote about power. His subjects were courtiers, hangers-on become pawns to those in power, women who encouraged murder but wanted to be blameless, parents who destroyed their children, and psychopaths who ruined others just for the experience. Today he easily could find comparable if not exact duplicates. With the internet, he would only need to read the headlines.

Shakespeare was fascinated by the getting, the keeping, the abusing, and the losing of political advantage. Politics and history were his natural milieu. He showed us the truth of Santayana’s comment that those unaware of the past are doomed to repeat it. So, as we head into yet another election cycle, it would behoove us to remember this cynical and yet hopeful observer of humanity, who would advise us that nothing is new under the sun. We could do a lot worse than to go back and and reread his plays.

Growing Old Graciously

Growing old is something of a conundrum: for something we are told exists only in our minds, people seem to spend every waking hour thinking about it. The problem is that no one quite knows what to do. Even our media is hopelessly conflicted on the subject.

On the one hand, the media hits us with ads for every manner of potion, lotion, hair dye, viagra, and other chemical known to humankind, all designed to prevent or reverse time. We're shown admiring portraits of people who have surgically tightened, smoothed, and sucked away their age, the implication being that if we look like "before" pictures it must mean we are lazy or cheap. Into this category fall those "raging against the light" (to quote Dylan Thomas) and those older men and women who pursue youth by literally pursuing youths, using the mantra, "if I can get away with/afford it, why not?" No one HAS to look old is the mantra that keeps plastic surgeons in their Ferraris.

On the other hand, we are given unctious sermons on accepting ourselves as we are and growing old "gracefully," which seems to mean not whining about getting old, accepting whatever stereotype of age our culture decides to imnpose on us, and showing up on time to babysit the grandchildren. Usually, though, it's tied to appearance as few overweights (even the mild forms) are said to be aging "well."

If we take all this nonsense seriously--which I can't--what, then, are we left with? The apparent choice seems either to take action against a sea of sags ( the solution approved by a society that links appearance to success) or get off the boat and sink beneath the waves (a solution not favored by people who still have alert minds).

Well, I neither desire nor wish to pay for growing old "well," nor do I wish to recede into a rocking chair waiting for the ultimate call. Instead, I propose to grow old "graciously." Allow me to explain.

You are at a busy airport with heavy luggage and someone you don't know offers to help. What do you do?

a.  Say you are perfectly capable of handling your things. You're not a cripple, thank you very much. You've got enough money to pay for a porter if you want one.
b.  Agree to the help but complain about how things are so rushed these days and warn the person not to damage your suitcase.
c. Although perfectly capable, accept the help with a smile and thanks.

If you chose a), you're still trying to compete with the big dogs in the world of power. If b) you have sunk into self-pity. If c) you are gracious.  The person who offered help to a) will walk away muttering about old farts. If b) the person will feel used and manipulated. If c) the person will feel they have done a good deed and, who knows, maybe they'll be a little bit kinder to other people for the rest of the day. The younger folk are so unkind to one another these days, a little genuine humanity and concern for others might go a long way.

Little acts of kindness--the pat on the shoulder I got from the waiter at lunch today, the unexpected offer to open a water bottle with a stuck cap, doors held open a little extra long for me, help pulling my suitcase off the airport carousel--can only be done for children and seniors because we are believed safe to show kindness to. They don't think we're still competing or slighting others--frankly, because we're supposed to be mature and grown beyond egocentrism and greedily grasping for a world that is no longer ours. Some of us anyway.

I believe growing old graciously means providing a model of maturity and compassion for those behind us still locked in the rat race. We don't have to be rich, looking fifteen years younger, and flattening and shaping our aging bodies to compete with the people to whom youth really belongs. We carry with us the marks life has put on us, but we have one thing youth doesn't: we have experience and instead of spouting about the good old days, it would behoove us to behave as a model of them.

Fortunately, experience is one thing that's safe from botox.