Sky Gilbert - Shakespeare Beyond Science: When Poetry Was The World

ESSENTIAL ESSAYS SERIES 74

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TORONTO CHICAGO BUFFALO LANCASTER (U.K.)
2020

Copyright 2020, Sky Gilbert and Guernica Editions Inc.
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Cover and interior design: Errol F. Richardson
Cover image: Nicholas Hilliards miniature:
Man Grasping a Hand from a Cloud
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2019949191
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Shakespeare beyond science : when poetry was the world / Sky Gilbert.
Names: Gilbert, Sky, 1952- author.
Series: Essential essays series ; 74.
Description: Series statement: Essential essays series ; 74
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190177306 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190177349 | ISBN
9781771835039 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771835046 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781771835053 (Kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616Knowledge and learning. | LCSH: Shakespeare,
William, 1564-1616Philosophy. | LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616Language. |
LCSH:
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616KnowledgeScience.
Classification: LCC PR3001 .G55 2020 | DDC 822.3/3dc23

Dedicated to Lynne Kositsky and Roger Stritmatter:
for their impeccable scholarship and inspiration

Our true intent is all for your delight,

We are not here that you should repent you.

The actors are at hand, and by their show,

You shall know all that you are like to know.

A Midsummer Nights Dream 5.1. (punctuation; mine)

The work of art does not aim to convey something else, just itself.

Wittgenstein

W hy does Shakespeare fascinate? One might argue that there are far too many books on this subject already. In fact why study Shakespeare at all? Certainly Shakespeare supports a booming cottage industry quite literally as the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust trots about daily, escorting eager tourists to cottages in Stratford where Shakespeare is said to have been born. As devils advocate I remember that lone voice (but he spoke for so many of us!) in my high school English class, who after a particularly complex and taxing analysis of a difficult passage from the bard (we didnt have No Fear Shakespeare back then) whined: If thats what he meant, why didnt the guy just come out and say it? This is more than just the howl of a philistine; it cuts to the very essence of what makes Shakespeare relevant as we approach the quarter mark of the 21st century.

The secret lies in Shakespeares language not in the characters, the moral ideas or the meaning. My approach to Shakespeare is not a popular one. Not because we are too stupid to grasp it, but because it is related to an antique and significantly alien manner of perceiving the world. In the late 1500s in England western culture was experiencing a monumental paradigm shift. Shakespeare was at the very centre of it, and contrary to what you might imagine he was, to some degree, a soldier in the old, medieval guard. So a true understanding of Shakespeare that is, if we allow ourselves to be bewitched in the manner that he meant to bewitch us will literally deliver us to another world.

This is not to suggest that Shakespeare delivers us backward in time although, technically speaking, his work much more resembles medieval writing than it does modern writing. But ultimately, a true understanding of Shakespeare will take us forward. (Please note that for reasons that will become clear I hesitate to say it will improve us.) Of course if you have a teleological and optimistic view of human history you may not agree with an assertion that a confirmed medievalist like Shakespeare has much to offer us today. But my view of history is more cyclical. At any rate there is nothing more valuable than being able to step out of the box that we are in, and gaze at the world in a different way.

A warning. This book contains a critique of science and I would argue that science is the driving force behind modern western thought. Mathematics and geometry are ancient, but what we call science today that is, the scientific method that tests truth, partnered with the logic to argue for that truth was effectively discovered by Francis Bacon, during Shakespeares lifetime. I am not anti-technology, or anti-science. But science is arguably our new philosophy, our new religion, and to quote Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Here I do not make the common mistake of assuming an idea expressed by one of Shakespeares characters is also Shakespeares. Instead I insist that Hamlets opinion is also Shakespeares because this idea pervades the very form and content of Shakespeares work.

Appreciation for Shakespeare traditionally rests on detaching his work from the language; on confirming that Shakespeare is more than simply a poet. Technically speaking, Shakespeare was not merely a poet. He was a dramatist who wrote poetic plays with vibrant characters and engaging plots. Even poems such as Venus and Adonis (and Shakespeares Sonnets) are composed primarily of dialogue, i.e. speech. But speech is language, and especially in a medieval context speech is rhetoric. And Shakespeare, himself a rhetorician, would have considered human speech to be the primary element of his work.

How can I be so presumptuous as to claim I can peer into Shakespeares mind? Well its not an unusual thing to do, these days. There are numerous literary critiques of Shakespeare based on conjecture, as the facts we have about the life of the man from Stratford are sparse. Shakespeare critics routinely base their analysis on conjecture about Shakespeares imagined biography, personality and moods.

Take Henry J. Pauls book, The Royal Play of Macbeth, which was the accepted wisdom on the Scottish play for many years. Paul decrees that the first three acts of Macbeth were written precisely before the end of March 1606 The proof that Paul offers for this is purely circumstantial. We have no evidence to support the idea that Shakespeare wrote