D. Why we Read?: The Mind of the Bard

In the Introduction and seed blog two reasons were listed as to the focus of my self-directed learning for class this semester. The first was to come to know the Bard through biographies. The second was to understand why we read Shakespeare.  My objective for this "final blog" is to show the reader how to learn to see Shakespeare from his work. What I hope to convey from this section is that why we read Shakespeare is because of who He is. The two different questions of why we read Shakespeare and what kind of person is Shakespeare has the same answer.What many of the most renowned biographies and studies of Shakespeare conclude is that Shakespeare’s passion was for entertaining. Later in this section we will show how He truly was a entertainer at heart. By understanding the mind of the entertainer we can come to understand Shakespeare. However He was not just any entertainer, he was born with the attributes, passion, and misfortune that gave him the ability to be the world’s greatest poet/author/entertainer/playwright and hence why we read him.     

Index of this section
A. Why do we Read Shakespeare?

B. Science of the Mind: Shakespeare's Depth
C.Shakespeare's Vicissitudes: The Breadth
D. Validation & Understanding

Why do we Read Shakespeare?

          

 The first few pages of the general introduction of the book “The Necessary Shakespeare” by Bevington introduces the reader to Shakespeare. In the quotation below on page X of the book it lists the two reasons, above all others, for His fame.

“The general view down through the centuries is that Shakespeare is an extraordinary poet and that he excels in the breadth and incisiveness of his depiction of human experience.”

The two major reasons why Shakespeare is SO famous is His extraordinary poetry and “depiction of the human experience.” A book by D.J. Palmer also identifies the same conclusion as Bevington, “Shakespeare's ability to reconcile his career as a professional entertainer with his abiding speculative interest in the nature of man.” Shakespeare’s ability to “show us how we work” and “change the way we access the characters in the theater” (Greenblatt) is what originally made him a famous playwright. (Bevington) In the “Success” section of this blog, it quotes Bevington's proof that the characters in His plays is what people enjoyed most about His original work. But how does understanding what made Shakespeare famous tell us about who he is?

            As before mentioned Shakespeare’s passion was entertaining. Evidence that His passion was entertaining is that he continued to act even after he became a famous playwright and actors were looked down upon in Shakespeare's time. Shakespeare knowingly jeopardized His status as a play write to peruse His passion of acting. In the book “Acting Skills for Life” in chapter two, Ron Cameron outlines six important acting principles for the success of any actor. The first important principle listed deals with having confidence and making good “dramatic choices” that appeal to your audience. Understanding what appeals to your audience is part of what was pointed out by Cameron to be a successful actor. It was listed first because it is the most important according to Cameron. The second important principle listed is “Be able to justify your choices”. In this section Cameron makes it clear that as an actor you must be able to answer questions about your performance so your audience is clear about your performance. Cameron gives seven questions an actor must be able to answer in order to make the performance clear. The questions you must be able to ansewer about your performance is, “who are you, where are you, when is this taking place, what is the character feeling, why is your character saying these words, What is my motivation, and What is happening in this scene". The second most important principle of acting besides making good acting choices to appeal to your audience is to understand your character completely. Shakespeare was a successful actor (Bevington) and would have had to excel at the above skills stated to be successful because the basic principles of acting are just as true in Shakespeare's time as they are now. To be the successful actor Shakespeare was He would first have to identify what was appealing to His audience so as to make "good dramatic choices". To be appealing,  He would need to "justify" his performance by getting inside the head of the characters that He played and ask Himself the "important questions" listed above about his character. The more He could get inside the head of the characters He acted in retrospect of what appealed to His audience, the more entertaining and better actor He would be. In the eight years Shakespeare spent just acting (not play writing), He must have been constantly analyzing His character and His audience, mastering the skills needed to entertain the crowd. His ability to analyze and learn what characteristics appealed to His audience as an actor, allowed Him to see what appealed to His audience when He became a playwright. The skill of searching His audience mind allowed Shakespeare to later in his career as a play write, learn what other characters, events, and experiences people would enjoy and He should write in his play's. Everything that He learned about whats appealing from acting transferred over to writing plays with a little adjustment. From acting, Shakespeare also learned what issues were appealing to all audiences. 

               Shakespeare had the ability to learn and address subjects that appealed to all audiences (not just rich or poor, smart or dumb, black or white etc) and He could  "extra ordinary depict the human experience" in relation to those subjects.  For example, Shakespeare had many plays that included the subject of war. There has never been a time in recorded history that at least one civilization hasn't been at war on earth. It can also be said that every civilization on earth today has had some type of armed conflict, so the subject of war applies to everyone. When Shakespeare wrote His plays there was many conflicts between countries. Within Shakespeare's lifetime England was in many armed conflicts, so the topic of war was something everyone could relate to and was interested in. In the plays with war in them, Shakespeare addressed thoughts and events that are associated with war such as honor, justification for war, etc. Any civilization that experiences war can entertainingly relate to the characters. It wasn't just his ability to relate but the "extra ordinary depiction". One example in the play Henry V when King Henry gives his Saint Crispian's day speech. In the play King Henry's soldiers are outnumbered and complain that they wish they had more men. King Henry then gives a speech about how he wants not one more man because if they win he wants more glory from this battle but if they are going to lose the battle its better that they lose less country men. Henry also brings up the issue that the men he fights with are his brothers and he would not trust fighting with other men. King Henry's "brothers" are what give him strength to continue to fight.  Shakespeare use King Henry's speech to "show us how we work" as you hear the speech you can help but get goose bumps as a guy because generally speaking every guy loves the action of war, honor, and brotherhood. Those topics addressed are also a part of war. Steven Spielberg, a famous movie writer today, has used the same issues in his war movies such as the movie Saving Private Ryan. One of Spielberg's movies is so similar in topic to King Henry's Saint Crispan's Day Speech, He actually used a line from that Speech for the title of the movie, called Band of Brothers. The source of Shakespeare’s entertaining ability’s was to get inside people’s heads and learn what appeals to them, as a result of his skills as an actor. In the 1890s a man named Sigmund Freud developed an entire study dedicated to understand peoples mind. 

Science of the Mind: Shakespeare's Depth

Freud’s life work was the discovery of a new study called Psychoanalysis. Freud's discovery of the new study was greatly influenced by Shakespeare’s work. Biographers say that age 8 Freud began to read and study Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is directly attributed to Freud’s discovery of the Oedipus Rex Theory. Freud wrote many articles that compare his many theory’s to Shakespeare’s characters in his plays. Psychoanalysis is the study of the human minds and psychological behavior. The three main components of Psychoanalysis is

1.     A method of investigation of the mind and the way one thinks

2.     A systematized set of theories about human behavior

3.     A method of treatment of psychological or emotional behaviors

Shakespeare did not establish any theories about human behavior however He inspired them and He investigated the "minds and the way one thinks" and that lead to His beloved characters and great success. “Shakespeare could have quite possibly been the first Psychoanalysis.” (Holland) Shakespeare's ability to  psychoanalyze His characters in retrospect to what appealed to his audience, allowed him to create the depth in them, along with his skills as a poet as previously mentioned. From a short look into His life and a few facts in retrospect of how His mind works, it can be seen that His life's misfortunes is what caused His fortune.

Shakespeare's Vicissitudes: The Breadth

         Shakespeare’s life experiences was not like any other, the instability of the Elizabethan age affected Shakespeare directly. As a boy He went from rich and well educated to poor and no education, as a result of Queen Elizabeth changing the national religion in part. He went from well-respected, established, and highly educated as a youth to no respect, no education, and transient as a teenager. Then in His twenty's He became more wealthy and influential then most men, many of which who were double His age. One idea is that the instability of Shakespeare’s life is what lead to His ability to map minds and the "depth" as mentioned in the previous paragraph. It has been found that children that are forced to be with with many different people, places, and situations as a result of an unstable childhood, will often understand much more and faster how to influence people around them. This ability to understand how to appeal to people is a defense mechanism in children to try to establish some control in their life. However the many unique ups and downs of Shakespeare's plays is believed to have lead to the "breadth" not "depth" "of the human experience." as mentioned in the introductory paragraph of this section. Because Shakespeare went from the middle upper class life as a youth to the low class as a teenager and then to upper upper class life in His twenty's, He experienced the full width of the human experience. He experienced the kings courts when He received the Kings patent, and He saw the life of a semi homeless person while trying to establish himself as an actor, as mentioned in the section 1590. Shakespeare had a myriad of different experiences and the breadth of unique experiences in Shakespeare's life can be seen from the drunken bum Sly in The Taming of the Shrew, to the majesty of King Henry V in King Henry IV, to the sorcery of Prospero in The Tempest. Shakespeare's many unique experiences can be seen in the many unique characters in His plays. While we do know thanks to a phone interview with Fred Adams by Brian, another student in the class, that Shakespeare went to pubs for characters in His plays as well. So it can be said that the skills obtained as an actor that lead to the depiction of the depth of the human experience in Shakespeare's plays also lead to part of the Breadth. However, while the skills developed as an actor intensified the ability of Shakespeare to depict the breadth of characters in Shakespeare's work it was His actual experience of vicissitudes that lead to the majority of breadth.

Validation & Understanding

                    

            From the previous paragraphs there can be little doubt that Shakespeare's mind was analytical just as a psychoanalysis but that He also thought a lot about whats entertaining. The play The Tempest, Shakespeare’s last play, has been argued to be a part of the “Problem Play” genre because it is filled with “intense psychological drama”. (W.W. Lawrence) Another critic stated that Harry, from Henry VI, Shakespeare’s first play, “reveals that he hangs around with these low-class friends as part of a clever psychological plan.” From the first to the last play critics have associated the study of the mind to Shakespeare’s plays thus it can be concluded that Shakespeare used psychoanalysis from the start of His career as a playwright. Because the focus of this blog is to learn Shakespeare from His work the fact that the characters in His plays that ware designed for His own self-expression (I.E. Prospero) were a result of His own psychoanalysis of Himself and more emphasis should be given to those characters to understand Shakespeare. However evidence of Shakespeare's personality can be seen everywhere in His plays as proved in the previous section.  

            Psychoanalysis is important to be understood for any scholar of the Bard. He used it so much in His thinking and play writing that the more we learn about the way one thinks the more we learn of Shakespeare.  The majority of respected Biographies on Shakespeare use a psychoanalysis of His text based off and compared to proven fact, the approach is known as psychoanalytical literary criticism. Using psychoanalytical literary criticism is normally uncommon for biographies but with little facts we have of Shakespeare private life and the great deal of self-expression in His plays, it is the best route plausible to really get an idea of the mysterious man. This section legitimizes the approach many use to understand Shakespeare as well as the approach of this Blog. Remember the goal of this blog is to prove that we can see Shakespeare more from the text's written later in life. We do this so as to build confidence in the reader to use what facts is known about Shakespeare’s life and compare it to His plays thus psychoanalyzing Shakespeare with His text. Any lover of Shakespeare can appreciate  psychoanalytical literary criticism because today we identify facts of how Shakespeare’s time must have been from what He writes in his play. The other is because the most respected biographies use this approach to depict Shakespeare, and why shouldn't they? A biography is a written account of a persons life. (OED) What better way to depict a psychoanalysis such as Shakespeare than by psychoanalyzing him from his text? What Shakespeare puts in his plays comes from a His own psychoanalysis of His self and His time. Shakespeare’s plays are simply His report to are time of His analysis of it. “In Shakespeare’s time, great books (texts) were thought of as mirrors. When you read a great book, the idea is, you are looking into a mirror—a pretty special mirror, one that reflects the world in a way that allows us to see its true nature. As we hold the volume of Shakespeare in front of us, we see that it reflects not only the world around us, but also ourselves. What is it that we find in Shakespeare? Nothing less that ourselves and the world—certainly worthy subjects to study in college.” (Holland)