Shakespeare and a Drifter Named Carl

 "I have striven hard to open English eyes to the emptiness of Shakespeare's philosophy, to the superficiality and second-handedness of his morality, to his weakness and incoherence as a thinker, to his snobbery, his vulgar prejudices, his ignorance, his disqualifications of all sorts for the philosophic eminence claimed for him." 

- George Bernard Shaw

When I was eight years old, my father befriended a man named Carl who could only be described as a drifter. He had no home to speak of, cohabitating with a much older woman with whom he shared a casual relationship and he often hit the road with no clear destination. My father was always making friends with people like Carl. A man with very little in the way of accomplishments, he had a need to feel superior to whomever would consent to be his friend. However, unlike another drifter who would come along when I was in my teens named Stuart, Carl was far from a pathetic lowlife idiot who probably earned money on the side as a toyboy. In fact, Carl was brilliant, a fact that angered my father to no end.

My mother was a psychologist who eventually earned her PhD. She outshone my dad in every possible way, including being in possession of a charisma that drew people to her without having to really do anything. She was also pretty. So, when she and Carl hit it off thanks to his ability to have intellectual conversations my poor dad could not, you can probably guess the rest. It probably didn't help that I liked Carl, too. I thought he was a nice guy and really cool. He was also younger than my parents, although even eight-year old me could see how attracted to my mom he was. For my dad, this was a kick to the proverbial groin that could not stand. So, he did what emotionally immature people have done since recorded history:

He sabotaged the friendship.

Before the inevitable parting of the ways, however, Carl bequeathed unto me a special gift. One day, possibly on my birthday, he decided to hand me a book of William Shakespeare's plays. Carl felt I was an extremely bright kid with a vivid imagination and that the book would prove invaluable as I grew older. Then one day he was gone and the only time my father mentioned him was to be as disparaging as humanly possible. 

The book remained on my various bookshelves for years to come, its Carl-authored inscription the most special part of my growing collection until recently. I tried reading it a few times, even using it in my fourth grade English class when we learned "Othello." The book synopsized the Bard's plays rather than reprinting them. 

I hadn't thought about that book in years until the other day. One of the libraries where I work has been essentially closed to the public since the Covid 19 pandemic started and has been weeding out books from its collection that haven't circulated in 6-10 years. I'm usually the person who disposes of them. It's often a painful process. Before I was a library employee, I found the very notion of destroying/recycling books repugnant. I get it now but sometimes there are books I have a hard time deleting from the catalog. Books by James Patterson, Dan Brown, Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele are not among them.

This most recent time, I found myself removing tons of older Shakespeare books. Books about him, plays by him, books about how great he was, books kissing his long-dead English ass, and even books praising him as an unrivaled genius. Obviously a ton of varied perspectives. And as I scanned and stamped each book, I remembered Carl the Intellectual Drifter Who Wanted to do my Mom, threw up in my mouth a little, and then started thinking about how much I cannot stand most of Shakespeare's work. This was followed by thoughts of the obnoxious and elitist cult his name and works gave birth to and the unquestioning devotional worship of the man and his plays.

If Carl wasn't killed by someone picking up hitchhikers and he's reading this, let me apologize for my blasphemous mentality. If it comforts him, I do not hate the so-called "Bard's" work any more than I hate Ernest Hemingway's incredibly uninteresting stories while appreciating his contribution to the world o' letters. "Bill," as the hipsters call him, was a talented man who sometimes hit upon a great idea. But in the words of Renaissance scholar Nora J. Williams regarding his plays, "Some of them are good. Some of them are terrible. Most of them are overrated."

Williams mentions the mythology of the man himself as demonstrably false, and that is where my general disdain originated. The more aware of the origins of stories I became, the more the Bard came off like a plagiarist. Yes, I know times were different. Copyrights weren't a thing really and people wiped themselves with leaves...when they bothered to wipe at all. But glaring examples of outright theft like "Macbeth" which is really just an updated "Oedipus Rex" leave me cold.

Any discussion of Shakespeare must, by necessity, include the fact that he is the Great White Hope of storytelling, held above all others because he exemplifies the assumed superiority of the Western European world. To hear many scholars tell it, 450 years ago, one white guy whose world experience was severely limited wrote everything we need to know about the human condition. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, of course. High school English teacher Dana Dusbiber wrote an open letter making the point I made above as well as many others. In her words, "I do not believe that a long-dead, British guy is the only writer who can teach my students about the human condition."

Freelance journalist Peter Beech in an opinion piece for The Guardian, wrote, "In my experience, reading or watching Shakespeare is, by turns, baffling, tiring, frustrating and downright unpleasant." 

He has a point. The olde English used in the plays is off-putting but even when one deciphers the speech, the tales being spun feel insular and fall flat in modern times. I know Bill's plays were a big draw for the common folks but they didn't have much else to compete with except the often superior work of Marlowe. Yet there is a vested interest, a cottage industry, that grips tightly onto Shakespeare's gonads as if the stability of society will collapse if we start questioning this outdated, overrated supposed man of the people. Curriculums and corporations rely too heavily on his work and perceived genius. As Beech writes, " Our continued creative and moral over-reliance on his plays is, at best, unimaginative and, at worst, dangerous."

I would love to say it's time to move on from Shakespeare but it's been time to do that for hundreds of years. His undeserved deification and dominance have placed a seemingly unbreakable stranglehold on literature that even the ancient Greek tragedies have not managed. He became the preeminent English writer because of politics and it is that same virus that prevents objective discussions about putting him behind us. 

Does Shakespeare deserve to be taught and discussed? Of course. But within reason and without kissing his medieval ass as if he was sent by God to write obnoxious plays and no one else will ever matter as much or even more.

So, if the intent of that gift was to inspire me to think for myself, to question mindless adoration and to form my own opinion then thank you. If it was to instill in me a love for a playwright whose work has always left me wanting, well...Sorry, Carl. I guess that'll learn ya to lust after somebody's mom~