Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Unlocking mystery of Shakespeare the man
The Boston Globe: "The eternal paradox of Shakespeare - that his plays reveal so much about human life, while the records of his life reveal almost nothing of his own humanity - has spawned whole schools of thought. Conspiracy theories, creative reconstructions, essays and plays and films about the man and his work all spring from the same frustrated impulse: to know the elusive creator who seems to know us so well."
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I love how Shakespeare's described as stealing. So often we have this romanticized view of the poet, perpetuated by films like Shakespeare in Love and the recent Doctor Who season, and in school he's sort of this ambiguous, almost fantastical genius writer your English teacher vaguely alludes to, either an old man writing annoyingly flowery poetry, or, as I like to imagine, a brilliant stud a-la-Joseph Fiennes or Rupert Graves. But rarely are we asked to really investigate Shakespeare the man, or look at his work with some real biographical research as opposed to making our own assumptions about what he meant. I like the idea of someone challenging the stereotypes or suggesting another possibility. I think its important for students to better understand Shakespeare as a person in order to get at what he was talking about, and that its important when it comes to appreciating the Bard to knock down those stereotypes.
And what a challenge: not only the challenge of making Shakespeare real, but of making a real man a character. It sounds like a very worthy endeavor.
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