Why Shakespeare
There are instances in Shakespeare’s accepted canon that show how — as an author — he made up words. Some of these are even descended into our current vernacular and admitted to the gold standard, the Oxford English Dictionary.
Working on material for the next year, I was struck by the invention of language, and my guess — zero academic research here — is that Shakespeare used words that were already commonplace, stuff that fit close enough. Maybe the first in print or performance.
I don’t make up words, but I do love the way words go crashing into each other, and that’s one of the hooks — for me — and Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s works are meant as performance, or the plays certainly are, dramatic interpretations, not something stoically situated on a page all alone. Some of the language is gritty and real; language that rolls up its sleeves and gets dirty to get work done.
However, it’s that wordplay that hooked me. There are pieces of the common human experience we all encounter, and that spreads across lands and languages, some kind of shared, transcendent understanding.
As reflection, at the year’s end? It was performance of the Comedy of Errors — date looks at me, and tells me it’s one of her favorite plays.
To be sure, it’s got all the elements, twins, mistaken identity, mistreated wives who rule, and the trappings of a renaissance city drama, which, in its time, was a post-modern equivalency.
The word play, the intersection, and even when an actor missed a line, the action, the staging, and the rest of the crew carried the momentum forward. Bonus: it is both a funny play and a fun play.
Why Shakespeare
My hook for Shakespeare was the way astrology was shot through and through the plays, turns out, just as part of the cultural backdrop.
Advancing my own studies, that singular lightbulb moment, again, this is me, at that moment I read a passage about astrology being nothing more than language.
Like poetry, astrology is language that is highly charged, but it’s merely language, nothing more.
Why Shakespeare
The “why” of my continuing Shakespeare fascination comes back to the idea of language, and the language itself is merely a method of mapping thoughts and feelings.
That’s “why Shakespeare.”
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The Age of Shakespeare – Frank Kermode
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