Why does Shakespeare matter? Scholars and students, historians and, indeed, the general public have quite a few answers to this important cultural and literary question. Some say it is for extrinsic reasons: the rise of British imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the need for a hegemonic figurehead. Others deny his mattering at all and provocatively assert that Ben Jonson or Cyril Tourneur, John Webster or Christopher Marlowe are better at their craft. Some argue it is the beauty and complexity of Shakespeare’s language; others suggest it is the enduring profundity of his ideas. Some cite the brilliance of Shakespeare’s intricate plots. (Think of the deftness of the four or five intertwined stories in Hamlet, for example.) Others discuss the excitement of the events in his plays. Yes, Shakespeare understood that sex, violence, and bloodshed sell—very well indeed. The argument of this book presents a different take on the man’s achievement: what matters with Shakespeare is his persistent and convincing belief that we can be immortal even in the face of—especially in the face of—death. Shakespeare would absolutely have agreed with John Donne, his contemporary, that death had and has no reason to be proud.
Let me begin with a simple statement with which all will agree: Everyone will die. Those we love will die. To which I will add my very personal view: Worst of all, I will die. What to do about the annihilation of self? Well, you can—among other remedies to this mortal illness—procreate (and produce copies of yourself), become famous, create an alternative reality, allow explanation to do the work of a monument, or become part of a much lengthier historical story. In light of these brutal facts about the ending of life and Shakespeare’s extraordinary and sustained discussion of the human condition in his poetry and plays, a consensus has emerged that the persistent attraction of Shakespeare’s works derives from a combination of katharsis and schadenfreude. That is, we delight in what Shakespeare does because by it we are purged of pity and fear (the katharsis piece) and because we are so grateful that the many horrible things that happen in his plays happen to other people rather than to ourselves. According to this model, Shakespeare helps us to cope with death either by re-presenting the fact of mortality in myriad ways (the histories and tragedies) or by banishing it entirely, doing so by dramatic fiat (the comedies and romances). It is the argument of this book that such a model, such a depiction of Shakespearean death, is almost entirely wrong in ways both small and large. It misrepresents the ban on death in the comedies; it overemphasizes extinction in the tragedies. In fact, Shakespeare’s enduring value—the explanation of why he matters as a dramatist—comes from the persistence with which he offers, throughout his plays (in all genres) and his poetry, a counternarrative against the permanence of mortality.
The argument of this book is divided into three parts: a prologue on the realities of the Shakespearean age as they relate to the argument of my book; three major sections that look in detail at the numerous strategies Shakespeare uses to present his counternarrative against death; and a brief conclusion. The prologue on the realities of the Shakespearean age (essentially the roughness of life then) is necessary because the particularities of that era will have affected Shakespeare’s attitude to death and the attitude shared by theatergoers at that time. One can argue for a universal set of responses to death, but then there are the circumstances under which particular generations live. These matter, and it is my contention that the Elizabethan and Jacobean worldview would in no way have removed the fear of death. Rather, it is more likely to have intensified it. The major part of the book details the strategies Shakespeare used to reassure himself and his audience that death was a fact that could be—and should be—coped with, that life is something to be enjoyed for all its irreplaceable wonder. It is organized into three sections: strategies of the body; strategies of the world; and strategies of the numinous and the dramatist. Throughout I have cast the net wide in my discussion of the plays to avoid the criticism that my argument is only a partial one (in both senses of that adjective) or an example of special pleading. There is much to the point of view that says almost anything can be asserted with Shakespeare as long as that assertion passes Paul B. Armstrong’s test of inclusivity.1 I have discussed, then, nearly all of Shakespeare’s plays. No genre has been left untouched. The brief conclusion implicitly suggests Shakespeare scholars have gone far enough along one or another of two lines of engagement: textuality and performance. There is value in getting back to an assessment of Shakespearean meaning.
I will finish this introduction by pointing out something that may not be entirely obvious to the reader. This book does not dwell on Shakespearean criticism (although there is an appendix about it, which I hope will prove useful). Anyone who has dipped a toe into that subject discovers how deep the waters of Shakespearean scholarship truly are. It would take a lifetime and more for someone to study everything written on even a reasonably precise topic when it comes to the man from Stratford, and only a little would be relevant to my argument as my argument is rather novel. I am also—as one of my earlier books on Shakespeare, Simply Shakespeare, showed—frankly averse to what I call “criticism-forward” discussions of his achievement. It little matters what scores of earlier scholars have said about Shakespeare in comparison to letting his own work speak for itself (albeit in a guided sort of way). It only really matters that a scholar does not go over well-trodden ground yet again. That I have certainly not done here.