Sunday Times 2
Shakespeare’s brentry to world culture
By Marshall Perera
William Shakespeare
“How many ages hence, Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, In States unborn and accents yet unknown! – Shakespeare “Julius Caesar” Shakespeare’s 450th birth and 400th death anniversaries were commemorated on 23 April, this year. As David Cameron, ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain noted, ”these two anniversaries are not just an opportunity to commemorate one of the greatest playwrights of all time. It is a moment to celebrate the extraordinary on-going influence of a man who – to borrow from his own description of Julius Caesar-[doeth bestride the narrow world like a colossus]”. In Ben Johnson’s phrase, he is “not of this age but for all time”. Shakespeare was catholic in his themes. These covered love, sickness and death, deception, betrayal, wit, murder and assassination, gaining power and retaining it, philosophy, madness, family, kingship, and of every inner soft emotion, feeling and motivation known to the human brand. Shakespeare is reputed not to have had a formal education, leading to widespread speculation that his works were actually written by someone else, Marlowe, de Vere etc. These arguments are not convincing. As Shakespeare had himself written, he found “books in running brooks and sermons in stone.” He shared his thoughts in imperishable phrases and idioms, embroidered in unmatchable prose and poetry. His rhythmic genius, acutest intellect, profoundest imagination and healthiest understanding have made his insights and thoughts a part of everyday life, expressed in daily phrases we utter, articulated in the conversations we conduct and enjoyed in puns and word-play we make. How perceptive he was, could be judged by some of his insights. Vacillation is embodied in Hamlet, “To be, not to be, that is the question; Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer, The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or, take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them?
Certainly, this is not a job description for selection of a Governor or Chief Minister of a Provincial Council, an attitude unlikely to be helpful when facing a landslide or a physical disaster. In another instance, he writes, “Sleep knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, a balm of hurt minds.” There are numerous other quotations which by constant use have become clichés. As David Cameron continued to note “Shakespeare’s influence is everywhere, from Dickens and Goethe to Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Brahms, from West Side Story to Hamlet. It inspired the title of Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mouse Trap’, the longest running theatre production in London’s West End today.”
It is a dry irony that, in the year of these birth and death centennial commemorations of Shakespeare’s birth and death anniversaries, there was a re-animation, a tableau vivant, of Julius Caesar, in the just concluded drama of Brexit. In this drama, the characters in Julius Caesar re-appeared, mouthing grand and noble phrases of how they reflect the Will of the People, their assertions only masking a naked power grab. Power resides in locations where power is made to go. The people of Britain have paid a heavy price – in the Brexit drama – to meet treacherous politicians’ inordinate ambition, and would continue to pay it. At the end of the Brexit drama, there was a mass defenestration: the Prime Minister is already out, other active participants may be shorn of power in the near future, including the leader of the opposition – who led a Eurosceptic half-hearted campaign. A rank outsider, an Octavius, emerged as the beneficiary. Shakespeare, a master, would have understood how power players operate and their inevitable comeuppances. However old the works of Shakespeare are, they are never dated: they become a Dorian Gray- constantly refreshed and contemporary. Plus ca change, plus, c’est la meme chose (more it changes, more it is the same).
My speciality is the law. In the judicial system, when two contending parties seek judicial finality about their conflict, a temporary organization is created – consisting of a judge and the two parties. The judicial decision deals with the resolution of these two narratives. The verdict given would be in conformity with already established laws and the persuasiveness of lawyers’ advocacy. A judicial decision has little to do with right and wrong (the value dimension) but only with being correct or incorrect (the legal dimension). Once the decision is delivered by the judge, the temporary organization created to hear the conflict, dissolves. The right/wrong, correct/ incorrect dimensional demarcation, is brought out in Merchant of Venice. A contract is hallowed and legally implementable. When a loan shark, Shylock, sued debtor Antonio for his contract to be applied to the letter (a pound of flesh), the following conversation took place,
Portia: “Then the Jew must be merciful.” Shylock: “In what compulsion must I? Tell me that.”
Portia: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven above,
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:It blesses him that gives and him that receives.”
Portia’s argument derives from the heart (right), not the head (correct). As The Buddha would have it, Portia’s argument was imbued with Karuna (compassion). It will be interesting to speculate how Portia’s argument would have been dealt in Sri Lankan courts.
Portia (to Shylock) “‘Take thou thy pound of flesh. Take thou thy bond but in the cutting of it, if you do shed one drop of Christian blood, all your goods are confiscate to the State of Venice.”
The contract struck between Shylock and Antonio makes no mention of the shedding of blood. However, if Shylock had retained the services of the galaxy of lawyers, which graces Sri Lanka’s legal firmament, the lawyers may have advised Shylock to go ahead and cut out his pound of flesh in conformity with the contract, offering the hyper-technical position that there was no proof that Antonios’ blood was Christian: a DNA analysis would show heritable affinity but not an ethnic one, that of religion. Therefore, Portia’s challenge made to Shylock would fail. Shylock could have his pound of flesh without running the danger of his worldly goods being confiscated.
The British, had an objective set of rules, in the short hand called the Weberian system. These rules covered recruitment, career development, job expectations, discipline, benefits, upto superannuation. Gratitude for a good deed done or ethnicity, were no considerations. Cassius was embittered by what he considered to be Julius Caesar’s ingratitude, when he saved Caesar from drowning. (Shakespeare, dealt with ingratitude in another play King Lear. In my view, Hamlet and King Lear are two of the leading works of world literature. But King Lear is more complex. Hamlet deals with a disordered mind, possessed by an individual unable to cope with life’s complexities and challenges. King Lear is social drama of parental dispossession – unfortunately increasingly reported in Sri Lanka. Hamlet should be dealt by a psychiatrist, King Lear by a sociologist. Cassius bitterly recounts the swimming episode,
“For once, upon a raw and gusty day, The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, Caesar said to me, “Dar’st thou, Cassius, now, Leap in with me into this angry flood, And swim to yonder point?” Upon the word, Accoutered as I was, I plunged in, And bade him follow; so indeed he did. The torrent roared, and we did buffet it, With lusty sinews, throwing it aside, And stemming it with hearts of controversy. But ere we could arrive at the point proposed, Caesar cried, “Help me, Cassius, or I sink!”
I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor, Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder, The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber, Did I, the tired Caesar. And, this man, Is now become a God, and Cassius is,
A wretched creature and must bend his body, If Caesar carelessly but nod on him”.
This extract reveals the depth of Shakespeare’s knowledge of the classics eg Virgil’s Aened Bks 1-10. Virgil also uttered the warning Timeo Danae Dona Ferrentes (Fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts), an appropriate warning to politicians, when strangers come a-visiting, with gifts. These visitors have hidden agendas. Ethnicity should not be a factor in public governance. Ethnicity deals with birth, family, race, religion, language, colour and caste. Taking decisions based on ethnicity, particularly of colour, was castigated by Karaka – the great Indian journalist – “as the most inhuman of human prejudices”. None of the authoritative commentators on Shakespeare have said that Portia, of Merchant of Venice, had an aversion to a member of the Islamic faith. When she was to be married, there were three caskets placed before her from which to choose. When Portia is relieved that the Prince of Morocco has chosen the wrong casket she says “Let all of his complexion chose the same”. Thus the word “complexion” leads to the irresistible conclusion that it is a synonym for colour. Portia had no objection to ethnicity.
The election principle, in public governance, was established in 1931 with the Donoughmore Constitution. Since then, the occult, charms, light-reading, star forecasts, have been invoked as the kick off for personal decision making and predicting election success by aspiring contenders for power. Considering that “fair is foul, and foul is fair” (Macbeth), three witches were consulted by a coup d’etat leader – Macbeth. The witches readied themselves to predict his future, with their stock-in-trade,
“Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adders fork and blind worms sling, Lizards leg and howlets wing, For a chain of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble”. But the contrarian view was given in Julius Caesar, “Men at some time are the masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Here, Shakespeare deals a veiled blow to the sacred and hallowed Buddhist and Hindu doctrine of Karma.
Perhaps, the nature of competitive, democratic electoral politics compels undue enrichment. Brutus, faced this problem squarely, one posed by his closest colleague Cassius, following the successful conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar. After their acquisition of power, Brutus confronted Cassius, “Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself, Are much condemned to have an itching palm, To sell and market your offices for gold, To undeservers, contaminate our fingers with base bribes, And sell the mighty space of our large honours, For so much trash?”
(The reference to the itching palm offers a reminder of the timely slogan referring to bribery, exhibited in all government departments in Sri Lanka, in the 1950’s),
“Turn from the glittering Bribe, Thy scornful eye, Nor sell for Gold, What Gold can never buy.”)
Cassius turned nasty at Brutus’ accusation. After all, Cassius was instrumental in levering Brutus – as the leader of the coup d’etat – to confront Julius Caesar: he was the king maker. Feeling let down, Cassius responded, “Brutus, threaten not me, I’ll not endure it. You forget yourself, To hedge me in. I am a soldier, I, Older in practice, abler than yourself, To make conditions.”
Eventually, the problem was papered over, not solved. When morality and pragmatism are at loggerheads, morality cannot deliver – morality is talk, it has no hard output. This is a lesson civil society and NGOs may chew on. Yet, the general issue remains: since, in democratic politics, upward mobility is through the support of volunteers – who were looking forward to reaping the rewards of office – what mechanism should be in place to meet their material expectations? Political supporters were not incurring sacrifices for altruism! “Nothing will come out of nothing”, mused King Lear.
Macbeth was the most intellectual of all Shakespeare’s characters. Ambition was his driver but he was clinically analytical about it. On hearing of his wife’s death, he calmly reflected, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools, The way to dusty death. Out, Out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”
This is one of the finest of Buddhist expositions, dealing with Dhukka and the evanescence of human life. Shakespeare is one of the best analysts of the human condition. He faced the human condition with honesty, with due recognition of its absurdity, weakness and stupidity. When commemorating his 450th birth and 400th death anniversaries, it would be a rewarding experience, to re-engage with Shakespeare and remind ourselves of Aniccha.
(The writer is a President’s Counsel and the Governor of the Sabaragamuva Province.)