In recent posts I have been looking at the disparity between appearances and realities as an important theme in Hamlet and, increasingly, in the world we live in. I suppose one could argue that governments have always used propaganda and various media to convey a perspective that they want their citizens to share, but I can’t help but think there is something much different about what is going on today. It seems to me that all kinds of policies are being enacted and promoted that have little concern with the common good, so that the lies currently being propagated have, in many instances, become vehicles for promoting hatred, evil, suspicion and paranoia. Certainly these are not results that strengthen society. People deserve, and are entitled to, much better.
The most obvious illustrations of this revolve around the American-initiated ‘war on terror,’ a war which, as in the one depicted in Orwell’s 1984, will seemingly have no end. Ever since that horrifying attack on the Twin Towers, George Bush and Dick Cheney have used the politics of fear and manipulation to further their goals. For example, although Iraq had nothing to do with the attack, the administration carefully, in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, suggested there was one.
The effect of this manipulation was such that as of January 2003, 44% of Americans believed that some or all of the Sept.11 highjackers were Iraq. Of course, the truth is that none of them were. One can see the motive behind this manipulation was to make the invasion of Iraq much more palatable to the American people.
Yet the truth is never obvious. Fortunately, with the formidable access to information afforded by the Internet, there is at least the potential for citizens to be able to sift through what they are told and come up with reasonable conclusions about their leaders, who often, when the data is analyzed, seem to be sneering at the electorate. For example,such is the contempt the U.S, government has for its own people, it even indulges in www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/stephens-hayes-hearts-dic_b_60861.html revisionist history. If you have the time, the link in the previous sentence will take you to an entry from the Huffington Post which then offers a link to NORAD tapes which clearly show Dick Cheny caught in an egregious misrepresentation of his role during the 9/11 crisis.
But the lies and malfeasance continue, costing so many lives, both American and foreign, in remote parts of the world. And to what end? In the play Hamlet, only after the waste of many lives is there a sense of restored order and the beginning of healing; in our world today, I suspect that the latter is still a long way off.
Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Hamlet Part 4 – The Illusory Nature of the World - Manipulative Political Practices
Last day I discussed how the Canadian political establishment, like Claudius in Hamlet, shows little respect for the citizens. I’d like to continue with this idea in today’s post before going on to examine some American examples tomorrow.
The current Conservative government, led by Stephen Harper, promised in the last election to establish a regime that stresses transparency and accountability. That promise has proven to be just the usual political rhetoric one expects from today’s caliber of politician, in other words, just another illusion of respect for the people. The most recent and egregious example of this is the fact that Harper and his cronies tried, on the claim of national security, to keep secret blacked out parts of the O’Connor commission of inquiry into the Maher Arar false imprisonment
and torture debacle. It turns out that the reason given, national security, was a lie; the actual reason was the report was embarrassing to Canadian and American security officials, as they knew from the outset that the alleged evidence used to send him to Syria was obtained from another man through Syrian torture. Fortunately, the courts have now forced most of this material to be made public.
The Freedom of Information and Privacy Association had this to say:
The decision to cite national-security grounds to censor about 1,500 words of Judge O'Connor's report was made by Conservative cabinet ministers, and it was they who ordered federal government lawyers to fight their release in court.
"This failure to inform Canadians truthfully about key mistakes of government serves to highlight Tory hypocrisy over our right of access to information," said FIPA executive director Darrell Evans. "We were deeply disappointed in the Conservative government's failure to deliver on their election promises to increase federal government transparency."
For the full story, click here.
In Hamlet, Claudius’ smooth façade conceals some terrible realities. I think this one Canadian example suggests the potential of the same truth in my country.
The current Conservative government, led by Stephen Harper, promised in the last election to establish a regime that stresses transparency and accountability. That promise has proven to be just the usual political rhetoric one expects from today’s caliber of politician, in other words, just another illusion of respect for the people. The most recent and egregious example of this is the fact that Harper and his cronies tried, on the claim of national security, to keep secret blacked out parts of the O’Connor commission of inquiry into the Maher Arar false imprisonment
and torture debacle. It turns out that the reason given, national security, was a lie; the actual reason was the report was embarrassing to Canadian and American security officials, as they knew from the outset that the alleged evidence used to send him to Syria was obtained from another man through Syrian torture. Fortunately, the courts have now forced most of this material to be made public.
The Freedom of Information and Privacy Association had this to say:
The decision to cite national-security grounds to censor about 1,500 words of Judge O'Connor's report was made by Conservative cabinet ministers, and it was they who ordered federal government lawyers to fight their release in court.
"This failure to inform Canadians truthfully about key mistakes of government serves to highlight Tory hypocrisy over our right of access to information," said FIPA executive director Darrell Evans. "We were deeply disappointed in the Conservative government's failure to deliver on their election promises to increase federal government transparency."
For the full story, click here.
In Hamlet, Claudius’ smooth façade conceals some terrible realities. I think this one Canadian example suggests the potential of the same truth in my country.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Hamlet – Part 3 – The Illusory Nature of the World (1)
In my last post I talked about Hamlet as a story of the transition from childhood to adulthood. Today I’d like to discuss how a related theme, the disparity between appearance and reality, is relevant to our lives today.
Almost from the play’s outset, Hamlet discovers that the world he thought he knew was more of an illusion than a reality. First comes the discovery of his mother’s seeming fecklessness in hastily marrying her brother-in-law Claudius, a union considered incestuous at the time. As things progress, Hamlet learns about other types of betrayal. The woman he loves, Ophelia, rejects him at her father’s behest, and two childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, essentially spy on him to curry favor with Claudius, who wants to know why Hamlet has been acting so strangely. Ultimately, the Prince is able to ascertain that Claudius did commit fratricide, as claimed by the ghost early in the play, and therefore is a usurper. All of these discoveries send the young prince into a depression and a despair of paralyzing proportions.
So how is any of this relevant to 21st century life? Today, isn’t it becoming increasingly difficult to discern truth from lie, illusion from reality? Most people, of course, on some level understand the nature of advertising, with its beguiling yet completely illusionary promise of happiness and fulfillment through a better dust collector, brighter teeth, or, ‘six-pack abs,’ so I think I’ll skip that discussion. The more serious and insidious gulf between appearances and reality, in my opinion, lies in how the government, aided by much of the media, shapes our view of the world, both domestically and internationally.
If we go back to the play for a moment, Claudius is the consummate politician – adept at reading and manipulating people, and skilled in the discharge of foreign policy. He uses these skills to hide his corruption. In his very first speech in Hamlet, he addresses his court, acknowledging national sadness over the passing of King Hamlet, making reference to the possible impending war with Norway, and implicitly justifying his incestuous marriage to Gertrude (“Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state”) as a way of ensuring continuity in these difficult times. Indeed, this speech and an analysis of it should be required reading for all those who aspire to power! (Actually no, since I have no interest in electing more such politicians.)
When contemporary politicians fail to find public support for policy initiatives, their most common explanation is, “We haven’t communicated our message effectively enough.” Never is there a consideration that the policy might be flawed or should be reconsidered, the subtext being that they just have to find a more effective way of manipulating the people, of spinning an illusion or half-truth to get the people ‘onside.’
One example from my own country illustrates this succinctly: since Canada’s participation as part of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan has become increasingly unpopular here, there has been a shift from the earlier, bellicose rhetoric of the chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, about killing “scumbags and murderers,” to greater emphasis on aspects reminiscent of more traditional Canadian military operations, such as helping a school open and handing out food to displaced Afghans. This public shift does not mark a change in the mission, which is to hunt down terrorists; the loss of Canadian soldiers’ lives continues, but such is the contempt in which the public’s intelligence is held that the government hopes the voters will be fooled by a few treats handed out to Afghan children as being in the Canadian humanitarian tradition, and we’ll forget the realities of the war.
In my next post I would like to continue examining this facet of Hamlet’s relevance to our lives.
Almost from the play’s outset, Hamlet discovers that the world he thought he knew was more of an illusion than a reality. First comes the discovery of his mother’s seeming fecklessness in hastily marrying her brother-in-law Claudius, a union considered incestuous at the time. As things progress, Hamlet learns about other types of betrayal. The woman he loves, Ophelia, rejects him at her father’s behest, and two childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, essentially spy on him to curry favor with Claudius, who wants to know why Hamlet has been acting so strangely. Ultimately, the Prince is able to ascertain that Claudius did commit fratricide, as claimed by the ghost early in the play, and therefore is a usurper. All of these discoveries send the young prince into a depression and a despair of paralyzing proportions.
So how is any of this relevant to 21st century life? Today, isn’t it becoming increasingly difficult to discern truth from lie, illusion from reality? Most people, of course, on some level understand the nature of advertising, with its beguiling yet completely illusionary promise of happiness and fulfillment through a better dust collector, brighter teeth, or, ‘six-pack abs,’ so I think I’ll skip that discussion. The more serious and insidious gulf between appearances and reality, in my opinion, lies in how the government, aided by much of the media, shapes our view of the world, both domestically and internationally.
If we go back to the play for a moment, Claudius is the consummate politician – adept at reading and manipulating people, and skilled in the discharge of foreign policy. He uses these skills to hide his corruption. In his very first speech in Hamlet, he addresses his court, acknowledging national sadness over the passing of King Hamlet, making reference to the possible impending war with Norway, and implicitly justifying his incestuous marriage to Gertrude (“Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state”) as a way of ensuring continuity in these difficult times. Indeed, this speech and an analysis of it should be required reading for all those who aspire to power! (Actually no, since I have no interest in electing more such politicians.)
When contemporary politicians fail to find public support for policy initiatives, their most common explanation is, “We haven’t communicated our message effectively enough.” Never is there a consideration that the policy might be flawed or should be reconsidered, the subtext being that they just have to find a more effective way of manipulating the people, of spinning an illusion or half-truth to get the people ‘onside.’
One example from my own country illustrates this succinctly: since Canada’s participation as part of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan has become increasingly unpopular here, there has been a shift from the earlier, bellicose rhetoric of the chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, about killing “scumbags and murderers,” to greater emphasis on aspects reminiscent of more traditional Canadian military operations, such as helping a school open and handing out food to displaced Afghans. This public shift does not mark a change in the mission, which is to hunt down terrorists; the loss of Canadian soldiers’ lives continues, but such is the contempt in which the public’s intelligence is held that the government hopes the voters will be fooled by a few treats handed out to Afghan children as being in the Canadian humanitarian tradition, and we’ll forget the realities of the war.
In my next post I would like to continue examining this facet of Hamlet’s relevance to our lives.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Hamlet – Part 2 – From Childhood to Maturity
In the last post I gave a brief synopsis of the play. Now I would like to begin addressing its importance for us.
In many respects, Prince Hamlet is the most human character I have ever encountered in literature. Although of royal lineage, he is in many respects an everyman who is called upon to respond to a world I think he would prefer to ignore; just as we have little choice in our engagement with the world as we mature, neither does Hamlet.
Although the play begins less than two months after the death of his father, there is much to suggest Hamlet had a rather idealized, innocent life prior to that traumatic event. We can infer this from the shock and despair permeating his first soliloquy in which the melancholy Dane says, “O that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!" “In other words, he wishes he were dead. But his disaffection and disappointment with the world goes deeper: “Or that the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” In fact, he wishes it were not against God’s law to kill himself. Here is a young man, reacting with despair to two events: his father’s unexpected death and his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle, a man young Hamlet sees as vastly inferior to his father. Both events have shaken his faith in the world and in human nature, leading the Prince to see the world no longer as Eden-like, but as “an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature/ Possess it merely.”
Perhaps the most painful revelation for Hamlet is the fact that his parents’ marriage was not the utopian union he had imagined: “Why, she would hang on him/ As if increase of appetite had grown/ By what it fed on and yet, within a month - …married with my uncle/ My father’s brother … O most wicked speed: to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets…” So there we have it, revelations of unpalatable realities: love that was a sham and a hasty and incestuous remarriage.
If we were to view this part of the play allegorically, we could see it as the beginning of the transition from childhood to adulthood. The world poses challenges to all of us in its imperfections. How we respond to those imperfections is ultimately a measure of our character. Do we turn our backs on them and seek oblivion in one form or another? Or do we confront the challenges and engage with the world? That is Hamlet’s challenge, and it is also ours.
While this brief examination of an important idea hardly does justice to the theme, I hope it gives you at least a hint of how it resonates with the human condition. In my next post, I will continue discussing this and related themes of the play.
In many respects, Prince Hamlet is the most human character I have ever encountered in literature. Although of royal lineage, he is in many respects an everyman who is called upon to respond to a world I think he would prefer to ignore; just as we have little choice in our engagement with the world as we mature, neither does Hamlet.
Although the play begins less than two months after the death of his father, there is much to suggest Hamlet had a rather idealized, innocent life prior to that traumatic event. We can infer this from the shock and despair permeating his first soliloquy in which the melancholy Dane says, “O that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!" “In other words, he wishes he were dead. But his disaffection and disappointment with the world goes deeper: “Or that the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” In fact, he wishes it were not against God’s law to kill himself. Here is a young man, reacting with despair to two events: his father’s unexpected death and his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle, a man young Hamlet sees as vastly inferior to his father. Both events have shaken his faith in the world and in human nature, leading the Prince to see the world no longer as Eden-like, but as “an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature/ Possess it merely.”
Perhaps the most painful revelation for Hamlet is the fact that his parents’ marriage was not the utopian union he had imagined: “Why, she would hang on him/ As if increase of appetite had grown/ By what it fed on and yet, within a month - …married with my uncle/ My father’s brother … O most wicked speed: to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets…” So there we have it, revelations of unpalatable realities: love that was a sham and a hasty and incestuous remarriage.
If we were to view this part of the play allegorically, we could see it as the beginning of the transition from childhood to adulthood. The world poses challenges to all of us in its imperfections. How we respond to those imperfections is ultimately a measure of our character. Do we turn our backs on them and seek oblivion in one form or another? Or do we confront the challenges and engage with the world? That is Hamlet’s challenge, and it is also ours.
While this brief examination of an important idea hardly does justice to the theme, I hope it gives you at least a hint of how it resonates with the human condition. In my next post, I will continue discussing this and related themes of the play.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Great Books and What They Have To Teach Us – Hamlet – Part 1
The following post is much briefer than I had originally intended, the reason being that I love the play so much that I want to take extra care in writing about it
Every semester that I taught a senior English class, I made certain to leave one book to the end, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It wasn’t that I dreaded teaching the play – quite the opposite. But my enthusiasm for the work meant that if I taught it at any other point, I would spend far too long on it. It is that rich a tragedy.
Very briefly, the plot of Hamlet revolves around the assertion by a ghost that he is the spirit of the late King Hamlet. He reveals to King Hamlet’s son, Prince Hamlet, that he was murdered by Claudius, the King’s brother, the man who has now claimed the throne and married the late Hamlet’s widow, Gertrude. Additionally, the ghost suggests that Claudius and Gertrude were carrying on a relationship while the king was still alive. His purpose in appearing to Prince Hamlet? He asks the lad to avenge his murder. The rest of the play revolves around the prince determining if the spirit’s story is true, and the impact on him of discovering the truth.
While the plot sounds simple, it is considered by many to be Shakespeare’s most complex play, and that complexity is found in both its themes and its imagery. But what has any of this got to do with today’s readers and audiences? Well, just like Macbeth, it has much to teach us, both as individuals and as a society. In my next post I'll begin to talk about its value.
Every semester that I taught a senior English class, I made certain to leave one book to the end, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It wasn’t that I dreaded teaching the play – quite the opposite. But my enthusiasm for the work meant that if I taught it at any other point, I would spend far too long on it. It is that rich a tragedy.
Very briefly, the plot of Hamlet revolves around the assertion by a ghost that he is the spirit of the late King Hamlet. He reveals to King Hamlet’s son, Prince Hamlet, that he was murdered by Claudius, the King’s brother, the man who has now claimed the throne and married the late Hamlet’s widow, Gertrude. Additionally, the ghost suggests that Claudius and Gertrude were carrying on a relationship while the king was still alive. His purpose in appearing to Prince Hamlet? He asks the lad to avenge his murder. The rest of the play revolves around the prince determining if the spirit’s story is true, and the impact on him of discovering the truth.
While the plot sounds simple, it is considered by many to be Shakespeare’s most complex play, and that complexity is found in both its themes and its imagery. But what has any of this got to do with today’s readers and audiences? Well, just like Macbeth, it has much to teach us, both as individuals and as a society. In my next post I'll begin to talk about its value.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Great Books and What They Have To Teach Us – Macbeth
For the next few posts, I’d like to address something that I think is undervalued in our society and our school systems today: literature. I have already touched upon how it can help to cultivate critical thinking, but now, at the risk of sounding somewhat airy, I’d like to talk about how it can also cultivate the spirit and teach us important things about human nature. These aspects perhaps are not taken as seriously today when put against some of the ‘hard skills’ taught through public education, but, I would argue, are essential in order to live fully and meaningfully.
I was never one of those teachers who stand in awe of everything written by Shakespeare, (let’s face it, Romeo and Juliet really are just a couple of very immature teenagers who make some very bad decisions), but I never tired of teaching certain of his works, including his darkest, Macbeth. Set around the eleventh century, ‘the Scottish play’ has no end of relevance for our own times. Revolving around a military commander of great prowess and courage, the play tells the story of what happens when you start believing your own press. Praised by his King and colleagues, emboldened by the prophecies of some witches, and encouraged by a seemingly amoral wife, Macbeth gives in to his hidden ambition, setting down a dark road that will see him kill that King, assume the throne, and embark on a bloody reign of terror that will take many innocent lives and cost him everything: his virtue, his humanity, and ultimately his life.
So what does such a tragedy have to teach modern audiences? For me, it always put in stark relief the essential emptiness of pursuing purely material goals; even though we live in times that try to convince us that the key to happiness is “the next big thing,” be it the latest cell phone, plasma T.V. or ______________ (you fill in the blank), experience teaches us that we are doomed to be continually disappointed by such pursuits. Macbeth, however, learns this truth far too late for it to do him any good. We see him early in the play contemplating assassinating Duncan, both his King and his cousin; he asserts that if he could be guaranteed success in this venture, “We’d jump the life to come.” This willingness to sacrifice his very salvation for the acquisition of power is contrasted much later in the play when he admits, “…my way of life/ Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf,/ And that which should accompany old age,/ As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,/ I must not look to have; but in their stead,/Curses, not loud but deep, mouth honor, breath,/ Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.” In this quotation, Macbeth realizes that the achievement of his ambition has not been worth the price he has had to pay, the complete absence of all the indicators of a life well-lived: integrity, love, respect, friendship. All he has instead is those who obey him out of fear.
A chilling lesson, both for Shakespeare’s time and all others.
I was never one of those teachers who stand in awe of everything written by Shakespeare, (let’s face it, Romeo and Juliet really are just a couple of very immature teenagers who make some very bad decisions), but I never tired of teaching certain of his works, including his darkest, Macbeth. Set around the eleventh century, ‘the Scottish play’ has no end of relevance for our own times. Revolving around a military commander of great prowess and courage, the play tells the story of what happens when you start believing your own press. Praised by his King and colleagues, emboldened by the prophecies of some witches, and encouraged by a seemingly amoral wife, Macbeth gives in to his hidden ambition, setting down a dark road that will see him kill that King, assume the throne, and embark on a bloody reign of terror that will take many innocent lives and cost him everything: his virtue, his humanity, and ultimately his life.
So what does such a tragedy have to teach modern audiences? For me, it always put in stark relief the essential emptiness of pursuing purely material goals; even though we live in times that try to convince us that the key to happiness is “the next big thing,” be it the latest cell phone, plasma T.V. or ______________ (you fill in the blank), experience teaches us that we are doomed to be continually disappointed by such pursuits. Macbeth, however, learns this truth far too late for it to do him any good. We see him early in the play contemplating assassinating Duncan, both his King and his cousin; he asserts that if he could be guaranteed success in this venture, “We’d jump the life to come.” This willingness to sacrifice his very salvation for the acquisition of power is contrasted much later in the play when he admits, “…my way of life/ Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf,/ And that which should accompany old age,/ As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,/ I must not look to have; but in their stead,/Curses, not loud but deep, mouth honor, breath,/ Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.” In this quotation, Macbeth realizes that the achievement of his ambition has not been worth the price he has had to pay, the complete absence of all the indicators of a life well-lived: integrity, love, respect, friendship. All he has instead is those who obey him out of fear.
A chilling lesson, both for Shakespeare’s time and all others.
Monday, July 30, 2007
What’s Shakespeare Got To Do With Anything?
Mentioning Shakespeare to a classroom of students is somewhat akin to telling them they are about to receive a massive dose of cod liver oil – something to be avoided at all costs. Maybe it’s true, as someone once said, that education is wasted on the young, because the older I get, the more I understand what the Bard has to offer to our fractured and troubled world. Today I would like to discuss only one small element of his relevance.
Being something of a ‘political junkie’ may be one of the many reasons that I took such pleasure in teaching two of Shakespeare’s greatest works: Macbeth and Hamlet. But literary merits aside, the plays’ compelling qualities are in part informed by the Elizabethan view of the universe, one that we have long since abandoned, but which, at its core, perhaps helps to explain much of the political and moral malaise of our times. Known as “The Great Chain of Being,” this view, very concisely, stipulated that there was a natural order in the universe, with everything emanating from God. Each realm, be it divine, human, animal, or mineral, had a hierarchy; remnants of that notion remain today. For example, we talk of the lion as the ‘king of the jungle; reason has priority over emotion, the eagle is deemed the head of things avian, etc. In the realm of human affairs, the country’s leader, the King, was believed to be God’s representative in the secular world, and thus was responsible for the well-being of the people. If the King was good, the nation prospered; if bad, as in the case of a usurper, the country suffered.
Both Macbeth and Hamlet deal with usurpers, people who have stolen the crown from God’s rightful representative. In both cases, the people suffer tremendously. Under the bloody dictator Macbeth, Scotland suffers a reign of terror; in Hamlet, the usurper Claudius, who has killed his brother in order to ascend to the kingship, is responsible for a moral corruption that grips Denmark.
So what’s Shakespeare got to do with anything? Well, even though power is no longer seen as coming from above, i.e., from God, but rather from below, i.e., the people, (at least in a democracy,) I have never really subscribed to the notion that government is merely a reflection of the people, that people get the government they deserve through the electoral process. After all, very few purposely vote for ineptitude, corruption, and cronyism; yet these elements seem to define so many democracies today.
The part of the Great Chain of Being so pertinent today is the infectious nature of bad leadership. Here I don’t mean the obvious consequences of being led by someone not fit to govern: abuses of basic freedoms, manipulation of truth, the abrogation of due process, catering to special interests, etc. More insidious, and something Shakespeare clearly demonstrates in Hamlet, is the toll exacted upon the nation’s spiritual health. The central metaphor of Hamlet is that of an unseen yet highly contagious disease. If we consider the widespread cynicism and disengagement gripping people today, we are witnessing the effects of bad leadership.. When people refuse to vote because they don’t feel it will make any difference, when they ascribe corruption and greed as the main motivations for people seeking elected office, when they evince little or no surprise at the flouting of constitutional laws by their elected representatives, they not only have fallen victim to a spiritual or moral malaise, they are in fact facilitating its spread, something I suspect our elected representatives are not in the least bit concerned about; after all, the more disengagement and disaffection there is amongst the voters, the easier it is for politicians to continue on their self-aggrandizing paths.
So what is the solution, the cure for this disease? How does a nation recover its soul?
Those are questions I would like to consider in a future article.
Being something of a ‘political junkie’ may be one of the many reasons that I took such pleasure in teaching two of Shakespeare’s greatest works: Macbeth and Hamlet. But literary merits aside, the plays’ compelling qualities are in part informed by the Elizabethan view of the universe, one that we have long since abandoned, but which, at its core, perhaps helps to explain much of the political and moral malaise of our times. Known as “The Great Chain of Being,” this view, very concisely, stipulated that there was a natural order in the universe, with everything emanating from God. Each realm, be it divine, human, animal, or mineral, had a hierarchy; remnants of that notion remain today. For example, we talk of the lion as the ‘king of the jungle; reason has priority over emotion, the eagle is deemed the head of things avian, etc. In the realm of human affairs, the country’s leader, the King, was believed to be God’s representative in the secular world, and thus was responsible for the well-being of the people. If the King was good, the nation prospered; if bad, as in the case of a usurper, the country suffered.
Both Macbeth and Hamlet deal with usurpers, people who have stolen the crown from God’s rightful representative. In both cases, the people suffer tremendously. Under the bloody dictator Macbeth, Scotland suffers a reign of terror; in Hamlet, the usurper Claudius, who has killed his brother in order to ascend to the kingship, is responsible for a moral corruption that grips Denmark.
So what’s Shakespeare got to do with anything? Well, even though power is no longer seen as coming from above, i.e., from God, but rather from below, i.e., the people, (at least in a democracy,) I have never really subscribed to the notion that government is merely a reflection of the people, that people get the government they deserve through the electoral process. After all, very few purposely vote for ineptitude, corruption, and cronyism; yet these elements seem to define so many democracies today.
The part of the Great Chain of Being so pertinent today is the infectious nature of bad leadership. Here I don’t mean the obvious consequences of being led by someone not fit to govern: abuses of basic freedoms, manipulation of truth, the abrogation of due process, catering to special interests, etc. More insidious, and something Shakespeare clearly demonstrates in Hamlet, is the toll exacted upon the nation’s spiritual health. The central metaphor of Hamlet is that of an unseen yet highly contagious disease. If we consider the widespread cynicism and disengagement gripping people today, we are witnessing the effects of bad leadership.. When people refuse to vote because they don’t feel it will make any difference, when they ascribe corruption and greed as the main motivations for people seeking elected office, when they evince little or no surprise at the flouting of constitutional laws by their elected representatives, they not only have fallen victim to a spiritual or moral malaise, they are in fact facilitating its spread, something I suspect our elected representatives are not in the least bit concerned about; after all, the more disengagement and disaffection there is amongst the voters, the easier it is for politicians to continue on their self-aggrandizing paths.
So what is the solution, the cure for this disease? How does a nation recover its soul?
Those are questions I would like to consider in a future article.
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