Shakespeare: great writer or overrated?

I was scrolling on Facebook absentmindedly when I spotted a clip of Dame Judi Dench and immediately, my interest was piqued. For those of you who don't know her, which seems unlikely, she is an actress and a person who I hugely admire. She is also, which is relevant to this article, an advocate for Shakespeare's works and the timelessness of his words, which I wholeheartedly support.

I would urge you to watch the clip below. I have also provided the words of Sonnet 29 that she recites (although that is too trite a word to describe what she does) so that you can read them at the same time, or not - as you so choose.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

***

It completely blew me away. I'm not sure what it was about the clip at first that really made me contemplative. I think that there is something about her delivery which brings the sonnet alive. She reveres him as a writer, I know and this comes through in her recitation of the sonnet. She brings a meaningfulness and emotive quality to it, which I don't think that I would have got from it from just reading it. However, I found myself wanting to return to the words regardless, to see how they were formed on the page and mull them over again as I made sense of them myself.

It made me buy a book of sonnets I found myself craving his work. This was new to me, this need to seek him out.

And I discovered what the world already knows: that he is a wondrous writer.

I didn't always feel this way about Shakespeare. I remember reading his plays at school and being totally baffled by them. The language was hard work and a mystery a lot of the time. It is only in more recent years that I have come to truly admire the words of England's most famous bard, mainly as a teacher when I was responsible for the learning of others and so, really needed to deeply engage with the texts in order to be able to bring them alive for them. I had to take the time to understand his words, his imagery, his motives, his characters so that I could better articulate my understanding to my class.

It opened my eyes enormously. I had never engaged with Shakespeare on this level before, even when studying him myself at school. And it was, cliché coming, like having a curtain lifted.

I can't profess to have read everything by Shakespeare so I am no great authority. I had planned on reading The Complete Works as a New Year's resolution some years ago but this was never achieved. I'm not sure that it ever will. I have since stopped setting myself such unrealistic goals and will probably just delve as and when I feel the urge. I have The Complete Works somewhere but it must be packed in a box, languishing alongside George Eliot and Poets of the Sixteenth Century, dust-covered and probably quite sad.

I never lost my love for Shakespeare but Judi's sonnet has created a further desire in me. The clip has acted as a springboard into deep diving into the folios and sonnets. I have found myself becoming more and more enamoured of Shakespeare the more I discover about his works. There is a lot on British TV at the moment: for starters, Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius which has dramatisations of Shakespeare's life as well as actors and actresses from the present day and other writers and educators commenting on his works and what they get from them; and Upstart Crow, a comedy by famous writer and comedian, Ben Elton, which parodies Shakespeare's life and where his influences came from to create them, and is very funny, witty and learnéd all at the same time. Elton constantly makes light of Shakespeare's life and his writing and I like to think that Shakespeare would approve although there is a considerable lack of twins.

My interest has also been increased by conversations on Vocal that I have been having with Doc Sherwood. You can check him out here:

He has created his own abridged version of Richard III, one of Shakespeare's most discussed history plays, proposed to be a piece of damning Tudor propaganda rather than historically accurate. As a starting point to get the essence of what Shakespeare is all about, I would recommend it.

So, why am I waxing lyrical about Shakespeare now? It's because I agree with Judi. I think that Shakespeare was a marvel, the like of which we may never see again.

This revelation has been, in part, as a result of my own writing. As I sit and contemplate my word placement and the essence of what I want to say and how I will say it within a particular form or in a certain way in order to make meaning plain, I am more and more conscious of what a process it is. Writing on Vocal has made me thoughtful too. Here is a platform where our works will be shared for anyone to see if they can find them and I have a body of work now that I am proud of. People read my creations and for that I am thankful.

But I don't pretend to think that my work has longevity. I am a writing hobbyist who devotes time to it when I can. I will never make a living from it and I'm not sure that I would want to because I write to express it, not to be applauded. Don't get me wrong: I love comments and feedback and I like to reflect on what people say about my work but it's not for plaudits that I write.

I like what I write and I like that I write and that is good enough for me. That is where the joy is.

My point here is that I don't think that my writing will survive me. And this makes me think about Shakespeare and how we are still reading him now, hundreds of years later. I think Doc Sherwood would agree with me, and this is an apt statement if you ever visit his works and see the images he chooses for his stories, and that is that Shakespeare has legs.

I think that I have come to appreciate Shakespeare more too in light of the amount of writing I do. It takes time to perfect what you're writing; it takes concentration; it needs thought and knowledge and a degree of insight. His work is packed with many things. There is no doubting the power of his imagery and this comes from the word choices he makes and the juxtaposition of them with others in the text. He crafts his works like an experienced artisan, using language as his main material, and with the assistance of other tools that he can use to whittle and carve a work that we can admire, he creates writing that stands, like a piece of antique furniture. I don't know if mine is the Ikea equivalent but there is no denying the presence that Shakespeare still has and, I am sure, will continue to have into the future.

It is a contentious subject though, I know, Shakespeare. Like Marmite, you either love him or hate him. There doesn't seem to be an inbetween.

But for me, I am looking forward to further engagement with the bard. I am looking forward to having my horizons littered with twins and fools and kings and dark ladies and the darling buds of May.

I would be interested to know how others on Vocal feel about him. Personally, I admire him. Love seems too trite a word to describe my feelings when I read him but he does touch me in a way that makes me recognise myself and others in his words as well as opening me to things that I may not feel but can acknowledge. For instance, I would never have the ambition of Macbeth but I recognise other people's desire for it and understand it from Shakespeare's representation of it, whilst not wanting it myself.

And, on that note, leaving you to ponder what Shakespeare means to you, I'm off to read King Lear.

Thanks for stopping by! If you do read this, please do leave a comment as I love to interact with my readers and this story, in particular, has been designed to prompt debate. I would be interested to know what my fellow Vocalists think of the Bard and his works. No judgement here, just discussion.