Thomas Mazzaferro
Professor Doyle
Shakespeare Final Paper
10 December 2018
Shakespeare Reveals Himself
Literature is an incredibly powerful form of media. We, as the readers, are able to step out of our reality and into the text. The text can take us to other places, worlds, and into the lives of people and beings we have never met. Fiction is a genre that rejects the limits and laws of reality, to take it’s reader somewhere they would never be able to find otherwise. It is through the process of reading that we can escape our own individual world and peek into another. However, how do these worlds come to be? Are human beings truly capable of creating their own worlds, simply from the words they put on paper? The answer lies in the process of creating fiction, and all fingers point towards the author. The author is the divine, omnipotent creator of these worlds, they design the reality, laws, conflict, and messages behind the story. However, in order for humans to create reality, they must gather what they have learned about the world, from the life around them. Here is where an interesting event happens, the author begins to, potentially unknowingly, pour their own life and knowledge into the world they have created for us. Scientist work within a field they focus on, Musicians make music pertaining to their personal genre, Writers of fiction make use of their knowledge of reality, in order to copy or replicate it. The author must take bits and pieces of our known and understood world, in order to translate this unknown and confusing one for us. Here, many issues can arise, as an author’s understanding of the world will surely shine through their work, and can reveal a great deal about who they were as a person, and the world they lived in.
William Shakespeare is obviously a widely beloved author of fiction, and creator of many worlds. He would often make use of real-world locations, and place his fictional characters within them. Shakespeare lived in Europe and was constantly surrounded by European people, culture, history and more. He was relatively unexposed to the outside world. So, one could argue that Shakespeare had a certain amount of limitations on the things he could effectively write about. The man would very often write about other nations and countries, but they would be very European, even his fictional settings had very European structure to them. In his essay on “Culture” Stephen Greenblatt writes “a careful reading of a work of literature will lead to a heightened understanding of the culture within which it was produced.” (227.) According to Greenblatt, an author is only capable of writing what their culture knows. Author’s are incapable of setting their own world aside, at some point in the writing process, their own thoughts, beliefs, morals and understandings will bleed into their text. So, what can we learn about early European culture, by analyzing moments in which Shakespeare expressed thoughts on Culture, Gender and Race through his fictional plays.
It is easy to see European culture through the concept of social hierarchy, which come into play in many of Shakespeare’s works. One’s status and class in society was very important in Shakespeare’s time, and these characters are often very important to the story. However, there is one character in a very lowly place, who still holds great importance. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the character of Bottom is mainly seen as comic relief, to keep the driving force of comedy and mischief prominent throughout the play. Bottom is a young actor who seems very hopeless and sad. He lacks any noble place in society and is meant to be seen as below the majority of the characters. However, Bottom’s place in society is a interesting factor of his importance to the story. Later in the play, Bottom’s head is transformed to that of a donkey’s, through the magic of the fairies in the forest. The Queen of these fairies Titania, quickly falls in love with the donkey-headed Bottom as a result of a love potion affecting her. This event is a very powerful moment in the play as Titania could be considered to be one of the highest social positions in the entire play. She is not only a Queen, but also Queen of the Fairies, a species of beings that clearly holds a great power over the rest of the human characters. Her affection for the lowly Bottom could be seen as Shakespeare revealing a satirical view he had of his society. His culture was so greatly focused on wealth, status and social position, so Shakespeare chose to depict these two characters, of opposite worth, intimately in love and affectionate with each other. This occurrence would be so incredibly ridiculous to his audience, that it would be seen as comedy. In today’s society, these kinds of relationships are quite common. At least in the United States, social position does not play nearly as large a part in marriage as romantic love does. So, through this scene, Shakespeare’s early European culture reveals its belief that being in love with someone outside of one’s own social position was frowned upon, and even worthy of mockery.
Many of the plays we have come to know and love could be vastly different if Shakespeare’s life was even slightly changed. One of the many aspects of Shakespeare’s life that influenced his writing was his Gender. If Shakespeare was a woman instead, many events of his plays would play out differently. This is all purely speculation, however, one could argue that a female playwright would work harder to emphasize the unbalance between men and women in this time period. As another example from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the character of the Duke Theseus holds an interesting power over his daughter’s head. Hermia, daughter of the Duke, is deeply in love with a man named Lysander. However, her father longs for her only to marry another man known as Demetrius. Theseus forbids his daughter from marrying Lysander and Hermia must find a way to accept this fact. Hermia attempts to reconcile with her Father and explain that they are both great men, but she loves Lysander more. Theseus responds, “But in this kind, wanting your Father’s voice, the other must be held the worthier.”(5) This is simply Theseus stating, “Yes, but my opinion matters more.” Although Hermia struggles with this conflict, there is more of a focus on the fact that she is forbidden from marrying specifically Lysander. There is significantly less of a focus on the fact that her Father gets to determine who she marries. In my opinion, a female Shakespeare would allow this issue to come to light much more. A female Shakespeare would hope to make use of these characters to expose the falsities of this cultural phenomenon. Being a women themselves, they would sympathize with Hermia much more, and attempt to spark a sense of freedom in the women of the time, and push them to make decisions for themselves. Instead, Shakespeare uses this conflict as a source of comedy and confusion, rather than expose the corrupt and oppressive side of the society he lived in.
Race was most likely Shakespeare’s most close-minded subject. There is no greater evidence that his own society greatly influenced his work. Throughout early European culture, there is a powerful and consistent use of the term “White privilege.” This privilege was the belief that white people are above all other races, in intelligence, culture, and technology. Much of early European culture was based upon the “White Man’s Burden” the belief that white settlers must further expand lesser developed nations and modernize them. However, as issues like racism and slavery arose, the “White Man’s Burden” was a complete failure. One character of Shakespeare’s plays is a living representation of this failure to aid the lesser developed world. In Shakespeare’s famous play The Tempest, the character Prospero lives on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. Prospero is often depicted as an elderly white-skinned wizard who is very intelligent and clever. When arriving on the island, Prospero meets Caliban, a native “creature” that has already lived on the island for some time. Caliban is described as a dark, evil beast that crawls around and acts like an animal. The play greatly antagonizes him, and the many white European characters have a passionate hatred for Caliban. However, Prospero has an interesting relationship with him. Caliban acts as a sort of servant to Prospero, much like a slave. The wizard is clearly above him in intelligence and strength, and the native Caliban had no choice but to give in to Prospero’s conquest of the island. This aspect of The Tempest is an incredibly clear depiction of the European expansion to the New World. The fact that Caliban, who technically should rule the land he was born on, is pushed aside by the oppressive White European characters, is like Shakespeare giving us a fictional play-by-play of how British colonization went. In order for Caliban to be seen in a different light, Shakespeare would have to have been born into a culture much more negatively affected by colonization. Because of his society, he saw no wrong in the actions of his fictional characters, and thoughtlessly wrote off Caliban as a mindless, villainous animal.
This is not an attempt to expose Shakespeare as some ugly label like racist or sexist, but rather an example of the fact that the world an author lives in greatly influences what they write about, and how they write about it. We, as humans, are natural learners. We gather information about the things around us and cement them into our minds, especially as we are growing up. It is difficult to break away from one’s conditioning, or natural programming society places upon each one of us. As modern writers, we must find a way to deny our own world, and find a way to create wholly new realities, never based on our own opinions or mindsets. Otherwise, bias, stereotype, racism and unbalance will continue to exist in the world. Literature often has the ability to outlive the society it came from, so let’s make sure our society is looked back on with a positive glance.
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Culture.” Critical Terms for Literary Study. Edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Second Edition. 1995.
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Pelican. Edited by Russ McDonald. New York 2016.
THOMAS MAZZAFERRO 