Now that we are into the 21st century, it should surprise no one that Shakespeare remains relevant. Just recently, as my AP students and I probed Othello, Lear and Hamlet, the relevance struck me mightily. The first point I should makes stems from the fact that spending time with more than one play at a time truly enriches the experience enormously. One accrues a sense of repeated themes, preoccupations of the poet, and the ongoing skepticism with regard to language he possesses. In fact, Shakespeare, like his surrogate Hamlet, trusts little in the external world, because his gut tells him something is ill with it. And therein, we know that Shakespeare is, indeed, still relevant.

What he is particularly good at is representing the confusion one confronts in encountering the complexity of the external world and the difficulty in fathoming the truth beneath the surface of what we experience. His skepticism directly focuses on the shimmering surfaces and their propensity to deceive us. This can lead us (metaphorically) to blindness or madness in Lear's case, or enormous self-doubt as in Hamlet's case, or worse pathologies, as in the case of Othello.

As we do live in a world of appearances and surfaces and "the visual moment," Shakespeare can teach us a lot about how to decode what is authentic and what is not, with a real predilection toward skepticism toward all appearances whatsoever. Bump this up against a culture in which our students are forever bombarded with images that are merely surface with little substance and one can see that a dose of Shakespeare may be a singular inoculation against the superficiality with which they must contend.

What is difficult, however, about Shakespeare is the language--it probably always has been, even in his own day, because it is incredibly rich, elusive, playful and substantive in its own right. Of course, the Elizabethan audience had the advantage of sharing the same idiom with him, but these texts are rich beyond most imaginations. More has probably been written about Shakespeare's plays than any other texts, except perhaps the bible; he still confounds  us and drives us to construe him.

Nevertheless, the difficulty is worth the lesson. In Othello's and Lear's case, one must be particular careful about who one listens to and what they say--it requires the student to begin to appreciate a skill we seldom emphasize in learning, but we know it is a priority--listening, good listening. Who is speaking to whom about what and what is in it for them? All utterances are rhetorical. Most have substance as well, but we must learn, from Shakespeare, what to trust.

Life is a carnival of visual richness and Shakespeare asks us to take it carefully, to discern what is what. Moreover, he also teaches us that language is not always reliable as a vehicle for truth--as William James retorts, "Language betrays the truth"--even when we most want to utter whats true. Sometimes words themselves simply get in the way.

I could cite more specifically and in more detail the dynamics of many of his plays, but suffice it to say, Shakespeare can teach us much about modernity and that goes for the 21st century as well. The delight, of course, for my AP students and me stems from the fact that we've had the time to spend with these plays.
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Posted by Matthew Kearney at January 12, 2008 10:00 PM

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