All Posts Tagged With: "shakespeare"

Like that of Henry V, Prince Jack’s passing leaves a big hole

Photo by Phil Kalina on Flickr

As a Shakespeare prof, I am always interested to see how the popular media represent my particular expertise, so this piece by Don Macpherson over at the National Post caught my eye. Macpherson suggests provocatively that the race to replace Jack Layton as NDP leader is a story worthy of Shakespeare — yet somehow the Bard of the St. Lawrence manages to get through the entire piece without mentioning a single Shakespearean play or character.

But the idea intrigued me, and since I have a passing knowledge of the Shakespeare canon, I wondered if there really was an instructive Shakespearean parallel here.

And I think there is. It’s the end of Henry V.

Without boring you with too many details (you have to shell out over a thousand bucks in tuition fees for that), let me tell you that Shakespeare’s Henry V was a heck of a guy. At first people thought he was a crazy radical, hanging with the wrong crowd and just not cut out to be king. But one day when the moment was right, he caught on, got the country behind him, and, against overwhelming odds, conquered the land of the French. Any of this sound familiar?

But Shakespeare’s Henry V ends on a sombre note. With barely time to savour his victory, Henry dies, and everyone knows that there is no one like him waiting in the wings. Sounding very familiar?

Following the death of Henry V, a terrible, divisive civil war breaks out (chronicled in three more plays) and it’s another generation before the path back to peace and prosperity can be found.

I won’t labour the point by trying to match up every NDP hopeful with a Shakespearean counterpart (is Thomas Mulcair destined to be the tyrannical Richard III?), but the lesson that Shakespeare draws from Henry V should not be ignored. Shakespeare’s point is that a dynamic, charismatic leader is a wonderful thing. He can do what others didn’t even dream of. But such leaders, by virtue of their own greatness, unintentionally set a dangerous trap for the future. Shakespeare saw that no man can cheat death, and the bigger the man, the bigger the void he leaves behind.

The New Democrats find themselves staring into just such a void and on the verge of their own civil war. The rest of us will have to be content to chronicle it as best we can. Oh, for a muse of fire…

Todd Pettigrew (PhD) is an Associate Professor of English at Cape Breton University.

“Let not men say / ‘These are their reasons; they are natural;’ / For, I believe, they are portentous things / Unto the climate that they point upon.”

Sometimes I think it doesn’t matter what you study, as long as you study something, for I have often noticed that many brilliant people have arrived at the same habits of thought through the studies of entirely different disciplines. This is why I rely on my knowledge of Shakespeare to understand climate change.

Now, before you scoff too loudly, understand that I am not about to suggest that Shakespeare knew very much about global climate (when he uses the word “climate,” it is in a more limited sense) or that he was prescient enough to predict our current situation. In fact, the part of Shakespeare studies that I’m thinking of here is the so-called authorship debate. You know, where a small number of observers keep making the case that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon could not have been the author of the plays attributed to him.

Those wishing to make the case for someone other than Shakespeare being Shakespeare can trot out a number of seemingly convincing points, all of which are true, as far as they go:

1. Though Shakespeare is supposed to have gone to the Stratford grammar school, there is no record of his actually having attended there.

2. There are no surviving letters mentioning Shakespeare as a dramatist.

3. Shakespeare’s will does not make mention of any books.

From these facts, the anti-Stratfordians (whoever their preferred Shakespeare may be) go on to draw all sorts of conclusions. If Shakespeare didn’t attend school he couldn’t possibly have been able to write the plays people say he did. If Shakespeare was so famous, why doesn’t anyone mention ever having met him? How could a literary genius not have owned any books? It doesn’t add up!

At least it doesn’t add up unless you know the full slate of facts. To wit:

1. There are no records of Shakespeare attending the King’s New School in Stratford because the records from the period were lost in a fire. Shakespeare’s father was the Bailiff of the town, a position roughly equivalent to a mayor. On this evidence, it is nearly certain that Shakespeare would have attended the local grammar school.

Nine days, 11 hours and 33 seconds ago, I walked out of Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute for what I hope will be the last time. In other words, my biology exam is written, and life is worth living again. And if I play my university elective cards right, Shakespeare will be a thing of the [...]

Nine days, 11 hours and 33 seconds ago, I walked out of Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute for what I hope will be the last time. In other words, my biology exam is written, and life is worth living again. And if I play my university elective cards right, Shakespeare will be a thing of the past and Basket Weaving 101 will finally appear on an official school transcript of mine.

And because I’m now an official adult (sort of), any day now, I’ll spontaneously lose the ability to say, “Pokemon.” Which means I’ll become like all other adults around the world, who insist on pronouncing it, “Pokeyman.”

And if my family hadn’t relocated to the Kitchener-Waterloo area last January, I’d be preparing to move into residence, 500 km away from my family. But since I don’t have to sink into the depths of denial, I can fully appreciate how horrible that would be. At least for me.

Never mind that I’d be living alone in an unknown city, where I don’t have any relatives or friends, and ignoring the fact that I would be going from home-cooked meals to an area not under my mom’s jurisdiction. Meaning, a place where rules like, “no finger-licking or making mooshy smacky noises allowed,” aren’t enforced.

What if my roommate liked listening to loud pop music while they did their homework, or made annoying tapping noises? When a sibling does that, you can say, “You know that irritating, mindless tapping noise you’re making? It’s irritating. And mindless.”

My toothbrush would be on the same counter as someone else’s. In the same toiletry suburb. It would be within odor-traveling range of someone else’s crap. And within the misting range of all their flushes.

Worst of all, if I went into residence, I would go from seeing my three-year-old brother Sam every single day to maybe three or four times throughout the entire school year.

Without Sam in my daily life, there wouldn’t be anyone to laugh when I pretend to get blown to pieces by an imaginary sniper. Sure, there are thousands of people at the University of Waterloo, but something tells me that I wouldn’t have the same captivated audience. At three and a half-years old, Sam is still incapable of pronouncing “f” sounds. Instead, it comes out like an, “s.” Meaning “five” is “sive” and “fruit” is “suit.” If I lived in residence, I would never again hear, “I want ketchup for my sies.”

Before Sam was born, all babies looked identical to me. I didn’t really consider anyone under the age of four as having a unique, individual personality. Three years ago, if I had to tell one baby apart from another, it would have been like trying to distinguish between two goldfish.

Now it would be more like telling one grade nine student apart from another. Or two fourteen-year-old girls.

Without Sam, I wouldn’t be able to play one of my favourite games. It’s more fun than X-Box and Wii combined. More entertaining than blowing the crap out of aliens in Contra 4. For reasons not yet scientifically understood, there’s a certain satisfaction to sneaking up on Sam and then proceeding to scare the living crap out him.

And then hearing him say, “That’s not sunny, Scott.”