All the world's a stage
Shakespeare in my rear view mirror: What I’m taking with me after a 37 week journey
If you’ve been by my side as I read through Shakespeare’s plays, you deserve some recognition:
Being knowledgeable about Shakespeare isn’t important in itself. It doesn’t make you more intelligent, or classy, or deep. Perhaps understanding cultural references has value, but that’s no reason to see the plays or read them.
We used to attend the annual Shakespeare in the Park performances in St Louis. We saw their first production and attended many years. Despite sometimes excellent productions, the experience became dispiriting. As its marketing reach expanded and audiences swelled, fewer people came to see the play. Inevitably, our blanket neighbors would spend the first half of the performance talking loudly and taking selfies, only to leave at the first intermission.1
Attending a performance to prove your cultural bona fides makes no sense to me. Art exists for pleasure and discovery. There’s nothing wrong, and a lot right, about finding whatever art makes you feel that way. Shakespeare isn’t for everyone, even though I think more people would enjoy Shakespeare if the plays seemed more relevant and accessible, one of the reasons I chose this project.
The Shakespeare Project
My project to read and write about the plays has given me something to look forward to for 37 weeks. Picking up the final play last week was bittersweet. Since the play was new to me, I was eager to dive in. And yet, I knew it would be the last stop on a memorable journey of discovery and delight. Not too different, I think, from life itself.
Today I want to assemble what I learned into a simple narrative that will give shape to what I’ve learned, because most will be lost to time. During the project, I picked up a number of memory trinkets along the way, much as I do when we travel. When I return from a journey, I stuff the ticket stubs, tour maps, and unused postcards into an envelope that I tuck into a drawer. Those artifacts are destined to be forgotten. Over time, they release their hold on my imagination.
For instance, when I was reading the plays covering the War of the Roses, I diagrammed the major players’ relationships. I tucked that piece of paper into my book; it will be useful only if I ever need to remember the son of the ‘Black Prince’ Edward. But along with the trivia are thoughts I don’t want to forget. They have meaning to me. These I want to preserve.
From my 37 essays, I’ve distilled three major themes: all the world’s a stage; the hollow crown; and wenches, queens, and other fierce women. Let’s dive in.
All the world’s a stage
JAQUES All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. -As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 7
Shakespeare conceived theatre as a metaphor for life that remains current today. The sociologist Erving Goffman’s idea that people assume societal roles as if they were actors in a play (“The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”) is not only heavily indebted to Shakespeare: it also articulates how we think about roles we adopt through life.
Much of the fun in Shakespearean comedy (and much of the plotting of his tragedies) depends on characters who disguise themselves as someone else. Watching as other characters interact with the disguised person elicits either laughs or tension. Regardless the kind of play, the final scene in which characters are unmasked creates a satisfying conclusion.
Gender switching
Often, the disguise involves gender switching (almost always a female character disguising herself as a man2). The fact that so many plays use gender switching doesn’t suggest that the plays are gender fluid, but the opposite. The plays use the firm boundaries of society’s rules for men and women to make deception possible. A person wearing a man’s garments or using a male name must be a man: the rules are so rigid that little else is needed to disguise oneself. If the character has no facial hair or speaks with a high voice, other characters conclude he must be a young man, not that he might be a she. Gender roles being rigid allow the deceptions to work.
Female characters in the plays typically assume male disguises in order to protect themselves. The setup is usually that the woman finds herself in a strange new place and disguises herself as a man to avoid being preyed upon. Men, on the other hand, typically disguise themselves for advantage: to spy, to gain access, to trick. The disguise may be physical (Arcite disguising himself to avoid capture while performing in the Duke’s May Day games), but more sinister is the virtual disguise, in which a villainous character, like Iago or Richard III, pretends to be well-meaning.
Trust and judgement
Determining a character’s true nature becomes a major theme in many plays. Trust is the issue: what and who can be trusted? Every play seeks social harmony. Comedies resolve conflict by marriage; tragedies reassert order by mourning the dead and with an authority figure decreeing a new order. Hidden agenda and subversive goals prevent trust; transparency and shared interests increase it.
The plays fundamentally are interested in judgement and justice, and more than half the plays feature a judgement determining guilt or innocence. Almost always, the party is found guilty, even if the judge decides to be merciful. Multiple plays explore the definition of justice (Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, All’s Well that Ends Well are just a few), and the plays give us hypotheticals that test our assumptions about fairness.
Societies rely on judicial arbiters to make decisions about opposing claims, and the people in turn judge whether these arbiters deserve their trust to make those decisions. A healthy society disagrees, but works through their disagreements. Individuals may be unhappy with specific outcomes, but everyone must trust in the fairness of the way justice is determined. It was as true in the monarchical England of the 16th and 17th centuries as it is in any modern country today.
‘All the world’ in some ways, not others
Shakespeare’s aspiration was to bring the world to his theatre, and his often exotic locales and time traveling histories attest to this grand vision of depicting all of humanity on his stage. His ambition, however, over-reaches; his perspective is entirely European and primarily English.
In Laura Bohannon’s 1966 article, “Shakespeare in the Bush,”3 she describes telling the tale of “Hamlet” to the Tiv tribe. She frames her article with a disagreement between herself and an English colleague:
Just before I left Oxford for the Tiv in West Africa, conversation turned to the season at Stratford. “You Americans,” said a friend, “often have difficulty with Shakespeare. He was, after all, a very English poet, and one can easily misinterpret the universal by misunderstanding the particular.”
I protested that human nature is pretty much the same the whole world over; at least the general plot and motivation of the greater tragedies would always be clear—everywhere—although some details of custom might have to be explained and difficulties of translation might produce other slight changes. To end an argument we could not conclude, my friend gave me a copy of Hamlet to study in the African bush: it would, he hoped, lift my mind above its primitive surroundings, and possibly I might, by prolonged meditation, achieve the grace of correct interpretation.
She spends her time in the field interviewing her subjects and recording their stories. They, in turn, encourage her to share a story from her home, and Bohannon translates Hamlet’s story using concepts that she hoped would be familiar to them: for instance, the ‘king’ becomes ‘chief’ in her telling. The Tiv interrupt her repeatedly, arguing with the fundamentals of the story. An elder concludes the tale with these remarks:
“That was a very good story,” added the old man, “and you told it with very few mistakes.” There was just one more error, at the very end. The poison Hamlet’s mother drank was obviously meant for the survivor of the fight, whichever it was. If Laertes had won, the great chief would have poisoned him, for no one would know that he arranged Hamlet’s death. Then, too, he need not fear Laertes’ witchcraft; it takes a strong heart to kill one’s only sister by witchcraft.
The Tiv people’s interpretation illuminates the objective fact that the moral tradition in which Shakespeare worked was essentially cloistered. Moral interpretations aren’t universal: for example, Hamlet’s revulsion at Gertrude’s marrying her brother-in-law can only be understood with a set of shared beliefs. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Gertrude’s decision to marry Claudius.
The story traditions upon which Shakespeare relied derived from European culture. I think some of the tropes as well as the racism and sexism are not only dated but morally wrong. What elevates his work to universal impact is not the story but the text.
Exposing the interior lives of characters
The plays’ verse and prose craft characters whose human frailty and strengths walk the earth through time. These are lives we can sink into and learn from. Because of Shakespeare’s interest in developing interior lives for his characters, we are able to identify ourselves and others in his characters. We can acquire an understanding that transcends life experience.
In the excerpt below, Titus has learned that his daughter was raped and mutilated (her tongue cut out and her hands cut off so that she couldn’t speak or write about the men who attacked her).
TITUS It was my dear, and he that wounded her Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead; For now I stand as one upon a rock Environed with a wilderness of sea, Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, Expecting ever when some envious surge Will in his brinish bowels swallow him. -Titus Andronicus, Act 3 Scene 1
He has much more to say, but these few lines make real the depth of pain Titus experiences. They tap into emotional responses that every human has had when faced with the horror that grief expresses. Through poetry, the plays elicit responses that are fundamental to the human experience: betrayal, loss, wonder, security, vengeance, laughter, joy.
The plays often use mirror plots—a major plot involving principals of the upper class and a minor plot amongst lower-class, often comic characters—that showcase the universal nature of the themes. Prince Hal (Henry IV Parts 1 and 2) gives us a character who slips with ease between the upper and lower classes, demonstrating his essential flaws (a grasping avarice, narcissism, and disloyalty to friends) in both realms. The plays take a firm position on the idea of exceptionalism: the royal class is made up of people who are no different from you or me. People differentiate themselves by the decisions they make, not the circumstances into which they’re born. It’s a democratizing world view that, while not as expansive as he might have assumed, is surprisingly modern.
The hollow crown
Almost half of the plays were histories or tragedies that involve conflict over political power.
KING RICHARD (Sitting) For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings— How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, All murdered. For within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall; and farewell, king. -Richard II, Act 3 Scene 2
The plays that dramatized English or Roman history centralize the drama of acquiring, defending, and usurping power. Beyond dissecting political battles for power, the plays explore the uses and misuses of power. If playing a role was his primary theme, power struggles are the primary activity for those role-players.
This interest in power starts with the first play, The Taming of the Shrew, which pits one woman against one man, and passes through every play until the last.
“This Wooden O”
Prologue […] But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? — Henry V, Prologue
The plays repeat this image of an ‘O’: the hollow crown itself; one’s life surrounded by sleep (Prospero: ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” The Tempest); the Globe theatre itself as a symbol of the round earth we inhabit.
This consistent use of the ‘O’ image brings together the concepts of transient power, transient lives, and the commonality of human life seen at a distance. Attaining power, in this context, means nothing and it means everything. Power can be grasped but never owned. It is as impermanent as life itself, and as the dreams that rule sleeping minds.
The worlds imagined by the plays are governed by power. The comedies are no exception: the plots in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are driven by a spat between Oberon and Titania (fairy king and queen), in which they test the power dynamics in their relationship. Conflicts over power produce the disharmony that becomes increasingly discordant in the arc of the play, which is finally resolved (violently and/or romantically) by the last scene.
With the exception of queens, women in the plays are assumed to be powerless, especially in their choice of mate. More than one play makes use of a puzzle device that a father uses to determine which man, a stranger, will marry the daughter. (One of those puzzles is designed by a ruler to prevent anyone from marrying his daughter, with whom he has an incestuous relationship. I don’t think a more powerless character could be imagined than this daughter, who remains unnamed in the play.) More than one bride, ‘won’ through some trial, at the end of the play seems more to be pitied than admired.
Yet the plays also give us memorable female characters who wield power of their own making.
Wenches, queens, and other fierce women
CLIFFORD (to King Henry) I would your highness would depart the field— The Queen hath best success when you are absent. -Richard Duke of York (3 Henry VI), Act 2 Scene 2
And so it was that King Henry VI, inept in war, is kicked to the curb in recognition of his dynamic queen. Strong female roles abound in the plays, despite the relatively fewer female roles. They sort themselves into several categories. But first, let’s tackle the question of feminism in the plays.
Are the plays feminist?
Shakespeare wasn’t a feminist, by any means: witness the number of pretty ingenues who are distinguished by their docility, virtue, and willingness to be co-opted by men; the number of bawds and whores (misogynistic stock characters) who populate the plays; and the number of insults that use female attributes to demean male characters.
The percentage of named female roles in the plays averages 20% (for comparison, the percentage for speaking roles in the USA’s top grossing films in 2023 was 35%, an abysmally low percentage). The plays fail the Bechdel test, which measures whether there are two female characters who speak to each other about something other than a male character. So, no, Shakespeare’s plays weren’t vanguards for equality for women.
However, he created many female characters who are strong, complex, wise, and witty. Did he create these roles because he needed more meaty roles for his (all-male) acting troupe? Without trying to imagine what was on his mind, let’s consider the theatre in his day. Acting troupes were all-male, and most plays had at least a few female roles—the theatre reflects human experience, after all. None of Shakespeare’s contemporaries created timeless roles for strong female characters. For whatever reason, Shakespeare wrote female characters with a depth that’s surprising even today.
Women who outwit men
In comedies, female characters get the upper hand in relationships with men by outwitting them. Beatrice is the sharper wit in her romantic jousting with Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing). Despite his snarky reputation, Benedick folds quickly after trading a few barbs with Beatrice. He’s needed to soften her rough edges, so that she’ll even consider marriage. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia pretends to be a judge in a legitimate legal trial and weighs the mortal fate of two men. Despite this dodgy premise, she proves to have a sharper legal mind than any of the play’s men, and navigates the logic of a desperately involved problem to deliver a bloodless outcome (whether it’s just or not is up to the audience) and gets married.
Contrary to popular sexist tropes today, the plays imagine men to be overly passionate and intemperate, while women are grounded, logical, and insightful. They’re often canny and sometimes craven, but they’re not illogical bimbos. Even the sweet, virtuous, and compliant maids can think and plan. Men, on the other hand, are often portrayed as bumblers and wastrels. Without Olivia’s maid, Maria, devising a scheme to prank Malvolio, her male colleagues would never have been able to pull off the scam that’s central to Twelfth Night. The comedies rely on smart, crafty women to lift the plays out of romantic comedy dross.
Women and power
Most memorable are the strong women who wield power regardless if they’re in positions of authority. In The Winter’s Tale, Paulina stands up to Leontes’ tyrannical impulses and puts right the wrongs he had done while impassioned with jealousy. She saved his wife and reunited the couple, to Leonte’s joy. Paulina’s husband didn’t have the clarity of mind to make the right choice when his king told him to abandon his infant in the wilds, and he paid for that poor choice with his life. He was too afraid to stand up to Leontes; Paulina was not. She shames him, and he takes it as his due. She alone had the moral clarity to act as if she were powerful, in order to be so.
Coriolanus was the very image of martial power in his eponymous play. He learned how to be powerful from his mother, Volumnia. The tribunes, who represent the people of Rome, quake to meet her. They call her ‘mad’ but fear the woman who responds to a dinner invitation with this:
VOLUMNIA Anger’s my meat, I sup upon myself, And so shall starve with feeding. (To Virgilia) Come, let’s go. Leave this faint puling and lament as I do, In anger, Juno-like. Come, come, come. -Coriolanus, Act 4 Scene 2
Volumnia is a keen political strategist, and she counsels and coaches her son as he seeks to become consul. In a pique of temper, he fails to follow her advice and is exiled. Coriolanus is impelled by his emotions, and he ultimately dies because of them.
Shakespeare created a number of female characters who distinguish themselves in ruling a country and militarily. Male characters note their strategic acumen and military leadership. They’re tough negotiators. And always, they do this in service of men.
Volumina’s more than an advocate for her son, Coriolanus, she’s the mastermind behind his political career. Queen Margaret (Henry VI Part 3) asserts her leadership despite her husband’s diffidence in order to protect the throne for her son (who is killed, nonetheless). Lady Macbeth, who manipulates Macbeth into taking power through violence, steels herself so that her husband can advance. Joan of Arc stands alone in this regard: her military courage serves no one but her ideology. Once captured, her character repudiates her image as courageous. She goes to her death lying to save herself, in vain.
Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558-1603, the first woman to rule the country herself, not as an adjunct to a king. Shakespeare was born in 1564. Until James I was crowned (1603), Shakespeare lived his life under the rule of a queen. He had the benefit of seeing a model for a strong female head of state. He’d witnessed political rule in the hands of a powerful and willful woman and it shows in his portrayals of women.
The female mind
Shakespeare’s greatest gift to his audience is the revelation of his characters’ internal states. Being male, he understood the minds of men intimately. Almost unexpected is his imagination of the minds of women in all their variety and complexity. Female characters in the plays don’t mimic the lazy madonna/whore dichotomy. You’ll find chaste virgins and passive mothers as well as whores and witches, but you’ll also find real women who earn respect from the men in the play. They may also be unapologetically unlikeable.
Volumnia is more than a woman with a great strategic mind. She’s also proud, although she knows when to use humility to her advantage (as she did when she kneels to Coriolanus to persuade him against annihilating Rome). She’s unsympathetic and lacks empathy: she’s amused by her memory of young Coriolanus, toying with a butterfly until he kills it; she has no time for Coriolanus’ demure wife who wants to stay at home and avoid unpleasantness; she has no feelings for anyone outside her family. She’s not a likable character, but she’s undoubtedly more powerful than any other in the play, and she never has to resort to violence to demonstrate her power.
This is, perhaps, the point. Aside from Joan of Arc, women in the plays don’t use physical force to assert themselves, while most of the plays showcase men fighting or demonstrating their physical power in contests. Lacking similar physical strength, women in the plays use their minds to overcome adversity. They plan, they strategize. They use logic and debate to gain agreement to pursue their goals. They are often unrelenting.
I’ve studied medieval and Restoration drama (that is, theatre before and after Shakespeare) and never found a place for myself. Those traditions described unrecognizable worlds that only a scholar could love. When I was introduced to Shakespeare, I didn’t expect to discover a place that would accommodate my imagination, capture my emotions, and deliver epiphanies that made me think differently about who I am and how I can be in the world. My low expectations melted away. I found a bottomless treasure chest that continues to amaze me, decades later.
I hope you do too.
Recommended
A few recommendations if you’ve enjoyed the series.
“Sing Sing” hasn’t been released yet, but this trailer is doing its job. The look on Colman Domingo’s face when he’s asked at a probation hearing if he’s “acting now,” well it speaks volumes. Keep an eye out for this film.
Speaking of Shakespeare in prison, Margaret Atwood’s book “Hag-seed” is a masterpiece. Even if you know the story you’ll be surprised.
For mystery fans, Jo Nesbo’s “Macbeth” combines the thrill of a Nesbo mystery with the dark power of its source material.
I recently read Maggie O’Farrell’s '“Hamnet” and was impressed with her imaginative reconstruction of Shakespeare’s private life. Her take on why Shakespeare would write Hamlet soon after his son’s death is creative and plausible.
The Donmar Warehouse’s All-Female Shakespeare Trilogy uses the ‘Shakespeare in prison’ concept for its three plays (which can be rented or purchased). We watched the Julius Caesar episode a few years ago and it was stunning.
Thanks for reading,
In fairness, we saw some of this at the (New York) Central Park production of King Lear one summer (featuring John Lithgow as Lear). We sat near a group that must have been comped their seats: there’s no way a group of people waits hours in a queue for a free ticket, only to leave after the first act. However, once the play started the audience was respectful.
The mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream put on a play with a female character (Thisbe), so a man does dress as a woman for the play’s performance. In The Taming of the Shrew, the framing device has a man playing a wife. If I’ve missed another instance, let me know!
Do read the linked article; it’s funny and fascinating.