As I've been reminded by James Shapiro's excellent BBC4 documentary, Britain's most influential writer, national artistic icon and cultural export - not to mention literary Olympian - was effectively a servant of the Royal household, paid to entertain, not to say flatter, the King, which he did very effectively. I wonder how much this has influenced British history and helped keep the monarchy in place. I know the plays are ambiguous, ambivalent, questioning and quite clearly transcend their author's role as Royal lackey. But its still easy to construct a composite 'Shakespearean' view that works to support the British monarchy. Indeed, some of the speeches of the history plays are an accepted part of the royalist narrative. Had our foremost poet / dramatist been from the nineteenth century (being a post-revolutionary, more egalitarian era), as were Hugo or Baudelaire in France, or had he been an outsider in the way that, arguably, Dante was in Italy, or, say, Whitman and Dickinson were in the USA, how differently would British history have turned out? I'm not suggesting the the plays' investigations of power and politics are limited, or that, transferred to other cultures, they can't act as powerful challenges to authority; I'm just musing on their influence on Britain and its monarchy; could they be partly responsible for the fact the we're subjects, not citizens, and that our government and top layers of society are - even in the 21st century - stuffed with Lords, Ladies, Dames, Knights, Dukes and Princes?
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3 comments:
Since the only successful revolution in English history replaced one Stuart with another it's unlikely that Shakespeare is all *that* important. I mean, the French revolution empowered the bourgeoisie and they're still in place, ditto the US, the German, the Italian, etc.
National myths aren't as important as national realities. Why is the US so enamored of your royal family? Because we were in fact and still are psychologically a colony. That's not our myth, of course. But our myth just covers our reality. Whitman has as little to do with who we are as Shakespeare does with who you are, or take Italy, which was run for a long time by Berlusconi, who would have been in hell per Dante ..
"...we were in fact and still are psychologically a colony." Interesting. And, as you say, not the American myth. I do think national myths are important though. Maybe not as important as 'realities', but the British national myth includes the notion of benevolent invasion to 'liberate' other countries. But maybe you're right John, and I'm allowing too much importance to writers, and too little to power-politics.
I think we're both right. National myths enable national realities. I just think the myths have a supporting role, they aren't the main players.
And, yes, we are still a colony, hence insecure. You can see it in England too, which is insecure vis-a-vis France. Why? Because of the Norman Invasion. And because of the failed attempt to retake France in the 1400s. And no, I'm not being facetious.
Think of the current situation in Greece, and how people are still discussing Greek fascism as ironic given Athenian democracy ...
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