{"id":12050,"date":"2021-08-19T12:03:19","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T11:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=12050"},"modified":"2021-08-19T12:03:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T11:03:19","slug":"shakespeares-wisdom-in-troubled-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2021\/08\/19\/shakespeares-wisdom-in-troubled-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Shakespeare’s Wisdom in Troubled Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a barrister I am given to quoting from Shakespeare\u2019s plays in closing speeches. This may seem pretentious, but I find his acute observations on the human condition continue to speak to juries, and judges. He remains highly relevant to legal education, and indeed the practice of law. I would go so far as to say that a good knowledge of his work provides a real advantage to any practitioner.<\/em><\/p>\n

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William Shakespeare’s Birthplace.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stratford-upon-Avon <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently, I was delighted to have the opportunity to appear in a rare in-person trial in Royal Leamington Spa, which is in Shakespeare\u2019s home county of Warwickshire. I recalled John Betjeman\u2019s poem about dying in the town, whose name conjures images of Bertie Wooster on a bucolic retreat:<\/p>\n

oh, you know that the stucco is peeling.
\nDo you know that the heart will stop?
\nFrom those yellow Italianate arches
\nDo you hear the plaster drop? <\/em><\/p>\n

Times have changed. To my chagrin, Leamington Spa is not actually a spa town \u2013 any longer at least \u2013 but is just a short hop from Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare\u2019s birthplace, where I stayed for the duration of proceedings.<\/p>\n

The house where Shakespeare was born<\/a><\/span> was previously an ale house and is now a museum. Nearby, in The Holy Trinity Church, lies his grave, which contains a stern warning that his bones should remain in situ.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the well-preserved Anne Hathaway House<\/span><\/a> was closed for the duration of my stay, but the exterior and gardens were at least visible. Likewise, the complex of theatres \u2013 home to the Royal Shakespeare Company \u2013 were also no go in this bleak period for the performing arts.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare himself often confronted the closure of puppet shows for sowing subversive ideas as Puritanism gained ground, as documented in James Shapiro\u2019s, 1599<\/em><\/a> A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare<\/em><\/a><\/span> (2005) and 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear<\/em><\/a><\/span> (2015).<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s era was marked by recurring plague, tyranny and civil strife, themes according to Stephen Greenbelt\u2019s Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics<\/em><\/a><\/span> (2018) the Bard approached obliquely, for fear of persecution. Under conditions of tyranny, public art may still be an outlet for mockery of the powerful. Thus we find in Percy Bysshe Shelley\u2019s \u2018Ozymandias\u2019<\/p>\n

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
\nAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read<\/em><\/p>\n

In what follows I recite some of Shakespeare\u2019s lines that inform my understanding of our present world.<\/p>\n

Neither a borrower nor a lender be<\/em><\/strong>. (Polonius, Hamlet<\/em>)<\/p>\n

In the light of the bailing out of toxic banks \u2013 socialism for the mega rich \u2013 and the infliction of austerity, being indebted now brings serious dangers. With so much crime linked to social exclusion and poverty, it is as if we are returning to an era of Debtors\u2019 Prisons, ubiquitous in Shakespeare\u2019s day.<\/p>\n

The late David Graeber\u2019s excellent book Debt: the First 5,000 Years<\/em><\/a> <\/span>(2011) precisely illustrates how debt, and now student debt in particular, is creating a permanent rentier class with no educational outlet for upward mobility, and low prospects of home ownership, at least for those who don\u2019t have access to the bank of Mum and Dad.<\/p>\n

The power of bankers in contemporary society should lead to consideration of The Merchant of Venice<\/em>, which, apart from dreadful antisemitism \u2013 Shakespeare often expressed the prejudices of his day \u2013 provides a searing attack on the sin of usury, the existence of which is conveniently ignored by far right Christians today.<\/p>\n

In the play, Portia (Bassano\u2019s betrothed who finds himself in a spot of bother after taking on a debt on unfavourable terms from Shylock) presents herself in court, disguised as a male lawyer, and pleads for mercy against the enforcement of the bond, which is the extraction of a pound of flesh.<\/p>\n

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Shylock and Portia (1835) by Thomas Sully<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a famous passage she argues:<\/p>\n

The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed, it blessed him that gives, and him that takes, tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown, His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings: But mercy is above this sceptred sway, it is enthroned in the heart of kings, it is an attribute to God himself; and earthly power doth then show likes god\u2019s, when mercy seasons justice\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

Shylock responds with a narrow vision of justice that sadly is all too familiar in our time of dispossessions:<\/p>\n

I crave the law, the penalty and forfeit of my bond. <\/em><\/p>\n

Portia then shifts ground and cleverly argues that the bond should be enforced but:<\/p>\n

The bond gives thee there no jot of blood \u2013 The words expressly are a pound of flesh \u2026 Then take they bond, take thou thy pound of flesh, but in the cutting it, if thou dost shed one drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods are by the laws of Venice confiscate \u2026 For as thou urge justice, be assured, thou shalt have justice more than thou deserts. <\/em><\/p>\n

In this morality tale, therefore, Shylock \u2013 unlike our contemporary bankers in most cases \u2013 is forestalled in his extraction of the pound of flesh. If only such arguments against the extraction of financial flesh were available to barristers defending the disposed today.<\/p>\n

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Three daughters of King Lear by Gustav Pope<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The True Criminals<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So who are the true criminals today? Shakespeare offered an answer through the medium of the wise Fool in Kind Lear:<\/p>\n

What art mad. A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears see how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thine ear, change places, and handy dandy, what is the justice which is the thief. <\/em><\/p>\n

Governments bail out Goldman Sachs and other banks. There are no repercussions for their reckless lending, save in Nordic countries like Iceland. But If Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread, they pursue him to the ends of the Earth to extract the pound of flesh.<\/p>\n

Similarly, if you become a whistle-blower and reveal the machinations of the powerful such as Julian Assange, then you are turned into a criminal, while Messrs Blair, Kissinger, and indeed Varadkar, are never forced to face the music.<\/p>\n

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Amanda Knox<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lady doth protest too much, methinks,<\/em><\/strong> (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2).<\/p>\n

Stacey Schiff\u2019s Witches: Salem 1692<\/em><\/a><\/span> (2015) observes how the hysteria of witch hunts appear to represent a sublimation of pre-existing grievances, and envy. This remains the case for modern day witch hunts such as that directed against Amanda Knox<\/a><\/span>, which have been highlighted by the Innocence Project.<\/p>\n

The book makes clear that children can be manipulated into holding false belief, even to the extent that they incriminate themselves. False allegations are also linked to hysterical parents or authority figures.\u202fAs occurred in Amanda Knox’s case<\/a><\/span>, young minds are easily turned to mush by persistent questioning, fear of authority, and interaction with nefarious police officers and social workers.<\/p>\n

This is what is referred to as falsely implanted memory syndrome, on which subject Elizabeth Loftus<\/span><\/a> and Maggie Bruck<\/a><\/span> are experts.<\/p>\n

Categorising someone as a witch or a warlock also reflects jealousy if that person holds a gift you do not possess. Seen in Freudian terms, it is a form of transference of perceived inadequacies.<\/p>\n

All that glisters is not gold.<\/em><\/strong> (The Merchant of Venice<\/em>, Act 2, Scene 7)<\/p>\n

This zeitgeist<\/em> is one of post-truth<\/a><\/span> amorality, a phenomenon with long antecedents. In King Lear<\/em> we hear that \u2018a scurvy politician seems to see the thing thou does not\u2019; while Henry VI<\/em> speaks of: \u2018Stuffing the ears of men with false reports\u2019, which seems curiously relevant to Covid Times.<\/p>\n

Purveyors of nonsense and incomprehensible prose \u2013 the structuralists and post-modernists who took over the universities \u2013 represent a movement, or grouping, united in their rejection of universal values. Relativism leads to the dismissal of evidence, rationality, science, rigour, precision and all the integrative forces that tie society together, as Noam Chomsky<\/a><\/span> has observed: \u2018if I am missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"The first point to note about the post modernists nonsense is that it has encouraged a distrust of the truth and an atmosphere of looseness and imprecision, wherein any old argument, or moral position, is accorded equal weight.<\/p>\n

In 2005 the late David Foster Wallace<\/a><\/span> observed that this created an epistemic free-for-all in which any truth is seen from the vantage of perspective and agenda.<\/p>\n

Relativistic and structuralist ideas such as the indeterminacy of texts, alternative ways of knowing and the instability of language fed into Trump and his aides saying that every word he utters should not be taken literally. Just as a text by Derrida could contradict itself, similarly Trump can jump from one inconsistency to the next.<\/p>\n

The work of The Innocence Project is littered with examples of perjured evidence, false and fabricated claims and cognitive and confirmation bias by experts or pseudo experts, which have led to wrongful convictions. All too many innocent people are incarcerated on the basis of lies. With the embrace of subjectivity, we are celebrating opinion over knowledge, feelings over facts.<\/p>\n

Confirmation bias applies where people rush to judgment, and give into their prejudices, rather than evaluating evidence.<\/p>\n

According to Evan Davies<\/a><\/span> in his recent book Post Truth<\/em>, one aspect of all this bullshit is a desire to believe something unreasonable to be true. Pope Francis sagely remarked that \u2018There is no such thing as harmless disinformation: trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n

There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.<\/p>\n

— Pope Francis \u2013 ARCHIVE (@Pontifex266Arch) January 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n