When I’m trolling around for blog post ideas I’ll often spot a topic I don’t often see discussed and then google “<that topic> Shakespeare” to see what comes up.  So on Reddit I saw a post about Rudyard Kipling.  Ok.  Google “kipling shakespeare” and one of the interesting things I’ve learned to watch out for is whether Google fills in “shakespeare” before I’m done typing it.  That means that other people are also googling for this.  Sure enough it completes the query.  Even better it completes it with “kipling shakespeare bible.”  Interesting!

And then I found this.  “Proofs of Holy Writ“, by Rudyard Kipling, starring William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Let’s jump to the end:

“Proofs of Holy Writ” was said to have arisen from a dinner table conversation between Kipling and John Buchan about the process by which the splendidly poetic language of the King James’ Authorised Version of the Bible miraculously emerged from a committee of 47 learned men. Might they, Buchan wondered, have consulted the great creative writers of the day, like Will Shakespeare or Ben Jonson ? ‘That’s an idea’, said Kipling, and he went away to turn it into a tale.

As most of us have no doubt heard there’s long been a theory (nay, conspiracy?) that Shakespeare helped to write the King James Bible.  A theory that goes so far as to suggest that Psalm 46 contains a hidden message — the 46th word in from the front is “shake” and the 46th word from the end is “spear”.   (Bardfilm deals with this topic elsewhere, if you are interested.)

So does that mean that we’re looking at the originator of the whole Shakespeare/Bible theory?

No matter how many times I see an article like “6 Myths You Still Believe About Shakespeare” I always click and skim to see whether there’s something new under the sun.  This one had all the usual — his birthday’s not necessarily on 4/23, he didn’t get all his money from writing, the plays weren’t “published” in his lifetime, and so on.

But this one was new to me:

The building in Southwark known as Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is a reconstruction that opened in 1997 – almost 400 years after the original was built. The original was ruined by fire after an accident involving the firing of a cannon during a 1613 production of ‘Henry VIII.’ It was rebuilt the following year only to be demolished in the 1640’s under Puritan pressure.

Emphasis mine.  I knew about the burning of course, but I never realized that the Puritans had it burned less than a generation after Shakespeare was gone?  “A bunch of us are sailing to America.  Last one to leave England, don’t forget to burn the Globe.”

Has somebody out there got more timeline on this? What happened to Middleton and Fletcher and Jonson and all the others that were still alive after Shakespeare was gone?  For that matter what exactly was going on at the Globe after Shakespeare, who kept writing for them?

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I’ve tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you’ve found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

Someone asked on Reddit, “What’s the best way to start with Shakespeare?”

As expected there’s a bunch of “Don’t try to read him, instead go see a good version of the play” suggestions.  But the particular one upset me in its absolute stance on how bad reading is for you. Quoted briefly, but you should go read the whole thing at the link:

Put down your written copies of the plays. Now. You don’t have to read Shakespeare to love him. Unless you are in a play, or a serious student/scholar, you are not helping yourself or him by attempting to get satisfaction from the words on paper.

I have a big problem with this.  Rather than write it all down again I’ll quote my response.  I’m moving the discussion here because I know my audience better :).

While I appreciate the passion, I agree vehemently with your absolutism on the subject. 

Here’s the problem. Shakespeare’s dead. You will never, not in the next million years, ever see, nor should you want to see, Shakespeare’s plays as he intended them. 400 years have gone by, after all, and you won’t even begin to comprehend the state of mind that his audience was in when they saw them. You will be unable to set your knowledge aside and look at them with the same eyes and listen with the same ears. 

What you get, when you see Shakespeare’s plays today, is the specific interpretation of that director and those actors at that time. Which has nothing at all to do with what Shakespeare intended, other than what they can extract from the text, which is still nothing but interpretation. Again, the man’s dead. We need to stop pretending that we can know for certain what the “right” way to do it is. 

So why then is a certain interpretation of Shakespeare ever better than another? It’s not a question of better it’s a question of different and intriguing. You don’t want to see one, say “Ok, I’ve seen it”, and then check it off your bucket list. You want to see as many Hamlets as you can and then ponder why David Tennant played it a certain way that Kevin Kline did not. Or why Patrick Stewart as Claudius shrugs before drinking the poison. (Why oh why does he shrug?!) 

So, then, what you really want to do is see as many interpretations as you can. What do all those interpretations have in common? THE TEXT. 

How will you ever fully appreciate the Shakespeare that you are watching, unless you know the source material? Or at least the source material as close as we are able to reproduce it? 

Think of it like this. When you go see a play what you’re really saying is “Shakespeare gave this group of people a big block of marble, and what they did is they chipped away everything that, to them, didn’t look like Hamlet.” Wouldn’t you like to see the raw material that Shakespeare started with, and decide for yourself what parts you’d like to chip away? 

I could give a dozen examples. What if you saw 4 productions of Hamlet, all of which cut out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the way Olivier did? You’d be none the wiser. Then you go and see a fifth version and here come these two guys and you’re all “WTF is the director doing adding these two bozos?!”

See/hear the plays in as wide and frequent a variety as you can find, absolutely. You will learn and understand them by seeing them. I don’t deny that. But to truly internalize them and get rid of all the middle men between you and Shakespeare? Absolutely read them.

Discussion?

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I’ve tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you’ve found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.