In Praise of “Difficult Pleasures”

I recently attended a performance of King Lear at Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia. The 300-seat playhouse is the only re-creation of the first indoor theater in the English-speaking world, which William Shakespeare and his colleagues built on part of London’s Blackfriars Monastery.

The resident company has received international acclaim for its performances of Shakespeare’s works under their original staging conditions – a simple stage, without elaborate sets, with the audience sharing the same lights as the actors.

King Lear, of course, is Shakespeare’s profound and timeless exploration of the meaning of life. And the performance that evening was exceptional, with the actors clearly relishing their roles. (Funny how superior acting can bring to life qualities that lie dormant on the page.)

I confess that I have not invested as much time as I’d like reading The Bard. But that’s changing.

Like generations before me, I sometimes complained that “Shakespeare was ruined for me in high school.” You may have had the same experience.

Elizabethan English, of course, is a challenge for modern readers. And when we’re young, it’s too early for much of Shakespeare to resonate with us.

If you haven’t experienced great triumphs, temptations, disappointments, love affairs, false friends, a broken heart, the corrupting influence of politics, or the pleasures and tribulations of parenthood, Shakespeare may cross your head at 30,000 feet.

Then, too, there is the way Shakespeare is often taught, especially the sonnets.

In his poem “Introduction to Poetry,” former Poet Laureate Billy Collins writes that teachers often “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. / They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.”

If that sounds eerily reminiscent of your own introduction to Shakespeare, you may want to try again.

Why bother? One reason is that Shakespeare is the presiding genius of the English language. Another is the profound enjoyment you can receive tackling “difficult pleasures.”

Shakespeare is the author of 38 plays, 154 sonnets and many poems. Many believe he thought more comprehensively and originally than any writer before or since. No other playwright’s works are performed more frequently. Only the Bible has been more widely translated. Shakespeare is rightly venerated.

If I’m approaching what George Bernard Shaw called “bardolatry,” consider what Bill Bryson says in his biography Shakespeare: The World as Stage:

“If we take the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as our guide, then Shakespeare produced roughly one-tenth of all the most quotable utterances written or spoken in English since its inception – a clearly remarkable proportion.”

Remarkable? That billions of people have spoken the language and a single individual is responsible for roughly 10% of the most quotable things ever said is almost beyond belief.

Shakespeare’s influence is so pervasive that we walk around quoting him every day without even realizing it.

Just a small sampling of phrases originally found in Shakespeare’s works include flesh and blood, bated breath, tower of strength, foul play, foregone conclusion, good riddance, dead as a doornail, fool’s paradise, heart of gold, Greek to me, fancy-free, devil incarnate, one fell swoop, for goodness’ sake, vanish into thin air, play fast and loose, eaten me out of house and home, elbow room, go down the primrose path, in a pickle, budge an inch, cold comfort, household word, full circle, salad days, in my heart of hearts, in my mind’s eye, laughing stock, love is blind, lie low, naked truth, neither rhyme nor reason, star-crossed lovers, pitched battle, pound of flesh, sea change, make short shrift, spotless reputation, set my teeth on edge, there’s the rub, too much of a good thing, what the dickens, and wild goose chase.

Despite these now-common phrases, you may have been turned off by Shakespeare in the past simply because you encountered so many unfamiliar words. Rest assured you’re in good company. Many of them were unfamiliar to his audiences 400 years ago.

Indeed, during his productive peak he was coining new words at a rate of one every two and a half lines. Scholars claim that Hamlet alone gave audiences nearly 600 words they had never heard before.

Bryson points out that “among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, excellent, eventful, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany and countless others (including countless).”

Of course, Shakespeare isn’t considered one of the great creative geniuses just because he kept Noah Webster up at night. He created utterly original and consistent voices for more than a hundred major characters and several hundred minor ones. In the process, he showed the world what it means to be a member of the human race.

In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom says, “Shakespeare’s uncanny power in the rendering of personality is perhaps beyond explanation. Why do his personages seem so real to us, and how could he contrive that illusion so persuasively?… The plays remain the outward limit of human achievement: aesthetically, cognitively, in certain ways morally, even spiritually.”

If you haven’t read Shakespeare, there’s still time to discover (or rediscover) him. Even if you initially find Shakespeare complex, obscure or not to your taste, keep plugging. There can be deep satisfaction in difficult pleasures. By their very nature, however, they require time and persistence.

If you offer a 6-year-old a choice between a hot dog or linguine with white clam sauce, for instance, he will invariably go for the frankfurter. No surprise here. A 6-year-old hasn’t developed his palate.

Offer the average teenager a choice between a rap song or Ella Fitzgerald singing a selection from the Cole Porter songbook and he’ll prefer the tune where his subwoofer can be heard two blocks away.

Most of us understand why. (I went through my own “bad haircut, loud clothes and god-awful music” phase.)

Yet as we reach middle age and beyond, our tastes generally mature. They become more refined. We give up comic books and pulp fiction for history and literature. We play bridge, gin or poker rather than Crazy Eights or Old Maid. We may prefer a single malt scotch or glass of Sauvignon Blanc to a Budweiser (unless, of course, there’s a game on).

In short, we begin to enjoy the challenge and mental exercise of more difficult pleasures.

Aside from the sheer enjoyment of tackling more challenging pastimes, studies show that exercising your mental faculties helps prevent the onset of mild depression, dementia and cognitive decline.

Fortunately, there are plenty of great works out there. Few, however, are superior to Shakespeare. So pick up a recording of the sonnets, attend a play at your local theater or rent Laurence Olivier’s 1948 masterpiece Hamlet.

And don’t feel like you have to tough it out. Cheat a little – as I often do before a performance – by picking up a copy of Shakespeare Made Easy or Simply Shakespeare, containing modern line-for-line translations beside the original text. Once you’re familiar with the plot, the language won’t be an obstacle to your enjoyment.

Spark Notes has even posted modern translations of 19 major Shakespeare works – including the sonnets – online for free. (Just visit nfs.sparknotes.com.)

If you revisit Shakespeare and find him challenging, keep at it. There is pleasure to be found exploring what Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said in the world.”

Carpe diem,

Alex