Book Review: Shakespearean
Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption by Robert McCrum (Pegasus Books, 2021)
Two weeks ago, I wrote that I’m not sure whether unsettling endings are becoming an actual trend in publishing. I still can’t say for certain, but it really is starting to look that way. If “three is a trend,” as the saying goes, I got my third example when I read The Last Graduate, Naomi Novik’s sequel to A Deadly Education (which I reviewed here back in January). The Last Graduate was so enthralling that I stayed up almost till 1 in the morning to finish it—and then I nearly sat up and howled in frustration.
Granted, the ending was meant to be a cliffhanger, since there’s a third book coming in the series. But it was such a horrible cliffhanger. And I had invested so much effort in that book—Novik’s a wonderful writer, but not an easy one—that I felt I’d earned a better payoff than a horrible cliffhanger.
Are downer endings a sign of the times we live in? Hard to say. Some of these books I’ve been discussing were written pre-pandemic, but even before the pandemic, the political situation had a way of getting people down. Some of what I’m seeing may stem from that, or it may all be coincidence. Nonetheless, I think it will be interesting and informative in a few years to examine the books that came out of this period for signs of how they reflect the general mood.
It’s already interesting and informative to study how similar periods have affected writers of the past, and that’s where Robert McCrum’s Shakespearean comes in. William Shakespeare, McCrum reminds us, was a writer in a tumultuous age. Bubonic plague was a frequent threat, and political dissent could get you executed. (And neither was a very pleasant way to die.) It took an artist of uncommon intelligence and skill not just to navigate those volatile times, but also to make art out of them that captivated everyone from the reigning monarch to the “groundlings” who got in for a penny apiece.
Reading McCrum’s thoughtful study of the playwright’s life and work inevitably brings the thought that the times themselves helped to create the man. If Shakespeare had lived in a tranquil period, we would have had a completely different Shakespeare. And we would have been the poorer for it. McCrum convincingly argues that Shakespeare’s intimate knowledge of peril and his willingness to take risks make him an ideal writer for our age. He quotes from Macbeth to remind us that the dangers of such an age may threaten not just our lives, but also our minds and souls:
But cruel are the times when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear.
The seeking of guidance from such an artist is a very personal subject for McCrum, as the book jacket tells us that reading Shakespeare helped him recover from “a life-changing stroke.” That’s a bit of a bait-and-switch, as McCrum barely touches on that particular topic here; it turns out he wrote much more about that illness and recovery in two previous books. But in any event, it’s clear he knows his Shakespeare well and has found his works a “book of life.” True, he pulls no punches in describing the darkness of Shakespeare’s tragedies, going so far sometimes as to call him “nihilistic.” Yet ultimately, the portrait he paints is of a survivor, a man whose will (no pun intended) to live and create would quite literally change the world. If there’s a better argument for revisiting Shakespeare in our own perilous times, I don’t know what it is.
(Image copyright Pegasus Books.)
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