Shakespeare's identity revisited

Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford - 

a lovely place to visit on a sunny day

As happens recurrently, there is a resurgence of the argument that the bloke from Stratford upon Avon could not have written the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. 

This will never cease; because details of WS's life are so sparse, because authorship in those days involved a great deal of copying and adapting, irregularities of spelling and nomenclature; and also because some of the (lesser) Shakespeare-attributed works are probably by others or done in collaborations (as has emerged in mainstream scholarship, over the years - for instance the Passionate Pilgrim poems).  

Nonetheless, all the people that I have read who make this argument against Shakespeare, have been arguing from what I regard as false premises, as I have explained before. 

Firstly; Shakespeare is so much better than the second best writer in English Literature (whoever that might be, which has always been disputed) that there cannot be any argument of a kind which suggests that Shakespeare of Stratford was incapable of writing something - but somebody else was. 

If we genuinely recognize the quality of Shakespeare, then nobody was capable of writing it - in the sense that there has never been anybody else in the same league.

So no alternative identification as author is any more plausible than Shakespeare of Stratford.  

Secondly; the quality of the works attributed to Shakespeare mean that the author was a first-rank genius; and it is not valid to apply the probabilities that apply to normal people, to the work of a major genius.  

The example I used was Isaac Newton, another first-rank genius - but one whose life is well documented. 

It is striking that Newton's actual achievement is impossible on the basis of what is known of his life. 

The fact that Newton's achievement was not predictable on the basis of his biography, yet he did it anyway; is evidence that when dealing with major genius, normal predictions and probabilities are meaningless. 

There is - as I said initially - a mystery about Shakespeare as the author of the best attributed dramatic works. 

Yet I find the usual narrative of a Grammar School boy from Stratford; from a rebellious, recusant Catholic family on his mother's side, and the rest of it - to be rich, coherent and satisfying. 

After all the caveats regards particular works or parts of works; to me, Shakespeare of Stratford rings-true. 

Romantic Shakespeare and Fantasy (the supernatural)

Brian Blessed as the Ghost in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet movie - and whispering, not shouting!

In the preface to Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, the 'romantic' was given a definition in terms of Wordsworth focusing on the numinous qualities of Nature, and Coleridge upon the Supernatural. So the Fantasy aspect of Romanticism - such as we see in The Inklings - was present from the start.

Shakespeare had a role in Romanticism, in that his renewed popularity came from a German reappraisal (probably originating with Herder, who worked from translated excerpts of Shakespeare - and greatly amplified in England by the Shakespeare lectures of Coleridge) that saw Shakespeare in such terms; as a 'wild', spontaneous, natural genius.

Shakespeare was often linked with the then extremely high valuation of the strange, semi-faked 'poems' of 'Ossian' - which were a 'translation', plus very extensive reworking and expansion, of Gaelic songs and stories collected in the highlands and islands of Scotland by James Macpherson and published in the middle 1700s. So that Homer, Ossian and Shakespeare were found linked in a 'bardic' lineage - for instance, this is later referenced by Emerson and Thoreau.

Shakespeare came from a 'recusant' Catholic, and therefore pre-Reformation, sensibility on his mother's side. She was Mary Arden, and members of the Arden family were part of a concentration of families trying to practice the Old religion; Ardens even involved in, and some executed for, spying, rebellion, and assassination plots.

So, Shakespeare had an interest in magic, fairies, ghosts, witches and the like; that can be seen from A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest (the only plays whose plots were essentially original) and others of his greatest work such as Macbeth and Hamlet. And, in general, many of the plays have a strong 'premodern' element of fate or providence governing the affairs of Men. However, as Tolkien noted with disappointment, such elements are seldom given full value or treated with full seriousness - it is mostly a matter of hints and epiphanies.

With the dawning of the Romantic consciousness, Shakespeare was therefore ripe for revival and reinterpretation in this light - despite that in other respects, his work was often very 'artificial', ironic, fashionable, or simply derivative (in terms of basic plots and subject matter).

Shakespeare can therefore be seen as spanning from the Medieval consciousness, which simply took magic and the supernatural for granted as a real and objective part of the external environment; the early modern consciousness, which treated such matters ironically and satirically - as being unreal and delusional - purely a part of subjective consciousness; and the Romantic consciousness which (in its highest development; e.g. Coleridge, Novalis, Blake) returns to the pre-modern in conscious thought, with a realism that includes as necessary, both the subjective and the objective.

In other words, the Romantic concept of the magical-supernatural is that these things are real; and/but - like all real things - their reality is neither wholly in the external environment nor the internal consciousness, but in the necessary apprehension of the environment by consciousness. They (both the supernatural and all real phenomena) are indeed out-there, and/but they require the subjective consciousness to be known; and only the known is real. (Only the known is part of Creation - all else is unknowable chaos.)

The magical is real, but reality has a new location, in the realm of thinking. Neither purely out-there nor in-here, but in a new conception of the potential of the world of thinking to know directly and perhaps participate in divine creation. This is the thinking of the 'creative genius', who is seen by Romantics as (potentially) the proper mode of all Men.

So the ghost in Hamlet is 'really there' but requires someone to see and hear it; if there was no consciousness present, there would be no ghost.

What's so good about Shakespeare?

In English Literature, Shakespeare is first; and the second is a matter of dispute (Milton, Byron, Walter Scott?) but far below.

Indeed, Shakespeare is - in terms of influence and attention - first in the world.

But why?



Obviously it is for the quality of his language, the 'poetry' of his language - its suppleness combined with crispness... yes, but how do people know about this?

Modern high brow purism has obscured the reason: Shakespeare is the most quotable writer. He works better than any other writer when given in digestible chunks.

No doubt, these quotable sections work even better in context, but the point is that they work superbly well even completely out of context.



This was brought home to me by a recent visit to Stratford upon Avon were I saw dozens, nay scores, of quotes from Shakespeare, engraved, carved and posted here and there, out of context; and where I also saw excerpts from the plays on video, and done live by one or two actors.

Some were so effective they literally brought tears to the eyes.

What other writer can do this?

The answer is simple: the answer is none.



In the time when Shakespeare became established as the pre-eminent writer; he was, indeed, presented almost wholly in excerpted form - in anthologies such as William Dodd's Beauties of Shakespeare of 1752 which inspired Herder who inspired Goethe and led to the deification of The Bard (this coming back to England from Germany, where Shakespeare was until then under-rated).

And from the 19th up into the early 20th century, Shakespeare was usually presented in a severely cut and edited form by the travelling Actor-Managers such as Sir Henry Irving and his successors - as more or less a collection of the best quotations and most dramatic scenes.



I suspect that the above are indeed the 'best' way to present Shakespeare the mass of people (including myself); not least because his philosophy of life, in so far as one can be discerned from his high points of poetry and rhetoric, is so bleak and pagan as to be hardly bearable except in brief-ish chunks.

But also because, with very few exceptions (e.g. for me Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet), the plays are very patchy indeed in terms of quality and coherence - so little is lost and much is gained by shortening and concentrating.

If Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, then Newton wasn't Newton...

I have heard people argue that Shakespeare could not have written the great plays attributed to him because the Stratford man was too ignorant, uneducated, inexperienced. But that is to make two errors: to discount genius, and to neglect the fact that nobody else could have written them - because Shakespeare's work is far above that of any of his contemporaries.

There is indeed a mystery about Shakespeare, because so very little reference to him is made in documents - some have (plausibly) suggested that Shakespeare deliberately 'kept low' because if his family connections with notorious Roman Catholic counter-revolutionary traitors against the Queen. Whatever its cause; the paucity of contemporary reference to Shakespeare has left a vacuum into-which rushed the idea that he did not author 'his' plays.

By contrast, a great deal is known about Isaac Newton. Yet - by the standards of arguments against Shakespeare - there is even stronger evidence that Newton could not have made the mathematical discoveries with which he launched his international career.

In his biography of Newton, Never At Rest, Richard S Westfall shows meticulously that Newton was almost ignorant of mathematics until less than 2 years before he began publishing major breakthroughs in the subject. Clearly, this is impossible - so Newton couldn't have done it - especially as Newton had pretty much failed his degree exam, and only passed by an irregular 'back door' route. So he was clearly 'a duffer'.

Of course, I am joking! It is precisely the fact that Newton did the impossible, and learned mathematics so rapidly and thoroughly that within a couple of years he surpassed everybody in the world, which demonstrates his supreme genius even in an age of genius. He then went on and did much the same with physics.

Newton was not a 'front' because there was nobody - and no combination of people - who could have done what he had attributed to him.

Shakespeare likewise, in his plays apparently demonstrated more wide-ranging and detailed knowledge than it was plausible for him to have acquired by normal means - but then, he was not a normal man...


Note: My book on genius - The Genius Famine - is available free online. 

What if Shakespeare was your Dad? Getting to know God - easy or impossible?

There are only two coherent ways of regarding God. 

Either as someone who is easy to know; exactly as easy to know as knowing your parents. 

(Which - of course - not everybody can do, although it is common enough; and so easy that even a child can do it - and indeed young children are nowadays often better at it than adult children.) 

Or else God - being the creator - is so qualitatively different from us, that God is impossible to know. 

So - God is either easy or impossible to know.

The other option, which I would reject, is that God is 'possible but difficult' to know. This is the idea that most people cannot know God; but some few can get to know God by (for example) prolonged study, meditation, practice or initiation/ ordination. Such a view has been common in the history of religion, including the history of Christianity - yet I think that it is and was an essentially false understanding, for a Christian. 

Getting to know God, in the way that we know our family, is a very different matter from understanding God, or from predicting God. 

A young child may know his mother, and has faith in her love - even though the child's intellectual capacity means that the child cannot understand her. 

Indeed the gap in ability between (say) a young daughter and (say) William Shakespeare, who happens to be her father, is truly immense; in that Shakespeare was a creative genius of such stature that he towered above all others in his field - then and now. 

This makes an instructive thought experiment for Christians. Many Christians are 'stunned', 'overwhelmed' - even mentally-paralyzed - by the qualitative gap in ability between the creator of this reality, and themselves - and they assume that this means we cannot know God.  

It does mean that we cannot get near to understanding God in the specifics of his creating; just as Shakespeare's daughter did not understand how her father could write what he did. Indeed, nobody has ever understood how Shakespeare wrote what he did: the gap is just too large. 

Yet the little girl can know that her father loves her, and can live in that confidence. 

She can also, no matter how young, understand her father's motivations as they relate to her; she can understand what (in broad terms, and also in some specifics) he hopes from her in terms of her behaviour and life trajectory. 

This applies to a Christian's ideal relationship with God; because all Christians understand God as their loving father. This means that, although we can understand God's creative work much less than we can understand Shakespeare; we can nonetheless know God in the same kind of personal way that we know our parents.

We can - and should - be in awe of what God has done and can do; yet it would not be a good thing if a daughter was to have a relationship with her father that was primarily one of awe - the relationship ought instead to be loving and personal, affectionate and close. 

Ideally, there should and would be respect on both sides - the respect of one unique person for another when they are bound by love and confident of love. 

But in a family, awe and respect does not get in the way of affection, of closeness - because underneath all there is a confidence that derives from mutual knowledge of love.

That confidence is also called Faith.   

Thus a Christian should aim for the kind of confident, affectionate relationship with God that we innately know to be the ideal for a loving family. And this Faith can then be the basis of understanding what God wants for us and the world. In much the same way that Shakespeare's young daughter might have understood what her father wanted in terms of family relationships and plans - despite that she had no understanding of how her father had composed his sonnets, nor how he planned to write Hamlet. 

Note: the above is indebted to the insights of William Arkle - especially his Letter from a Father. 

Why are the Royal Shakespeare Company actors so mediocre?

I have seen the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) act on stage several times over the years, and have usualy been surprised that the average standard of acting is mediocre - why should this be?

On the face of it, due to the prestige, it should be easy for the RSC to get the best actors - and actors are always grossly over-supplied. And there are plenty of really inspired actors born - since most amateur shows I have seen have two or three outstanding, naturally-gifted actors.

(My brother Fraser, for example, is one - he can be seen on YouTube performing in Gilbert and Sullivan.)

But then the RSC acting is no worse than the general run of professional stage acting, which is poor - so the problem is systemic.

The phenomenon can be explained if you consider the levels of selection which operate on RSC actors before they get to the position of being seen by me. Here are some of them.

1. Whatever their talent, Shakespearian actors are made to act speak their lines badly by the directors.

At one level, a director is necessary nowadays to explain to actors what their lines mean. At another level 19 out of 20 directors make the actors speak blank verse as if it was prose, and thereby most of its effect is lost. There were reasons why Shakespeare wrote most of his drama in verse - and these reasons are ignored by speaking the lines as if they were not verse.

(But then, most actors can't read poetry even when performing it as poetry - so perhaps they must share the blame with directors; unless this wilful incompetence is a lasting consequence of their professional training.)

2. Acting is such a terrible job and lifestyle that most naturally gifted actors wuld find it intolerable to be a professional. This means that most of the potentially best actors are selected-out before drama school.

(My brother is an example - he became a medical graduate; then a histopathologist.)

3. The audiences are not good at specifically detecting when acting is good - because they are focused on the quality of the actor's voice.

Most professional actors cannot act - but nearly all do have pleasant, powerful, clear voices - because without that, then they are unsuitable for stage work. This requirement puts-up a significant barrier since the best actors are not likely also to have the best voices.

(I learned this from a friend who was a musical director for the RSC. I went to see his production on tour. The cast was headed by two really outstanding actors - Nigel Terry and Fiona Shaw - but almost all of the others fitted into the category of Great Voice/ Can't Act.)

4. The audiences focus not on acting - but on concepts, stage design, costumes and 'business' (the acting slang term for the non-spoken aspects of plays, esepcially comedy). In the RSC production I recently saw, by far the most memorable aspects were some very funny and surprising bits of business. One RSC trick is to include pretend mistakes, and pretend 'ad libs' - seemingly spontaneous but done every performance - the audiences appreciate the idea of actors having to use their wits get out of trouble.

5. The craft. Professional actors need a phenomenal memory to learn their parts and moves and to avoid mistakes - this is a major constaint because being a gifted actor does not necessarily go along with these vital craft aspects. They often need to be able to dance and sing - in order to make a living over many years - which some of the best actors cannot do.

Also, actors need to be able to turn-up and perform reliably, at an acceptable standard, night after night for months on end. Much of the uninspired natrure of professional stage acting comes from this aspect of routine - it really is impossible for actors to turn-it-on under such conditions.

Also, actors need to have certain looks - either being reasonably good-looking, or else interesting/ ugly in the right kind of way.


So there are plenty of reasons why the average of actors we see on stage at the RSC are merely adequate. But, when you do get a cast containing many really good actors (and assuming the production is not actively ruined by one of the numerous breed of narcissistic director) then the results can be simply wonderful!


I went to see the RSC Loves Labours Lost in 1978. This is not one of Shakespeare's best plays, by common consensus; but - as well as being beautifully designed and directed, the cast assembled was simply stunning; with a remarkable concentration of the very best actors of recent years, some already famous, others yet to make their mark*.

The result was a completely wonderful play, sheer magic and delight from start to finish. Despite that I have never again seen its like; this production was - of course - the real play. Because Shakespeare's own production company comprised one of the most gifted set of individuals that have ever been assembled on stage; and they performed to the most discriminating and experienced theatre audiences of all time.

(See Shakespeare on Toast, by Ben Crystal).

In conclusion, Shakespeare is nearly-always performed severely sub-optimally; and he is even better than we think he is!


*Including Michael Pennington, Alan Rickman, Michael Hordern, Richard Griffiths, Ian Charleson, Ruby Wax, Carmen Du Sautoy, Jane Lapotaire, David Suchet... has there ever been a better cast?

The soulless mediocrity of current-"AI" is a consequence of blending and averaging in its industrial -scale plagiarism

One striking aspect of the industrial-scale plagiarism that is current "AI", is that the mechanism of generation leads inevitably to soulless mediocrity in its output.

This is because it samples, selects, blends, extrapolates from multiple sources. It is based on averaging - which entails removing the extremes that characterize genuine creativity, including genius. 

Consider: how would you plagiarize poetry such as to generate a work of genius? 

The only valid method is to re-label. 

You would need already to know of, a poetic work of genius (something which depends on prior human evaluation) perhaps a particular sonnet by Shakespeare. 

...Then to re-label this sonnet with your own name as author instead of Shakespeare - and convince other people that you (not Shakespeare) had written it.  

Such is the only way to ensure the production of a work of genius, of quality equal to the original. 

If instead you were to try and create a poem by sampling and combining several or many Shakespeare sonnets, then obviously the result would not be as good.  

If you tried to create poetry by (in some way, any way) averaging multiple Elizabethan poems of multiple authors, or many poems from all eras - the result would become less and less good, the more you added. 

The more you sample, and the more you average - the worse it gets. 

What this kind of multiplying and averaging can do, is create fakes that are hard to distinguish from mediocre poems - and can pass as an instance of the type, especially among people who are lack time, or aptitude, have little interest, or are weakly motivated. 

For example, if you were to combine all of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets - you could perhaps make something that was not easily distinguishable in quality from the mediocre or poor instances of his Sonnets - especially among those who were not really able to appreciate the quality of the best of the Shakespeare originals. 

And the AI approach is what successful forgers have done in the world of fine art. They do not try to forge the best Vermeer; not least because the forger could not do it. Instead, they attempt to forge a mediocre instance Vermeer, a variation on a known theme; something "good enough" that - when provided with a fake provenance by aesthetically-incompetent evaluators - can pass as a mediocre work by a great painter. 

Such mediocre forgeries can then sometimes be passed off as "great art" on the basis that they are superficially appealing to only-mildly-interested people with mainstream modern tastes - but that does not affect their artistic mediocrity - evident to those who can evaluate quality. 

But here we have another problem of AI, which is that it is mostly being casually used by lazy and conformist people who have little interest, ability or experience in the area of implementation. 

If all you are working at some chore, and all you want is background music, then genuine creativity is irrelevant - fakes and forgeries are fine. Computer-generated or AI muzak will suffice. 

If you are an average school kid, college student, post-graduate, professor; and all you want is to complete some assignment with the minimum of effort and getting the highest evaluation possible (without activating the plagiarism detectors - mechanical or human); then the truth and validity of what you write is irrelevant. Consensus-compatibility is very important, but ultimate value is not at all. Averaged mediocrity is indeed the ideal! AI will suffice. 

If you are a professional researcher in "science" or academia, who seeks career advancement and high status; then you will do or say whatever you believe will help pursue those goals. Developing, buying, using or praising AI will be embraced insofar as it seems expedient in terms of your immediate objectives. The fact that AI-output is boring, derivative and adds nothing substantive is all-but irrelevant; because that exactly characterizes the professional environment in which you already operate and in which you hope to thrive. AI will be fine for your purposes.  

 

It is evident that the set-up of current so-called AI - to sample (i.e. plagiarize) massively, combine and blend multiples, and generate an averaged-output; is necessarily soulless and mediocre. 

AI simply cannot-help but generate the soulless and mediocre - and is therefore a tool introduced and imposed by those who desire that society should be like that. 

Furthermore, this kind of "AI" can only spread and be used is a society where most people actually prefer the soulless and the mediocre; at least, when this is convenient. 

On top of this; Western Civilization is led and inhabited by shoals of Godless materialistic people who care absolutely nothing for Truth, Beauty or Virtue; are indifferent to quality and even functionality. 

These will implement AI even when it is functionally inferior or much worse, than existing systems and persons. 

It is a measure of our civilizational and personal corruption that AI is being so rapidly and pervasively imposed upon The West - and why so many, at so many levels, have embraced it. 

Who is second to Shakespeare: Prose and Drama

In a recent post:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/whats-so-good-about-shakespeare.html

the discussion established that in English poetry the authors which comes after Shakespeare are Chaucer, (+/- Spenser), Milton and Wordsworth.

I'd like to do the same now for prose and drama.

1. English Prose: This is easy - there are only two books of prose with comparable impact to Shakespeare: the Book of Common Prayer and the Authorised Version of the Bible (King James Bible).

So, the second-best prose writers to Shakespeare in English Prose are Thomas Cranmer, William Tyndale, Myles Coverdale and various other collaborators.


But if the fact that the second greatest writers of English prose are translators and a (kind-of) committee (albeit divinely inspired) is hard to stomach, then it gets much harder to identify a second placed writer.

I would put forward Samuel Johnson.


2. English Drama: This is easy - aside from Shakespeare there is only one dramatist in the English language who is productive and quotable enough to stand near him: George Bernard Shaw.

A literary town - Stratford upon Avon

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I have recently spent a week in Stratford upon Avon which is... Shakespeare town.

There is no other place of its size in Britain which derives its character from a single person. Britain produced many eminent men and women, but only one of them has a whole town devoted to their memory.

*

I found it worked very well. Of course, Stratford is very crowded indeed in some parts at certain times of day; but the fact that the place teems with visitors from all over the world means that its facilities are excellent (more like a city than a town).

And it is encouraging to know that what brings everybody to Stratford is Shakespeare; and remarkable that Shakespeare apparently speaks to so many people of so many types.

*

Although there are plenty of (more or less speculative) pictures and statues of Shakespeare and characters from the plays, having a writer as its focus means that the celebration is very word-focused.

There were many quotations scattered about the place, and these were extremely effective: again and again I found myself stopped and my emotions aroused by reading a phrase set into stone or brass, or quoted in a multitude of ways and places.

*

The situation of Stratford is itself extremely pretty - with lovely riverside walks lined by willow trees and many water birds, especially swans (symbolic of The Bard).

Strolling down the canal and along the banks on a sunny summer morning to attend the 8 am Eucharist at Shakespeare's own church (Holy Trinity) where he is buried, was one of those perfect times.

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Although of course many people are in Stratford just to pass the time or because dragged-there by teachers, and there is the usual trashy tourist stuff; it was a generally encouraging experience to know that this place exists purely because of the mass of folk who flock from all over the world, brought by a great writer from hundreds of years ago.

And when celebration is necessarily focused on great words; the words do their work.

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Shakespeare, Milton and the King James Bible?

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Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and dont sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

Henry Higgins speaking to Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

*
Shakespeare: yes, of course, and pretty much maintained in England now.

Milton: no, does not deserve this place. Indeed nobody else is in the class of Shakespeare and the Authorized Version of the Bible.

But if a third name is needed then Johnson is the most deserving - Samuel Johnson - who bestrides English letters as a colossus: author of the first real dictionary, the first real critic, arbiter of good taste and morality; and writer of many first rank personal essays, anthology-quality poems, and a novel of high class. And a permanently-influential prose stylist of magisterial distinction.

But the King James Bible is the only prose (if we include with it that other Anglican classic The Book of Common Prayer) that can stand comparison with Shakespeare; as acknowledged even by GB Shaw (who was a communist, Irish, and an atheist); but the KJB has been rejected and abandoned by all of the larger (so-called) English churches.

I am happy to state that it is indeed possible to be English and a real Christian and yet to reject the Authorized Version of the Bible as the basis of your Christian scriptural life^ - but would add that such a person has something seriously wrong with him.

Either he is ignorant (and in need of education) or else he is making a large error of judgment.

So, for someone who is both a Christian and English: the Triad should be Shakespeare, Johnson and the Bible - but the greatest of these is The Authorized Version.

*

^Note: The AV should be the basis of an English Christian life - but need not, of course, be the sole translation used. 

Life permeated with faith? An analogy with poetry

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If a life permeated with faith is the goal, then why is it so difficult?

Because it is difficult - and especially so for intellectuals.

What is wanted is that Christianity must be integral and habitual and intrinsic to whatever is being done; in the same way that poetry is intrinsic to the lines of Shakespeare.

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

*

Supposing we take Shakespeare's poetic stanza as analogous to the Christian life. Yet in our daily thought, intellectuals dwell within this world, devoid of poetry:

There are two different overall impact/outcome evaluation and monitoring paradigms which can be used. The first is to attempt to undertake impact/outcome on the 'full roll-out' of a program. The second is to just attempt impact/outcome evaluation on a pilot of a program and not attempt it on the full roll-out of the program. In the second case all that is done in regard to full roll-out of the program is monitoring that best practice is being applied. It is very important to distinguish between which of these two possible paradigms is going to be used in an evaluation. Attempting the first paradigm when it is not appropriate, feasible or affordable can lead to producing almost useless pseudo-outcome evaluation reports.


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It is clearly not sufficient to our goal merely to try and alternate between soulless, alienated modernity and Christian awareness. 
 
Christianity cannot be injected into modernity, poetry cannot be injected into bureaucracy - because that would merely yield:
 
There are two different overall impact/outcome evaluation and monitoring Fear no more the heat o' the sun paradigms which can be used. The first is to attempt to undertake impact/outcome on the 'full roll-out' Nor the furious winter's rages of a program. The second is to just attempt impact/outcome Thou thy worldly task hast done evaluation on a pilot of a program and not attempt it on the full roll-out of the program. (etc)


This represents the Christian periodically turning away from from his work, turning away from modernity, and recalling himself to God.

But the result is not what is sought - it is merely a mixture of incompatible elements and is neither Christianly effective, nor bureaucratically efficient.

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So this is why it is so difficult for intellectuals to live as Christians.
 
Modern public discourse in bureaucracy, government, law, science, education, the media... everywhere, is intrinsically materialist, worldly and secular; it has evolved for many decades on the foundation of excluding Christianity references and reason. 
 
This is why we cannot take public discourse as it is, and inject Christianity; Christianity is immiscible with modernity in the same way that Shakespeare is immiscible with management speak - when we add Shakespeare to management speak it is like sprinkling gold grains on oil: they cannot mix, the gold will sink to the bottom and all we can perceive is the oil. 
 
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This is the measure of our task.
 
The media of public discourse and Christianity have evolved into separate and immiscible elements, such that they cannot be recombined without destruction of what it.
 
Modern discourse - that which, as intellectuals we have spent so many years in mastering and attaining certificates of our mastery - must be discarded and all its benefits will be lost; and we must start anew to build public discourse  
 
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Because there are real benefits to modern discourse - as can be seen most clearly in the example of science.

 Compared with discourse which is integrally both functional and religious, modern scientific discourse has simplicity, precision, efficiency and focus. Much exact information can be communicated in few words, and modern scientific language can be used by ordinary people.

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By contrast the science of the past, someone like Sir Thomas Browne is complex, much harder to write and understand; and its difficult, rich integral-fusion of poetry and science (as of Christianity and public discourse) can be mistaken for diffuseness and imprecision:

The sexangular Cels in the Honeycombs of Bees, are disposeth after this order, much there is not of wonder in the confused Houses of Pismires, though much in their busie life and actions, more in the edificial Palaces of Bees and Monarchical spirits; who make their combs six-corner'd, declining a circle, whereof many stand not close together, and compleatly fill the area of the place; But rather affecting a six-sided figure, whereby every cell affords a common side unto six more, and also a fit receptacle for the Bee it self, which gathering into a Cylindrical Figure, aptly enters its sexangular house, more nearly approaching a circular Figure, then either doth the Square or Triangle. And the Combes themselves so regularly contrived, that their mutual intersections make three Lozenges at the bottome of every Cell; which severally regarded make three Rows of neat Rhomboidall Figures, connected at the angles, and so continue three several chains throughout the whole comb.


From Garden of Cyrus


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Thus we are locked-into the dead and deadly discourses of modernity.

Since these discourses cannot be modified without damage, attempts at reform will - insofar as effective - be destructive.

We cannot get from where we are to where we want to be without retracing our steps.

If we are to escape alienating modernity then it must be replaced, not modified.

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The Catholic Shakespeare - a TV documentary

A recommendation for an excellent, detailed, evocative four-part TV documentary - In Search of Shakespeare, by that doyen of British TV historians, Michael Wood:

https://vimeo.com/95680023

As well as being just fascinating in general; a specific interest is that Wood takes seriously the thesis that Shakespeare was a secret and secretive Roman Catholic - an idea which lacks direct confirmation, but which is supported by a large amount of impressive indirect evidence.

What I also got from this documentary was confirmation that, for all its unmatched glories, Elizabethan England was a terrible place - suffocating in its religiously-inspired and -excused cruelty and terror.

(When Christian zeal and courage become contaminated by ambition, greed and hatred, then the consequences for human behaviour are horrific. This is why the Apostle Paul was so emphatic that, unless underpinned by love, every other virtue, all system, all perfection of doctrine and devoutness of observance is rendered worthless trash - or worse.)

Which makes all the more remarkable and admirable the unsurpassed excellence, and glorious warmth of human spirit, of Shakespeare and other great writers of that era.

"Shakespeare and the Bible"

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On the old radio programme, Desert Island Discs, they used to ask the 'castaway' to choose a book to take with them; but they were first reassured that Shakepeare's complete works and the Bible were already on the imaginary island.

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Shakespeare and the Bible - the meaning of this phrase depends on whether Bible refers to the King James version, or to the Bible in a generic form.

I have always assumed that in this instance the King James version was implied, and that the reassurance was that the twin pinnacles of English *literature* would be available.

For indeed the poetic qualities of the KJB are, quantitatively, equalled only by Shakespeare - and, like Shakespeare, are scattered through the books.

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From Psalm 42

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.  

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?  

My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?  

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.  

Why art thou cast down , O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.  

O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.  

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

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 This is poetry: Beauty, as well as Truth and Virtue. 

And, indeed, I can never ignore the content of poetry - its 'subject matter: to work as well as possible, a poem needs to be as true as possible, and to be virtuous. 

This fact, alone, goes a long way to explain the diminution then disappearance of poetry from England - since the writers no longer aim after the transcendental goods as a unity: at most they aim for one or two at the cost of others - truth at the price of beauty, virtue and beauty at the price of truth, beauty at the price of truth and virtue etc.  


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But why is this Psalm an example of poetry? 

There are no rhymes, no consistent rhythm and the lines vary in length. 

The 'technique' was re-used from the late 19th century by Walt Whitman, and his more modern imitators (such as Alan Ginsberg) - but never with anything like the poetic power frequently attained in the KJB (and, indeed, in many of the older English versions of the psalms, especially the Miles Coverdale translation used in the Book of Common Prayer).

Perhaps this is poetry because the psalms are intended to be sung. Poetry is, somehow, song: the relationship is close.   

The poetic line is, at root, a musical phrase. 

And after all, the full title of the best anthology of English poetry is  Palgrave's Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics. 

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Bad endings are common because most modern writers are corrupt (The example of Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' triology)

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Phillip Pullman published a well-known trilogy from 1995-2000 called 'His Dark Materials', comprising Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

The point I wish to make about this series is that it starts very well, and ends very badly. The contrast is extreme - the first part of the first novel is very good, and by the end of the third volume it has become very bad.

This interpretation of His Dark Materials is not really a matter of opinion, but as close to objective fact as you can get in literary criticism - anyone who doubts should read John C Wright on the technical aspects; and the ideological reason for these gross errors and incompetencies.

http://www.scifiwright.com/xabout/transhuman-and-subhuman/#_Toc384557547

But bad endings are not unusual - indeed, it is quite normal, statistically common, even fashionable and mainstream - for books, plays, movies, and TV plays and series to start well and end badly.

But why should this be? Why do they, on the one hand, start well; and on the other hand, finish badly?

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I think the answer is quite simple. Great works are written with the assistance of genius, which can be understood as a visitor who will only stay if treated well.

Many more talented writers are visited by genius than succeed in completing works of genius, because most writers betray their visiting genius before the work is complete - the genius flies away, and the work must be finished without it; and talent without genius is comparatively a very poor thing.

So, Phillip Pullman was a talented writer who was visited by genius and began Northern Lights; but he was dishonest in the way he used this gift - so away it flew and he cobbled together the rest of the trilogy on his own - getting across the 'message' which meant so much to him, but making a an artistic pig's ear of the writing.

JK Rowling is different. She was visited by genius when writing Harry Potter, and it sustained her through seven volumes - and the last volume, including its ending, are wonderful! The best thing in it (probably).

There are signs that, part way through, Rowling became personally dishonest and corrupt -  probably due to the temptations of fame - but she kept this out of the books. However, when she finished Harry Potter, Rowling embraced the dark side, and away genius flew - her work has waned even as her commitment to political correctness has waxed - and she has been caught in several blatant lies about her life and work. I would not expect her ever to write anything really good ever again.

However, throughout HP, Rowling was true to her visiting genius - it stayed with her for the duration, and she was therefore able to complete a great work.

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And of course the benchmark classics all end well, else they would not be real classics. The Lord of the Rings, the Narnia Chronicles (despite extreme digressiveness en route), The Wind in the Willows (despite major incoherence and a detachably episodic structure) - all of these have deeply satisfying endings.

No author is so great as to overcome the need for a good ending. When George Bernard Shaw tried to end Pygmalion with an anticlimax, the actors when on tour secretly substituted the dramatically-implied-and-required 'comedic' ending (ie implying marriage between Higgins and Eliza). This, to Shaw's extreme annoyance! - but they would not stop doing it, because the audience response told them what was right. And the highly successful musical adaptation (My Fair Lady) made exactly the same change.

So, even so great a playwright as Shaw was not immune to the absolute requirement for a good ending. Even the greatest of all - Shakespeare - has to bow to this imperative...

All Shakespeare's best plays (best, that is, according to the consensus of playgoers through the ages) end well; and the ones that don't end well are not regarded as great.For instance, Measure for Measure is shaping-up superbly for most of its length; but the play has a truly terrible ending - so it never has become a part of the standard dramatic repertoire (despite having the best 'strong' female role Shakespeare ever wrote).

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This, then, is a possible reason why too many books end badly; and why so many other narrative forms end badly too. It comes down to the abuse of visiting genius.

Bad endings have indeed, become a feature of modernist writing over the past century. The inability to finish a book, play, movie has been covered-up with nonsense about the sophistication of an 'ambiguous' ending, or 'deliberate' anticlimax, or the desirability of 'dark', 'subversive' conclusions; or the need for some kind of radically transgressive and expectation-thwarting finish (to educate the audience).

But the fact is that it is an extremely difficult thing to end a narrative well - and I would regard supposedly deliberately ambiguous (etc.) endings as a fake; an excuse to cover-up incompetence and failure.

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Bad endings are so common nowadays because corruption of writers has become so common as to be nearly universal. When visited by genius, the writer is not grateful, does not perceive that this entails a duty to be truthful to his inspiration - but instead he tries to use the gifts of genius to pursue to fashionable ideology, or to ride some personal hobby horse.

Corruption leads to betrayal of genius - usually by dishonesty; and the cause of dishonesty is usually some brand of Left Wing/ radical politics - which the writer or artist places above the truth of art.

Dishonest art cannot be great; and an habitual liar can only be a great artist when he is (nonetheless) utterly truthful in his art - however badly he behaves the rest of the time.

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Under the Greenwood Tree - Words by Shakespeare, music by Thomas Arne

 

Song: “Under the greenwood tree” from As You Like It, by William Shakespeare, music by Thomas Arne (English: 1710-1778). 

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

I came across this delightful song in my mid-teens on The Art of the Recorder album collection, played by David Munrow and the Academy of Ancient Music. 

This setting of one of Shakespeare's happiest songs in one of his happiest plays has a delightful tune and orchestration (with sopranino recorder obbligato), and has stuck in my mind ever since.

The live performance is excellent, albeit the recording very ropey (presumably done on a mobile phone). 

My ineradicable prejudice in favour of the King James Bible

Just to note the fact (and it does seem to be a fact of my psychology) that I regard the King James version (KJV) of the Bible as being the true, inspired, correct English version of the Bible - as much superior to all the other 'translations' of the Bible as is Shakespeare to Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.

And I'm afraid that I regard other people who disagree with me on this question with about as much empathy as I would regard somebody who claimed that Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare was just as good as, or better than, the original.

And while the Book of Common Prayer comes a close second to the KJV; in the one place where the two books overlap - the Psalms - the KVJ is as much better than the BCP as J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is better than C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. Both are good; but the difference is qualitative.

(Although of course the BCP version of the Psalms - by Miles Coverdale - historically preceded the KJV, so the analogy is inexact.)

That the Anglican Church abandoned universal usage of the BCP and KJV I regard as an abandonment of its own reality - the BCP/ KJV *was* the Church of England - and what remained after their excision is a hollow bureaucratic simulacrum.

Drama is (nearly all) ephemeral

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When you look at how many new plays get written and performed every year, it is remarkable how little drama is lasting - how little of it is really any good.

I don't know how many good, lasting novels there are in English literature, from previous generations - hundreds or thousands of them.

Books that people still buy and read; books that are are worth re-reading.

But hardly any plays.

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In drama there are so few lasting works that you can be a famous playwright for doing just one of them: Oliver Goldsmith for She Stoops to Conquer or Oscar Wilde for The Importance of Being Earnest.

In the whole 18th century there are indeed only three standard classic plays - She Stoops and two others by Sheridan: The Rivals and School for Scandal.

There were periods of many decades when not a single lasting play was written. I know there are several so-called 'Restoration Comedies' - but really...?

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In fact, if you subtracted Shakespeare and Shaw (who were both prolific of classic plays) - drama would pretty much disappear from the literary canon.

If it wasn't for Shakespeare, who would (except from curiosity) want to sit through anything by Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson? Or Webster, or Beaumont and Fletcher? Not I.

If it wasn't for Shaw, who would bother with Pinero, or Galsworthy?

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Plays which seemed overwhelmingly good on first viewing (for me this would include Tom Stoppard's Jumpers and Travesties, and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker) after a while seem unlikely to survive.

Indeed, in most respects, it seems that theatre is even more ephemeral than movies.

Assuming the medium itself survives, there were a lot more classic movies in the twentieth century than there were classic plays - does anyone really want to see an Arthur Miller play nowadays?

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I would guess that there never have been, and presumably never will be, many really good plays. 

Indeed, leave-out Shakespeare and Shaw and it would be a reasonable approximation to say that there are no really good plays at all, and theatre is merely a diversion.

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Why Shakespeare is the greatest writer of English - Quotable AND Smooth (Prosy and Poetic)

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Most of the most quotable writers of English were prosy writers (even if not actually writing prose) - e.g. Bacon, Sam Johnson, Wilde, Shaw - and most of the most poetic writers are not very quotable - Sidney, Spenser, Tennyson...

I think it is distinctive to Shakespeare - and perhaps that which sets him above all others - that he is both: as smooth and musical as Spenser, as pithy and gnomic as Bacon.

(Other writers who combine poeticism and prosiness in this way stand next in line to Shakespeare - for example Chaucer.)

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The Silmarillion (1977) should Not be sold as a work by JRR Tolkien; because it isn't

The Silmarillion (1977) is to The History of Middle Earth, what Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare is to Shakespeare's plays. 

This describes my (elsewhere elaborated) feelings about the net effect resulting from the extensive process of selection, compression, subediting and forced-harmonisation that was imposed on JRR Tolkien's original material by the 1977 Silmarillion.

(My understanding is that Christopher Tolkien did the selection and ordering, and Guy Gavriel Kay did line-by-line editing/ ghost-writing.) 

Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare has some literary value by the critical consensus of the past, and was apparently popular with our ancestors. But there is a heavy price to pay in literary terms; as may be seen from its presentation of Portia's courtroom speech from The Merchant of Venice:

The importance of the arduous task Portia had engaged in gave this tender lady courage, and she boldly proceeded in the duty she had undertaken to perform. And first of all she addressed herself to Shylock; and allowing that he had a right by the Venetian law to have the forfeit expressed in the bond, she spoke so sweetly of the noble quality of MERCY as would have softened any heart but the unfeeling Shylock’s, saying that it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath; and how mercy was a double blessing, it blessed him that gave and him that received it; and how it became monarchs better than their crowns, being an attribute of God Himself; and that earthly power came nearest to God’s in proportion as mercy tempered justice; and she bade Shylock remember that as we all pray for mercy, that same prayer should teach us to show mercy.

Similarly; the 1977 Silmarillion is a partial, distorted and flattened 'nursery' version of JRR Tolkien's primary writing; which may be found in Unfinished Tales and the twelve volumes of The History of Middle Earth.

It is not that The Silmarillion is bad; but objectively, it is not a part of JRR Tolkien's oeuvre.

In all honesty; The Silmarillion should not be published and sold under the name of JRR Tolkien; but instead as a sort of 'condensed book' reduction and rewrite of the primary texts.

The promise of each morning: Days, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 

And marching single in an endless file, 

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 

To each they offer gifts after his will, 

Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that holds them all. 

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 

Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Days - by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I don't especially like Days as poetry (nor, indeed, any poetry of Emerson's) - but its "message", its cry, is one that returns frequently to my mind. 

It is (I think) about the promise felt by people such as Emerson and myself, at the start of a day - the promise of each day, its gifts, and what we might do with them - compared with the inevitable disillusionment of the day's end, when we have not done much, or anything at all.  

This sentiment contrasts with the youthful optimism for the sunny future expressed in many other places by Emerson, that sense that on just such a day as this, a man such as Shakespeare, wrote something like Hamlet... and, if him, then why not me? (In my own way, at at my own level.) 

The idea that nothing is stopping us, but our own narrowness of vision and triviality of ambition...

In truth, it is the mismatch between optimism and actuality that leads to the disillusionment. Emerson felt great powers in himself; and indeed achieved greatly - but realized that whatever he had achieved was in the past, and he was always concerned primarily by the potential of the present moment. 

Shakespeare looking back on having writt-en Hamlet was (no doubt) a very different, and probably sadder, creature than Shakespeare actually writ-ing Hamlet. 

This is the human condition; and apparently nobody has ever eluded it - except by the suppression or obliteration of awareness that it is true. 

And this is exactly why the only escape from wise pessimism - from that stoic attitude which is only divided from rational suicide by irrational (yet true) residual scruples - is to know our mortal lives to be a stage or phase of experience that is both contributing towards, and destined to transform into, resurrection and the reality of a fulfilled life to come. 

Eternal Heavenly life is not, therefore, a compensation for the deficits we now suffer. Neither is it a time of happiness nor of perfection (whatever they may be...). 

It is instead a life in which the limitations of infirmity of will, of death (entropy), and of evil in and around us - are left-behind; and we can then fulfil that "morning feeling" so valued, yet mourned, by Emerson. 

We are not supposed to look-forward to life beyond life, as if it was a holiday - wanting to shorten or hasten-through the intervening days before we can quit the "work" of this world forever, and live in (perpetual!) leisure.... 

But instead, we should think of Heaven as a situation where we can get on with our real work; without having it continually dismantled by the fading of memory and the hazards of this-world. And having prepared our-selves as best we may by the experiences of this-life; acknowledging the-reality-of, learning-from, and seeing-beyond, Emersonian disillusionment. 

Such disappointment with ourselves for wasted days is valid; but it is a lesson, not a conclusion. .