Esoteric Shakespeare
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
176.17572
Summary
In this episode, I'm joined by the author of a new book on Shakespeare, Dr. Stephen Greenblatt, and we talk about the mysteries of the works of Shakespeare, and whether or not he was really a Christian.
Transcript
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what is coming up for you this one here foundations of shakespeare is a beautiful look they really did
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a good job on this and i'll show you they even did color diagrams and wow maps and all sorts of
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things so it's just about to come out next week i'm giving a talk in london about it next week
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i was a lecturer shakespeare for many years written five other books on shakespeare this
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is basically like my greatest hits this is like lectures i gave many times but i ended up
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rewriting them so heavily that they're completely transformed and i went into some considerable
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detail and it covers sorry to take up even more time but it covers eight plays so the first half
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of the book is basically context and history and you know how to study shakespeare and basic questions
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like what's the renaissance and what is the actual structure of feudal life and how would
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that change where shakespeare's time and social structure and the whole but in real quite in real
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detail then we look at midsummer night's dream as you like it twelfth night measure for measure hamlet
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dallow king macbeth so those are the ones i decided i thought i'd pick big meaty plays so pick up that
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and it's like a kind of if you've never studied shakespeare before if you're bored by it in school
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but still have an interest now that's the book to get all right awesome i'm definitely going to go read
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that yes i have a bit of an esoteric take on shakespeare but as long as you don't tell me he was
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secretly christopher marlowe or something like this i feel like the shakespeare the question is just
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unanswerable and doesn't change anything maybe he was christopher marlowe maybe he was the who what
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is the other one i forgot the earl of oxford earl of oxford francis bacon it was not let me just put
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this to bed he was none of those things the documentary evidence is there you've got records
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we've got his will we know where his actual will and testament yeah yeah we also they not no works of
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literature ever of any language have ever been studied more than these apart from the bible and
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you could even argue more books have been written about shakespeare than have been written on the
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bible okay these have been subjected to more forensic analysis than you could possibly imagine there is
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literally no chance he wasn't who he said he was he was a stockholder in the company there are references
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to things that in the plays that you would have only known if he'd grown up as the son of
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glover like esoteric knowledge of curb collection and things like this which a noble one wouldn't
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have known he didn't have the famous thing about shakespeare is that he had a little bit of latin
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and even less greek but if he went to university he would have been fluent in latin and fluent in greek
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so there's all sort there's all sorts of things that just show not only the documentary evidence
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and the fact that he was a real guy and the fact he was famous in his own lifetime
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and the fact he was rich and bought houses in stratford and so on but there's lots of stuff
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in the plays themselves that show you yeah he probably was who he said he was but anyway that's
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all in there as well somewhere no i when i say esoteric i do think that shakespeare is engaging in
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some higher level esoteric messaging and i think a lot of it is revolving around christianity i'll write
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a book on it one day people are dragging me in the chat for my slow publishing schedule i'm sorry it
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just is what it is but i i think there is there there are esoteric messages to shakespeare the ones
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that jump out at me are ones that we talked about not too long ago in hamlet and romeo and juliet but
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i think they are ultimately about a an attempted reconciliation in the case of hamlet between catholicism
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and protestantism and in the case of romeo and juliet between the new and old testament and so i do
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think he's deep and people like stephen greenblatt who have nipped around the edges of this in terms
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of protestantism and catholicism and hamlet but even he didn't actually take it all the way home
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in his book hamlet and purgatory which is well worth reading it's very interesting so i do think
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there's work to be done taking a rem lens it's not gem as mark and i would define it but it is
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something and it's interesting i think there it is a field that can be very productive but possibly
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the interest to you richard is that one of one of my older books is called shakespeare's moral compass
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of the five books i wrote one of the it's and i went into that expecting actually to find a much
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more christian much more christian shakespeare and during my research for that i found that in the
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19th century there was a very victorians were very moralistic so there were all these reverends and
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pastors and so on looking to drag the moral message out of shakespeare the christian like the christian
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shakespeare and what i found mcbeth do yeah i always ask myself so one of the really fascinating things i
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found is that these 19th century priests were going to shakespeare and saying hold on a second
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there's something odd here this guy ain't a normal christian in the moments where characters should
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reach for salvation and look up they don't yeah in the in moments where like a normal christian
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writer would drag something back it's not there and also in the process of researching that book
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i came across another book called by a writer called danby that was called something like shakespeare's
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moral shakespeare's natural virtue or something like that where he basically advances an argument
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that shakespeare may have been a crypto pagan in so much as there's a huge amount of pre-christian
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pagan stuff in the plays festivals and so on and also that like i was saying the overt christian
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moralizing you find in many of his contemporaries just is not there so that's another angle to look at
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that there's something i think there is something there and i think you can make a argument that he's
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pushing towards nihilism and mcbeth just jumps out at you i my reading of hamlet is that he's
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hamlet is a protestant he's actually in shakespeare tells you this he gives you a clue he's the man
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from wittenberg and also which has is a tremendously impactful city in the history of protestantism and
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shakespeare would know that there's also an interesting reference to a diet of worms after
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he kills polonius you'll nose him as you go up the stairs or something like that and so it's very
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interesting you have these like references connecting hamlet with protestantism i think claudius is also
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trying to be a protestant in the sense that it's it is about internalization and intent what is it my
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words fly up my thoughts remain below words without thoughts never to heaven go so what he's saying is
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that you can't just go through the rituals you can't just do the good deeds and get to heaven
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you have to sincerely believe it and he can't give up the kingdom because it would be disaster for
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himself and denmark and so he has to hold on to his biggest greatest sin and and then obviously hamlet
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senior hamlet's father the fact that he is in purgatory this is what stephen greenblatt talked about
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is and he mentions things in that book isn't it interesting that hamlet seems protestanty or
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something but he doesn't take it all the way and i think there is a in that a kind of establishment of
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a tragedy between these things and mark actually brought me this when we were talking about it but
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hamlet the name so it does reference back to omleth or some of these older plays or dramas etc but
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hamlet is an interesting name there's hamlet which is the son of shakespeare who died too young but
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hamlet means a small little village without a church and perhaps that's coincidental but perhaps
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it's not and i think shakespeare as a true intellectual is able to look at all of these things and see the
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tragedy in it all he's wondering about whether england might be a hamlet it might be a village without
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a church without a priest hamlet expresses like in some ways the greatest potential of the protestant
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reformation of intellectual activity internalization the interior not seeming to be something but being
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something but maybe at the end of the day it's better to be ruled by hamlet senior who kicked ass or
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fort and brass who just comes in and just tell the soldiers shoot just a man of action is so there's
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almost like a protestant he's like playing with these ideas and showing the tragedy of protestantism
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catholicism atheism a town without a church and even fascism you could say in fort and brass of maybe this is
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the only way to reconcile this at the end of the day and that each of these systems has its own tragedy
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that sort of how i read these things but i do think there is messaging you know i'll leave in a
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second but one of my favorite and interesting readings of hamlet which i do talk about somewhere
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in here is by a writer or a christian critic actually g wilson knight i don't know if you ever
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came across him in your studies oh yeah g wilson right g wilson knight wrote all sorts of things
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but his reading of hamlet is absolutely off the wall because he completely turns the play on its head
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he says look why do you think claudius is a villain he's not a villain claudius was actually a good
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king and the villain of the piece is hamlet the thing that's rotten in the state of denmark
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is hamlet yeah he's a villain he's a nihilist he's a look and he makes this whole argument he says look
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as a result of hamlet's actions 13 14 different people are dead okay he's lost the he's lost the
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kingdom to a foreign conqueror okay he looks backwards instead of looking forwards whereas claudius
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he's good he's a progressive king he looks forward he's got a positive attitude okay forget
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about that we don't even know if he killed we only know that he killed old hamlet because the ghost
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says but how do you know that the ghost is really a good ghost he could be a demon he could be sent by
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the devil and it literally that i've always found that a mind-blowing reading of hamlet because it oh
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yeah at least he turns the play on its head but anyway you can look at that in your own time
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oh yeah 100 thank you for being here i will 100 buy your book and we should actually do a shakespeare
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thing if you're willing i'd be delighted to do that cheers up richard