RadixJournal - Esoteric Shakespeare

00:00:00.000 what is coming up for you this one here foundations of shakespeare is a beautiful look they really did

00:00:06.760 a good job on this and i'll show you they even did color diagrams and wow maps and all sorts of

00:00:14.540 things so it's just about to come out next week i'm giving a talk in london about it next week

00:00:19.860 i was a lecturer shakespeare for many years written five other books on shakespeare this

00:00:27.000 is basically like my greatest hits this is like lectures i gave many times but i ended up

00:00:32.520 rewriting them so heavily that they're completely transformed and i went into some considerable

00:00:37.620 detail and it covers sorry to take up even more time but it covers eight plays so the first half

00:00:44.940 of the book is basically context and history and you know how to study shakespeare and basic questions

00:00:51.920 like what's the renaissance and what is the actual structure of feudal life and how would

00:00:57.740 that change where shakespeare's time and social structure and the whole but in real quite in real

00:01:03.620 detail then we look at midsummer night's dream as you like it twelfth night measure for measure hamlet

00:01:09.380 dallow king macbeth so those are the ones i decided i thought i'd pick big meaty plays so pick up that

00:01:16.860 and it's like a kind of if you've never studied shakespeare before if you're bored by it in school

00:01:21.800 but still have an interest now that's the book to get all right awesome i'm definitely going to go read

00:01:27.800 that yes i have a bit of an esoteric take on shakespeare but as long as you don't tell me he was

00:01:34.080 secretly christopher marlowe or something like this i feel like the shakespeare the question is just

00:01:40.820 unanswerable and doesn't change anything maybe he was christopher marlowe maybe he was the who what

00:01:48.440 is the other one i forgot the earl of oxford earl of oxford francis bacon it was not let me just put

00:01:55.600 this to bed he was none of those things the documentary evidence is there you've got records

00:02:00.900 we've got his will we know where his actual will and testament yeah yeah we also they not no works of

00:02:07.720 literature ever of any language have ever been studied more than these apart from the bible and

00:02:13.220 you could even argue more books have been written about shakespeare than have been written on the

00:02:17.940 bible okay these have been subjected to more forensic analysis than you could possibly imagine there is

00:02:24.880 literally no chance he wasn't who he said he was he was a stockholder in the company there are references

00:02:31.480 to things that in the plays that you would have only known if he'd grown up as the son of

00:02:37.540 glover like esoteric knowledge of curb collection and things like this which a noble one wouldn't

00:02:43.240 have known he didn't have the famous thing about shakespeare is that he had a little bit of latin

00:02:48.260 and even less greek but if he went to university he would have been fluent in latin and fluent in greek

00:02:52.460 so there's all sort there's all sorts of things that just show not only the documentary evidence

00:02:57.360 and the fact that he was a real guy and the fact he was famous in his own lifetime

00:03:01.020 and the fact he was rich and bought houses in stratford and so on but there's lots of stuff

00:03:07.480 in the plays themselves that show you yeah he probably was who he said he was but anyway that's

00:03:13.380 all in there as well somewhere no i when i say esoteric i do think that shakespeare is engaging in

00:03:19.720 some higher level esoteric messaging and i think a lot of it is revolving around christianity i'll write

00:03:26.760 a book on it one day people are dragging me in the chat for my slow publishing schedule i'm sorry it

00:03:33.160 just is what it is but i i think there is there there are esoteric messages to shakespeare the ones

00:03:40.600 that jump out at me are ones that we talked about not too long ago in hamlet and romeo and juliet but

00:03:46.820 i think they are ultimately about a an attempted reconciliation in the case of hamlet between catholicism

00:03:56.740 and protestantism and in the case of romeo and juliet between the new and old testament and so i do

00:04:04.680 think he's deep and people like stephen greenblatt who have nipped around the edges of this in terms

00:04:10.600 of protestantism and catholicism and hamlet but even he didn't actually take it all the way home

00:04:15.720 in his book hamlet and purgatory which is well worth reading it's very interesting so i do think

00:04:21.360 there's work to be done taking a rem lens it's not gem as mark and i would define it but it is

00:04:29.500 something and it's interesting i think there it is a field that can be very productive but possibly

00:04:35.980 the interest to you richard is that one of one of my older books is called shakespeare's moral compass

00:04:41.260 of the five books i wrote one of the it's and i went into that expecting actually to find a much

00:04:46.860 more christian much more christian shakespeare and during my research for that i found that in the

00:04:53.060 19th century there was a very victorians were very moralistic so there were all these reverends and

00:04:58.360 pastors and so on looking to drag the moral message out of shakespeare the christian like the christian

00:05:05.240 shakespeare and what i found mcbeth do yeah i always ask myself so one of the really fascinating things i

00:05:12.180 found is that these 19th century priests were going to shakespeare and saying hold on a second

00:05:17.580 there's something odd here this guy ain't a normal christian in the moments where characters should

00:05:22.460 reach for salvation and look up they don't yeah in the in moments where like a normal christian

00:05:28.560 writer would drag something back it's not there and also in the process of researching that book

00:05:35.100 i came across another book called by a writer called danby that was called something like shakespeare's

00:05:40.400 moral shakespeare's natural virtue or something like that where he basically advances an argument

00:05:45.480 that shakespeare may have been a crypto pagan in so much as there's a huge amount of pre-christian

00:05:52.800 pagan stuff in the plays festivals and so on and also that like i was saying the overt christian

00:06:00.260 moralizing you find in many of his contemporaries just is not there so that's another angle to look at

00:06:06.480 that there's something i think there is something there and i think you can make a argument that he's

00:06:12.200 pushing towards nihilism and mcbeth just jumps out at you i my reading of hamlet is that he's

00:06:21.680 hamlet is a protestant he's actually in shakespeare tells you this he gives you a clue he's the man

00:06:27.000 from wittenberg and also which has is a tremendously impactful city in the history of protestantism and

00:06:33.620 shakespeare would know that there's also an interesting reference to a diet of worms after

00:06:37.700 he kills polonius you'll nose him as you go up the stairs or something like that and so it's very

00:06:43.160 interesting you have these like references connecting hamlet with protestantism i think claudius is also

00:06:50.020 trying to be a protestant in the sense that it's it is about internalization and intent what is it my

00:06:57.660 words fly up my thoughts remain below words without thoughts never to heaven go so what he's saying is

00:07:03.500 that you can't just go through the rituals you can't just do the good deeds and get to heaven

00:07:08.940 you have to sincerely believe it and he can't give up the kingdom because it would be disaster for

00:07:14.280 himself and denmark and so he has to hold on to his biggest greatest sin and and then obviously hamlet

00:07:22.820 senior hamlet's father the fact that he is in purgatory this is what stephen greenblatt talked about

00:07:27.760 is and he mentions things in that book isn't it interesting that hamlet seems protestanty or

00:07:33.780 something but he doesn't take it all the way and i think there is a in that a kind of establishment of

00:07:40.580 a tragedy between these things and mark actually brought me this when we were talking about it but

00:07:45.700 hamlet the name so it does reference back to omleth or some of these older plays or dramas etc but

00:07:54.020 hamlet is an interesting name there's hamlet which is the son of shakespeare who died too young but

00:08:00.460 hamlet means a small little village without a church and perhaps that's coincidental but perhaps

00:08:08.260 it's not and i think shakespeare as a true intellectual is able to look at all of these things and see the

00:08:17.260 tragedy in it all he's wondering about whether england might be a hamlet it might be a village without

00:08:23.960 a church without a priest hamlet expresses like in some ways the greatest potential of the protestant

00:08:32.420 reformation of intellectual activity internalization the interior not seeming to be something but being 0.98

00:08:40.760 something but maybe at the end of the day it's better to be ruled by hamlet senior who kicked ass or 0.88

00:08:48.560 fort and brass who just comes in and just tell the soldiers shoot just a man of action is so there's

00:08:54.400 almost like a protestant he's like playing with these ideas and showing the tragedy of protestantism

00:08:59.760 catholicism atheism a town without a church and even fascism you could say in fort and brass of maybe this is

00:09:07.260 the only way to reconcile this at the end of the day and that each of these systems has its own tragedy

00:09:13.760 that sort of how i read these things but i do think there is messaging you know i'll leave in a

00:09:18.600 second but one of my favorite and interesting readings of hamlet which i do talk about somewhere

00:09:23.920 in here is by a writer or a christian critic actually g wilson knight i don't know if you ever

00:09:30.120 came across him in your studies oh yeah g wilson right g wilson knight wrote all sorts of things

00:09:34.900 but his reading of hamlet is absolutely off the wall because he completely turns the play on its head

00:09:41.100 he says look why do you think claudius is a villain he's not a villain claudius was actually a good

00:09:46.120 king and the villain of the piece is hamlet the thing that's rotten in the state of denmark

00:09:52.000 is hamlet yeah he's a villain he's a nihilist he's a look and he makes this whole argument he says look

00:09:57.920 as a result of hamlet's actions 13 14 different people are dead okay he's lost the he's lost the

00:10:04.760 kingdom to a foreign conqueror okay he looks backwards instead of looking forwards whereas claudius

00:10:11.080 he's good he's a progressive king he looks forward he's got a positive attitude okay forget

00:10:16.700 about that we don't even know if he killed we only know that he killed old hamlet because the ghost

00:10:21.500 says but how do you know that the ghost is really a good ghost he could be a demon he could be sent by

00:10:27.520 the devil and it literally that i've always found that a mind-blowing reading of hamlet because it oh

00:10:32.720 yeah at least he turns the play on its head but anyway you can look at that in your own time

00:10:36.860 oh yeah 100 thank you for being here i will 100 buy your book and we should actually do a shakespeare

00:10:43.560 thing if you're willing i'd be delighted to do that cheers up richard

00:10:48.480 you

00:10:57.220 so

RadixJournal - March 05, 2026

Esoteric Shakespeare

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