NEIL SAFIER: I'm thrilled
to see everybody here
tonight and want to offer
you a very warm welcome.
The first thing I
wanted to mention
is a question that I'm sure is
burning in all of your minds,
which is why a lecture on
Shakespeare in the John Carter
Brown Library?
Well the easiest justification
to respond for that question
is on display right over here.
Indeed, it's the last
book in this display
case, which is the first folio,
1623, of Shakespeare's work.
The first printed
collection of Shakespeare.
The story of our own first
folio acquired by Sophia Augusta
Brown--
John Carter Brown's widow--
in the years following
his death was quickly
recognized as a book not
only for its cultural value
but of extreme importance
to the whole mission
of this institution.
It is said--
I'm not sure if it has
been confirmed yet,
which the Shakespearean
scholars will tell me
if this is the case--
that Shakespeare
himself may have
had a copy on his desk of the
work of Michel De Montaigne
as he was writing The Tempest.
In fact, it is the tempest
to which our first folio
is opened, as you will see.
De Cannibal on The Cannibal's
was one of the essays
that Montaigne composed,
which was very much influenced
by the 16th century attempts
to colonize the land of Brazil
and many parts of the Americas
from which Montana derived much
of his own wisdom and
arguments about the relativism
of human culture.
So that is really more of
a hook than anything else,
but it enables me to introduce
our evenings speaker, Michael
Witmore and his lecture
tonight, 10 Things
I Learned From Shakespeare.
Michael Witmore is probably
known to a lot of you.
He received his
undergraduate degree
from Vassar College, an
MA and PhD in rhetoric
from the University of
California at Berkeley,
and was a professor at the
Carnegie Mellon University,
and the University of
Wisconsin at Madison,
prior to taking up
his current position
as director of the
Folger Shakespeare
Library in Washington DC.
I came to know
Mike most directly
as a participant in the
Independent Research Library
Association of which the Folger
and the John Carter Brown
library are both members.
I was very impressed
in my first meetings
there to the extent to which
Mike was a very natural leader
of that group, and also the way
in which he spoke eloquently
about the humanities and the
public role of institutions
like this one, like the Folger
Shakespeare Library, especially
vis-a-vis, the political
and cultural organizations
in Washington DC,
which, as I said,
is where Folger makes its home.
On a very personal
note, I will also
say that Mike has been
a fabulous colleague
and mentor in many
ways to me helping
me to manage the transition
from scholar to administrator
and director, which he himself
navigated those roiling waters
just a couple of
years prior to me.
Without a doubt, both
of these abilities,
both, as a scholar
and a library leader,
will be on display this
evening as Mike showcases
his knowledge, both, of
the Shakespearean opus,
as well as his ability to
deliver a clear and very public
facing message about the
relevance of the humanities
today.
With that, I would
like you to join me
in welcoming Mike Witmore to
the John Carter Brown Library
and to Providence for
the very first time.
Mike.
[APPLAUSE]
MICHAEL WITMORE:
Thank you, Neil.
I have had a thrilling
day here today.
I got a chance to look
at the collection.
I've gotten a chance to
talk to grad students.
I had some time at the library
talking about digital projects.
It's very exciting to be here
and in this space talking
to some of you who
are colleagues,
and some of you who may just
be interested in Shakespeare.
I'll tell you that I wrote this
talk after a year of talking
about Shakespeare.
We sent at the Folger
first folio to 50 states
and to two
territories last year.
And half a million
people came face
to face with this
book, some of whom
cried when they saw the book.
At least one person proposed
marriage in front of the book.
We learned about that from the
Twitter hashtag she said yes.
[LAUGHING]
There was a jazz
funeral for Shakespeare
in honor of the
book in New Orleans.
The indie rock band,
Low, from Duluth
did a special concert for the
book in a rare book manuscript
in Manuscript Library.
It was hard for me to believe
how many people connected
with this source,
powerful source,
for 36 of Shakespeare's
plays, half of which
we might not have today
if this book didn't exist.
And the question I
set for myself was,
what is it that I personally
take from the stories,
and why is it that we still
connect with the plays
themselves?
My background is in rhetoric.
I do now lead a library
in cultural institution.
But one of my research areas
has been into wisdom literature
and wisdom culture.
And as a part of
early modern culture,
it's a very important
area of publishing
and of just mental life,
thinking about proverbs,
learning to apply proverbs
to situations, taking a maxim
and looking at it from a
couple of different directions.
In some way, play
going was probably
a way in which people
exercised this ability
to sum up a situation, and then
apply a short proverb or maxim
to what they were seeing.
And at least in
Shakespeare's plays,
it's interesting because
some of those plays
were actually named with
maxims and proverbs.
And it suggests to me that part
of play going was actually--
just as in the casket scene
in The Merchant of Venice--
was a process in which
you would go see a story,
and then try to figure out what
the proverb was that applied
to what you were seeing.
There's a particularly
wonderful first folio
at Massey University, which
is in Tokyo, that I covet.
It is the most annotated
first folio I've ever seen.
And a 17th century annotator
went through page by page,
and almost line by line
wrote the proverbs and maxims
that came to his--
likely a he-- to his mind
as he saw or read the plays.
So in The Merchant of
Venice, in the margin
he writes, "All that
glitters is not gold,"
a proverb that actually
is then reproduced
in the drama of the play.
But I'm interested in that.
I'm interested in that
process whereby people
take a situation,
and then they think
about what larger rule of
thumb, maxim, or proverb
might apply to that.
And I decided to take a modern
approach to that by asking
myself what are 10 things--
10 proverbs, maxims,
rules of thumb--
that I take from my life
of reading the plays,
and teaching them, and
reflecting on them with others.
I'll be talking about
many of the plays.
By the time I'm really talking
about the Winner's Tale,
you'll know I'm about to end.
[LAUGHING]
All right.
Number one.
I want to begin with something
that politicians know about,
theater artists know about,
jazz musicians know about.
Number one, Shakespeare
knew that you
have to improvise
to get things done.
When Shakespeare thought
about improvisation,
he would have thought
about the art of rhetoric.
Rhetoric is something
that I was trained in
and I think about a lot.
Let me give you a
definition from Aristotle.
According to Aristotle,
rhetoric is the faculty
of recognizing the available
means of persuasion
in any given situation.
I'll repeat that because
it's complicated.
It's the faculty of
recognizing the available means
of persuasion in any situation.
For Aristotle, rhetoric
is an art of perception.
It's an ability to size
up a situation and say,
this would work,
and this won't work.
Eventually, it translates
into action using
words in a particular way.
But this whole practice
of readying oneself
so that one can act with
the right set of terms,
the right set of
arguments, no matter what,
presents itself as a situation.
It's one of those arts that was
very close to the Renaissance.
And it's one that
Shakespeare would
have understood very well.
One of the greatest improvisers
in Shakespeare's plays
is Viola who, as
you'll remember,
is washed up on the
shores of Illyria
in a shipwreck
believing that she
has seen the last of
her drowned brother.
The sea captain
tells her about where
she is, about lady Olivia,
who's a countess who
has lost her father,
lost her brother,
who has been enclosed in a
kind of reclusive mourning.
Viola sizes up that situation
in her usual quick witted way.
And she decides
there and then what
she's going to do
to bide her time.
She says, "Oh, that
I serve that lady
and might not be
delivered to the world
till I had made my occasion
mellow what my estate is."
Made my occasion mellow.
Mellow there, as in the
ripeness of a piece of fruit.
She knows that she can't act
yet, that she needs to wait.
And later when she's
been mistaken for a man
and is now the object
of Olivia's advances,
she throws her hands up, and
she says, "How will this fadge?
Oh time, though must
untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot
for me to untie."
Someone who is
watching this action
and thinking about
the word of occasion
would have brought to mind
the Renaissance emblem, which
is one of those beautiful,
allegorical pictures that
were created in this.
The emblem of something called
Ocasio, also known as chance.
Ocasio is a goddess
who stands on a sphere.
We often see sculptures of
females standing on spheres.
It's connected to this picture.
She has a shroud or
a sail around her.
And she's bald.
She has a single
forelock in front of her.
And if you look at this
picture and think about it,
why was it a good illustration
of occasion or chance?
When opportunity is coming
toward you, you see it,
and you can grasp it.
But once it's passed you by,
there's nothing to grab on to.
That's what that picture
was meant to illustrate,
the changeability and the
fact that, once it's gone,
it's really gone.
The other interesting
thing about that picture
is it's a great picture to
illustrate improvisation.
If you're standing
on a ball, you
need to constantly and perfectly
readjust and recalibrate
your weight.
So Ocasio, this goddess
of improvisation,
is the fastest,
most reactive deity
who can accommodate
all of the occasions
and variety of circumstances
that she faces.
Viola is someone who knows how
to wait for the moment to act.
And it's something that a
great director knows how to do,
as well.
Rhetoricians do it.
But Shakespeare liked to
show things in opposites.
And so now, I want to consider
another virtuoso improvisor.
This time, Iago when he tries
to frame his rival, Cassio,
who's been promoted to
lieutenant as they arrive
at Cyprus.
Cassio has embarrassed himself
by fighting while drunk
when he was supposed
to be holding
a military watch at night.
Iago has framed him with
a man named Rodrigo.
Cassio decides to
win himself back
in the graces of the
general, Othello.
And as he Iago and
Othello are walking up,
they see Desdemona having
a conference with Cassio.
And Cassio turns to leave.
As he walks away,
Iago's says, [SNAP] "Ha!
I like not that."
Othello, "What does thou say?"
"Nothing, my Lord or
if I know not what."
There's an art in the
Renaissance called sprezzatura.
And what it means is practiced
ease or feigned casualness.
You're pretending to do
something by accident.
But in fact, you've been
rehearsing it all along.
You can see how this
applies to politics.
It also applies
to this situation.
What Iago does is he
seizes an opportunity,
like the forelock of occasion.
He sees the arrangement
of circumstances,
sees his actors in
the right place.
The scenario which he can
sum up, and he says, [SNAP] I
don't like it.
And once he's gotten
Othello's attention,
he can start to
back off and say,
I really can't say
what I've seen.
The danger of being
around a great improviser
is that you don't know
what role chance has
played in the production.
You don't know whether they're
making their own fortunes,
or whether they're
seeking to make
the most of a misperception.
Number two, Shakespeare
knew that decisions
must be made in the
absence of all the facts.
Knowing what to say in a
shifting situation where
sometimes an audience looks one
way and then another means you
don't really know everything
about what you ought to do.
And the conditions that
undergird rhetoric,
which is this art of perceiving
what can be done in the moment,
are also the conditions that
undergird all really important
decisions in life.
Drama is almost by definition
taking an action when you
don't have all the information.
That lack of clarity is what
makes a situation dramatic.
You have to consider
what you would
do in the same situation in the
audience with the same amount
of information that
the characters have.
Sometimes you have more.
But often, you're
looking at people
who are working
with what they have.
Hamlet's often been described
as a play about someone
who couldn't make up his mind.
I would say that
it's really a play
about a man who chose to
test things and test them
obsessively.
There's the question
of the ghost.
Is that ghost a Catholic
ghost or a protestant ghost?
Is it a spirit of health
or a goblin damned?
Is it someone come back from
purgatory, the real father--
Hamlet's father-- telling
him what happened?
Or is it the devil coming to
tempt Hamlet into mortal sin?
Hamlet understands
that that's a choice.
And he decides to test it with
a play called The Mouse Trap.
He makes that famous comment.
"The plays the thing
wherein I'll catch
the conscience of the king."
And that image of the king's
guilt unkenneling, like a dog,
running out when he's seen
the image of what he's done,
activating his guilt, and
turning it against him.
19th century German romantics
loved this indecisive prince,
and called attention to his
slowness in making decisions.
But in fact, Hamlet
was like a scientist.
He set up experiments.
He set the conditions in which
he could observe and so confirm
what he thought
was true or untrue.
There are other people
making decisions and testing
hypotheses in Hamlet.
You'll remember that
Polonius is employed
in the task of figuring out what
Hamlet is really brooding on.
He sets up a scene like a
director in which is daughter,
Ophelia--
once the lover of Hamlet--
is going to walk
up and down stage.
She's holding a prayer book
and, as it were by accident,
encounter Hamlet.
When they observe
this interview,
and the interviewer is
one in which Hamlet says,
"Get thee to a nunnery."
You remember how that
conversation goes.
Claudius, having seen what
they've said to each other,
makes up his mind immediately.
He says, "Love, his affections
do not that way tend.
Nor what he spake, though
it lacked form a little,
was not like madness.
There's something in
his soul over which
his melancholy sits on brood."
And as soon as he's
figured this out,
he writes the death
sentence in a letter he
sends with Hamlet to England.
Claudius is an executive.
He makes decisions.
And no matter what we
think of this character,
I think that Shakespeare
thought of Claudius
as someone who was
actually very good
at taking incomplete information
and doing something with it.
It's really his ruthlessness
that's so unsettling.
A different scene of
weighing probabilities,
this one from Othello.
As you'll remember in
the Venetian Senate
early on in that
play, Othello first
has been accused of
seducing Desdemona.
He stands up and acquits
himself beautifully.
Then, there's the
discussion of where
the Turkish fleet is going.
Is it going to go to Rhodes?
Or is it going to go to Cyprus?
Conflicting accounts
come into the Senate.
The first senator after
hearing the two versions says,
"We must not think the
Turk is so unskillful
to leave that latest which
concerns him first, neglecting
an attempt of ease and
gain to wake and wage
a danger profitless."
He's weighing probabilities.
Why would the Turk
be headed to Rhodes?
It's not a useful objective.
And in the context of
deliberations in the Senate,
this is a perfect example of
how one sifts probabilities
based on the information
that one has.
People make decisions with
incomplete information.
And it turns out that this
was the right decision.
They got that one right
based on the kind of clues
that they had.
All of this is
important to drama
because what makes life
dramatic is that we
have to act without certainty.
It's an unavoidable
fact of our existence,
a fact that makes all
real choice in life
and in human life compelling.
That's why this
particular Maxim strikes
me as appropriate within
Shakespeare's plays
and outside them, as well.
Number three.
He knew that
reputation is a bubble
and that it is easily popped.
If you look at 17th
century Dutch still life
paintings, sometimes
you'll see a figure
of a child who has a little
pipe and is blowing bubbles.
Maybe you know what
that figure is.
He's called Homo Bulla.
It's the boy blowing a bubble,
and he's an example of one
of those themes in Dutch
still life painting
of the vanity of this life.
Reputation is like a bubble.
It inflates.
And then, somehow, by its
own size and elasticity,
suddenly it pops, and it's gone.
Cassio feels that
he's lost his command
in being lieutenant after the
brawl that happens in Cyprus.
And he has this to
say about reputation.
"Oh, I have lost my reputation.
I have lost the
immortal part of myself.
And what remains is bestial."
Iago then responds, "Reputation
is an idol and most false
imposition oft got without merit
and lost without deserving.
You have lost no
reputation at all,
unless you repute
yourself such a loser."
That may be the first time
the word loser is used.
The problem is that it's
difficult to unhear things.
Advisors to kings,
generals, and presidents
can fall from their perch
in an instant because
of this weakness.
And Cassio is described
as being an equinox.
His faults and his virtues
are equally poised.
I think, in the end,
Shakespeare sided with Iago.
In The Seven Ages Of
Man Speech, Jaques
describes the soldiers searching
after the bubble of reputation.
It's something you can't
control completely,
even though entire professions
as rhetoric in the Renaissance,
and PR, and social media
today, were created
to try to protect that thing.
As I think about
the internet, which
is the place where that
bubble inflates the most,
reputation has to be
the internet bubble.
Number four, he knew
that power is harder
to give away than it is to get.
This is the lesson from
King Lear in the history
play, Richard II.
Consider the famous opening
scene from Lear in which he
says, " Which of you shall
we say doesn't love us most?"
And his daughter,
Goneril, arrives
right on time, great
improviser, with this.
"I love you more than
words can wield the matter.
Dearer than eyesight."
Lear's attempt to give away
power to the next generation
may seem to go badly wrong
because one of his daughters
refuses to play the game.
But that problem starts earlier.
Power isn't something
you can simply hand over.
There needs to be a ritual,
some order in which it
can be cleanly passed from
one person to another.
Shakespeare thought about
this in his second tetralogy,
a play written entirely in
verse, called Richard II.
Now you'll remember that
Richard II was a medieval king.
He was one who had a tendency
to vacillate to change his mind.
He's also someone who
really didn't have
a talent for self-preservation.
At one point, another
character named Bolingbroke
who will eventually become
Henry IV, rebels against Richard
who's gone to Ireland.
And when he learns
of the rebellion,
Richard asks how
it was possible.
Richard, "Show us
the hand of God
that hath dismissed us
from our stewardship,
for well we know no
hand of blood and bone
can grip the sacred
handle of our scepter."
Richard is a divinely
anointed king.
He's the one who occupies that
magical state of the King's two
bodies.
The physical body,
which is proper to him,
and that second
body which attaches
to the metaphysical kingdom.
The voice that comes
from an anointed king
is not the voice of one person.
It's the voice of a multitude.
It's everyone speaking
through one person.
Bolingbroke corners
Richard, demands the crown.
And in giving it over,
Richard says, "Now,
mark me how I will undo myself.
I give this heavy
weight from off my head
and this unwieldy
scepter from my hand.
The pride of kingly
sway from out my heart.
With mine own tears,
I wash away my balm.
With mine own hands,
I give away my crown."
The imagery here tells us that
Shakespeare is suspicious.
How can tears of water wash away
the oil of an anointed king?
It won't work.
Carlyle prophesies that,
quote, the blood of English
shall manure the ground if
he, Bolingbroke, is crowned.
And this is a story that
Shakespeare has already
told in the Henry VI plays where
Bolingbroke's grandson loses
what Henry V gains in France.
There is some connection
here to American politics.
I think this country's
founders, many of whom
read and reread
Shakespeare, knew
that a constitution
solves the problem of how
to give power away.
The solution is you don't.
Instead of giving
away power, you
have to return it
because the power
in a constitutional democracy
is only ever on loan
to the person who wields it.
Number five, he knew
that our love of legends
is greater than
our love of fact.
I remember Sarah Silverman
talking about her new show.
And she said, you know,
facts don't change minds,
which may be a mark
of where we are.
But facts may not change
people's minds, but stories do.
And someone asked me if I had
a number 11 for Shakespeare.
That would be it.
In the absence of facts, or
even in the presence of facts,
stories seemed to frame things
in ways that compel action.
So it's very important to me
that we keep these stories
and we take from them
things that will really
nourish our democratic life.
Let's start with Shakespeare.
He was not a historian, but
he sourced his stories from
chronicles by [? Hall ?]
and [? Shedden ?] Hall.
Chronicles that are
in our collection,
and maybe they're in
your collection, as well.
When Shakespeare was
writing his plays,
there wasn't anything
like a profession
of professional history where
you sift evidence, again,
a bit like sifting
probabilities, deciding what's
likely, what's unlikely,
using methods of comparison,
and contextual thinking.
There's a tendency in the
histories that Shakespeare read
and the history
plays that he went on
to write to cast real
people in history
acting as heroes or
villains, martyrs, or saints.
That certainly happened
in the history plays.
Think about them as an
exercise, both, in storytelling,
in history storytelling, that is
the stories of medieval kings.
But also, myth-making
in and of itself.
Showing characters
who themselves
are in the process of
making their own myths.
So even while
Shakespeare's sources
were what we would
say biased when
you look at what the
Tudors made of Richard III,
they also show his tendency
to think of history
as if it were a play.
In Henry V, some of the
most important action
is related by the chorus.
It's a device that Shakespeare
uses because he can't troop
an entire army on to stage.
And he can't get his characters
to fly to the vasty fields
of France in one instant.
But of course, the
imagination can do that.
The chorus describes the night
before the Battle of Agincourt.
The men are awake.
They're nervous.
Blacksmiths are pounding
rivets for their armor,
and the sound of
war is everywhere.
In the midst of that nervous
army, there goes Henry.
And here's what the
chorus has to say.
"Every wretch, pining,
and pale before.
Beholding him plucks
comfort from his looks.
A largess universal,
like the sun,
his liberal eye doth
give to everyone,
thawing cold fear that
mean and gentle all.
Behold, as may unworthiness
define a little touch of Harry
in the night."
The chorus is helping
us make up the scene.
And Harry in going
out to the night
to raise the spirits
of his troops,
is also thinking about
the legend of Harry,
about what will be said.
And a good leader, or at
least a canny politician,
he can't ignore that aspect of
his future and of the stories
people will tell.
Contrast now Harry
to Richard III.
Another character who loves
to talk about what he's doing
and who loves to
think about himself as
if he's a character in a play.
Early on in the
history of Richard III,
Richard says after noting
his own deformity that he's
been created to descant upon
He says, "I've been created to
look upon my shadow in curse.
And therefore," he adds,
"since I cannot prove a lover
to entertain these
farewell spoken days,
I am determined to prove a
villain and hate the idle
pleasures of these days."
He's a villain.
And later when he's talking
to the two young princes who
are about to go into the tower,
he calls himself a vise figure,
like a figure from
the morality plays.
Richard knows that his
audience knows that he's
a character in a play.
And he also knows that
history likes such characters.
If you watch the
House of Cards today,
you know that it's the
story of Richard III married
to Lady Macbeth.
[LAUGHING]
Historical figures sometimes
styled their actions
after stories that they had
encountered in sacred texts
or in folk tales.
And politicians--
today, at least--
as well as actors
keep an eye on where
the legends may take them.
I think no modern
president can avoid
being compared with others whose
actions were larger than life.
A Lincoln, or a Reagan.
Both of these presidents
were well aware of the way
in which life becomes a story.
Lincoln, with his frequent
readings of Shakespeare,
we know that he was able to
quote Macbeth and, in fact,
interview an actor on
the version of the text
that he was using.
And then, Ronald Reagan, who
as Michael Rogan has shown,
quoted his own films
in which he was
a star during his presidency.
[LAUGHING]
I think Shakespeare
would have appreciated
what is said to Jimmy Stewart
at the end of the man who
Shot Liberty valence.
When the legend becomes
fact, print the legend.
Number six, Shakespeare knew
that race is a kind of script
that governs our actions.
The period in which
Shakespeare lived and wrote
was one in which the
foundations of what we now
call the modern world
were being put in place.
He had a front row seat
to colonial expansion
to the beginning of
the modern corporation,
scientific communication,
international commerce,
double entry bookkeeping,
trade, religious conflict,
and the media revolution
that was the printed book.
He also saw conflicts around
race that mirror our own.
For example, Shylock's
brutal treatment
at the hands of his
Christian counterparts.
Aaron the Moor's mockery
of white limed Romans
in Titus Andronicus.
And the fact that
Othello must constantly
disprove the assumption that
he lacks the moral temper
of a Venetian or a Christian.
A script says what will happen.
It puts words into
people's mouths,
which is just what
assumptions about race
do in Shakespeare's plays.
Antonio, for
example, is following
an anti-Semitic script
when he mocks Shylock
for loaning money at interest.
Shylock repeats the
script back to him
when Antonio asks for a
loan noting the Venetians
lapse in memory.
Here's Shylock.
"In the Rialto,
you have rated me
about my moneys and my usances.
Still, I have borne it with a
patient shrug for sufferance
is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever,
cutthroat dog, and spit
upon my Jewish gabardine,
and all for use
of that, which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears
that you need my help."
It's interesting that Shylock
is the one doing the reminding
here.
The fact that only some
people have to negotiate race
all the time, the Jews,
Africans, and non-Christians
in these plays have no
choice but to think twice
about what they say and
do is a telling one.
If race remains a script,
perhaps, the unstated script
of American contemporary
life, Shakespeare's plays
show us not only that it exists
but that part of its power
resides in the fact that only
some people can ignore it.
Number seven.
He knew that words can
do almost anything.
We've been talking about
rhetoric and improvisation.
The plays are
filled with moments
when an improviser takes on a
situation in which he or she is
cornered.
Think about Isabella talking
with Angelo, Desdemona
confronted by accusations
of Othello's witchcraft.
Othello himself accused
by the Venetian Senate.
These characters are able to
acquit themselves in speech.
And that's part of the
drama of their characters
is this ability to just
stand up while cornered,
and say why the
accusations aren't true.
They come to an audience or come
at the listeners from an angle
that they're not expecting.
They have that ability
to reframe the situation
and force a listener to
consider it differently.
And I think about
this in connection
with the opening of King Lear
where Edmund the bastard begins
to talk to his
father, Gloucester,
about his brother, Edgar,
the brother who's legitimate.
And you'll see an
Iago like trick here.
As Edmund is
talking about Edgar,
he stashes something
quickly in his pocket.
His father, Gloucesters,
say, "What's
that with such dispatch
that you put in your pocket?
Why are you so quick
to conceal that?"
And Edmund says, "I
beseech you, sir.
Pardon me.
It is a letter from my brother
that I have not over-read.
And for so much
as I have perused,
I find it not fit for
your overlooking."
Of course, that only
creates curiosity.
And curiosity
leads to suspicion.
The sense that
Edmund doesn't want
to show what he
pretends to hide implies
that he is withholding
something, something
that, therefore, must be true.
Push comes to shove, his
father takes the piece of paper
from him.
And Edmund says, "I
have heard him off
maintain that it
be fit that son's
at perfect age in
father's declined,
the father should be
as ward to the son,
and the son manage his revenue.
This is a scene where
everything turns upside down.
It's where the play
tips on its hinge.
And this is the beginning
of Gloucester's journey
to blindness, disaster,
and redemption.
There's a similar scene in one
of Shakespeare's late plays
called Pericles.
In this story, a
wandering prince
named Pericles loses his
daughter, Marina, in a series
of accidents at sea, which are
typical of the romance form.
And this style of
storytelling is one
that Shakespeare adopted more
toward the end of his career
in plays like Cymbeline, The
Tempest, and Two Noble Kinsmen.
Stories about families that
are separated about disguise,
about chance coincidences,
encounters with pirates,
rescues at sea, improbable
reunions and, finally,
recognitions.
She herself is
kidnapped by pirates.
And as these stories
go, she ends up
in a brothel in Mytilene.
Romance will not encourage
you to suspend disbelief.
In fact, it'll do
just the opposite,
which is something I'll
talk about in a moment.
But when Marina encounters
the governor of Mytilene,--
his name is Lysimachus,--
he is her first customer.
She's the first man
she must resist.
And here's what she says.
"If you were born to
honor, show it now.
If put upon"-- that is if that
honor was thrust upon you--
"make the judgment good that
thought you worthy of it."
Lysimachus, "I did not think
thou couldst have spoke so
well, nor dreamt thou couldst.
Had I brought thither
a corrupted mind,
thy speech had altered it."
Marina accomplishes
this rhetorical magic
by flipping the
situation at hand.
She's got to work with the
facts that are on the ground,
but place them in a
different arrangement.
I know why you're
here, she's saying.
There's no ambiguity about
what you want from me.
Look where I am.
But then she refrains it.
She says, "Think
about all the people
who expected you as
governor to act virtuously,
who inferred that that's
what you would do.
Why don't you honor their
hope and faith in you
rather than your
current intentions?"
It's brilliant.
She reframes what
he's thinking now
by getting him to think
of what other people would
think of him.
That's a great
example of words doing
something almost miraculous
given that situation.
But Shakespeare, I
think, was also aware
that words sometimes fail.
That's a wrenching possibility
but a very real one
when we're dealing with
language and with human beings.
Think about Lear again at
the beginning of the play.
What can you say
here to Cordelia
to earn yourself
a bounty a third
more opulent than your sisters?
Goneril has already gone.
Regan has already gone.
They've said what
he wants to hear,
both of them
improvising beautifully.
Cordelia's gambit, if that's
what it is, is to say nothing.
"Nothing will come of
nothing," Lear says.
"Speak again."
Cordelia tries to speak
the truth to her father.
"I owe you a divided duty.
The duty I owe to you as
the person who raised me,
of course.
But there's also the duty
I will owe to my husband.
You've just heard your
daughters write checks
that they could never cash
pledging their entire loves
and lives to you.
I, who truly love you, will
give you a just reckoning
of my love, of who I am."
And Lear spurns her.
Eloquence, even simple
eloquence, fails.
By the end of the
play in one version,
King Lear approaches
his daughter
who is now dead because the
countermand to the order
to kill her has not reached
the executioner in time.
Lear puts a feather over
his daughter's mouth
and says, "This feather stirs.
She lives.
If it be so, it
is a chance which
does redeem all sorrows
that ever I have felt."
But of course, the
feather doesn't stir.
And the words don't revive her.
What we're seeing
here is words fail,
which is another way
of calling attention
to their remarkable
power since now they
function as expressions of grief
rather than a reviving spell.
Number 8.
He knew that the capacity
to forgive is precious
and that it goes hand in hand
with the capacity to love.
Continuing on with Lear.
Shakespeare begins
this play with a man
who is utterly unforgiving.
His youngest daughter
disappoints him
in a love competition.
And the punishment is swift.
When Kent begins to
object to say to Lear,
you're moving too
quickly, Lear says,
"Come not between the
dragon and his wrath.
The bow is bent.
The shaft is drawn.
Make from it."
Step back.
One of the most important
moments in the play
occurs when the tables
have been turned completely
and Lear himself must
ask for forgiveness.
Asking is not enough,
however, since the asker has
to recognize what he's done.
That moral recognition
coincides exactly
with his recognition of
the woman in front of him,
the fact that she
is his daughter.
Lear, "I am a very
foolish, fond old man.
Do not laugh at me
for, as I am a man,
I think this lady to
be my child, Cordelia."
Lear is just climbing down
from the wheel of fire
getting his bearings in a new
world where his daughter really
is his only hope.
Later, he looks to
the future and thinks
about the ways in which his
experience could be redeemed.
He looks to his daughter and
says, "Be your tears wet.
Yes, faith.
I pray.
Weep not.
If you have poison for
me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love
me, for your sisters
have, as I do remember,
done me wrong.
You have some cause.
They have not."
And she responds, "No cause."
No cause.
He's forgiven.
Later, he looks at his
daughter, and he says, "Come.
Let's away to prison.
We two alone will sing
like birds of the cage.
When thou dost ask
me blessing, I'll
kneel down and ask
of thee forgiveness."
It's not the prodigal daughter.
It's the prodigal father
who comes home and kneels
in front of his daughter.
A clear sign in
Elizabethan and Jacobean
culture that he is the child.
This moment of
loving connection,
which is also one
of dreamy exclusion
from the rest of this
world, is one remove away
from the trials of
the life he's lived.
It's one of the
only respites that's
given to Lear and the
audience in this play for whom
Lear's trials are experienced
as a kind of ordeal.
At the play's
opening, such a change
would have seemed
nearly impossible.
But of course, in
the theater, it
is not, which leads us to the
ninth point and my last remark
about Lear.
Number nine.
He knew that people
actually change.
Changes of heart require
changes in perception.
That's the crucial point
in many of these plays,
whether they're comedies,
history's, tragedies,
or romances.
How hard is it to see
things in a different way?
How do we know that a
character has seen things anew?
In Lear, that change is signaled
by a change in language.
And in this case, a
language that mixes
simplicity and concreteness.
This is a play with some
of the most devastating
Anglo-Saxon monosyllables
in the Shakespearean canon.
That is that low voice,
that direct voice,
of the life world that comes
from that register in English.
The kind of left-hand
that's played
where the right hand plays
in the Latinate, post
conquest, romance words.
Those are the words that
are about life, love,
the body, about the world.
"Poor, naked wretches,
wheresoe'er you are,
that bide the pelting
of this pitiless storm.
How shall your houseless
heads unfed sides?
Your looped and
widowed raggedness
defend you from
seasons such as these.
Oh, I've ta'en too
little care of this.
Take physic, pomp."
Take your medicine, pompousness.
"Is man no more than this?
Thou."
He's looking at Edgar.
"Thou art the thing itself.
Unaccommodating man is no
more but such a poor, bare,
forked animal as thou art."
Wonderful moment in this play.
Shakespeare's hitting
those short words that
bring us, slow down the tempo.
And then, he'll drop in this
very long, latinate word,
unaccommodating in the middle
of words like thing and forked.
He's trying to make
something very concrete here.
Lear has changed his mind
after the trial in the storm.
And the experience of nature and
of the suffering that he sees
prompts him to return to
humility and to this new
and simpler language.
Shakespeare also used
theater to change
people, whether it was
him, or his company,
or an audience who was willing
in all of that transaction.
And here we turn to
one of his late plays,
my favorite play,
The Winter's Tale.
Like many of the
other late plays,
The Winter's Tale is filled
with fantastic events, chance
encounters, lost children,
special tokens of recognition.
And of course, a dreamy
reconciliation and reunion
at the end of the play when
a family comes back together.
It's definitely a once
upon a time story.
And that's the point.
We're dealing with an
adult nursery rhyme
because it begins in a realm
of fantasy and sudden violence.
Leontes, as you may know,
turns against his wife
before we have any sense
of why he might be jealous.
His turn against his
wife kills his son.
Mamillius, his son, dies
upon hearing the news
of what his father has done.
And this leads to
the death he thinks
of his wife, her Hermione.
He also exposes his
daughter, Perdita,
who is somehow taken
up, taken away by sea,
and brought back for a reunion.
All of that has to be
transacted in the plot.
Paulina, who's her
Hermione's lady in waiting,
does something very interesting.
By the end of the play,
Perdita is back in Bohemia
with Leontes.
And Perdita says, essentially,
come into this space.
I want to show you a statue.
It's a statue that is
preternaturally like that
of her Hermione, of this woman
who's gone and who's dead.
Here's Paulina gesturing
towards the sculpture.
"So much more are
carvers excellence,
which let's go buy
some 16 years and makes
her seem as she lived now."
Leontes.
"As now she might have done
so much to my good comfort
as it is.
Now it is piercing to my soul.
Oh, thus she stood.
Even with such life of
majesty, warm life, as now
it coldly stands when
I first wooed her.
I am ashamed."
A work of art, and we'll
soon learn what kind of art,
has brought Leontes to a
full and frank admission
of his terrible
error and the price
that he and others
have paid for it.
That price is too high,
something that Shakespeare
asserts with the deaths in
the middle of this play.
But it is a play.
And even in the very
adult world of jealousy
an unforgivable
error, the audience
wants some kind
of reconciliation.
And here we learn something
about ourselves and our stories
as Shakespeare cues the ending
of The Winter's Tale, which
leads us to the final
point, number 10.
Shakespeare knew that our hopes
sustain us even when we think
they cannot be satisfied.
The adult pleasures
of The Winter's Tale,
the persistent hope for
an outcome that we know
has passed out of reach.
The truth of our longing
for the impossible, which
is what theater and poetry
deliver, not in the naive
way as in once upon
a time, a story
told by the fire,
what Shakespeare
thought of as a Winter's Tale.
But in a way that makes
his audience, its hopes,
its longings, the efficient
cause of a miracle,
which the theater creates.
Here's Leontes looking
at the sculpture.
"What you can make her do,
I am content to look on.
What to speak, I
am content to hear.
For it is as easy to
make her speak as move."
In other words, he
doesn't expect either one.
Paulina.
"It is a required that
you do awake your faith.
Then, all stand still.
For those that think it is
unlawful business I am about,
let them depart.
Music strikes.
And as surprising as it is
to Leontes and his daughter,
it's also a surprise
to the audience."
Hermione comes back to life.
She steps back into that
life, the impossible revival
that the dramatist said
could not happen, at least
from the middle of the play.
What theater creates
in this moment
is a world in which
one thing and one thing
only is completely real.
Shakespeare believed in
the persistent reality
of our longings.
Our longings for
reconciliation, for justice,
for a world in which
the good prevails,
even as he and we know that we
are being told a fairy tale.
It's a knowing falsehood.
But it's also one of
the great achievements
of the theater and, perhaps, the
source of its redeeming power
as an art form.
Theater's power
grows from the fact
that its effects are shared.
We don't come to the stage
with equal resources.
We find unequal
freedoms, unequal access
to the precious
things of this world.
But in the middle
of all these things
that we bring free and
unfree, Shakespeare
creates a democracy
of perception.
Theater at its best gives
us the ability to see.
There are things, true
things, that we can all
witness in the theater,
even if we do not equally
possess the power to
act on those things.
That is the great gift of these
plays, the last great gift
of this dramatist.
And it's the one to which
we must all hold fast.
Thank you.
[AUDIENCE]
Should we do some questions?
NEIL SAFIER: Yeah, absolutely.
MICHAEL WITMORE: Great.
NEIL SAFIER: The floor is open.
MICHAEL WITMORE: I don't think I
can recite those in order, but.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Of all the
things about The Folger
that attracts people to
the library, what currently
draws the most people?
I recently hightailed
it over there
right after reading the recently
published book, Collecting
Shakespeare because
I was so moved
by the story of the passion
of collecting all things
Shakespeare that brought
Emily and Henry Clay Folger
together that I had to just run
right over there as soon as I
got to Washington
on my next trip.
MICHAEL WITMORE:
Well I like that you
had to run right there.
AUDIENCE: What?
MICHAEL WITMORE: I like that
you had to run right there as
soon as you--
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: I did.
MICHAEL WITMORE: Usually,
it's the second day.
AUDIENCE: I took the metro.
But is it going to see
plays in the theater?
What attracts the most people
to the Folger, at this point?
MICHAEL WITMORE:
So 60,000 people
a year come to our concerts
and performances at night.
We have the first
Elizabethan Theater
in North America
created in 1932.
We're performing the plays
all year, except the summer.
And that is filled to capacity.
We couldn't sell more tickets.
But it's a limited number.
We get around 50,000 visitors by
day to see our exhibition work.
I think that number
could be much larger.
The Library of
Congress currently
gets 1.8 million visitors a
day at the Jefferson Building,
which is right
across the street.
They're going there to
see Mr. Jefferson's books.
But in Washington,
we have Magna Carta.
We have the Declaration
of Independence.
A lot happened in
between those two things.
And the Folger is really
the only institution
in the US capitol that
can tell that story,
for better and for worse,
how we became modern.
And we can debate
whether that's something
that happened in the 16th
century, in the 14th century,
in the 17th century.
But I do think it's a
vital part of the story.
And my hope for the Folger is
that we can show more and talk
more to people who visit.
Not just about Shakespeare
who had this front row
seat to a world that was really
hurdling towards something
that we recognize as our own,
but that we leave visitors
with stories that they
can use to understand
the historical sources
that, yes, in part,
they informed the
declaration of independence,
but they also inform
the modern corporation.
They also tell us
about urbanization.
There are all of these forces.
And so I think we have
a double proposition.
If it's the public, we
do our day time work.
In exhibitions, our nighttime
work and performance.
And then, there's the
online collection.
So the Folger additions,
which are the best selling
high school edition
of the plays,
95% of American schoolchildren
encounter Shakespeare
at least once before they're 18.
We put those plays
online for free.
And we're currently
in the process
of stacking collection images
behind the words in those plays
so that people don't have
to know what to search for.
If you're reading
Shakespeare, we
can take you to a picture of
a bare Bodkin, if it's Hamlet.
We can take you to five of them.
But I believe in all
three of those things.
The power of seeing an early
modern book or artifact
and what it does to people.
I think the living art of
poetry recitation of rhetoric,
of lectures, and of
performance are vital.
And we want to continue
and deepen that work.
But I also think that one of
the great opportunities we have
is that people can
enjoy a collection,
even if they don't
know what to look for.
And with a playwright who
is as pervasive and working
in so many languages, and
translation languages now,
we have the ability to
take this collection
and really share it on
a much broader scale.
I think we could probably accept
or welcome three to five times
the number of people who come
by day without disrupting
the scholars who are working
in this intense environment
in the reading rooms.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
MICHAEL WITMORE: Yeah.
When we she asked me a
question about the public,
there is a connection
between our scholarship
and the public work.
We have about 800 scholars who
come to work in our collection.
They are the most
advanced scholars
using a research instrument
that, if you're a scientist,
I would say--
I don't want to
become too grand--
but it's the equivalent
of an atom smasher.
It's a very powerful instrument
that these 800 people
can use with an intensity
that really is unparalleled.
And I'll just give
you an example of this
because it's illustrative.
We did an exhibition on the law.
And the Chief Justice
came over with his clerks.
That's a pretty
impressive bunch.
So he was not wearing his robes,
but he had his five clerks.
And then, he had
his security detail.
And those are some big guys.
So he looked at the exhibition.
We talked about the sources of
US law, the cook, other things.
And I said, Mr. Chief
Justice, would you
like to see our reading room
where 800 scholars a year
are coming to work with his
unparalleled collection?
And happily, he said,
yes, I would like that.
So if you know the
Folger, there's
the great hall
over here, and it's
right next to the
Renaissance reading room.
To get in between
the two, you have
to throw open some glass doors.
So in walks the Chief
Justice of the United States
with his security
detail and his clerks.
Scholars working
throughout the room.
No one looked up.
[LAUGHING]
And it was one of
the proudest moments
I've had as someone
who's privileged to lead
this institution,
because I said,
these people are connecting with
sources that are 400 years old.
They are diving
deep into history.
We don't matter.
And that's the kind of intensity
on the scholarship side
that I think we need to sustain.
It's something that you can
sustain here at the John Carter
Brown Library.
But there is another
direction connected to this.
We asked the Mellon
Foundation for support
so that we could sponsor
multi-year research projects
where we identify a
part of the collection
where grad students, a
couple of senior scholars,
and then conservators,
and curators
could work together
and produce a traveling
exhibition, a digital archive.
Our first project, which
was funded by Mellon,
is on early modern food
ways in the Atlantic,
which is very exciting.
But it's another
form of scholarship
that we're seeing happen so
that of the 800 people who
are intensely communing
alone with those early modern
sources, there also need
to be teams of people who
can talk out loud
and share knowledge
from different disciplines.
So that will put pressure
on our research spaces.
I saw this beautiful reading
room when I arrived today.
It was relatively quiet.
But sometimes you really do
want to lay out 30 receipt books
or manuscripts for recipes, have
the curator there, and really
start working
through the material.
So I think that's a
positive development
in humanities scholarship.
It's collaborative work.
But it is essential
that research libraries
have the ability to sponsor
and fund the research of people
who use the collection.
And as I see universities-- it
may not be the case at Brown--
but many universities have
shrunk their humanities
faculty, and enrollments
have gone down.
And that has led to
cutting research budgets.
That means we should continue
to pay people to read things
in our collection.
And we should pay more of them.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Absolutely nothing wrong
with sponsoring research
with collections.
But I appreciate your question.
And I do want to give the
full picture of what I hope
the Folger can and will do.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: What was your
introduction to Shakespeare?
And did you like it?
MICHAEL WITMORE: No,
I did not like it.
I read Romeo and Juliet
when I was in junior high.
I didn't like it.
I wasn't that interested
in school either.
So it maybe not have
been the right time.
When I was a senior,
I read Othello.
And that play, I
found, really changed
the way I thought about
literature because it
was a story about what
do you do when you meet
the one person who
can tell you the
lies that you just can't resist.
Everybody will meet that person.
You know, everybody
will meet there Iago.
And when I was 17, that
was really a powerful idea.
And so that was the beginning.
And I was lucky to have a
great undergraduate education.
And I met some wonderful
Shakespeare scholars
at Berkeley.
And now I do this.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
those questions.
But I'm going to be
teaching high school
juniors one high Shakespeare
play this spring.
They've already read
Romeo and Juliet.
They'll read Hamlet as seniors.
What would recommend given our
current national world order
that they would be inheriting?
MICHAEL WITMORE: Yeah,
I think it's Othello
for a lot of different reasons.
I'll give you an
example of something
that happened with us.
We were lucky to receive
any H funding last year
to do something
called cross-talk,
which were a series of
community conversations
in mosques, temples, churches,
and community centers
around racial justice and
religious intolerance.
And it's tricky.
Those were conversations that
were driven by a community.
We could arrive with
a scene from Othello
and some historical materials
to talk about how race played,
and what it was in
the Renaissance,
and what the history
of performing Othello
was from the prohibition
of [? ropes ?]
and playing in
the United States.
But there's a really rich,
and complicated, and sometimes
painful history of that play.
And I think that for
students who are 17 or 16,
that's a conversation that
they're ready to have.
But I also think that if
it's a difficult conversation
about race, a teacher can't
force that conversation
or force certain people to
lead those conversations.
And so I think you
should teach that play
because it's marvelous for
a lot of other reasons.
But I think at our moment
where there's really
an unequal recognition of the
unequal distribution of justice
and resources in this
country, that is a play that
can start that conversation.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: You spoke
about maxim and also
about how the titles of
some of Shakespeare's plays
are the maxim that
represent the play.
But do you feel that often there
is a double message with those?
And then, what do you
think about productions
of Shakespeare that
bring out the, sort
of, contradictory points?
MICHAEL WITMORE: Yeah.
Well they're almost
all contradictory.
And the thing about a
maxim is seize the day
tells you to act quickly.
And then, a bird in hand is
better than two in a bush
tells you not to do that.
For any good maxim,
there's another side.
And the Renaissance
understood that,
which is why they
practiced arguing
two sides of any issue,
Which is a good habit.
And I think we
should keep that up.
But with Shakespeare's titles
of plays in particular,
I am interested in a
wisdom practice that
is expressed in things called
lottery books where there's
a volvelle or spinner
in the back of the book.
And you generate
a random number.
And it leads you to a proverb,
which is then connected
to an emblem and a poem.
And the idea is that you
use chance to put yourself
in a unique situation.
And the proverb
may apply to you.
I am curious about
the possibility
that people saw a play
going as a kind of lottery.
And there's some comments in
Johnson about how many lots
you're buying when you
buy an expensive ticket.
But I think that one of the
things you might have thought
is, I'm seeing an
advertisement for a play that
is a proverb or a maxim.
I'm gonna take the bet.
And I'll go see the play, and
see if the proverb applies.
And I think Shakespeare
is gesturing
toward that in the casket
lottery in Merchant of Venice.
But it's really
interesting in King Lear
where Lear says, what
can you do to draw
yourself a third more
bounteous than your sisters?
And the word draw there
seems to refer to a lottery.
And lotteries had blanks.
So you could pull out a proverb,
or you could pull out a blank.
And so when she
says nothing, and he
says nothing will come
of nothing, speak again,
it's a bit like the first
proverb didn't work.
And so he's going to
pick out the second one.
But I have an entirely
just scholarly interest
in whether people
thought of plays
and play going as an attempt
to match a maxim to a scene.
Now maybe they did,
maybe they didn't.
But I think you're absolutely
right that if the public asks
us to boil Shakespeare
down into 10 maxims,
I would hope they're
contradictory.
And in my case, you
know, I do think
these are defensible maxims.
But by the time
I get to the end,
I really want to talk about the
power of theater and the fact
that there are certain powerful,
compressed longings that
are recognized as, both,
impossible and completely
necessary, and that that's
where Shakespeare was going.
NEIL SAFIER: Well if
there is one maxim that
is not very well in
use or in vogue today,
I'm not sure is
Shakespeare said it,
but it is to admit
error in public when
you have spoken untruth.
[LAUGHING]
And therefore, publicly,
I will say that it is not
this that is the first folio.
Although, it may have been
a good idea for us to make
you think this the first folio.
[LAUGHING]
But in fact, this
is the first folio.
And as I sat there and I saw
Shakespeare staring at me
from the image, I thought, I
should correct my falsehood.
This is the second folio, 1632.
We Have very much in
Shakespeare's spirit
some food and drink.
MICHAEL WITMORE: What
revels are in hand?
NEIL SAFIER: Exactly.
[LAUGHING]
Thank you very much.
But please, join me in
thanking Michael Witmore.
MICHAEL WITMORE:
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
