Civilization #51: Shakespeare's Language of Empire

Okay. Um, good morning. So, this class we are focusing on William Shakespeare. But before I do that, I want to give you an overview of how we will end the course. Um, to end the course, we will we will focus on the four great modern civilizations that have fought for global dominance these past 20 years.

These four great civilizations are the Russians, the Germans, the British, and the Americans. Now what's interesting about um all four civilizations is that they all claim to be the the um ultimate Christian civilizations that are here to Rome. But because of the differences in their geography and their culture, they have different interpretations of Christianity and Romanness. Okay. So let's compare and contrast these four great civilizations.

the Russians. Uh as you know, Russia is the largest land mass in the world. It is huge. It is also really cold and dark. Okay.

So the geography um transform the Russian character. Okay. Um Germany in contrast it is within Europe and it does not have the natural boundaries that the other nations have. It is always being attacked and threatened by adversaries. Okay.

Um, the British, it's an island fortress. The Americans um are the most interesting because it is a continental fortress. It is not only invincible. It cannot be invaded, but also has all the resources it needs in order to have a thriving modern economy. Therefore, America can choose to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

Okay. Now because of the difference in geography you have differences in Christianity and in its Romanness. So the Russians believe that they are here to the bisantine empire and as such they are the protectors of something called eastern orthodoxy. Okay. So to understand what eastern orthodoxy is think of augustine.

Okay we read Augustine city of god. So it is a very mystical metaphorical u collectivist attitude towards religion. In contrast the Germans believe that they are here to the Holy Roman Empire first initiated by Charlemagne and as such they are more Catholic than the Russians. Okay. Then you have the British who believe they are here to the real Roman Empire.

Um and their religion is angling. Okay, remember Anglicanism there's really really little difference between Catholicism and in Anglinism when in Anglicanism you swear allegiance to the king of England. In Catholism you swear allegiance to the pope of the Vatican. Um and then you have the Americans who have a who believe that they are adheres to the Roman Republic. Okay, not the empire, the republic before the time of Julius Caesar, the best former government in the world.

Um the religion um so the elite is something we call um das. Okay. So they believe in God but God as someone who is removed from the world. You also have many different sex of panism. Okay.

So the religion in America it is very diffuse very diverse. Okay. So um different c cultural the different cultural outlooks will also determine their cultural identities. So for example the Russians um they have the thing that differentiates the Russians is they have a very dark imagination. So some of the greatest literature, some of the greatest music philosophy actually comes from Russia.

So think of Toy Story, Dossi. In terms of music, you have Tchaikovski and Stravinski. Okay, I will also show you that uh the Russians produced the greatest geopolitical leaders in history. So in the 20th century, the greatest geopolitical leader was actually Joseph Stalin. And I will show you I I'll show you this is the case uh when we move to the 20th century today.

The greatest yopula leader in the world is Vladimir Putin. So there's something about the Russian dark imagination that produces men of genius to lead their countries. Um the Russian cultural identity is the idea of mother Russia, the land itself, the nation, the people. It is divine. All right.

And so the main objective of all Russian geopolitical leaders is to protect its borders from enemies because because Russia is so huge and encompasses two continents. Um it has a lot of geopolitical enemies. Okay. So that's the Russian um civilization. When we move to the Germans, the Germans are really interesting because the Germans have also the great human civilizations in history.

Okay. So rather than a dark imagination, the Germans believe in the idea of will to power. We will discuss this when we discuss German philosophy, especially nichi. Okay. But the idea is this that we have the capacity to impose our will on reality.

That's the idea of will to power. We don't we are not subject to culture. We're not subject to reality. There are great men among us who can impose their will on all of us. Okay?

And that's why you have Hitler and the Nazis. Okay. Um the what the Germans believe in is the idea of limit. Okay. Limitum.

I know this is a hard word. It's a German word, but it's actually a pretty easy concept. The concept is called living space. So throughout its history, German, the German people have always been invaded, attacked by its adversaries. So to protect itself, it needs living space.

It needs to move out and colonize its surrounding territories, Poland, uh, Russia, Austria and make it more German so that the German nation can thrive. Okay, very simple concept. Okay, but this is the concept that drives the German uh military strategy in World War I and World War II. Okay, limits Rome. You have the British and the British as we discussed last class, they are a very practical people.

The philosophy is empiricism and utilitarianism. Okay, it's not a question of what is right or what is ideal. It's a question of what works now. Okay, the British are extremely practical. Um the British Empire is based on the concept of white men's burden.

Meaning that the British culture is inherently superior to all other cultures and as such the British have a responsibility to go out and civilize and educate and enlighten all others. Okay. So this is the philosophy that drives the British Empire. The Americans are interesting because they are a new civilization and they try to base their culture on the ideas of the enlightenment. Okay.

So Rouso Kant especially John Lock um their driving ideology is the idea of manifest destiny. So the idea of manifest destiny is that it is the obvious will of God for America to control the entire Western Hemisphere. That's why Trump today is saying we should take over Canada. We should take over Greenland because that's always been part of the American understanding of the world. It is God's will that America will eventually control all the entire Western Hemisphere.

Canada will eventually come into America into America as well and eventually America will drive out all European powers including Denmark and Britain from the Western Hemisphere. Okay. So next class we'll discuss uh America in greater detail. Today we will focus on the British Empire which is founded by William Shakespeare. Okay.

So we will discuss William Shakespeare today. Uh next week we'll start to focus on the Russians and the Germans. Okay. These are the four great civilizations that will drive history from from the 19th century up to today. Okay.

And I will also show you later on that it is actually the conflict between these four great civilizations that will drive human creativity. Science, technology, um philosophy. Okay. And that's why from about 1800 up until um 2000 you had a tremendous flowering of ideas and culture. Okay.

All right. So that's the game plan for the rest of semester. Any questions about this framework? Again, you don't have to know these ideas right away. I'll explain them in detail to you as we move forward.

Okay? But understand the overall framework is there are four different civilizations that will drive human uh modernity and they are in conflict with with each other and it's because of this conflict that drives human innovation. All right. Okay. Let's move on.

So the shakes the question we're looking at today is how did Shakespeare transform English into the language of empire? So for the longest time, English is what they what they spoke on the British Isles. Okay, not even the British Isles, primarily in England. So how did Shakespeare transform that into the language that everyone speaks today? Okay, English really is the language of empire.

You think when you learn English, you're not just learning uh grammar and vocabulary. You are really learning a culture, a philosophy, an identity. All right? Right. And what's amazing about English is that it has really created um it it's really for soft power convince everyone to believe that Anglo-American culture is really the best in the world when objectively speaking it is not.

I you can make the argument that Russian and German culture is far superior to Anglo-American culture. But everyone especially young people in the world today believes that Anglo-American culture is just vastly superior. And the reason why is because most people speak English and we absorb um um our understanding of the world through language. Okay? Right?

So that's the question we're looking at today. All right? So before we talk about Shakespeare, I want you to understand some basic principles about language, art, culture and civilization. Okay. The first major principle is great art.

Okay. Dante, Homer, uh, Vamir, Shakespeare. It lifts the soul of civilization and changes the neurological neurological structure of societies creating a new way of being and seeing. Okay. So this is a really important idea where you have to understand that civilization has a collective consciousness.

And what great art does is it seeps into this collective consciousness and rewires the brain to make the civilization see the world in a new way which causes people to behave differently. Okay. So we discussed this about Homer and Dante, right? Especially Homer and Dante. Today I'll show you how Shakespeare radically transformed the English imagination.

All right. Another idea I need I need I need you to understand is how poets transform civilization is they innovate in imagery, grammar and vocabulary. Okay. And when they do that poets expand a civilization's capacity to imagine, feel and think. Okay.

So um we will discuss William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare did not live very long. He died at 52. Okay. So he was not alive for a very long time.

But his accomplishments are amazing. In his brief life he wrote anywhere between 38 to 41 plays and he established the English culture identity. Okay. Shakespeare is really the founder of English culture and he established the his English historical memory. Okay?

And he did this by writing a lot of plays, right? So tragedies, histories, comedies, you've read some of them in in in um in in school, right? So his accomplishments are tremendous. The reason why we don't know how many plays he actually wrote, okay, is he never published in his lifetime. All his plays were published after his death by his friends who are working with his notes as well as as um recollections from actors who participated in Shakespeare's plays.

That's why so we don't have actually anything written specifically by Shakespeare. Okay, so keep that in mind. Um in his plays he used anywhere between 20,000 to 30,000 different words. So his range of vocabulary was just vast. What's really unique about Shakespeare is he introduced anywhere between 1700 to 3,500 new uses of words.

What we call diction. Okay, I I'll show you what diction is later on. To put this in context, between the years 1500 and 1650, around 10,000 new words are being introduced into into England because of re revolutions in agriculture, in trade, um in communication, in technology. Okay. So, at this point in history, England is um going out into the world and it's transforming it society and therefore it needs to bring in new words.

What Shakespeare does that's really important is he transforms the British imagination in order to better um absorb these new ideas and he does so through new new uses of words what we call diction. Okay so this makes sense guys. Okay so let's let's examine how he does this. Let's let me give you an example. Let's look at the word dagger.

Okay. Dagger means just a short sword. Okay. And it's a very common English word. But what Shakespeare does is he uses it in a really imaginative metaphorical way that forces you to reimagine the world around you.

Okay? So let's look at some examples. And these are my examples by by the way. They're not Shakespeare's examples. All right?

We will look at Shakespeare examples later on. All right. So the first example is he has a dagger fat and short. Okay. This is interesting because when we see a dagger, we think of something that is um thin, right?

This is saying this is fat. All right? So, this forces you to to think about what dagger is as a metaphor. And this makes your mind think, oh, here's a dagger fat and short. So, it's possible that on the surface he looks fat and short, but actually as a person he is lean and mean.

He's very very clever. He's pretends he's stupid, but he has he has very precise um cleverness. Okay. All right. So that's what Shakespeare does.

He takes a traditional metaphor and he radically reverses or inverts it to force you to reimagine things in a new way. All right. That's the first example. Second example is I daggered him with questions. Now the word daggered actually exists in English language but it means you carry a dagger with you.

Okay? So if I say I am daggered it means my there's a dag my pocket and that's a traditional use of dagger. But there's no reason why you can't do what Shakespeare does and says I daggered him with questions which means like I stab him with questions. All right I'm threatening him with questions. I ask a lot of questions and this is very visual.

It's very imaginative. Okay. Now the third example is his voice is daggerly. Dagly as a word does not exist. But because you know what the word dagger means you can imagine what dagly could mean right?

A voice that is like mine very high high high. Okay. And which you feel um is jabbing at you. All right. So that's the genius of Shakespeare.

He takes words that we use every day and he finds new ways of using it in his plays that forces us to reimagine the world in a different way. All right, that's the power of Shakespeare. Now, um what this is saying is this what Shakespeare understands is that language can be a portal into the neur neurological framework of our minds. Right? So you might have some study some neuroscience or psychology you know like our brain it's structured by these things called synapses okay these pathways in our brain and what Shakespeare understands is that by manipulating language in a new way you can also perform a sort of surgery on the synapses.

All right. All right. So Shakespeare as music. The thing to remember about about Shakespeare is his plays were meant to perform as musicals. Okay.

Um today in school we have you read Shakespeare but remember during the time of Shakespeare no one read him. You experienced Shakespeare by going to his plays and his plays were musicals. uh when people spoke Shakespeare it was as though they were singing and also there were lots of like dance routines within the place as well remember these are people who are extremely ordinary okay who are going to Shakespeare as a form of mass entertainment it's almost like the equivalent of like going to movies today and the way that Shakespeare creates music in his place is through a device called pentameter okay pentameter um you know right it's Um, amus is just uh the arrangement of syllables where you have one one that is deep and then another that's high. So deep, high, deep, high, deep, high, deep, high, deep, high. When you have 10 syllables, it's called pentameter.

Okay. So an example of course is to be or not to be or that is the so so you you understand how this works right low high low high low high and Shakespeare does that throughout his plays that's why it comes across as musical but if it's musical then then it's easy to remember because it becomes like a song right it's really easy for us to remember songs So e andic pentameter Shakespeare's plays are memorable, beautiful and resident meaning they touch our souls and again these are people. So through I'm a pentameter Shakespeare is performing a surgery on the imagination of civilization right all right so having said that let's go into some brief history about Shakespeare um during the time of Shakespeare theater is extremely popular around the country and theater is primarily the means of mass entertainment but it's also the means of mass education if you want to know about history. If you aren't about culture, um you go to the theater. Now, problem with this is that during the time of Shakespeare around the 16th century, as we discussed last class, there's a major conflict going on between the Protestant religion and the Catholic religion.

And so the the queen Elizabeth is concerned about theater as a means of creating the scent in society. So what they do is they force all the theater productions to be placed in a suburb of London. Okay, that's where Shakespeare is going to work. By doing that um Shakespeare is being introduced to all the major theater of that time. Okay, so Shakespeare never actually wrote anything that is unique.

Okay, so Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Ollo, King Lear, these are all plays that are um part of the British theatrical imagination. But what he does that's different is he reimagines the characters and introduces new diction into the plays to make it beautiful. Right? So this is the globe which is where Shakespeare performed much of his productions. Right?

The globe theater. Um the thing also remember about this time is theater is low class. All right. So a in this district the this district there are lots of brothel. People go to theater and they get drunk.

Okay, they're drinking, they're spitting, they're eating stuff. They're also part participate in something called in a gambling activity called bear baiting. Okay, bear baiting is really strange, but the idea is you take a bear, you chain him up, you blind him, okay? And then you have dogs attack him, and then you bet who wins, the bear or the dogs? And this is a really popular thing to do at this time, right?

So it just shows you that we think of Shakespeare as very high class and we teach Shakespeare as high class but at this time Shakespeare is very very low class and Shakespeare's plays are performed uh right beside beer baiting uh venues as well as brothel right but this is important because because if Shakespeare is reaching to the masses right he's educating the masses into a global imagination All right. Um Shakespeare and theater it's so detested by the upper class that from 1642 to 1660 the Puritans banned from England. Okay, remember we discussed the Puritans and how they're obsessed with uh control. They hate alcohol. They hate fun.

They hate theater especially theater. They hate Shakespeare. Okay, so they banned it. So during this time Shakespeare is extremely controversial. Um so having gone into history let's discuss the genius of Shakespeare.

Okay. Um you you do Shakespeare in school. You've read quite a few of his plays. So I'm not going to go too deeply but I'm going to focus on one example that distinguishes um Shakespeare from all other playrs. Okay.

So the example I want to use is Hamlet. Okay. Hamlet. The story you know it's a very simple story. It's about this prince of Denmark called Hamlet.

He's going to university in um um Germany um I believe Wikenstein which is where Martin Luther went. He comes home and then he's visited by the ghost of his dead father. And the ghost of his dead father tells Hamlet, I was killed by your uncle Claudius who now has stolen the throne from me as well as married my wife Gertrude your mother. It is your responsibility as my son to seek vengeance against Claudius. Okay.

So that's the mission of Hamlet. The problem is that Hamlet, he is a very analytical person. He thinks too much. Paralysis is analysis. Okay?

So he spends the entire play thinking about how to kill him, kill Claudius, but also whether or not to kill Claudius. And this is why we believe that Hamlet is Shakespeare's best play because it is a very deep philosophical work. And in many ways, Hamlet is really the expression of Shakespeare. Um, you may not know this, but Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet. And Hamlet actually died when he was young.

So, a lot of um scholars of Shakespeare, and there are like thousands of scholars on Shakespeare believe Hamlet is Shakespeare's most personal play. All right. So we're going to go into a bit of Shakespeare and look at the most famous siloquy in Shakespeare to understand how he thinks how he writes. All right. So this again this is amic pentameter to be or not to be that is the question.

Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them to die to sleep no more and by asleep to say we end the heartache and a thousand natural shocks that flesh is here to a consummation devotely to be wished to die to sleep to sleep her chance to dream. I there's the rub for in that sleep of death. What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause. There's respect that makes calamity of soul long life. Thus conscious dove make cowards of us all and thus the native hue of resolution is slick over with a pale c of thought and in a pris of great pith and moment with this regard the currents turn arry and loosen of action.

Okay, so some brief comments about the slickquake. First of all, as you can understand, it's beautiful, right? It's also, if you think about it, pretty easy to read. There are lots of really complicated words in the speech, but it's really smooth, right? If you read it for yourself, it's really smooth.

And that's the power of pentameter. If you really want to be fluent in English, just read Shakespeare aloud for a few months and your English will be perfect. Okay. Um, the British really are the best practitioners of English. If you read magazines like The Economist um, it's really the best written magazine in the world.

And you think to yourself, well, duh. The British invented English, right? Uh, no. Okay. Just because you invent something doesn't mean you're good at it.

So, the Chinese invented gunpowder, compass, printing, paper. Didn't really get us anywhere. Okay. The fact of the matter is that in England, you're expected to read and know Shakespeare, right? So, it's Shakespeare that allows the British to have amazing English.

All right? So, this is very complicated, but it's actually not that deep. Okay? It's not like Dante. Dante is very, very deep, but Shakespeare is actually not that deep.

All right? So, let's look at what it actually means with these words. Okay? To be or not to be, that is the question. Against the misfortune in our lives, is it more brave and good to bear it or to stand against it?

I no longer want to bear this pain. Let me sleep. I no longer want to feel my heartache and my body become weak and injured. That is my wish. I want to sleep and to dream.

But that is a danger, isn't it? When we are dead, we cannot control what we dream. And that is what frightens me. And that's why I continue to build more misfortunes around me. It is my own mind that has made me a coward and why each time when I become determined my resolve breaks apart and I cannot act.

Okay, that's what he's saying. That's like literally what he's saying. No difference. But of course when you do this when you simplify Shakespeare you lose the beauty and richness of Shakespeare. All right.

So now question then is why is Shakespeare so complicated? What's he trying to do with his language? Okay. So the first thing that he's trying to do is he's trying to use language as a mechanism to convey different realities, different meanings. Okay?

So within Shakespeare with each with each of his plays, there are many different layers of meaning that can be true at the same time. All right? So let me show you an example of this. Let's look at the first possible interpretation of to be or not to be. Okay?

You can say it means to die or to live. I cannot decide. I do not know if it's more brave to live a painful life or to run away from it and escape into death. So this is saying that Hamlet is overwhelmed by the moral dilemma he's put in. Okay, he cannot u escape.

He he has to avenge his father, right? Or he cannot sleep. But avenging his father means killing his uncle who his mother loves. Okay, it's an impossible moral dilemma. He doesn't he doesn't want to deal with it.

So he wants to kill himself. Okay, that's one possible interpretation. Another possible interpretation is to kill or not to kill, I do not know. Is it more good to let those who do evil suffer their own fate or should I stop their evil and end their lives? Okay, so you can interpret this as saying he's asking himself, how should he kill Claudius?

Should he kill Claudius? Okay, that's a different interpretation. Yet another interpretation is should I follow my fate or should I defy it? Is it more brave and good to do as I am told or to fight against my fate? and in so doing perhaps die.

Okay, so this is a much more deeper and richer meaning where he's talking about fate and life in general. He's making the argument that we are we have no free free will. We are forced into a situation where we must do what fate tells us. And in this situation, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have free will?

Where you're controlled by the forces of fate around you. Okay, so that's a much deeper meaning. And then the last deep meaning is what is the point of existence? I do not know. When we exist, we must face pointless questions in our lives.

Should we suffer or should we fight? Okay, so this is the deepest meaning where he's ask he's he's actually asking what does what is existence? What is the point of all this? How do we get here? What is the purpose of existence?

Okay, so there are four possible interpretations of this speech and they're all correct. you can interpret them any way they want. Okay, so it's the first power of Shakespeare where he's forcing you to interpret his speech in different ways. Okay, the second power of Shakespeare is it's visual. Okay, in this tradition, in this oral culture where no one reads and writes, well, most people don't read and write, uh, most people are accessing information through words, right?

And in this tradition, words are images. All right. So let's go over the silicquay and see how they are images. Okay. So when Hamlet says suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and by posing in them, the audience is seeing these pictures.

They're seeing a movie in their heads. Okay? That's the attraction of Shakespeare. Okay? Do you guys see this?

Is it clear to you guys? All right. And because you're seeing pictures, they remember all this. Okay, if you when you talk to an English person, it's amazing how much Shakespeare that person knows subconsciously. Another image.

Okay. In that sleep of death, what James may come, we have shoveled off this mortal coil must give us pause. All right. So, this is an image of a person who's dead. So, his soul goes up to heaven.

But what's in heaven? What's that sleep of death? No one knows. Okay, another image. The native hue of resolution is slick over with a pale pass of thought.

Okay, so this is a complicated sentence, but it's really about how something that is clear to us once we think about it becomes very dark and unclear. Right? So that's a power of Shakespeare. It's a visual language. All right, another example.

Enterprise of great pivot moment. Their currents turn to rise and loss of action. Right? So imagine a ship. It's going very it's going in a direction.

You're set on that path. But the moment you think about it, the think the moment you think deeply about what you're doing, um the ship collapses. You don't know where you're going anymore. Right? So is that clear to you guys?

All right. So, another example of the power of Shakespeare is uh Julius Caesar. I'm not sure if you read Julius Caesar in uh school, but Julius Caesar, it's a very I mean, the plot is very simple. Um Julius Caesar, he has defeated all his enemies in the Roman Civil War. And his friends, Brutus, Casius, um they're worried that he'll become a dictator.

They're they're worried that he he'll become king. So, they plot to kill him. and Brutus and Casius and all the conspirators kill um Julius Caesar and then Brutus and Cas think this is over. Okay. But Mark Anthony who is Caesar's lieutenant, he swears vengeance and Mark Anthony and Octavian will combine forces to destroy and kill Brutus and Cases.

And that's the plot of Julius Caesar. Not very complicated, okay? But in Julius Caesar you will find some of the greatest speeches in the English language. It's stunning speeches. Okay.

And in the speeches you will find example of how Shakespeare understands language as a surgery on the brain. How through speech making, how through language you can actually transform the neur neurological structure of the human brain. Okay. So let's look at an example of this. Mark Anthony and Brutus are going to engage in a speech competition.

They're going to debate each other. Okay? Brutus will be the first to give a speech and then he'll be followed by Mark Anthony. So the strategy of Brutus is is you use a rhetorical strategy called the antithesis. Okay?

The antithesis is basically very simple. You have two opposing ideas. Okay? And there are opposed to each other. So the idea is I am Buddhist.

I am honorable. You know me as honorable because my name is Brhus which is also the name of Lucius Brhus who founded the Roman Republic. You know me as honorable person. Now who is Caesar? Caesar is ambitious.

Okay, honor and ambition cannot go together. So I love Caesar but because he was ambitious he wanted to enslave us. I want to free us. Therefore I have to kill him. All right.

So that's the idea of Buddhist. He's trying to create a economy between Caesar and himself. If you know me Brutus as honorable, then you must believe that Caesar is ambitious. This rhetorical strategy is what we call the antithesis. Okay, in the human mind, you just see these two things as separate from each other.

Mark Anthony then responds to Brutus using something called the triasmus. Okay, the triasmus, it's really interesting. The triasmus take tries to take these two opposing principles and combine them together. All right. So what Mark Anthony will say is that Caesar was ambitious and honorable as honorable and ambitious as Buddhist.

This is called we call triasma. It's called it's an a bba structure. When you do that when you have a triasmus you collapse the antithesis. Remember the antithesis are two separate ideas that cannot meet together exclusionary. The chasma shows you like these are mirrors of each other.

Okay. When you do that in the in the Roman imagination, human Roman mind, you then collapse the economy between Brutus and Caesar and you see them as one and the same. But if it was Brutus that killed Caesar, then Brutus must be the less honorable and ambit and more ambitious one. Okay? Does that make sense, guys?

Julius Caesar. All right? So, let's see an example of this. All right? This is Brutus si talking to the Roman crowd after the death of Julius Caesar.

Okay, he's trying to explain his actions before the Roman crowd. He says, "If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer." Okay, you want to know why he killed Caesar? I'm going to tell you why he killed Caesar. Not that I love Caesar less, but I love Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves than that Caesar were dead to live all free men?

This is an antithesis, right? I love Caesar but I love Rome more. Okay, this is antithesis. This is also antithesis. Caesar if you were living he we he would make us into slaves.

If Caesar is dead we will continue to live as free men. Okay, two exclusionary ideas developed by Brutus. Now what Mark Anthony is going to do is he's going to collapse this. Okay, he's going to change your neurological structure. He's going to change your synapses within you through his speech making.

Let's look at Mark Anthony. Yet Buddhist says he was ambitious and sure he is an honorable man. Okay, so he's summarizing uh the argument made by Buddhist. I speak not to disprove what Buddha Buddhist spoke, but here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause.

What cause withholds you than to mourn for him? Okay, this is a tasmus cause love mourn. Okay, you guys see that? He continues with a tasmus. But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world.

Now lies he there and none so poor to do him reverence. Oh masters, if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong and Cass's wrong, who you all know are honorable men, I will not do them wrong. I rather choose to wrong the dead to wrong myself and you than I will wrong such honorable man. Okay, this is two examples of tismas where word of Caesar and reverence match stood and lies match. Okay, for the chasm he's collapsing this economy.

Another example is here. Okay, the red match the green match. This this is what we call chasmus. Does that make sense guys? Okay.

Have you guys learned this before? Okay. It's really important. You know, you know these ideas. All right.

So, that's the power of Shakespeare. Through his language, through his rhetoric, he's transforming the British imagination so that they are more open, more fluid. They can absorb new ideas and they can be more innovative. Okay. Now we we as we discussed way back at the beginning of this course, Homer did the same thing.

So let's compare and contrast Homer and Shakespeare. How was it able that they were both able to be founders of great civilizations? All right. First of all, they came at a time when there's a cultural tabular rasa. Okay, tabular rasa just means blank slate.

So Homer came at a time after the branch age collapse of Greece. The misanian civilization collapsed and now you have this the polar system. Okay. So it's a tabala rasa. Same thing with Shakespeare where Britain at this time it is not an advanced culture as much as the French and um the Spanish.

Second is rapid cultural change where Britain is undergoing all these revolutions. when you when it's undergoing all these revolutions, people are anxious and they're looking for new ideas. Oral culture, okay, we we talked about this where if you live in an oral culture, people have a stronger memory and have a greater imagination. That's why they're able to sit through three hours of Shakespeare at one go at at one um one go and visualize his language. And this is like the most common person in Britain.

Okay, these are not the elite. These are just commoners. And so, um, we have an oral culture, you have a stronger memory, imagery, vibrancy, and flexibility. They look guys, I I hate to say this, but back then they were smarter than we are today. We have, you know, Google and chatbt, but if you think about it, all these things are just making us stupid.

Okay. Um, open cooperative competition just means that in their times, Homer was just one of thousands of bars that are traveling around uh, Greece and singing legends of the Trojan War and the Golden Fleece. Okay, so what they were doing was they were stealing from each other. All right, Shakespeare was stealing from everyone else. And that allows for rapid innovation when when you have an open cooperative competition.

Democratic sensibilities. This is really important. Okay. Homer was talking to ordinary people. Shakespeare was talking to ordinary people.

The problem with today's culture is um there's a lot of uh market differentiation where if you feel that you are high class, you're university professor. You don't want to talk to common people. You want to talk to other university professors. That leads to stagnation and segmentation. Okay.

Uh free market really important idea where how do you know if you look good or not? Okay. Well, in a university, you know if you're good or not if a professor tells you you're good or not. But how do you know the professor knows what he's talking about? The free market provides an objective feedback loop- which forces you to constantly innovate and improve, right?

How do you know you're good? Because people come and listen to you. They pay attention to your plays. They want to pay for your place, right? And it turned out that because of the free market and open corporate competition, Shakespeare proved to be the best.

Okay. And the last idea is poet as profit. Okay. This is a really important idea where okay, yes, Shakespeare became very wealthy because of the plays he was producing. He was he came from a very common background.

He was not very wealthy. He didn't go to university. That's why that's why today there are scholars who believe Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare because he didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge. Christopher Maro wrote to went to Oxford or Cambridge but not Shakespeare. Okay, so you have a lot of scholars who actually believe because he's not well educated.

He um could not have written the place he wrote. But what drove Shakespeare and what drove Homer is the idea that you have a divine mission to spread the truth. Okay. So Shakespeare and Homer, they were rich, they were popular, they were famous, but they were not driven by money. They were driven by a divine messianic mission to transform the world.

Okay, does that make sense, guys? This is really important to understand. Great artists are driven by um a messic mission to change the world for the better. They're not driven by money or power or fame. All right.

So having done that, let's recap and summarize the three great poets that have impacted western civilization. Okay? And compare and contrast the three. All right? You have Homer who founded the Greek civilization.

You have Dante who we discussed in great detail this semester. He's the founder of modernity. And you have Shakespeare who was the founder of the British Empire. All right. So um again, Homer, Dante and Shakespeare were all democrats in their heart.

Homer was a roing bard who went around the different polices to uh sing and entertain the masses. Dante was revolutionary because he wrote divine comedy not in Latin which was the language of the educated elite but in the vernacular in Tuscin so that ordinary people could access it and by doing so he transformed tas tuskcin into the official Italian language that is spoken today. Uh Shakespeare again was a playwright he wrote to entertain the masses. That's why in Shakespeare you have such I mean it's it's it's very offensive someone's language. Okay.

All right. Um they have different conceptions of language though. All right. And this is very key for us to remember. For Homer language is a window into the human soul.

So go back to the Iliad in the Odyssey. It was really about what drove us humans. Achilles was driven by the thirst for fame. Uh Odysius was driven by his love of Peny and his son Tamakus. Okay.

So uh both the Iliad and the Odyssey were tremendous psych psychological studies of what it means to be human. You have Dante. Okay. Dante uses language as a portal into the mind of God. What is the universe?

How did God create the universe? What does God want from us? Okay, that's divine comedy. Shakespeare is very different. Okay, Shakespeare creates a new idea of language as a reality onto itself.

All right, a reality onto itself. So what I mean by that is with Shakespeare, it's not really a deep meaning. It's very hard to find deep truths in Shakespeare. But the language is beautiful. And this is the culture we live in today where you know what people write novels, they use beautiful language, beautiful description, great imagery, but there's really not great truths, deep truths, grand truths in the novels that are written and produced today.

Okay, so let me give you example of what it means to have language as reality onto itself. All right, so let let me show you show show you what this means. And to do so, I'm I'm going to use a different um poet. His name is John Keats. Okay, John Keats.

And this is from his most famous poem to Autumn, which is considered the greatest English poem of all time. All right. So, let's read it together and then I'll show you how this is a reality onto itself. Where are the songs of spring? I Where are they?

Think not of them. Thou has thy music to you. While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day, and touch the stubble plains with rosy hue. Then in a wealth of choir, the small nuts mourn among the river shallows born alive or sinking as wind lives or dies. And foreground lambs loud bleed from hilly born.

Had crickets sing. And now with treble soft the red breast whistles my garden cough and gathering swallows Twitter in the skies. Okay. So it's beautiful. What does it mean?

All right. I'm going to show you what it means. Okay. This is this is language as real reality onto itself. It is language visualizing a new world.

All right. So you see how the words match, right? While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day and touch the stubble plains with rosy hue. It's a painting, guys. All right, this one sentence.

It's a painting of a new world that you can see in your heart. Also then in a wealthful choir the small gnats mourn among the very shallows born aloft or sinking as our l as a light wind lives or dies. Okay, you can see the music within this picture, right? This is a not just a picture but it's a world that you can access because it's moving. It's alive.

It's the power of language. Next sentence. and full grown lambs loud beat from hilly born head sing and now with treble soft the red breast whis from a garden cough okay so you see what's happening where this poetry it is entering your soul and is it is activating all your emotions all your senses there's the visual okay there's a sound there's a smell there's a touch and gathering swallows Twitter in the sky. Okay, that's what poetry is. Poetry is the expression of a new world that you can access, right?

And when you access it, when you enter it, it transforms your soul and your imagination, your capacity to think, feel, and imagine. Okay. Does that make sense you guys? All right. All right.

So, let's summarize what we learned. Okay. Shakespeare turns English into the world's linguistic internet, a platform in which all cultures, ideas, and worldviews can meet and crossbreed. Okay. So Shakespeare is transforming English into this extremely flexible, beautiful, memorable language which allows everyone to learn English.

Well, you want to learn English well just read Shakespeare. Okay, that's all you have to do and then you can master English. So it's a linguistic internet. For the first time, all cultures are able to meet together in within a English language and communicate with each other. Okay, there's a problem with this.

There's a problem with this. The problem is this. But this exchange is mediated through Anglo-American civilization which is at its heart utarian, skeptical, and empirical. All right. So when you embrace English, when you experience English, you're also experiencing British culture, history, and philosophy.

Okay? And as we discussed the three main philosophies of British culture are utitarian, skeptical and empirical. Utarian we discussed last class. It just means that um we should do things that works as opposed to what is right. Skeptical is to be skeptical of our capacity to reason and to think.

If you think you know something, you probably don't know it. Okay. And then empirical just means the only thing you know is things you experience. All right? So in other words, Anglo-American culture, even though it dominates the world, it's it's pretty lackluster.

It's very narrow-minded. It's very practical. It's pretty mediocre. Okay? And if you want to know what I mean by that, think about think think to yourself what when was what was the last great American novel you read?

I mean there are lots of great Russian German novels right so Russ Russians you have Anakarina war in peace um K punishment the Germans have great philosophy Kant nichi Hegel we we'll go into that uh later on okay but I I struggle to think about what great art the Americans produce have produced even though they are the most wealthy most powerful country that has ever existed in human history. Okay. And I mean Shakespeare is great. I mean like like like I love Shakespeare. King Leair is one of the greatest plays ever written.

But Shakespeare compared with Dante I mean I don't know. Okay. Dante is like you are in the mind of God. You can feel this is divine. Okay.

But with Shakespeare you're like this is beautiful but is it a pretty nothingness? Okay, that's a question I I have. And again, to be fair, it's been a long time since I actually rich read Shakespeare. I've read most of his plays. Uh, but it's been a long time since I've read Shakespeare.

So, what I want to do later on, uh, may maybe a few years from now is actually teach Shakespeare and see if I'm wrong. Okay. But, um, right now I I I have to say Shakespeare is not as impressive as Homer and Dante, right? And I think Homer and Dante are the two greatest poets who ever lived. All right.

So let me give an example of what I mean by how British culture is kind of narrow-minded. All right. So this is considered the greatest epic in the English tradition called Paradise Lost by John Milton. And it's really about um Adam and Eve, right? Why did Adam and Eve eat that forbidden fruit?

and why were we banished from uh the garden of Eden? And look um it's 12 books which is a model of the great epics of integrity um Homer and uh Virgil and there are some parts of Paradise Lodge which are beautiful. Okay, I mean I love Paradise Lost. I I've taught Paradise Lost before but the reality is this as an epic as a grand vision of the world. It doesn't really work.

Okay. I mean like um I don't really think the plot the vision of Paradise Lost it is as fully formed and as grand as Homer and as Virgil and as Dante. Okay. and and so Paradise Lost, you might have a chance to read it um in college one day, but it's a very limited and narrow-minded uh epic. All right.

So, so let's conclude. All right. So, we we did Britain today. Okay. And I hope you understand uh British culture.

It's an island fortress. It sees itself as here to Roman Empire. It is an Anglican religion. It's driven by the emper empiricist and utteran philosophies. Okay.

And Shakespeare is really the founder of this great civilization. Next class we'll do America. Okay. And then after we do these two uh cultures that now dominate the world, we'll move on to the Germans and the Russians. Okay?

That's the game plan. But was today's class clear to you? Do you understand Shakespeare now? Does this make sense? Okay, any questions?

Anything you're not clear about? Any questions? So that's like Okay. Yeah. So, okay.

So, the question is what is like like so Shakespeare is played is is performed all the time and you are forced to read Shakespeare in school. So, where is where do we get these plays from? Okay. So, um let me explain to you what's happening. All right.

Okay. So, Shakespeare's plays. All right. So when Shakespeare was alive, um he didn't really publish his plays. Okay, he didn't publish his plays.

And there are many reasons why he didn't publish his plays. Um first of all, in this culture at this time, there's no copyright. So if you publish your play and someone steals it, too bad. So you're not incentivized to publish your play. Second of all, people don't really read and write.

So there's really no market for his plays. So even if he were to publish his plays, he wouldn't make any money. He he would make money. He would not make money off it. Okay.

So what he did was he wrote his plays down um primarily for his actors to memorize. But as but but the but but the benefit of America is that actually the speeches are pretty easy to memorize. Okay. And um when he was alive Shakespeare was a national celebrity. He performed his plays in front of the king and queen.

Okay. He was very very very well known. Um extremely famous. um he was looked down upon by the nobles but I mean he was very very wealthy and he himself will go on to purchase a noble title for himself. Okay so he was extremely successful um when he was alive people didn't really fully understand his genius.

Okay. It's only about 100 years, 20 years afterwards uh when people really appreciate his genius and his play spread throughout Europe especially to Germany to Germany. The Germans love Shakespeare. Okay. And it was only after his death that people realized what a um unique genius Shakespeare was.

So um after his death um his friends and I don't remember their names, okay? But his friends want to uh remember him. They want to memorize him. Okay. So they start to publish his plays.

It's it's something called the first folio. So basically what they did was okay they took um the notes from Shakespeare. So some of surviving manuscripts not complete okay but some of his notes. They also got the actors to basically write down what uh they uh remembered. Okay.

And they remember a lot because these are actors. Actors have extremely um good memories. Okay. So they were able to reme remember exactly uh the speeches um and then they'll make they'll make edits. Okay.

And this is the first portal first for folio. Okay. But as you can imagine over time there'll be a lot lots of additions and mistakes. All right. But um so today it there are thousands of Shakespeare scholars and they argue over certain words.

Did Shakespeare really have this word or was it a later edition? Okay. And I mean it's a really silly thing to do because as I explained to you the genius of Shakespeare was to imagine language as this very fluid um flexible imaginative tool for you to experience reality onto itself. Okay. So to argue what I mean like was the word dagger or datter or dasher.

Okay. And people will argue this. I mean like does it really matter? I mean like a lot of Shakespeare is just word play, right? I mean like there's really no deep truth in Shakespeare and quite honestly I mean like these words are not are not going to change the deeper meaning of Shakespeare.

Okay. So so something that I think overpaid English professors do. Okay. Just because they have nothing better to do. Okay.

They argue about what was the in the first fortio what was edited out was added to. They're trying to figure out what was Shakespeare's original intention. And I mean Shakespeare, think of him as a musician, okay? He's I mean like he's trying to um sing beauty and truth, but a lot of it is not intentional. A lot of it's not conscious.

A lot of being driven by inspiration and intuition and imagination. Okay. Right. So when we go back to Hamlet the silicquy if we change a few words it doesn't really change the meaning of the silicqu. Okay.

Right. Okay. Does that make sense, Eva? Okay. Great question though.

Right. Any other questions? Yes. Yeah. So how's that like mindset?

Okay. Okay. So it's a great question. Okay. Um what men's burden?

Okay. This is a concept that was introduced during the age of imperialism right at the end towards the end of the 19th century by Robert Kipling. Okay. Okay, the white man's burden. We have a responsibility as white people to go and civilize the dark people.

Okay, in Africa and in China and other places. Um, what's the connection to Shakespeare? Okay, first of all, Shakespeare was not interested in the world. Okay, he he was very provincial. He was interested in London and that was about it.

I'm not even sure if he traveled. Okay. Um, there's a debate whether or not he actually speaks French and Latin. He knows a bit of Latin, but this is debate whether or not he speaks French. Okay, so um Shakespeare was not an imperialist.

He was not a globalist. He didn't really care about the world. But within Shakespeare is British culture. Okay, he wrote of histories, tragedies and comedies. there's like 38 to 41 plays and together they are the encapsulation of British culture right so as Britain was going out into the world and conquering people uh and colonizing nations they need to explain why this this was happening okay why are you going and killing people for like no particular reason and this is why Shakespeare is important because Shakespeare allows him to say, "Well, do you have a Shakespeare?

Do you have do you have like 38 to 41 plays that are beautifully written?" Well, if you don't, then that means you're not civilized. Okay? We have Shakespeare. You don't have Shakespeare. That means we're superior to you and therefore we will teach you Shakespeare.

We will educate you in Shakespeare. We will civilize you. Okay? So, this is not just Shakespeare. There are other um um individuals as well.

Okay. But primarily Shakespeare. Shakespeare is really the um greatest cultural product of the British. Right. So that doesn't make sense.

Echo. Okay. So Shakespeare himself was not an imperialist. He didn't really care about that sort of thing. Okay.

But his legacy will be co-opted by British imperialists in order to justify and explain why they're going out and killing so many people around the world and stealing the resources. Right? Okay. But we'll discuss this when we enter the age of imperialism which is towards the 19th century and and then this will lead us into the great wars uh world war I and World War II. Okay.

All right. Any more questions? really best way. learn. Yeah, I I I answered the question.

Okay, great. Great. Yeah. So, so you're you're doing a fellow in class and you're looking at a fellow from the perspective of race and identity and culture, right? Um okay.

So, let's just discuss how Shakespeare wrote his plays. Okay. So, he wrote um for around 40 plays before he died at at 52. Okay. which meant that he was basically producing one, two, three plays a year.

That's a lot, guys. If you read Shakespeare, the themes are extremely diverse. Okay? You have a fellow who is a Moore who kills his wife Desimona, okay? But you also have Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar.

Okay? So, there's a wide range of his plays. And so, the question is, how did he do it? Well, he was stealing it from everyone. Okay, remember this is a um market.

There's a huge market for theater. There are dozens and dozens of really talented playrs in London, in England who are producing wonderful works. Okay. So, he's just stealing these plots from different uh playwrights. But what makes Shakespeare unique and special and superior to these other playwrites is first of all his characters.

Okay. um he has a deep empathy for his characters. He goes into the mind of his characters and he says if I'm this person, how would I behave? Okay, so that's one thing that makes him unique. Second, as we discussed, is his use of language.

Okay, just the fluidity and the beauty. Okay, and the flexibility of his language. Okay. Um, and the last thing is the realism, which is he's trying to make the plot as realistic as possible. He's trying to remove the supernatural elements.

Okay, he's much he's interested in psychology. Okay. So, um, when you look at a fellow, he's he's he's asking himself, why is it that a man who loves his wife, what could drive him to kill his wife? Okay, that's the question he's asking. He doesn't see Oll as a black person in a foreign culture.

He doesn't see it that way. He just sees I want to ask myself a question. If you truly love a person, what would what would drive him to kill her? Okay. But because the theme is so universal, it allows you to impose um cultural readings.

Okay. So he himself was not interested in the issue of race, culture and identity. And quite honestly at this time in history there's no such thing as race or identity. Okay? Remember I keep on saying this but for most of you of human ministry we did not differentiate ourselves according to race.

We differentiate ourselves according to community. Okay. So within England people didn't care about the French or the Germans. They hate but but you know what they cared about each other and they hated each other. Remember the main conflict in England at this point is the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants.

Okay? So they weren't focused on the world. They were focused on each other. So um these cultural readings come later. They come from today.

Shakespeare himself was only interested in psychology. What drives us humans? All right? And you can see that manifests itself in Oll and in Hamlet. All right?

And quite honestly, um I'll be honest with you, I think it's really unfair to Shakespeare that we're doing this. All right? I mean, like like like like isn't it much it wouldn't be much more interesting class if we stop asking ourselves, oh, Oll was a black person, so how black people were persecuted and ask ourselves, Oll is a man of great achievement. He's a man of great tremendous pride and honor. But is it possible that in in certain in certain circumstances this can be used against him and that's and that's the plot of a fellow which makes it a Greek tragedy right the Greeks were concerned about hubris arrogance fate these are questions that the Greeks were concerned about so in many ways Shakespeare saw himself as continuing the Greek legacy all right and the fact that we're focusing on questions like race culture and identity it sort of like degrades the because it's saying like, oh, if you're a black person, uh, then you may always be manipulated and persecuted.

And quite honestly, it's also reinforcing certain racial stereotypes about black people as very violent and emotional. Okay. So, if I were to teach Oll, it's a great play and I've never taugh, but I would focus more on the human aspect of a fellow as opposed to the racial aspect of a fellow. Does that make sense? Okay, great.

Any more questions? That's a great question. How is Shakespeare able to focus on human psychology um given the fact that he's not well educated? Okay, I will make the argument it is precisely because he's not well educated that he focused on human psychology. Okay, when you are educated, you are educated into cultural attitudes, norms and values of the elite.

But if you're not educated then what you do is you observe humans as they are without prejudice. You want to know you want to know how are we as humans and you have not been indoctrinated to believe believe certain certain things. Okay. So if you go to school you do one school and you go to university the first thing you're taught is only well educated people are capable of deep psychological insights. And that's a prejudice.

That's a failing because Shakespeare never went to school. He's able to see himself as equal to other people and therefore he's able to have tremendous empathy for other people and therefore he's able to understand the psychology and his own psychology. All right? He's able to see people as a reflection of his own psychology and that's what drives his genius and that and quite honestly that's what also what what drove Homer. Okay.

So, um I mean um I I hate to say this, okay, but I did go to Yale University. I studied English literature there. So, I stud I spent a year studying Shakespeare. And um I was not impressed with the education I got at at Yale because again the problem with going to these elite universities is you're taught to think in a very rigid way that inhibits your empathy, your curiosity and your own psychological understanding. Okay.

In fact, I'll be honest with you. Um, I watch a lot of YouTube videos and like to do research for these talks. I'm always impressed by how these self-taught historians know much more about history um than these academics at Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard. Okay, that I mean that's that's something that that I I've observed. I'm you're much better off talking to an individual who has a passion for history and who spent his entire life asking himself what is history but never really got a formal education never got a doctorate in history as opposed to a Harvard PhD in history.

Okay, that's that that's that's a hard lesson I learned in my life. It was very hard for me for me to accept because I am um an elite um graduate of of elite university. Okay. But what Shakespeare understood intuitively is no, it's the common people, the ordinary people. That's where the truth lies.

Okay? Not in books, but in people. That's that's what makes Shakespeare so great. He's he is first and foremost an anthropologist, a psychologist of people. He wants to understand how people think and behave.

Okay? And when you read when you read his plays, that's what that that's what you experience for yourself. Okay? He's really interested in the psychology of IGO Desimona and Oll. Okay, that's a that that's what he's that's what he's curious about.

He's not interested in these structural forces that drive conflict and persecution uh among these people. Okay, that comes later. That that that's what we do to Shakespeare today. Okay, but back then he was only he was only interested in what it meant to be a human being. Okay.

Okay. Does that make sense? Okay. Great. Any more questions, guys?

You want to ask more about Oll, I'd be happy to answer even though my reading of Oll might be different from what what you're being taught in class. Okay. Okay. So the question is how does Shakespeare develop his themes? Okay.

So um so Oll sorry so Athell Hamlet King Leair all these plays are well-known stories okay they're extremely well well-known stories but Shakespeare he is curious about people all right because every day if you work in a theater you you deal with people all the time okay your customers are people your actors are people and what he discovered over time is people are very complicated. People are very emotional. People have um their own psychology. There's diversity among people. Okay?

And so what he does that's really interesting is he takes these legends and he combines them together. Okay? He takes these legends and he and he takes his observations of human individuals and he combines them together to create Shakespeare. In other words, what he does that's unique is he takes these characters, King Lear, Hammond, he turns them into people he's observed. All right?

When you do that, you get you get a lot of interesting psychology, right? So let's imagine um you become Hamlet and you were in a circumstance where your father has come and told and given you a mission to go kill your uncle because he's sleeping with you know your your your mother and um how would you behave? Well, you probably like Hamlet and you'd be like very confused. You'd be very distraught. Okay, does that make sense?

Same thing with where um let's just say that you're this great champion. you're this great hero. Well, other people are be jealous of you, right? And if other people are going to are are going to be jealous of you, what what they're going to do is figure out how to um get back at you. Okay?

So, it's not a racial issue, it's a human issue. If you're the top student in the school and every day the teachers are praising you, right, I'm pretty sure those students are going to hate your guts. That's a fellow, right? That's a human thing. It's not a racial thing.

It's not because he's black. I mean, it's because he's such a uh accomplished individual. Okay. Does that make sense? All right.

Great. Okay. So, um next class we do the American Revolution. All right.