Skip to main content

Shakespeare in the age of Brexit and Trump: the play’s still the thing

In his new book, Peter Conrad explains how the Bard’s plays are the perfect mirror for our troubled times

Next time you go to a Shakespeare play, don’t think you can settle back into a safe invisibility when the lights go down. You will be under observation: the actors we watch are in turn watching us, examining our personal flaws and the fault lines in our fractious society. We receive fair warning of the test that is in store. Hamlet invites a troupe of itinerant players to perform at Elsinore in the hope that they will embarrass and with luck incriminate his guilty uncle. Their purpose, he tells them, is to “hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature” and expose “the very age and body of the time”.

It’s our age and body, our manners and manias, that Shakespeare’s plays now probe, perhaps more pointedly than ever before. The film-maker Errol Morris, introducing American Dharma, his sulphurous documentary about Trump’s ideologue Steve Bannon, recently remarked that we are suffering through a period resembling “bad Shakespeare” – a mismanaged chaos that matches Horatio’s summary of the plot at the end of Hamlet, when he reflects on “accidental judgments, casual slaughters” and “purposes mistook”. History, while you’re living through it, doesn’t have the cyclical predictability discerned by Marxists; like Shakespeare’s plays, it is a melee of upsets and reversals, driven by capricious individuals whose actions seldom turn out as they are supposed to do.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Orsns2
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more

JD Vance says US needs control of Greenland to fend off China and Russia

Vice-president criticises Denmark’s treatment of Arctic island and says it should come under US ‘security umbrella’ JD Vance told troops in Greenland that the US has to gain control of the Arctic island to stop the threat of China and Russia as he doubled down on criticising Denmark, which he said “have not done a good job”. Under increasingly strained relations between the White House and Greenland and Denmark, the US vice-president said during a visit to Pituffik space base on Friday: “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have underinvested in the people of Greenland and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/ANDJCac
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more