Shakespeare and history

When asked how or why I became a historian—and these are standard questions from interviewers and the plainly curious—Shakespeare comes to my mind. For it was not Shakespeare but through Shakespeare that I developed: my hunger for research, my appetite for useless information, and my craving for new and different ways to taste and serve stories that people thought they knew all along. In Shakespeare I learned to discern the flavors and aromas of the past, mixing ingredients in a cauldron following the recipe provided by the second witch in Macbeth:

“Eye of newt, and toe of frog,/Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,/Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,/Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,/For a charm of powerful trouble/Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

We were required to study one Shakespeare play in each level of high school: “Merchant of Venice” in freshman year, “Romeo and Juliet” in sophomore year, “Macbeth” in junior year, and some other play that I cannot recall for senior year. Contrary to popular belief, not all historians have a memory for which elephants are widely known. Memory is not one of my strong points, having discovered early—through Shakespeare, of course—that I did not need to learn by heart all the names of Andres Bonifacio’s Katipuneros in the 1896 battle of Pinaglabanan. That information can be found in books, if you know where and how.

As a curious college student, I sat in a graduate research class where the professor asked: “In which play does Shakespeare use the word ‘love’ the most often?” Before anyone could hazard a guess, she declared it was not “Romeo and Juliet” or “Antony and Cleopatra.” And then she ordered everyone to the library, saying they had an hour to return with an answer. Like sprinters jumping to the sound of the starting gun, the students ran to the library and emptied the shelves of Shakespeare faster than locusts descending on a rice field. Desperation encouraged teamwork, and books were piled on the large study tables arranged by play before each student began flipping through pages, searching for love and counting the ways. As expected, everyone returned empty-handed and frustrated.

Then came the life-changing lesson. Tucked away in the reference section was a thick creature bound in red, with stamped gold letters that screamed: “A Concordance to Shakespeare.” It was a hefty tool that burrowed through the 34,895 speeches spoken by the 1,223 characters in Shakespeare’s 43 works, all of 884,421 words arranged alphabetically, cross-referenced, and made searchable by play, character, frequency, and even etymology. I remember that “love” is used 35 times in “Antony and Cleopatra,” and 44 times in “All’s Well That Ends Well.” I don’t know which Shakespeare play used “love” the most often, but if I need the answer, I know where to find it. Why waste time memorizing all the facts in the world stored in books that are never checked out of libraries?

Having taught young people for the past three decades, I see the difference in their research methods from mine. They search with a mouse, while I am of a generation that used the card catalogue. They think physical books are for old-fashioned scholars like me, and some even presume that if a book isn’t available online, it isn’t important. The Internet overwhelms students with instant gratification. Unlike the physical search for books in a library, the Internet delivers data in seconds—more information than we can handle. So the real challenge is not in the search, but in validating information, sorting, deleting and organizing data into something useful.

We learned Shakespeare in high school using the Folger editions, where Shakespeare’s numbered text was on the left pages of the book, and the most erudite, most obscure notes on the right pages. Dense text was livened up with spot illustrations, often from 16th-century woodcuts. Unlike my classmates who were dulled by the course, I unlocked Shakespeare’s quaint English while relishing these annotations. Being the only one in class who enjoyed these notes, I realized: first, that I was a nerd, and second, that the world had become a lesser place because people had lost their appreciation for useless information.

Years after high school I discovered the Royal Shakespeare Company, thanks to discounted tickets given to postgrad students of the University of London. One evening I turned up and expected to leave during the first intermission to catch a pint at the pub before returning home. “Twelfth Night” it was, and I was mesmerized by the music, the costumes, and the magic of drama.

Shakespeare is best experienced in a theater than force-fed through text in a classroom.

In Act 2, Scene 5, Malvolio picked up a letter in Olivia’s garden, lifted it to his eyes and exclaimed: “By my life, this is my lady’s hand, these be her very C’s, her U’s and her T’s and thus makes she her great P’s. It is, in contempt of question, her hand.” I burst out laughing and was hushed by the stares of those whose elevated cultural experience was ruined by my laugh; they glared as if I had let out a loud, smelly fart.

Why was I the only one who laughed aloud? Did the performer adlib or was this a bawdy 16th-century joke lost on 20th-century viewers? The next day, I picked up a copy of “Twelfth Night” at Dillons bookstore, and found Shakespeare’s vulgar side. I think it was then that my rude side was revealed, and I have honored the Bard’s example often by deploying the same in my writing.

So it was that Shakespeare gave me the tools of my trade.

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