Shakespeare-ji – by Bob Heath

I taught English Language and Literature in a large north London comprehensive school for over 40 years. Overall, it was a fulfilling experience on which I look back fondly and with a  degree of satisfaction at having contributed something of benefit to others.

Depending on who was the Secretary of State for Education (and I served under at least 15), the ‘classics’ of English Literature were either championed and prioritised, or they co-existed alongside ‘world’ literature in English. But whatever the political complexion of the administration in power, they were always there. Prominent amongst them were the works of William Shakespeare and we mostly studied the plays. The sonnets were covered occasionally, if and when they  appeared in GCSE anthologies.

Centuries of reverence extended to the Bard have ensured that he has not disappeared from the nation’s consciousness or the school curriculum; the human insights evident in his works are still entirely relevant today and will remain so indefinitely.

The richness and complexity of Shakespeare’s writing have prompted a wealth of critical analysis from numerous, sometimes quite surprising, perspectives including feminist, Marxist, Freudian and post-modern, to mention but a few.

None of the above featured in teaching the syllabus, though we might mention them at A level, for students to follow up independently. We were solidly based in the conventional AC Bradley ‘Shakespearean Tragedy’ approach – character, plot and language for the plays, structure, form and meaning if we ventured into the sonnets.

Fast forward to 2021(?) when I came across Philip Marvin and his ‘Advaita Sundays’. These were deep pandemic times, when Zoom meetings proliferated and all sorts of unlikely gatherings proved possible. I can’t recall how I came across these meetings but I was aware that Philip was connected to The Study Society, an organisation I had been interested in for a while.

A number of the meetings were Shakespeare themed and there was a particular focus on the sonnets. This was of interest as they were relatively unfamiliar to me compared to the plays. But what was fascinating was the premise that Shakespeare was ‘a man of knowledge’ an enlightened individual attuned to a flow of divine wisdom and truth, and this was manifest in his works. This enabled a completely different approach. Conventionally, the 154 sonnets are viewed as ‘love poems’, with 126 being addressed to the ‘Fair Youth’ and the remainder to the ‘Dark Lady’, both shadowy entities who form, with the author, a love triangle with undertones of infatuation and homo-eroticism.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. First, sonnet 15 :

When I consider every thing that grows 

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; 

When I perceive that men as plants increase, 

Cheered and cheque’d even by the self-same sky, 

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, 

And wear their brave state out of memory; 

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay 

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, 

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay, 

To change your day of youth to sullied night;

And all in war with Time for love of you, 

As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

It’s worth mentioning the form and structure of the sonnet as a genre of poetry – 14 lines (always), 10 syllables per line (5 stressed and 5 unstressed) 3 quatrains (groups of 4 lines) and a final rhyming couplet – this last feature was an innovation which defined the Shakespearean sonnet, distinguishing it from the Petrarchan sonnet, his original inspiration.

Sonnets, though often ‘love’ poems, are also philosophical and reflective in tone, and two perennial (and Shakespearean) preoccupations, Time and Death, feature regularly.

Back to the sonnet in question. We can immediately see that it is about Time, which proceeds hand in hand with its travelling companion, Decay. The first part of the poem, sometimes referred to as the exposition – setting out of a situation or state of affairs – presents the effects of Time on humankind.

The third quatrain forms a commentary on this, with reference to an individual. ‘Youth’ is mentioned twice here, and we can assume it is the Fair One.

The final couplet, in contrast, suggests some sort of fight (and success) against the ravages of time, at least in relation to the Fair Youth. And so the Beloved remains forever fresh and beautiful in the eyes of the adoring Lover.

So the assumption here is that this is one person writing about another individual. But what if the Lover and the Beloved were one and the same? What if Shakespeare were addressing  himself (small self, initially)?

Seen from this perspective, the poem is transformed. The early stages still comment on how fleeting moments come and go, how perfection is transient, but there is a strong sense of being in the present moment with full attention – ‘consider’…’perceive’ and the notion, found elsewhere in Shakespeare, that we are all actors in a drama  – ‘this huge stage presenteth nought but shows.’

Conventionally, our lives are played out and we develop into our prime, then decline into our dotage, with only memories of our ‘inconstant stay’.

The final rhyming couplet, so important in the sonnets, delivers a clear conclusion – ‘The passing of Time may lead to physical decay, but emotionally and spiritually I am continually enriched’. Notice here that ‘you’ is mentioned three times – we can interpret this as Shakespeare addressing his true, higher self.

If we maintain this perspective, the other sonnets (or most of them) take on this enhanced meaning and significance. Here’s Sonnet 23 :

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharged with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

Again we have the idea of life as a drama and ourselves as actors in it, in this instance ‘unperfect’ actors. What a subtle and resonant choice of words! We’re not ‘imperfect’; that would suggest that we’re not good actors. No, we’re ‘unperfect’ i.e. not yet perfect, but we are capable of polishing and perfecting ourselves – i.e. developing emotionally and spiritually.

At the moment, fear puts us ‘beside’ ourselves; we’re not comfortable with the part we are to play in life, our energies are unfocused and we miss ‘The perfect ceremony of love’s rite’; we are unable to open our hearts and be comfortable in ourselves.

The last six lines, the ‘sestet’, are a plea for greater awareness and higher consciousness, a shift in our own being, to recognise and practise the divine love which is silent and wordless.

It is possible therefore to approach the sonnets, to varying degrees, from a perspective which now sees them as a spiritual ‘journey’, a voyage of self-discovery, with the poet addressing his words to a ‘you’ which could be the shadowy figures of the conventional interpretations, humanity in general or, perhaps most telling, the poet’s higher self.

Of course, if we can interpret the sonnets in this way, why not the plays as well? ‘Hamlet’, of all the 39 plays, is probably the richest source of language and ideas which support the notion of Shakespeare as a conduit for the divine world.

That most famous of speeches – ‘To be or not to be…’  is an example of profound self-examination, albeit inconclusive. Hamlet is working out various preoccupations and he spends a good deal of time speculating about the nature of life and death. On one level he seems very focused (preoccupied / self-absorbed?) and ‘present’, but at the same time he is too much ‘in the head’; his thoughts are scattered and unchecked. Notice too the references which could be interpreted in ‘yogic’ terms –

‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ – the metaphors of bow, quiver and target – our intended/ not yet completed actions in the law of karma. Later on in the speech :

“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.”

… a perfect evocation of the way that our thoughts and thinking processes get in the way of our true natures, echoed at another point by :

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,”

A statement which could have come straight out of one of Eckhart Tolle’s books!

Bear in mind also that Hamlet spends a lot of time engaged in the now familiar ‘play-acting’ – pretending to be mad, and later we witness the ‘play within a play’ designed to catch out his murderous step-father.

Finally, there are various references in ‘Hamlet’ to the illusory external world, the ‘Maya’ of the Vedic texts. The world is not what it seems to be, and Hamlet sees himself as a seeker of the Truth :

“ ‘Seems’, Madam! Nay, it is; I know not ‘seems’.

Elsewhere, Macbeth makes a similar observation about the deceptive nature of appearances :

… “Function is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is but what is not.”

This merely scratches the surface; there is so much more in the plays and sonnets to corroborate the view that here was an individual of higher consciousness, destined to keep company with the likes of Leonardo, Mozart, Einstein and other such ‘transformative geniuses’

As Bimal Narayan Thakur says in his 2004 work ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Bhagavad Gita’ :

“The Sonnets are an exposition of the inner workings of a yogic mind and heart. The personality of the sonneteer as it appears in the hymns abounds in the truth of his inner soul free from attachment to the objects of senses, ego and desire… Shakespeare is a well-versed Yogi living inwardly.”

See also : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000x6tr