Coincidental Genius

Four hundred years ago today, the deaths of two literary giants were recorded: William Shakespeare and Cervantes. Though there's dispute over the actual day they died, officially it is the same day for both: April 23, 1616.

 The two men apparently did not meet (Shakespeare never left England, and after his soldiering days Cervantes stayed in Spain) and probably did not know about each other. Still the coincidence of this day is the occasion for a symposium at the Newberry research library in Chicago (and elsewhere), a which-said-what quotes quiz (it's predictably tricky) and an article on the subject in the Guardian, which points out that April 23 is also the death date given for William Wordsworth, Rupert Brooke and some lesser known poets.

 Also a comparison of the lives and work of Shakespeare and Cervantes that notes that a 2002 poll of 100 unnamed international writers named Don Quixote the "most meaningful book of all time."

 Oddly, I stumbled on the coincidental death day by sheer coincidence (Kowincidence?) I've started reading a few pages of J.B. Priestley's Literature and Western Man (1960--when "man" was still an acceptably encompassing synonym for human) before bed, and a week or so ago I got to the page where he noted these deaths on this date of April 23, 1616. Apparently my math skills were up to realizing this was an anniversary year, though it took a calculator to figure out the exact number of years.

(Though perhaps not directly pertinent, I began reading the Priestly book because it was recommended (or favorably mentioned) by novelist and playwright Roberson Davies.  He saw it as a Jungian view of literary history.  My desire to read it was instantly abetted by realizing I owned a copy of it, always an extra bit of confidence and delight.)

 What's fascinating about this coincidence of date is that these are not just two famous writers--their work is arguably the most famous in the western world and considerably beyond it. They are the most famous writers, in two areas of literature. As Priestly wrote, "Perhaps only Shakespeare has captured and delighted more minds than Cervantes."

Shakespeare worked in what became the dominant form of his time and place, plays for the stage. His work helped make it dominant, and transformed theatre for all time. The secret of his perennial appeal, Priestly writes, might be not only the range of what he dramatized but his insistence on not being one-sided.

 "In his desire to keep a balance, his wrestling with the opposites, even the very kinds of opposites they were, despite his immensely rich nature (and rich is surely his favorite word) and many-sided genius, he comes close to generations of ordinary Western men of intelligence and good will. It is perhaps the secret of his hold upon our world, century after century...."

 "Though he conjures up everything from lyrical young love and gossamer fairylands to darkest witchcraft and bloody murder, he always leads us home...If the day ever comes when Shakespeare is no longer acted, read, and studied, quoted and loved, Western Man will be near his end."

 Drama was also the dominant form in Spain, but Cervantes did something else. He put together some existing forms of tales to create something new. Don Quixote is generally considered to be the first novel.

 As Priestly writes: "...and in the gathering shadows of the age and his own time (in contemporary terms he was an old man), with no patron, no salaried place, few prospects, rich only in experience, memory, knowledge of men, the one-handed old soldier began to write his book. Then out of that experience, memory, knowledge, and an eruption of genius, he wrote the best novel in the world."

 But literary definitions aside, he certainly defined a huge area for the novels to come. "Through its bustle of roads and inns, its sense of movement, colour and life, he reached far forward to inspire all the novelists who set their characters wandering." So to Fielding, to Dickens, Melville, Kerouac, Jim Harrison. "And as the magical ironist of the relativity of reality, of truth at war with illusion, he might be said to have pointed further forward still..." To Ibsen, Joyce, and pretty much everyone since.

 "Of all our great novelists," he concludes, " he is the youngest, because he is the first, and the oldest, because his tale of the mad knight is an old man's tale. He is also the wisest."

 It is worth mentioning that though both writers were famous in their time, by April 1616 the world had seemingly moved on, never to return. Shakespeare's drama was already going out of style at the end of his career. Though some of his plays were always performed somewhere in the years after his death, his work was not so appreciated again until the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the 19th century. Similarly, the novel did not emerge in a big way until about then, especially in England, and Cervantes' role as a pioneer as well as an exemplary became cherished.

 So these two geniuses, together responsible for much of what life and letters are like today, died on pretty much the same day. Or...did they just return to where they came from on the same spaceship?

Shakespeare the Thinker
by A. D. Nuttall
Yale University Press

William Shakespeare would have to count this year's as a pretty good birthday, even with 442 earlier ones to compare. He was simultaneously on the covers of Harper's Magazine, the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement a few weeks ago, and today marks the official publication for a new edition of his Complete Works and several other new books, including a new biography by René Weis, a description of the powerful effect of his plays performed by prisoners in Shakespeare Inside, and the work under review here: a lively, penetrating and convivial discussion of his plays that will surely become a classic.

A. D. Nuttall, retired Oxford University professor of English who died before this book was published, writes with the careful and fearless precision that honors the best academic standards, yet in an almost conversational style. He writes about nearly all the plays, and his approach is variously appropriate to that particular play as well as its relationship to the others, to its "type," to Shakespeare's times and what we know about him. In that sense, you might even call this journalistic.

This book has already proven to be an excellent companion when considering a specific play, especially before and after seeing a new production. The contexts and meanings of the histories for someone so remote in time and place is invaluable. Nuttall does not shrink from the issues which certain plays raise for 21st century audiences: the role of women within marriage in The Taming of the Shrew, for example. Other commentators may suggest that Kate's submission is meant ironically, but Nuttall does not take that easy escape.

What makes this book especially valuable is that Nuttall brings not only a lifetime of reading and discussion of the plays, but a lifetime of seeing them performed. Shakespeare the Thinker instantly becomes one of my favorites, along with such titles as Shakespeare: A Life in Drama by Stanley Wells, the discussion of the comedies in Michael Gelven's Truth and the Comedic Art, and William Gibson's unjustifiably neglected masterpiece, Shakespeare's Game.

I'm not a Shakespeare scholar, and I don't agree with all of Nuttall's interpretation, but that's the joy of Shakespeare--the dialogue with the plays can be endless. For reference and for reading, I will be returning to Shakespeare the Thinker.

P.S. I'm posting more on Shakespeare on the occasion of his birthday at Stage Matters.