A book I really enjoyed

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, but other things kept coming up.

As you have probably gathered, I'm a big, big Shakespeare fan, so imagine my rapture to find a popular history of the Shakespeare personality cult: Becoming Shakespeare, by Jack Lynch.

Yes, I've been told by the occasional conversant in so many words that they "don't see what the big deal is about Shakespeare," and that "Shakespeare is overrated." Heresy! And yet it has done wonders for my own playwriting (and my writing in general) to take a little conscious thought for why Shakespeare has the status he does. Is it the characters? The language? The plots? Or merely the weight of custom and the fear of pointing out the emperor's nakedness? Becoming Shakespeare suggests it's a combination of all these factors, and reading the book is a very bracing confrontation with one's own assumptions.

Truly, if I can't tell you exactly why I enjoy Shakespeare so much, I have no business asserting his greatness. And if I can't even begin to figure out how he does what he does, I haven't learned enough yet about my own writing, or about writing in general.

As an analogy, I enjoy looking at great works of visual art. But I can't tell you how it's done. I can't do it, and I don't know how anyone else does it. However, I don't pretend to be a painter or a sculptor. By contrast, I love going to a good play or reading a good story. The difference is that I call myself a writer, so I'd better be able to take an extra look — not just at the story, but at the technique, and tell you things like: "See how this character becomes increasingly bizarre? See also how the sets become more symbolic in the second act? That shows on several different levels how the character's state of mind is changing and becoming more chaotic and poetic as the pressures on him increase." Or "See how the sentences and paragraphs in this story get shorter and shorter as the character starts to panic?" Or "This sentence has lots of open vowels and liquid consonents and steady rhythms, which is giving a sense of calmness."

Becoming Shakespeare is, first, a great read for anyone interested in how the crowd dresses any emperor, in the evolution of popular taste and critical thought, in the need for heroes, in the development of intellectual elites. But it's also a fascinating challenge for anyone who has ever gushed, "Oh, I love Shakespeare!" Oh, really? Why?

The mere fatuous enthusiast sees no need to answer; the writer must.