"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates

The Shakespeare Pledge:

From this time onward

and for the rest of my life,

I pledge to watch,

to read,

or to listen 

to a minimum of one play

by William Shakespeare

per year

for the rest of my life.

Listen, here’s the truth of it. Reading William Shakespeare is hard. For beginning readers of Shakespeare, understanding his vocabulary and sentence structure is difficult. He writes compelling, but complex metaphors, and his allusions are obscure at times. He is not for educational wimps. I remember one time watching King John in Central Park with a wonderful and intelligent friend. She was a lawyer for Price-Waterhouse, respected, and able to deal with complex legal language. We watched the play through to the intermission. It was quite well done and I was enjoying it immensely. I turned to her and was about to ask how she liked the play when I saw her perplexed look and she said, “Do you have any idea what is going on?” What was the difference between us? I had read and watched Shakespeare some fifty to a hundred times by then. I had read it for high school, college classes, classes that I taught, on my own, and then I had been to a dozen or more plays and seen a dozen or so movie versions. I can’t read and understand the legal terms on the release form for the software I am using to type this essay, but I can enjoy Shakespeare. Do I understand all of it? No. I want to be candid here. There are still things I look up. I still like to use the versions of the plays that come with text notes and I still get thrown by some passages when I read or hear a play spoken. And I am not alone with this problem. John Gielgud, that’s Sir John Gielgud to you and me, the noted English actor wrote in his book Acting Shakespeare that early on in his career he could not understand whole passages, “but I padded my doublet and wore a false beard and shouted and boomed and seemed to get some sort of result.” (Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992)

So why bother? If it is this difficult, why continue to work at it?

Indeed, it is a fair question. The answer is, if one wants to become a truly literate and wise person, he should not turn down the opportunity to see any play by Shakespeare. He has much to teach us. With each reading or viewing of a play, I gain knowledge of psychology, philosophy, political science, history, language, humor, philology, love, life and nature. And more. There is always more. He is well worth my time and efforts. And it gets easier. The more a person watches and reads, the easier the Elizabethan language will become and the more insight into human nature a person will gather. It is simply not enough to have seen any of his works once. I have seen or read many of his plays numerous times and I have always found something new in each of his plays no matter how many times I have experienced it before.

So now, you. What does this mean for you? In all likelihood the typical high school student may have experienced Shakespeare under five times. Five. You are just beginning. You are a neophyte, a tyro, an acolyte to the study of Shakespeare. This is wonderful. This is exciting. This is also frightening and difficult. Perhaps. But, if you are to begin your journey of life-long learning, if you are to realize your goal of ever moving onward on you road to personal enlightenment and understanding, you must include Shakespeare. So I make you a deal. Please trust me on this. First, you must pledge that you will expose yourself to a Shakespearean play at least once a year (more is good, but one will work) for the rest of your life. Some of the plays you will cover in school and some you will just happen on and some you will have to go out of your way to read or see. Please remember that movies count as long as they use the original language of Shakespeare. But you must promise yourself to do this. If you make this pledge, I will make this promise, my guarantee: There will come a day when you look at all the work you put into trying to understand his dialogue and characters and you will know in your very depths that the time was well spent and that you have received more than what you have put in. You will know that you enjoy and love Shakespeare. This is a can’t-lose proposition. None of your work will be wasted. You will get more than you give. You will find an author you love. You will become a more interesting person. You will score higher on Jeopardy.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Knowledge of Shakespeare will allow you to examine life through the eyes of one of the most insightful people who ever lived. More than give you answers, Shakespeare will spur you to ask questions. Questions are the important ingredients in learning to discover how people, society, the world, or the universe works. Shakespeare will inspire you to ask the interesting questions. Gratify Socrates and make your life worth living.

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