On Shakespeare's Role in the Modern Education System
Weighing in on the cultural importance of William Shakespeare's plays and whether he has earned his place at the pinnacle of English Literature.
“There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark, but he's an arrant knave.”
William Shakespeare has the most interesting reputation of any literary figure in our modern world. Cultural critics bemoan the colleges that have cut his works from the required curriculum, holding him up as a rival to Homer and Vergil. Arrogant philistines, having seen these legitimate cases of Shakespeare’s overestimation, will respond by throwing the whole folio out because of some nonsense about Bayesian priors. Both types of people are wrong in their own ways here. Shakespeare is good. At points, he’s even great. None of this puts him on the same level as the ancient masters though.
The reason that so many Americans overrate Shakespeare’s contributions to literature1 is because of our own insecurities. The arts in this country have not received the same appreciation they do elsewhere as a generalization, but anything that rhymes has the particular reputation of being at the very least effeminate if not outright gay. Mainstream American culture looks down on the expression of emotion as being lesser than your “Gary Coopers” of the world, and plays and poetry are the best ways to transmit our deepest feelings. Even someone like Robert Bly who was able to stay on the New York Times Best Seller list for 91 weeks,2 regardless of quality, could not hope to achieve the notability of British war poets like Wilfred Owen, Alfred Tennyson, or Dylan Thomas. It is through the deep-rooted fear of being called gay that stops these cultural critics from holding up an American poet’s work on the world’s stage, anyhow. If someone were to pick out one of the fruitier lines from Whitman’s corpus3 and asked one of the people who named him as a worthy member of the “Western Canon,” they’d become untouchable in their own social bubble overnight.4 At least by picking a Brit, they can motte-and-bailey any allegations away by waving him off as a European while still citing his work as an example of a worthwhile contribution to the canon in English.
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