For centuries people have turned toward the theater to offer an escape. Theater has offered society chance to watch a story unfold on stage (or on the movie screen) and escape from the reality of everyday life. Every society, throughout history, has developed its own version of the theater. From puppets that retell historical events and valuable fables to plays that had no words, only dance and music. In the middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church used theater for liturgical dramas and then public displays of Old Testament and New Testament stories. Each play had a “lesson” to be taught. It would seem that, like every other form of art, the Church was maintaining control.
By the Renaissance period, theater began to transform. The theater became a combination of ancient Greek tragedies, the Church’s liturgical dramas, and Italian masked theater Commedia dell'Arte.
The world was changing. The Elizabethan idea of theater was born. Professional companies of players emerged and England had a surge in the building of theater houses.
From all of this emerged Shakespeare. Today his works are commonly read in high schools and colleges around the world. His plays have been created into movies, a different version for every decade. We read his work and see a talented man, but often overlook the struggles he must have endured. While theater was breaking from the Church and becoming a secular form of entertainment, Shakespeare’s ideas were still very unorthodox.
Shakespeare wrote what he saw and what he felt. No person or situation was out of reach of his quill. Royalty was humanized. Nobility exposed for the very corrupt nature that he saw. I can only image that if we had a modern day version of “Shakespeare” the government would lock him up and throw away the key. His plays brought to life the deception, murder and lust that permeate every level of society. Until Shakespeare, nobility and royalty were protected and (at least at the surface) revered as untouchable. They were socially, economically, ethically, and religiously higher than everyone else. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he displays a prince who finds himself in the middle of a web of corruption and murder. In Macbeth, he exposed weakness in nobility. Shakespeare suggested that no matter the station there are always secrets.
Today, we watch his plays brought to the movie screen. So many versions of these stories have been told. Shakespeare’s words have become timeless. The more I read and the more I research, perhaps the meanings of his plays have been lost. We shrug them off as Renaissance romanticism, but then I begin to reflect on our own forms of government. Not just in America, but around the world. We have not changed. We still revere those in government as “protected” from our everyday struggle. The current recession is a perfect example. Yes, most of us are struggling, praying for the next paycheck and to keep our homes, but those in governments around the world are ignorant to the burden. They make the decisions, but in the end will lay their heads on expensive pillows in expensive homes. Perhaps we need a modern day Shakespeare-to shake things up a bit.
Hamlet said “To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand”. How true for all of us.
