Deep Dive Into Jane Lee

Tales from Shakespeare- Charles and Mary Lamb- Puffin Classics

I wasn’t always a fan of Shakespeare.

On the contrary, I thought of it as rather boring. The words were boring, the story itself was weird and confusing- all those types of sorts.

Even now,  I don’t love Shakespeare. It can be, in some areas, sexist, as well as racist- his views are very old fashioned- rather like most old time writers. It talks about how women have to be the obedient one, and the men, the proud, strong one. In some ways, his ideas are fixed. And I, as a person who strongly is against racial or sexual discrimination, was, slightly disappointed.

But he brought so much to the world of literature.

And this book was great for me to engage into the world of Shakespeare- and it was fascinating. I loved all of the stories- they were unique, and full of drama and excitement.

Now, in English, we are learning about Shakespeare and Macbeth, especially. We learnt that Shakespeare worked for the royalty, so most of his work portrayed the royals as good, or, at least, people that were actually alive as good.

His work was influenced by the rulers. After Queen Elizabeth died, the successor was very into witchcraft- and that was how Macbeth was created.

And often, Shakespeare needed to grab the attention of the listeners- his play, if dull, would be ignored completely, for the theaters back then weren’t the quiet cinemas we have today- it was rowdy, noisy, and full of food, yelling people, and crowed seats. He needed cliff hangers, and magnificent stories. So often his stories were dramatic, and big, of life, and of death.

Although his plays were full of life and was dramatic that even the rowdiest people sat down in hushed silence, his plays were rather suited to the audience, and the strict prejudice at the time.

For example, when he talks about Shylock, in ‘The Merchants of Venice’, he seems to repetitively stress the Shylock, who’s nature was full of greed and hatred, was a Jew. At first, I thought this was very strange. Why was he stressing on the fact that Shylock was a Jew? What did that have to do with his greed, or his violence? The story continued, and it felt like Antonio was a stereotypical white man who was from Europe, and it felt… oddly, wrong. Shakespeare’s work often marks good and bad very strongly, and distinctively, and the fact that a quote unquote Jew was the bad guy? This was turning into a slight… incorrect prejudice. Again and again, they repeat the lines “Merciless Jew” and “That Jew” or “You Jew” and it starts to get tiring. And then the weirdest thing happens in the story. After Shylock has been found out he did much wrong, the duke says this to him in the following lines:

“Get thee gone then,” Said the duke, “and sign it; and if you repent your cruelty and turn Christian, the state will forgive you the fine of the other half of your riches.”

I was dumbfounded. What does turning into Christian have to do with ANYTHING for trying to redo the bad things you have done? Why, is Shylock discriminated not for his bad deeds, but for what he believes in? What he is? How is this fair?

This comes up not in only racial, but sexual as well. There are many sexist stories such as “The Taming Of the Shrew” where the once feisty and full of personality Katherine, gets deliberately tamed, and turned into an obedient DOLL so that she, can obey her husband’s order and not care a heck about the world that’s around her, to be an useless housemaid all her life. Her personality, her feisty, and unique and beautiful personality, seems to be a burden to her father, because no man, wants a woman who’s feisty and actually cares about what happened to her, has her own views. And people think it’s an achievement- an achievement to destroy a woman’s soul, to make her a lifeless shell of a person- to make her so meek- that she never says another word except the agreement of her husband.

I cannot say I love Shakespeare’s work, because it isn’t the purest, best work I’ve seen. Shakespeares work is amazing, fun, and perhaps full of meanings on one side, like ‘jealousy is the green eyed monster’ and such, but the number of wrong ‘rights’ are horrendous.

I guess this saying is true: Ugly stones help carve my gems.