If anniversaries are a good time for taking stock, Shakespeare’s 450th birthday today offers the
perfect reason to ask about his plays and poems, and what the future may hold for them.
The writings of this country boy from Stratford are legendary. Thoughts and images came so easily from his pen that other writers have found his talent almost criminal. English had never sounded so good and has rarely sounded that way since. But will this always be the case? Is the status of his writing settled for all time?
Not at all. In fact, Shakespeare’s next century is likely to be less kind to him than the last, and the century after that less forgiving still. This is partly because his words get harder to understand every year.
Looking back, the past four centuries have been good to Shakespeare. Schoolchildren can no more avoid his plays than a trip to the dentist-both of which are supposed to be good for them, although stressful in different ways.
For those wishing to access his writings in other ways, there are not only countless printed editions, but also versions available on smartphones and tablets. Read, watch or listen.
Shakespeare was a star of the movies almost from the time movies began, so it is no surprise that he has made it into 21st-Century forms of culture. This is a man, after all, who helped define our sense of culture in the first place. Small wonder that he seems a monument able to withstand the passing years.
In his 55th sonnet, Shakespeare suggested that his writings could last when other things wouldn’t. His “powerful rhyme” would be eternal. But he also realizes, in this poem, that everything changes. Things like “marble,” “the gilded monuments of princes” and “statues” will all go away, ruined by history’s indifferent hand. Everything decays, and only the “living record” of writing would have the chance to cheat time.
As Renaissance led to Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age, computers have changed our lives in ways that Shakespeare could not have imagined. What he did imagine was time changing everything, something that has come true for his writing.
———◊———
Douglas Bruster is a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 04/23/2014