Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity

So it is not enough to say that we need to study the humanities. We also need to study how to study the humanities, which is itself, paradoxically, part of the humanities. If we simply make the humanities into another example of unthinking, rote learning, then we transform them into a means of oppression rather than liberation.

The humanities, then, take advantage of our ability to dance, to sing, to sculpt, to draw or paint, and to use language in order to show us both what we have been, what we are, and what we can be. And I cannot stress this point enough: the humanities have a dimension of enjoyment.

Intentions are a problem in studying literature. One complication is easily dispensed with. Teachers should never ask, "What was the author trying to say here?" The question, of course, implies that the author was an incompetent who was so unsuccessful in making a point that student readers have to decipher it. The real question is something like "What do these words say?" You may notice the phrasing of that question, which does not ask, "What does the author mean?" or "What does the author intend?"

A person who reads Sophocles' Oedipus the King and decides that the point of the play is "don't kill your father and marry your mother" has perhaps followed the action of the play but has missed the important points that the play makes. Of course, anyone who needs to read a play to learn that important lesson probably has other, more serious problems

One basis for such misconceptions is our uncertainty about what a work may be saying, which leads us to the easiest answer we can think of, an answer which is often a cliché or a moral truism. (This tendency is obviously related to our desire to get the one "correct" answer.)

Did a country actor named William Shakespeare really write these plays? This is actually a non-question. The answer makes no difference at all, and the question only concerns people who prefer not dealing with the plays. If the plays are so brilliant that we cannot believe they were written by a country actor, they are so brilliant that we cannot really imagine the mind that did create them. If that good-looking bald actor did not create them, then someone else did. What matters is the plays. We do not search Beowulf in order to learn its author's identity, and we do not read these plays to learn about Shakespeare.

Much of the word play in the play makes us aware of a subtext. The words, in their primary sense, mean one thing, but in their alternate sense they mean something quite different but something that bears on the major themes of the play. At one point Jaques reports the words of Touchstone: 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, And after one hour more 'twill be eleven, And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot: And thereby hangs a tale. (II.vii.-28)

It may seem surprising, but Shakespeare's tragedies are often easier to understand than his comedies. We know what to expect in the tragedies, not just because the stories are so famous but because we know that a Shakespeare tragedy will end with the death of at least one major character and most of the play's action leads directly toward that death. I am not saying that the tragedies are simple—no one could argue that point. I just mean that the comedies are less predictable, and though many of them end with marriages, often those marriages seem tacked on, while the action of the plays moves in a number of unpredictable directions. We may be surprised by how the conflicts in a comedy are resolved.

Everything in this world—Antony's Roman background, his martial prowess, Octavius' and Pompey's ambitions—makes their love impossible, especially because Antony wants to live in both worlds, the world of Egyptian sensuality and love and the world of Roman conquest. The problem is that these two worlds are incompatible, and Antony cannot choose between them. So, when Antony learns that he has news from Rome, he responds, "Grates me, the sum" (I.i.), or, in modern terms, "What a nuisance. Tell me quickly." And when Cleopatra mocks even this small attention to Roman business, Antony declares

"Mine honor was not yielded, / But conquered merely" (61-62). When Antony rebukes her for seeming to abandon him in favor of Octavius (though he is already married to Octavius' sister), she responds, "Not know me yet?" (157). The answer to that question is "No." Antony does not know her, and we do not know her. Part of the reason is the medieval and Renaissance notion that the monarch has two "bodies," a public body and a private one. As a private woman, Cleopatra has feelings and desires; but in her public role as queen, she must have other feelings and desires. Sometimes these feelings and desires overlap, but often they do not. So Cleopatra is not being duplicitous when she shifts from one role to another. In fact, part of her tragedy is that she must try to play both roles in spite of their frequent incompatibility. Like Antony, she is torn between two legitimate desires

She loves Antony and she wants to be with him, wants to give him that parting kiss; but as the queen of Egypt, she does not want to be captured and paraded through the streets of Rome. She may love Antony, but not to distraction. Instead, in what must have been an incredible scene in Shakespeare's theatre, Cleopatra and her attendants pull Antony up to the tower, where he can get his kiss and die. There is love in this scene, but not the heedless love of youth. These are two mature people who ultimately do love each other, but who, unlike Romeo and Juliet, unlike Othello and Desdemona, unlike Hamlet and Ophelia, recognize that they must temper their actions with prudence

Antony may be a troubled character, torn between conflicting loyalties, but compared to Octavius he is a heroic and human character. His death, with its nearly botched suicide, is typical of his life: he wants someone else to run him through but then does the deed himself (like Saul in the book of Kings), and yet even when he does it, he is not fully successful. His death is a heroic gesture that is made quite human. Cleopatra, too, despite her attempt to come to terms with Octavius, dies with some nobility, finally confirming her love for Antony. At the play's end, these noble characters are dead and the world belongs to Octavius. That may not be an entirely bad thing, because Octavius will bring order to a disordered world, and the world of Antony and Cleopatra certainly is disordered. From the play's opening words, "Nay, but…" we see that the play opens in the middle of a conversation; and the sense of movement and disorder can also be felt in the large number of rapid scene changes that characterize the play. Nonetheless, it is not entirely certain that the cold and efficient order that Octavius will bring will be better than the disorder of Antony and Cleopatra.

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Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity

Theodore Steinberg

Introduction