WHY SHAKESPEARE IS HILARIOUS

why shakespeare is hilarious


Hamlet: Denmark's a prison.
Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.
Hamlet: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards & dungeons – Denmark being one o' the worst.
Rosencrantz: We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet: Why then 'tis none to you – for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so; to me it is a prison!
Rosencrantz: Why then your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind.
Hamlet: O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have bad dreams...

-Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II Scene II



What's the joke?

Hamlet is depressed. Rosencrantz (and Guildenstern) are trying are trying to cheer him up. Their strategy is to affirm that his melancholy is the natural result of his life circumstances being too small for his vast intellect. This is such a crude and superficial attempt at manipulation that Hamlet is prompted to mock them – announcing that his intellect is so tiny, so insignificant that it would fit neatly in a nutshell with enormous spaciousness left over.

Hilarious.


Rosencrantz is the conventional self-serving idiot. He cannot understand the depth of the philosopher's considerations. And by 'philosopher' we always also mean Shakespeare himself -- whomever he might really turn out to have been. Rosencrantz imagines that Hamlet's trouble must be local, based on simple events, and readily corrected by easy flattery. This is the same idea as when the buffoonish seducer allows his lust to persuade him that a young woman's reluctance to embrace him is evidence of her own lack of self-esteem. Of course he resolves to help her overcome this problem!

He thinks he is a “good man” in two senses – he is doing a benevolent deed and he is also trying to accomplish a personal goal. These are not inherently bad motives, but they are quite crude and too often veil selfishness & insensitivity. Rosencrantz is the altruistic friend or family member who tries to “correct” Hamlet's ambiguity and world-weariness. He is the salesman who superficially believes his own logic -- that rephrasing into positive terms is already to have solved the problem. Thus he maintains the problem pertually by his own attempt to easily escape. A very American scheme of “winning friends and influencing customers.”

It is obvious to the philosopher Hamlet that his “helpful” friend is simplistically selfish -- trying to keep his own heart apart from any deep encounter with the ambiguous universe. Insult, deception, idealism, success, failure, contempt, irony, playfulness and and exaggerated metaphor all at once. Comedy.

This is the kind of multi-layered, trans-ironic humour found in sitcoms like “The Office” or “Arrested Development.” It plays off the valid rhythms of speech and follows their logic until it invalidates itself. The momenum of its reasoning is perptually spilling over the edges of the word-containers, overflowing with a surplus of harmless meanings. Pathos mixes with mockery to illuminates the insipid quality of whomever wishes to “succeed” at the expense of intelligently responding to other people and circumstances. We are confrontes by the limits of our social logic through a half-serious juxtaposition one reasoning against another. High intellect and ridiculous motivation are blended together into one delicious stew.

But if it's so damned funny & cutting edge -- why aren't people falling in the aisles at Shakespeare's plays?

Or do they just not laugh at the 'tragedies'?

That is unlikely. We must doubt that an author so instinctively comfortable with the rhythms of parody and comedic dance would be able to thoroughly keep jokes out of his long "dramatic" plays. And does Hamlet's interaction with Rosencrantz not show that the gags have crept in? Perhaps the distinction between farce and drama has always been mostly in the incomprehending emotional response of audiences.

So why don't people laugh more at Shakespeare?


There two likely answers:

1. People simply do not put the necessary effort into following the linguistic rollercoaster of the dialogue. Since they are not tracking the logic they miss the unexpected logical revsersals. Without noting the set-up a punchline will go undetected.

2. People have become semi-professional "Shakespeare-advocates" and “theater-goers.” They miss what would have entertained the unruly author because they are otherwise occupied about the business of dressing up & congratulating themselves for appreciating high culture.

Probably both.

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WHY NIETZSCHE WAS NOT INSANE

(why nietzsche was not insane)

We get a nice feeling when life reflects philosophy. We can take a strange pleasure in hearing that the author of many works concerning tragedy and madness has gone insane – tragically. It satisfies us to know that author of the sentence “God is dead” was struck down by a mysterious malady. Poetic justice doubles as divine retribution.


The damned malcontent & philosopher Frederick Nietzsche proclaimed that life was pointless and all our values are arbitrarily invented. It was simply the Universe's good etiquette to put this bizarre man into a semi-comatose state which no sensible meaning could penetrate.


Yet – if we should discover, by some accident, or by careful reading and re-reading of his actual commentary, that his philosophy was sublimely optimistic, rationally spiritual, sensitive, community-oriented, even – faithful? What then? Surely we might be tempted to find a different story concerning the fate of this beautiful and lonely man, a fate updated by our understanding, a fate more appropriate...


There can be an alternative to the widely gossiped hypothesis that Nietzsche went tragically insane from sexual disease – or from “too much thinking!”


Here is another life & death of Nietzsche:


Consider that his peculiar intellectual work and his well-documented daily health practices are equivalent to what Hindus would call the life of a yoga-saint. It is know that each day he set himself to contemplation of beauty, to the minimal and organic regulation of diet, to various disciplines of self-overcoming, and endless toward deep meditation upon the singular energy which gives rise to all the appearances in the universe – the Will to Power. It is recorded often in Nietzsche's writings that he was in pursuit of a “creative surplus of power... the Great Health.”


A good Oriental education would presume that such a life moves radically toward a point of benevolent psychological mutation. This shift is expected to involve an increase of good humour, an intensification of compassion, and the identification of oneself with the infinite & transcendent power of creation. These are precisely the qualities that were reported by those who observed Nietsche's early “descent” into madness.


His letters became more joyful, more mythical and full of benevolent hilarity. He cannot resist describing his sense that he is God or Dionysus or whatever universal power those words could positively signify. And as for compassion? Nietzsche was initially arrested after trying to protect a horse that was being brutally beaten in the town square. German authorities incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital – “for his own good.”


Reports from his visiting friends describe him as being in excellent spirits, even unusually overflowing with wit and empathy. His closest philosophical companion, Peter Gast, recollects, “[...] He does not seem to be mad. If anything, it strikes me merely an intensification of the humorous part of his nature. Also his piano playing has improved immensely.” These sympathizers rejected the hasty diagnosis of syphillis – an explanation also later dismissed by the analysis of the Journal of Medical History. Unfortunately, Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth can not be counted among his sympathizers.


Herr Nietzsche had a deep fondness for his sister and always treated her very cordially. She, however, had not been able to tolerate the more organic and free-spirited aspects of his nature. Her own tastes ran toward domination and cruelty. In his letters, Nietzsche repeated chides for her for slanderous, self-serving gossip that she has been spreading about him and his ideas. When she marries a fanatic racist and would-be cult leader he finally disowns her... and she spends the next few years helping her husband run an Aryan compound in Paraguay. Abuse and mismanagement lead to overthrow and suicide of her husband, Herr Forster.


Now, without any other means of pursuing her domineering ambitions, she hears that her “dear brother” has been institutionalized for erratic behaviour. She sets sail for Europe and personally takes charge of his treatment. His health begins a hasty deterioration.


One possible explanation is that Nietzsche had an hereditary brain disease. He becomes moody, incoherent, infantile and prone to absence-seizure of increasing duration. These symptoms could be produced by a poisonous or radioactive element in his diet or, most troubling of all, by primitive electroshock experiments. These latter were certainly being conducted at the time. We must recall that the management of psychiatric institutions in 19th century Germany would hardly have met contemporary standards of ethical and rational procedures. In fact this particular psychiatric hierarchy would soon be diagnosing the terrible disease of sympathizing with Jews... and proscribing therapeutic “gas chambers.” Even the best of these institutions at that time must be described as dangerous, fanatical, political and highly experimental. A bad situation for Nietzsche with only his psychotic sister to protect him.


Whatever the specifics of his mistreatment it is clear that his initially overflowing vitality was rapidly extinguished, replacing a transformed man with an increasingly vegetative husk. He no longer made trouble for anyone. Instead he was a compliant martyr symbol for Elizabeth to interpret however she wished. She took him him and quite literally began to exploit his semi-conscious body as a tourist attraction – trotting him out for paying visitors and selling post-cards of his mindless, slumping body. She explained his philosophy as one of racial supremacy for the Aryans and revised his writings accordingly. Years later she would personally assure Adolf Hitler that he was fully supported by Nietzsche's works. This is the kind of woman who had both opportunity and motive to ensure her brother's total compliance.


This tale is still tragic in the extreme – but it shifts the onus of blame from Nietzsche's own body and mind to that of his sister and his untimely social circumstances. Of course we are not seeking to divorce him from responsibility for his life but instead to establish a new reconciliation between Nietzsche's personal history and that profound spirit of health and illumination that dazzles any sensitive reader of his work.


Revisionism?
Yes -- but not entirely unwarranted.


This gentle hermit of the Alps has been denounced as a racist, sexist, war-mongering nihilist, latent homosexual, compulsive masturbator, possible Antichrist, unlovable weirdo & an emotionally inadequate loner who probably went insane from Siphyllis because prostitutes were the only women who would have sex him!


What a malign and oddly “redneck” set of accusations – gossip that puzzles us all the more when we learn that this fellow was a tireless anti-nihilist, outspoke enemy of anti-semites, advocate of a post-nationalist Europe, lover of community, and a deeply spiritual philosopher whose most widely quoted negative remarks about women are usually pieces of dialogue from characters in his novel Thus Spake Zarathustra.

So perhaps revisionism is sorely needed.


Our alternative history is not proven, but neither is the conventional rumour. We must admit that there is, at least, a reasonable doubt...

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