Ol' Shakes

Ol’ Shakes

The art of the times is an on-going social commentary, in my opinion. We are given certain things, certain knowledge, then placed in a certain setting…I think our imagination is just a rearrangement of things we already know.

Shakespeare quite excelled in creating characters and giving them a certain rhetorical style. The three most interesting characters from the plays covered by Kevin each have a unique style different from the other characters. I agree with Kevin—Shakespeare is supreme master of appealing to pathos and using decorum. The fact that he wrote a lot of histories and political dramas is a huge credit to his ethos.

I think Shakespeare would have been more on the epistemic side of rhetoric, had we asked him where the “habitation” of rhetoric was. (Can anyone tell this is my favorite part of this modern rhetoric course: that we have two opposing definitions, at least, and no one really knows exactly what it is? I love it. What does everyone think of this definition: rhetoric is the use of speech? Not speech itself, but the wielding of it. And also of commercials and visuals and etc.)

Ok, back to Shakespeare. Most of his plays, that I’m familiar with, leave the reader with a lot of open-ended questions. In The Merchant of Venice a recurring theme is race and stereotypes. He asks us, without asking us directly, if there is any validity to stereotypes and if you can have the stereotype without being of that race. In Midsummer Night’s Dream he does a similar thing with dreams and reality. In Hamlet he asks us if duty supercedes human desire. Shakespeare always seems to offer up at least two sides of any question without really revealing his stance. I think it is because he did not believe there was an absolute truth to things…that understanding could be obtained through discourse. He offered his discourse through plays…where the audience could see the opinions and arguments in action. Very cool stuff.