“Nothing
will come of Nothing” (King Lear, Act 1,1)
My
absolute favourite quote from “Shakespeare”, and I think it is very fitting
that it is from “King Lear”, though my predilection in this case has not that
much to do with its context in the play where it is just a cynical comment on
Cordelia’s “inadequate” account of her love. As I usually try not to do, I
isolated the quote from its context, and it took on a much larger meaning. In
general terms Lear is right. It applies to all kinds of situations where people
think they are owed without any previous effort or having anything to offer.
Like “I wasted time, and now does time waste me” from “Richard II” it is this
imaginary sticker on my fridge, and I think it belongs there. (No explanation,
though, why I LIKE it so much …?)
The
reason why I find it so apt that it is from “Lear” is that I finally got
thrilled about the play when I got the idea that it might be about Nothing. The
quote is certainly not a coincidence. Obviously Shakespeare got very much
involved with the concept writing “King Lear”. The play is really big on
“Nothing moments”. One of my favourites is of course “Not mad!” as Simon
Russell Beale played it, catapulting the play from its historical pedestal into
the 21st century. Millions of people with a diagnosis of dementia
would know the depth of it – and would certainly NOT have enjoyed seeing it on
the stage. (I am rather sure I wouldn’t have understood “To be or not to be” at
the time it happened to me, let alone appreciated it! This is not how “it”
works. I still don’t know how it works, just THAT it does!) Nonetheless, my
favourite “Lear” was not this one by the National Theatre but Ian McKellen’s, the
one where he has this particularly close relationship with his fool played by Sylvester
McCoy. Also one of these less conspicuous Nothing moments: when he is genuinely
distressed about his fool’s death. Actually it is one of the biggest, most
distressing, and most common in real life: losing people we depended on.
I know I
should read the play again, make a list of all its big and small “Nothings”.
Unfortunately I won’t get round to it because I have to move on swiftly to
“Anthony and Cleopatra” which I am planning to see in the theatre (!) in London
(!) in January (!!) (2019!!!). But I remember this as my deepest impression
from seeing “King Lear” with Ian McKellen: that the play actually is ABOUT
Nothing. So, instead of further looking into it now, I will make a synopsis of
“great” Nothing moments acquired so far from “Shakespeare” in biographical
order:
The biographical
approach entails that I begin with a moment which I haven’t got from
“Shakespeare” but which is linked to the moment of “initiation” from “Hamlet” and
came up in the same context: the initial boredom when we are growing out of
childhood. It is so important because it is really our first encounter with
Nothing – at least if we have had a reasonably happy childhood, and - as most
children do - tend to leave things we cannot understand – like the loss of
loved ones and the possibility of our own death – unprocessed. The ridiculous
intensity of despair children experience at being bored is not that ridiculous because
it is this first and purest expression of our fundamental relation with
Nothing. The realization that there can be nothing where something used to be. I
just recently found out – not having been bored for a second in the last twenty
years, except in the company of boring people – that I am still dealing with
this. That I STILL believe that life should be filled with delightful
adventures and lots of fun – and this is good! It is just that it is ME now who
has to live up to these standards, NOT LIFE.
There definitely
is a certain amount of juvenile depression to be found in “To be or not to be”,
but also the EXPERIENCE that life can turn out different – not at all as what
it is supposed to be. “We” will never ever understand it again, though –
neither the deadly scare of boredom nor the existential crisis - when we have
decided against topping ourselves, as we usually do, and have grown up,
learning to need the things we never wanted in the first place (as in “Passenger”,
or “Woody Allen”). Or, of course, have successfully chased our dreams … But there
is a lot of trying and brutal competition “out there”, and the percentage of
people who finally make “it” is somewhere very low in the one digits. So, there
IS some kind of logic to what Macbeth does. Sometimes, maybe often, there is
just this ONE chance … But, of course, there are limits! The bugger is to
decide WHERE they are. Macbeth is not clever – not in the sense Hamlet is. (In
fact, I already decided that Hamlet was clever and that was why I wanted to see
Benedict Cumberbatch play him. He did play Julian Assange and Sherlock for a
reason.) But it is not because he is an intellectual – because he talks loads
of sophisticated rubbish. It is because he actually THINKS and comes to the
conclusion that what will happen when he has killed Claudius will NOT be good. He
actively tries to hold tragedy at bay – unsuccessfully though. In the end they
encounter the same fate, but Hamlet retains the comfort of having tried and lived
as a “good person”. And it appears as if Shakespeare thought that this counted
for something. In fact, thinking about it, so do I. “I’ll fight till from my
bones my flesh be hacked” is still strangely attractive (?). Actually it is
rubbish, and not, in my opinion, because of giving up the “eternal jewel”. Not
even because people might look upon us favourably instead of hating us. In fact,
Hamlet succeeds where Macbeth fails, TAKING CONTROL of the last thing we have
left when it comes to the worst: ourselves.
There is, in fact, an awfuI lot of life to come of Nothing. Investigating “Richard III” I find how this refers even to one of the most influential of human ambitions: the desire for POWER. In fact, as Richard unfolds, his desire to rule is triggered by existential boredom – the war being over, he doesn’t know what to do with himself – and the crucial fear of being diminished. As “a packhorse in the wars” at least nobody doubted his usefulness. At that point there certainly are decisive measures in order for Richard to regain control over his life, and he decides that power might work for him. He anticipates that manipulating people might be something he would be good at, which is true – and then it becomes some kind of game. I often ask myself why I actually have fun at work – my work clearly being so boring that I got stuck with it because nobody else wants to do it. The reason is, actually, that I PLAY TO WIN when I am working. As – what is playing but taking control of an area where it is easy to gain control? Or difficult, depending on how good or ambitious we are, but still something we know we can handle. So, one promising option of dealing with Nothing is to play, and the most “serious” and highly rated way of playing is certainly to exercise power. To experience that it is possible to take control of everybody and everything. It often doesn’t really work, though, especially not for people with human skills who might recognize limits which inhibit them from ENJOYING the game. (I guess I wasn’t really surprised to see how good Donald Trump is at it compared to Barak Obama – though I so hoped he would fail!) Richard REALLY enjoys it, therefore he is good at it, and singularly successful. Up to a certain point … Within “Shakespeare” the WHEEL OF FORTUNE is sufficient to explain something that infallibly happens when something has gone on “long enough”: ruling, career, playing, life … whatever. Things suddenly begin to go wrong. I stick to the belief, though, that, unlike the wheel of fortune, it isn’t some kind of law of nature. One of my favourite sayings is the French “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” Not because I really know what it is supposed to mean but because it somehow refers to one of the very few things I believe in, disagreeable as it may be: that everything – and everybody - has to change into something/somebody else or ceases to exist. Richard’s frustrated rage is understandable: He doesn’t know what he has done wrong because he has done nothing different. He has just NOT CHANGED when it would have been necessary. The unfair truth about it is, of course, that it is not just really difficult to change. (“Never change a winning team” is probably even less valid than “Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose”. What happened to the German national football team after they became world champions is not some kind of mishap but EXACTLY what was to be expected!) It is that we cannot know IN ADVANCE what kind of change will be beneficial, or necessary. Thence all the frantic changing just for the sake of something new, and politicians running amok about the wrong issues. When it comes to the really important things in life we never know WHEN the time is ripe for a change. IF we notice at all we are probably already half down the other side … Accordingly, the wheel of fortune continues to be a good METAPHOR, an expression of the fact that everything, at all times, is threatened by Nothing. And when Nothing strikes people will find somebody to blame for it – usually the person in power. So Macbeth gets dismembered – and I loved the open grave in the Almeida Theatre’s production of “Richard III” exactly for this reason. The pit is already dug, and people will find somebody to go into it. Only THEN the war will be over, and everybody can go home and get on with their lives. But this is not yet the worst …
Luckily, a big part of the worst I have
already dealt with in my last post about “Being Nothing”. Now I come to the
last things – which, as I have already concluded, are BEYOND death and
destruction. (At the idea of “beyond” I actually remembered “House of Cards”
and was amazed that there is already a sixth (and finally last!) season announced
ON DVD. I hadn’t even checked yet if there would BE a sixth season! Without
Frank Underwood, obviously, and I hadn’t checked because I was against it, but
now I can hardly wait until March. The bugger with series is that they have the
promise of “beyond” worked into their fabric. If nothing else, I want to see
how Robyn Wright does. The reason why I suddenly remembered the series was the
use they made of the concept of “beyond” in the 5th series (if I
remember this correctly). I was thrilled because Beyond suddenly emerged as
some kind of reality – something quite
substantial, like a different “mode” of existence.) Fiction is, and always has
been, the realm of Beyond. So, the most inconsistent bullshit as well as the
utmost horror - like wanting to destroy oneself, finding in oneself no pity for
oneself, or being nothing - becomes possible. We might even enjoy it! But
almost all this might happen in real life as well where it is just impossible for
us to process it completely. Like the death of loved ones and people we depend
on – which also is a major issue in “Shakespeare”, of course, one that I
usually refuse to read. Probably just because I have never lost a child or a
partner, and am unlikely to do so. Of course there doesn’t HAVE to be some kind
of concrete fear, or shred of experience, to “really read” issues like this,
but sometimes it “helps”.
At least
where last things are concerned in “King Lear” it did. Certainly when Simon
Russell Beale scared me into finally embracing the play. His “Not mad!” moment
compressed this deep fear of complete loss of control into one intense “stab” of
truth. I think that everybody knows this fear, at least when we are old enough
– and this is usually when our parents are getting old. In my case it’s not
parents yet, it was my grandmother who died at the age of 93. It is not good,
of course, but at that age it is almost always a relief. But there is this constant
threat where parents are concerned, and, of course, the thought that, one day,
it will be me … In any case, this is much, much closer to home than the fear of
becoming nothing, or the possibility of total self-rejection. I loved how
precisely Simon Russell Beale pinned down the worst bit – that’s what he does!
To “sound” the personal abyss obviously is his thing, and of course I like that
immensely, at least in fiction. I even think there is a “healthy” fear of
Nothing at the bottom of it. To admit that “we” are afraid of it – as we should
be! – but not beaten … And I like these “shortcuts” that convince me that I
WANT to deal with the play. When I saw the RSC’s production on DVD I probably
knew already what I was looking for and consequently found it. Such an amount
of great “Nothings” I could hardly believe it … No wonder that I always felt
the play to be weighing me down and didn’t want too much to do with it. But I
also felt, for the first time, that it wasn’t JUST distressing. In this case, it
was rather the genuine EMPATHY the other actors on the stage displayed towards
Lear – even though he doesn’t deserve it! – that made me aware HOW MUCH of this
there is in “Shakespeare” as well, and how essential it is. That there is, in
fact, this flicker of hope, this little flame in a seemingly infinite darkness.
There isn’t much to WRITE about it - reading it was much more beautiful. And there
is certainly no less truth - or less beauty – to be found in this experience than
in the depth of despair conveyed by Nothing. So, quite inadvertently, this
turned into my Christmas post ***!
So,
Merry Christmas to all the readers out there! (“Readers of fiction”, of course,
not mine, thence the plural!) And I am looking forward very much to a period of
NOT WRITING, and to “House of Cards” 6 in March, and - maybe? - “Humans” …
