Shakespeare & the Exploration of Violence

In an article from a few weeks ago I looked at the “War Poets” (a group that I studied during High School as part of my English Literature classes) and the contrast between their original romanticized view of violence, and their later disgust, despair, and contempt for conflict after experiencing it firsthand etc. In this article I want to re-visit my English Lit. classes and look at some of the themes that Shakespeare explored concerning violence and how these can help inform us as to what motivates some people to engage in violent acts. To be honest, at the time, I wasn’t particularly enamored by Shakespeare and couldn’t really work out why my teachers thought he was so great. As a teenager, the 16^th and 17^th century language was a barrier for me, and not being a great student, I wasn’t prepared to put the effort into finding out the ideas concerning human nature which sat behind it; I wasn’t too interested in good grades for English Lit., and a pass was acceptable to me. One of the things that I didn’t realize as a high school student was that some of the most interesting things would be found where different disciplines connected and overlapped. I lacked the maturity to see the connection between fiction and psychology; I saw the two as being siloed and distinct from each other e.g., how could a playwright with no formal scientific and psychological training/education have any credible influence on the discipline? However, much in the same way as Micheal Angelo making the jugular prominent (it bulges) in his statute of David, to denote “fear”, didn’t know at the time how the circulatory system actually worked, the “observation” of heightened blood pressure, that occurs when a person is “stressed”, was anatomically/medically correct. Likewise, whilst Shakespeare may have lacked a scientific mind/approach this doesn’t mean that his observations concerning human behavior weren’t valid, and sometimes it is someone outside of a discipline who highlights the importance of something that those within it have missed. The importance of the intersectionality of different disciplines is something that is acknowledged in academic thought and something my teenage self didn’t yet understand.

                Often “fictional characters” offer an exaggerated form of some certain characteristics that we all share to some degree. It is this which allows us to relate to them and/or understand them. In Richard the Third, Shakespeare created a character who was defined by his deformity. Shakespeare’s Richard has a hunchback and a withered arm and whilst in real life Richard may have had some degree of scoliosis the degree to which this affected him is debatable etc., and there is no evidence to suggest that he had a withered arm/hand. The character created was one that was so detestable that no woman could ever love him, and it was this outright rejection of him by an entire gender that caused him to directly commit two murders and attempt to kill many more out of revenge. Whilst Elliot Rodger had no physical deformity, he believed that no woman would love him or find him sexually attractive. Motivated by revenge and a need to punish those who’d both directly and indirectly rejected him, the 22-year-old college student engaged in a shooting spree that killed six and seriously injured fourteen (Isla Vista, CA killings, 2014). Shakespeare used Richard’s physical appearance as an outwards mechanism to display his internal psychological and emotional state; a commonly used literary device of that particular era. In Elliot Rodger we see Shakespeare’s Richard III: a man rejected by women who takes his revenge and anger upon the world.

Shakespeare was not the first to create and develop characters that offered an explanation for human behavior(s), the Greek tragedies and mythologies attempted to do the same e.g., in Medea by Euripides, Medea betrayed by her husband kills their two children in an act of revenge. In 2001, John Battaglia, shot his two daughters in an act of filicide (the act of a parent killing their own children), whilst on the phone to his estranged wife, so that she could hear them die. He said to her, “Merry fucking Christmas” in reference to an assault he had committed against her the Christmas  of 1999, after she had left him in January of that year. The idea/concept of evil step-parents and parents killing their children etc., also exists and is common in folklore e.g., La Llorona or the “Weeping Woman” is a figure from Mexican folklore who is cursed to walk the earth looking for her children that she drowned in an act of jealousy/revenge after discovering her husband’s infidelity. We understand our realities by creating “stories” and “characters” within them that allow us to project realities onto things that are not real/tangible. A playwright, such as Shakespeare, just does this in a much more structured way.

Shakespeare often explores ideas of shame and guilt to the degree whereby they motivate his characters to seek vengeance against a world that has let them down, and not delivered what they were entitled to/deserved etc. Whilst trying to blame external factors, characters such as Timon in “Timon of Athens”, deep down know that they were responsible for their shortcomings and were embarrassed by it; guilt is a form of private embarrassment whereas shame is its public form. Timon after squandering his wealth on false friends wants to wreak death and vengeance upon the world. Timon’s story could be that of many active killers; middle aged white men who feel/believe that they have failed at life and need to externalize this failure by punishing the world. When we look to understand – the yet unexplained – motive of the 2017 Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, it is more than probable that his life and motivations, are reflected/contained in one of Shakespeare’s plays.