Two decades ago I devoured Stephen Greenblatt’s phenomenal Shakespeare biography Will in the World and I decided to pull this book from the shelf again. The first surprise was the author’s signature in the book. Suddenly I remembered I had attended his lecture at the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam. In the meantime I read several other Shakespeare studies but none made as much of an impression as that of Greenblatt, the biographer who had travelled back in time four hundred years with so much empathy.
This time the English playwright’s life story touched me even more than in 2004. As my knowledge about Shakespeare grew, so did my love and admiration for the playwright and poet. I saw my first play, Richard III, as a student in Groningen in the ridge of the theatre, the cheapest place. The Royal Shakespeare Company visited the continent on a rare occasion in the 1990s. I had not prepared adequately and hoped the miracle would happen by itself. Consequently, not much more than: ‘a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse’ stuck with me from that performance.
Ten years later in Stratford-upon-Avon, things were very different. I saw with my own eyes how a bus full of tourists stopped in front of a nondescript patch of grass where the bus emptied and passengers began photographing the patch in question en masse. Glancing curiously at an explanatory text sign, I read that Shakespeare had his ‘New Place’ built on this spot when he returned from London as a wealthy man. However, the last occupant had become so fed up with the lurking tourists that he had demolished this expensive house.
Besides talent, chance also played a role in Shakespeare’s life. William was the first in his family to learn to read and write. His father and mother put a cross as a signature. Just imagine if William hadn’t gone to school. Eventually he moved to London and ended up as an actor with a theatre company during the heydays of stage performances, highly regarded by Queen Elizabeth. He had no university education; his father didn’t have the means for that. Yet he wrote brilliant plays and poems with which he managed to outshine contemporaries with academic titles like Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Watson.
During the summer months, thousands of visitors flock both indoors and outdoors in Shakespeare’s birthplace to enjoy his plays. In a packed theatre, I witnessed a breathtaking performance of Hamlet of which I now knew entire parts by heart. The lead actor walked to the edge of the stage during one of his famous monologues, holding the skull of his old friend Yorick. He let his eyes pass along the rows where an international company of Shakespeare lovers watched breathlessly, and then uttered the words: “Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.”
A collective shudder swept through the audience. Shakespeare built up illusions in brilliant terms and broke them down again with equally well-worded sentences.
Shakespeare observed the changing world and remained aloof himself. No one knows what was really going on inside him. He chose the fleetingness, the attraction and the tempo of the theatre. Fortunately, others have preserved his lines so that future generations can still enjoy his unparalleled descriptions of the tragicomedy called life.