As for the so-called “insults” of Shakespeare, we see that they are all directed at conveying moral truth. They are not insults and naming them as such is an insult to Shakespeare and the truth he tells.
Jane Austen, in her first published novel, shows how sense and sensibility need to be kept in a healthy balance. Sense without sensibility leads to hard-headed and hard-hearted cynicism, whereas sensibility without sense leads to soft-headed and broken-hearted emotionalism. Those with insensitive “sense” prey upon those with senseless sensibility. With her usual clear headed and good-hearted wisdom, the indomitable Miss Austen is satirizing the cynicism of “enlightened” rationalism and the irrational emotionalism of romanticism, doing so with Aristotelian wisdom baptized with Christian realism.
This might seem to have little do with Shakespeare, or with the insulting of Shakespeare, until we see how our own age’s nonsense and insensibility misreads the Bard, judging his own Aristotelian wisdom and Christian realism in the light, or should we say the shadow, of our own deplorable epoch’s wrong-headedness.
Shakespeare abuse abounds. Much of it is the work of hard-headed and hard-hearted cynics who seek to remake Shakespeare in their own image. Such is the cynical spirit of “Shakespearean Insults”, a page-a-day calendar that I received as a light-hearted Christmas gift. It can be fun, to be sure, to read succinct “insulting” phrases but it misrepresents the phrases themselves, and the man who wrote them, when the “insults” are taken out of context. It sounds as though Shakespeare is a cynic, like Macbeth, who pours scorn on life as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It fails to place sufficient distance between the writer of the phrase and the speaker of it. Shakespeare does not believe that people and life are insignificant; Macbeth believes this. Shakespeare puts these words into the mouth of a despairing psychopathic serial killer!
Before we take a look at some of the other insults included in the calendar, let’s take a look at the definition of “insult” offered by Wikipedia, that oracle of oracles. According to the virtually almighty godget of virtual omniscience, an insult is “an expression, statement, or behavior that is often deliberately disrespectful, offensive, scornful, or derogatory towards an individual or a group.” In addition, insults “often aim to belittle, offend, or humiliate the target”.
It will be noted that there’s no suggestion in Wikipedia’s definition that an insult has anything to do with truth. It’s not about the veracity or otherwise of a statement, it’s about disrespectful and offensive motives and humiliating consequences. With this in mind, let’s look at some alleged Shakespearean “insults”, placing them in context.
Thou art a traitor, false to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father. These words are spoken in King Lear by Edgar, the innocent victim of his brother Edmund’s treachery, to whom the words are spoken. The words are not insults, unless we are going to say that the truth, plainly spoken, is an insult.
I know he is… a most arch heretic, a pestilence that does infect the land. These are harsh words indeed but they are directed in Henry VIII against Thomas Cranmer, whose teaching on the Eucharist and many other orthodox doctrines were indubitably heretical, objectively speaking, from a Catholic perspective.
Rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven. Repent what’s past. Avoid what is to come. Are these words insulting? Is a call for sinners to repent offensive? Should St. John the Baptist be silenced because he might cause offense to any sinners who might happen to hear him? These words, spoken by Hamlet to his mother, who is having an adulterous relationship with the man who murdered her husband, might be unwelcome. “O, speak to me no more!” she beseeches him. “These words like daggers enter in my ears. No more, sweet Hamlet.” Hamlet’s words cut her to the quick but are they merely insults or are they home truths that she needs to hear? If the vicious soul finds the voice of virtue offensive, should the virtuous voice be silenced?
Blind is his love and best befits the dark. Can these words be construed as an insult or are they simply the enunciation of a truth for all to see, except for those blinded by “love”. Spoken by the benevolent Benvolio of Romeo, the truth of these words are confirmed by Juliet soon afterwards. “If love be blind,” she says, “it best agrees with night.” Juliet prefers the darkness to the light. “Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-browed night, Give me my Romeo.” She gets what she wants under cover of darkness, succumbing to the senseless sensibility of which Miss Austen speaks, and seals her own doom. Returning to the veracity of Benvolio’s words, how is stating that blind love is best suited for the dark an insult? Is the chaste Diana to be chastised for counseling chastity to the devotees of Venus? Or is Rosalind in As You Like It to be chastised for insulting Venus’ unchaste son in another of the calendar’s selected “insults”: Conceiv’d of spleen, and born of madness; that blind rascally boy, that abuses every one’s eyes… The phrase is truncated oddly. Let’s include the omitted words: that same wicked bastard of Venus that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and born of madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses everyone’s eyes because his own are out… The “insult” is directed not against a person but against a personified abstraction representing the sort of erotic madness that masquerades as “love”. Such erotic passion is conceived in lustful thought and born of madness. It is a rascally blindness that causes blindness in those it afflicts. Is it an insult to point to such truths in a cautionary manner? Is it an insult to refute the Prince of Lies by telling the truth? Is it an insult to look the devil or his servants in the eye? Should we look at the countenance of the sinner, counseling virtue, or should we countenance the sin to avoid giving offence? The telling of truth is never an insult, even if the sinner or the liar claim to be insulted by the hearing of it.
As for these so-called “insults” of Shakespeare, we see that they are all directed at conveying moral truth. They are not insults and naming them as such is an insult to Shakespeare and the truth he tells.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image, uploaded by Sicinius, is a photograph of the Shakespeare monument in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.