Shakespeare-the problem child

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When I first started this class I have a vague understanding of who Shakespeare was. I had read Romeo and Juliet in high school, studied his sonnets in my second year of college, and had otherwise ignored him until beginning this course. I knew the basics: he was a writer, part of the common core, was not always well received, and could be problematic at times. The last part is what got me interested.

While I didn’t enjoy all the plays that we read, I gained a deeper understanding on how they connected to issues we as a society are dealing with today. Primarily the issues with sexuality/consent, gender, and racial biases.  While these issues were occurring hundreds of years ago, they’ve continued to be a constant issue even today. Measure for Measure, Merchant of Venice, and Othello are prime examples of this, and I believe that until we solve these issues that remain to run rampant, Shakespeare should still be taught for people to realize that there is a problem.  It’s easy to justify something as a “joke” or jest, but with the continued use of these excuses, there’s no problems that will be fixed.

In looking at this, I had to ask myself a few questions. Was Shakespeare a racist/etc? Was he commenting on the current social status? Can we learn from Shakespeare? These questions plagued me because there’s no clear cut answer to any of them. We can claim that Shakespeare was a racist, we can claim he was writing out against oppression, he wrote plays about everything so that others could know, but at the end of the day, no one knows. While we like to think highly of authors, it’s just not realistic to truly know or understand who they were or why they did what they did.  

Overall, this leads me to believe that Shakespeare is not only an enigma, but a problem child too. No one currently living has conversed with him and written down everything about him, and while there’s a lot of information out about him, we’ll never know the tru meaning behind Shakespeare and his works, but I fully believe that if we begin focusing on the issues at hand we can begin to change the society we live in bit by bit and make the world a better place.

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