The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James, Shakespeare, Republicanism Monarchy and Globalisation Season 17 Episode 5

For this is the nub of the problem, to evaluate the quality of Shakespeare's work.

Wittgenstein is puzzled by Shakespeare and asks himself in his work on culture and value whether Shakespeare is more a creator of language than a poet.

He suggests that because of this uniqueness Shakespeare should be regarded more as a natural phenomenon than a literary phenomenon, as Eliot was.

He also says that Shakespeare is like a dream where both language and world are created.

This impression is, I suppose, a result of the fact that Shakespeare's plays are intended to be recreated in the dream space of the theatre.

We sit in the dark, awake, and hear Richard II's monologue after the losing of his kingdom.

Of comfort let no man speak.

Let us talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs.

Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

Let us choose executors and talk of wills.

And yet not so, for what can we bequeath? Save our deposed bodies to the ground.

Our lands, our lives, and all, are bolingbrokes.

And nothing can we call our own but death.

For God's sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories about the death of kings.

How some have been deposed, some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, all murdered for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court.

How can you say to me, I am a king? The language and the world fit seamlessly together, like a panoramic landscape.

Here Shakespeare is like the linguistic alchemist conjuring up images of loss and discontinuity which fit together into a picture of a universe of sadness.