The Shakespearean Sellout
In a world where, more and more, doing the right thing is simply doing the wrong thing and not getting caught – does Shakespeare matter anymore?
William Shakespeare was born – and died – in the month of April. Even if you’ve never read one of his plays or sonnets, I’m sure you’ve heard his words:
“Every dog will have its day"
“Star-crossed lovers“
“Dead as a doornail”
“Bated breath”
Even, “Knock, knock! Who’s there?”
And those are just a small few of the many Shakespearean phrases that enliven our everyday speech.
Wit, drama, and colorful bon mots aside, Shakespeare — his works — are deep, and often delightful, dives into what matters in life. The essential “to be or not to be” question that should guide our lives is a dominant theme in nearly all his works, not just Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s plays are immutable lessons in living with integrity; an aspiration which seems as on its way to obsolescence as the American penny -- something we fish out of the bottom of our pockets only after we’ve hit rock bottom.
After all, these days, if you’re caught doing something wrong or saying something egregious, you simply show up looking contrite on Good Morning America, pass it off as “lockeroom talk,” or make a tearful confession on Twitter, and voilà, your integrity – or at least your viability in the marketplace of public opinion -- is, more often than not, restored.
In a world that overwhelmingly thinks that doing the right thing is simply doing the wrong thing and not getting caught – does Shakespeare matter anymore?
People often say, “It’s a jungle out there,” and it’s true that too often, when you play by the rules, the rule-makers end up playing you. Even friends and lovers and employers to whom you have been loyal and fair, are frequently the ones who think nothing of taking advantage of your faithful service when it suits them to do so. It can be tempting to fight fire with fire. To return lack of integrity with lack of integrity.
I’ve never forgotten the words my college professor, Dr. Henry Vittum, wrote on one of my Shakespeare essays where I’d questioned whether it was practical – or simply foolish – to try to live truthfully and honorably in all ways, on all days.
His response was one of the few definitive and sure answers I’ve ever received -- before or since -- from anyone, about anything.
“I believe, with all the strength of my being, that it is possible to live one’s life with unfaltering integrity. It has been my life’s standard.” — Dr. Henry Vittum
Can you imagine believing in something with all the strength of your being?
Living your life with unfaltering integrity?
Having standards for your life and actually living by them?
I’ve tried over the years to adopt Dr. Vittum’s creed as my own. But more often than not, I fail. I wish he were alive so I could call him up and ask him what to do when I’m confronted with dilemmas of character.
I’d like to ask him about whether or not I should work for clients who play fast and loose with facts and truths. I’d like to know whether he’d continue friendships with people who fudge their taxes, refuse to get the Covid vaccine, or cheat on their spouses. I’d like to know if he’d eat in front of the television.
The truth is, I know what he’d say. I guess I just don’t want to face it. I don’t know that I’m capable of dealing with the potential consequences of living up to high standards. (Earning less money, losing friends, and having to contend with my own thoughts instead of distracting myself with television during dinner.)
About dealing with a prevaricating client? Dr. Vittum would likely remind me of our long-ago discussion of King Lear — where I’d questioned which way to be in the world: like Cordelia? — who speaks honestly and is banished by the king? — or like Kent, who through self-disguise and some deceit preserves his proximity to the king he serves. Isn’t the answer situational, I’d asked?
Dr. Vittum’s simple response? “You can’t be both a Cordelia and a Kent. Unfortunately, the choice must be made.”
I’ve made many choices since that long-ago advice. I’ve wanted to be a Cordelia with all my heart — speaking truth to power and damn the consequences. But mostly, I’ve been a Kent — disguising my real thoughts in favor of keeping jobs or not offending people I like.
But the worst of it is that most of my choices have been non-choices. I’ve straddled my standards — one foot in the Cordelia camp, the other with Kent. Making a middle-of-the-road mockery of myself — if only to myself.
For example, with my less-than-transparent client, I’ve kept working for them. Oh, I let them know what I thought, but I did it like Kent — with carefully worded input couched in compliments.
I sacrificed my standards for the paycheck. And I still feel sick about it.
That’s the conundrum of a life lived without standards. We don’t live by them and then we feel sick. But we’re too chickenshit or weak or just too plain lazy to do the hard work and take the hard stands it would take to live by standards of integrity — much less require standards of those with whom we work, live, and love.
That sick feeling? That’s what Hamlet called the “calamity of so long life.”
That sick feeling comes out of knowing better and still acting badly. Understanding right and still choosing wrong. Wanting to live by standards and settling instead for living by none.
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. — Hamlet
It’s so easy to put off who we want to be for who we think we need to be. (i.e., I want to be Cordelia but I need money, so I’ll be Kent.)
So easy to say, “I’ll live by standards once I’ve got enough money to retire on.” “I’ll come clean about my affair after the kids have gone off to college.” “I’ll start using cloth shopping bags when I’m not so busy or forgetful.” Or, as in King Lear — and as in real life: “I’ll placate my mother or father by distracting them from unpleasant truths, so I can maintain the status quo and not disrupt the family dynamic or my own inheritance.”
Shakespeare wrote, “No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
Only problem is, no one seems to give a shit anymore about what we’ll leave behind.
Legacy, scheglacy. It’s only all about what we can get in the meantime … before we shuffle off this mortal coil. Nothing, anymore, really, gives any of us much pause at all. And even when we do pause, we often just do what I did with my client, and what I’ve done with friends, lovers, family even — straddle both worlds and belong to neither.
Existing in that noxious netherworld of neither choosing to be nor choosing not to be.
Simply not choosing anything at all.
When we do that in our own small worlds, it’s certainly destructive enough. We do serious harm to our individual hearts — our souls — when we compromise the hell out of ourselves.
There’s a greater harm that’s done to the collective, though. When we, as a people, refuse to take action, refuse to choose one way or the other, refuse to commit to ideals greater than ourselves — ideals like truth, integrity, intelligence, and simply the greater good — when we straddle both worlds, placating ourselves and others into pervasive, cow-like passivity — that’s when we have pandemics that never end, leaders and corporations who justify means by ends, and mass shootings that have stopped stopping us in our tracks.
As Shakespeare might put it, when we sell ourselves out, “Something wicked this way comes.”
This essay is dedicated to Dr. Henry Vittum. Thank you, teacher — I promise to be more of a Cordelia in the next 28 years.
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Excellent, thought provoking piece MC. I wonder what Dr. Vittum would have thought about today's cancel culture?