On the Kinship of Shakespeare and Plato
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On the Kinship of Shakespeare and Plato By Daryl Kaytor A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Political Science Carleton University Ottawa Ontario ©2017 Daryl Kaytor 1 Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgements ………….. ………………… 2 Introduction …………………………………………………. 6 1. The Literature ……………………………………………….. 9 On Nietzsche ………………………………………… 25 The Argument ……………………………………….. 32 2. The Socratic Defense of Poetry …………………………….. 43 On Poetry …………………………………………… 60 On Theory …………………………………………… 64 Comedy and Tragedy .……………………………….. 68 The Self …………………………………………….. 71 The New Poet ……………………………………….. 75 The Ancient Quarrel and the Soul …………………... 79 3. Shakespeare and the Tripartite Soul ..……………………….. 85 4. Shakespeare and Musical Education ………………………... 111 5. Shakespeare’s Gods …………………………………………. 135 6. Shakespeare’s Debt to Plato in Timon of Athens ……………. 170 7. Shakespeare’s Alcibiades …………………………………… 193 8. Concluding Remarks ……………………………………….. 221 9. Bibliography ………………………………………………… 249 2 Preface and Acknowledgements My personal engagement with Shakespeare has been fruitful, if short-lived compared to the truly great thinkers discussed in this work. What I now see as a shining pillar of wisdom literature was not always so, and I am certain there is something to be learned from my experience in relation to the situation of the modern young. My first memory of Shakespeare is, I am sure, the prevailing opinion of him in the minds of the many. He is an overcomplicated, impossible to understand bore, assigned by a figure of authority that has no vested interest either in Shakespeare, my own life, or knowledge as such. The young ‘read’ Shakespeare because they must, and many educators by and large begrudgingly go along for the ride. Shakespeare is a task to be conquered, criticized, and forgotten – we are far beyond this now, the students hear, but the curriculum dictates we must discuss where we came from. This is the environment upon which most young people encounter the master of the English language. I recall my first revelatory experience occurring shortly thereafter encountering a cigarette of dubious origin during my first year of High School. At the onset of class we were to read aloud Julius Caesar, and like the vast majority of my class, I could not possibly have cared less for the boring Bard of Avon; and even less for Rome or any relation to my opinions about politics as such. In my rebellious fervor, I was struck by a 3 voice that encouraged me to entertain my similarly imprisoned compatriots with an outright mockery of the text. A daimon of sorts was speaking to me again. The scene in question was, thankfully, conducive to my approach. Marc Antony’s funeral oration probably never sounded so bombastic or overblown, and yet I recall rather vividly that the more exaggerated I pushed my voice to sound, the clearer the language became to me. The more I sought to destroy the text, the more I understood it. The more I understood it, the more I was sure it had to be destroyed. And yet, somewhere in the back of my mind that same voice seemed to wonder, could this be English after all? Might this be saying something important? By the time I reached Antony’s fourth insistence that Brutus was indeed an honourable man, the voice in my head spoke up with a stunning suggestion. Is it possible that Antony is mocking Brutus? The young love a good mockery. The thought rattled me such that the remainder of the lines I read aloud came with equal parts genuine enthusiasm as they did modest exaggeration. I recall being praised by my teacher, although she suspected ulterior motivations, and I dismissed her praise entirely for fear of earnest engagement. I could be anything but honest with myself or others. It was not until several years later, in my final year of High School, that Shakespeare again re-entered my personal and intellectual horizon. By now I was an honour student, free from undue influence, and although I had received technically strong instruction in several of Shakespeare’s texts, I encountered him as nothing more than answers on a potential exam; an obstacle to overcome on the path to some place of future employment. Only then could I be free! I do not recall ever having ‘thought’ about any of his plays in relation to my own life, politics or society as such. 4 It was not until I saw one particular question, which I learned many years later was added partly as a joke, that my earnest engagement with Shakespeare began. At the bottom of a set of essay questions that required students to dissect the ‘themes’ of a particular soliloquy, list the historical inaccuracies inherent in the plays, or demonstrate Shakespeare’s grasp of gender, sat another revelation. “Prepare an essay that discusses the crucial events of Hamlet from the perspective of his parents.” Something about this question intrigued me. What followed was a skewering of Hamlet as I found every opportunity to present him as a cold and uncaring show off, a petty prankster, a slightly modified version of myself. I aimed again to destroy the text, to demonstrate its futility, but now I was armed with a higher vocabulary and like many young men my age, some personal experience with familial strife. I had to understand the text before I could annihilate it. I thought little of what I had done until I received an overly generous grade and exhaustive written response from my teacher. It was that score and the encouragement I received from my unique account that allowed me to take chances on studying Shakespeare seriously in University, and I have not stopped since. He became a parallel foundation upon which I would investigate the great thinkers of the western tradition, especially the Bible. He continues to be a revelation to me. I have benefited tremendously from the wisdom and guidance of Waller Newell, William Mathie, and the countless teachers and colleagues who have read and dissected Shakespeare with me over the years. I have been welcomed into their homes to read and discuss great works – experiences I will never forget. The arguments that arose from our readings frequently invoked the spirits of Nietzsche, Hegel, Aristotle and Plato in marvelous and fantastic ways. This work would not be possible without them, and I am 5 forever in their debt for making it so. Abbreviated versions of Chapters 5 and 6 have appeared in the journals of Philosophy and Literature as well as Literature and Theology. Both experiences were extremely beneficial engagements with more traditional scholarship and I am grateful for their commentary on my work. To my loving wife Brandy and my children William and Dylan, to whom every significant event I relate back to Shakespeare, I apologize. I cannot thank Brandy enough for her love and encouragement in this rather lengthy endeavour. I am a better husband and a better father for having undertaken this project. 6 Introduction The ancillary benefit of any truly good party inevitably includes the joyous, if partial, recollection of the night’s activity in the days, weeks, months, and years that follow it. Such is the case with the conclusion of the Symposium - where all we know is constituted by a few fleeting lines of text written by Plato about a second-hand account of a retelling of a party that occurred many years previous. We know that the end of the night saw Socrates drinking from a large goblet and explaining to the half-asleep Aristophanes and Agathon that a true poet ought to identify the genius of comedy and tragedy to be one and the same. He ought to be master of both. We hear very little more on the matter from Socrates, Aristophanes, Agathon, Plato, or any scholar since. This work is an attempt to take up that very discussion by asking a simple question, what if Shakespeare is that very poet? Would Socrates approve? Would Shakespeare? Reflecting on his teacher Leo Strauss, Harry Jaffa remarked that “Only Strauss could have led me to see that Shakespeare's inner and ultimate motivation was Platonic.”1 Jaffa never took the opportunity to fully explain what he meant by this remark, and we don’t get to hear him discuss it at length elsewhere. What this work can do is begin to take some foundational steps toward constructing an argument for understanding Shakespeare and Plato alongside one another and get to the core of what Jaffa means when he says the writings of a brilliant poet like Shakespeare can be accounted for by a ‘Platonic’ motivation. I approach my task along two parallel, if 1 Jaffa, H. (2003) Strauss at 100. Claremont Institute. http://www.claremont.org/basicPageArticles/strauss-at-100/#.VOiOAvnF8RU 7 uneven lines of argument. First, the somewhat pedantic task of uncovering Shakespeare’s explicit use of the Platonic dialogues and associated imagery, the majority of which are new discoveries or significant additions to existing interpretations. The second, more difficult than the first, is an attempt to uncover to what extent the meaning of Shakespeare as such can be interpreted from his use of Plato. Unlike most recent accounts of Shakespearean interpretation from the lens of political philosophy, I have put tremendous emphasis on working with the existing academic scholarship in order to better understand how Shakespeare is treated in the field. By engaging directly with historical and modern interpretations alongside an exploration of what it might mean for Shakespeare to have some form of Platonic motivation, this work sees an avenue to further participation with a diverse range of academic styles rather than an interpretive approach that begins and ends with political philosophy.