Our Professor from the Faculty of Humanities, Gastón Gilabert, on 14 April gave a talk organised by the Paideia student group. Entitled “The Shakespeare enigma: truth, literature and myth”, the session was held as part of celebrations for the fourth centenary of the death of the English writer. This is the first event that Paideia has organised, a group that was set up only a few months ago.
The chat revolved around the mystification and deification of the writer William Shakespeare. “A myth has been created based on him and a lot of his legacy is only conjecture”, stated Gilabert. In fact, he stated that “only 5% of what has been said about the author has been confirmed and is true, while the remaining 95% is suppositions and theories”.
According to the Humanities Professor, the most famous image of the author was discovered in 1748 and - although many of the features suggest that it could be of him - others suggest the opposite. This is the point when the myth begins to fail and he is valued more for who he was. “A lot of suppositions have been made. He was born in England, yes, but there are also other schools of thought supporting the idea that he was French, others that he was Portuguese-Jewish and others that he was a group of authors because six different signatures have been linked to him”. Did Shakespeare really exist? How could he be one of the literary greats without having gone to Oxford or Cambridge if he was British? Questions arise that are difficult to answer. Also, it is said that there is a curse that follows all those who want to find out more about Shakespeare’s life, an example of this is what happened to Delia Bacon.
Following on from this demythologisation, Gastón Gilabert stated that “Shakespeare did not invent anything: the story of Romeo and Juliet already existed before he wrote about them, it was a traditional story that he recovered and rewrote”. What this demonstrates is that he was a well-documented person with a lot of knowledge taken from Latin sources who had the ability to rewrite and recreate stories, using language and playing around with it in an astonishing way. It is calculated that he only used 20,000 words in his work, while we currently have a register of around 50,000; and out of those 20,000, 2,000 were neologisms he created himself. At that time it was not considered negative to copy other’s work, in fact people believed it was dignified to imitate others well, as he did. Nothing is known about him before he arrived in London as a young actor and writer, and worked for King James I, as well as Queen Elizabeth, he is mainly known for his connections to the latter. He never published his work, perhaps because he was only concerned with immediate success or alternatively it could be due to copyright issues.
Shakespeare is universal because he adapted to many ideologies. His critics and those who subsequently researched his work have managed to create a myth out of him and his work, starting with the date of both his birth and death, 23 April, the Saint George’s Day, the patron saint of England. Therefore and in conclusion, it can be confirmed that “Shakespeare is one of the least known well-known people of all time” as stated by Mark Twain.
What is myth then, and what is reality?
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