[Writerpreneur OS] Lesson 0201: Seeing the World as Shakespeare - Suffering Fools Gladly

Shakespeare had a talent that enabled him to write and publish works that involve readers even today - he saw the world as they do.

The motive which leads you to sit down and write has nothing to do with the quality of the work you produce. But this does not mean that the attitude you take toward your work while doing it is unimportant.

Let's now consider the characteristic approach of the great master writers.

They all wrote in different styles, on different subjects, and for different publics; but we find on examination that there are certain attitudes and procedures characteristic of these masters which we shall do well to emulate.

For convenience, we may choose Shakespeare as the archetype.

To begin with, he was interested in people—and people of all kinds. Dr. Samuel Johnson declares in his Preface to Shakespeare:

“This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies, by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.”

In order to gain such an understanding of people, an author must be a man of wide sympathies, a man bo delights in social contacts. No man who put people on guard when he appeared could have observed humanity in all its rich variety as he did.

You may be sure that when he walked down the street, the old folks went on gossiping, the young folks went on making love, the children went on playing. They saw it was only Master Shakespeare passing by: nobody was shy or ashamed. They felt even on brief acquaintance that he liked them, that he was no stern and critical superior being looking down his nose at them. They sensed his zest for life.

The late Sir Walter Raleigh remarked, “Everyone was more himself for being in the company of Shakespeare.” He added, “Shakespeare’s villains and evil characters are all self-absorbed and miserable and retrospective . . . Jealousy, born of deprivation is a passion as common as mud; to Shakespeare’s thinking it is the core of all uttermost evil.”

It was this universal sympathy that made him able to make friends with, and so portray, his rogues and vagabonds, who would never have revealed themselves to a man of less genial a nature.

He suffered fools gladly; his fools are among the most lifelike of his characters.

Such a temperament enabled him to understand and experience almost the entire range of human motivation.

Yet Shakespeare saw life steadily and saw it whole. He knew its worst and also its best, yet kept his balance.

The ideal here so well stated is just as true of Shakespeare as of other great masters.

He lived like other people of his time: went to school, fell in love, married, raised a family, made a fortune, and became acquainted with men in all walks of life.

He saw the world's people as they were. And became inspired.

[From the works of Walter S. Campbell.]

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