America’s preeminent Shakespeare scholar, Paul Cantor, has another conversation with Bill Kristol, this time on comedy. He is guided by Leo Strauss’s remarks about philosophy’s resemblance to comedy rather than tragedy, which points in two directions that seem opposite. On the one hand, comedy is not interested in beauty, nobility, or grandeur—it seems concerned with making ends meet, putting two together, happiness instead; this resembles philosophy’s down to earth character—Cantor points to the Socratic habit of taking the arts, however lowly, as a standard of knowledge, while also suggests the advantageous is more important than the splendid… On the other, comedy has a shocking vulgarity, a skepticism about all pieties that resembles philosophical investigation—this points to a radical lack of concern for our way of life, as though learning pursues a good entirely different from being human.
Cantor looks, of course, to Shakespeare, not Strauss’s Aristophanes, so he brings up two very interesting aspects of the problem of poetic wisdom that tie up with the medieval situation. First, that Shakespeare is an enemy of what we call Romanticism, but which might also be called Gnosticism, or in some cases, Christianity. Here, Cantor has wonderful scholarship to bring to bear, but the most important thing is the comparison of Shakespeare & Cervantes, the two poets who concerned themselves most with the collapse of honor politics into commercial politics. Shakespeare wants his audience to think about love more naturally, to avoid a certain deadly beauty—as tragedian, Shakespeare shows that people of a certain stature can very easily become gluttons for punishment, so then Shakespeare as comedian follows with certain prescriptions for making love. This you could call psychiatry, doctoring to the soul, trying to fix the sickness that leads people to prefer death to life, as a sign of exaltation. We remember the words “death before dishonor” & suddenly realize that in some cases this is a noble attitude, but in others, it’s a death wish. Shakespeare deals with this ambiguity in relation to the Christian faith of medieval Europe & in relation to the crusader problem—the military version of Christianity that leads to chivalry, but also to an apolitical fantasizing. The most interesting aspect of Cantor’s discussion here is that it’s largely apolitical, which is not entirely true of Shakespeare, but is the most obvious distinction between Shakespeare & Aristophanes, who didn’t seem to give a damn about love stories—his comedies are all political, whether in heaven, on earth, or in Hades!
Secondly, Cantor shows that Shakespeare thinks the funniest thing love reveals about us, which is worth all the comedy he can muster, is that we’re obsessed with our individuality, but unwilling to be alone! Hence, cross-dressing, surprising twins, & various deceptions that lead to misidentification, to mistaking, to mismatching. We think we know who we are, right up until we realize how far we’re willing to go to be something or someone else. Our self-importance leads to self-obsession, our love is mostly self-love, which is so ridden with paradox, that when we act on it, we fail at getting what we want from love the more we succeed. This propels Shakespeare’s comedic plots—Cantor shows very well how needed the distraction of comic poetry is for love, to give the lovers a chance to get to know each other, to re-evaluate their opinions or attachments, & to become somewhat sensible, i.e. to learn to laugh at themselves. Pomposity & ridicule by turn become necessary mistakes; poetry becomes an education for the comic protagonists. Tragic protagonists cannot be educated—perhaps their fall is an education for us as an audience, to begin with, to not idolize them so. But comedy does educate its protagonists, in order to bring them to a plausible happy end. Shakespeare as poet of nature is also a poet of modernity, making love somewhat more humorous. This ties up with philosophy in a certain sense, since the philosopher may be the only person who loves laughing. If you want to know what I mean, see what happens if someone who loves you finds you laughing at them. Cantor says, Shakespeare moderates love by patterning it on friendship—I would add that in the process, he makes nature as such erotic, as though the world were there for us to wonder at it.
All that by way of introduction—listen to Cantor talk & I’ll get back to you later. Since he’s a friend, I have the privilege of running my thoughts by him & seeing whether he thinks I’m babbling or not…
Wonderful "babble," Titus, that makes the interview irresistible!