Shakespeare, Tragedy, Post-truth: Hamlet, Othello and Antony and Cleopatra
Abstract:
The recent controversy concerning 'fake news', truth and falsehood provides the stimulus for the following argument that seeks to investigate different kinds of language in a series of Shakespeare plays: Hamlet, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. It is clear that at the turn of the 16th-17th century the issue of the representational powers of language was topical, and the following arguments seek to show how that issue develops primarily in three plays, but it could also be extended to cover more. In Hamlet different kinds of language compete with one another, from the purveyance of 'false truth' that is the idiom of Claudius, the 'player king', right through to the Gravedigger whose grasp of the contingent powers of oral language is superior, even to Hamlet himself. Hamlet's problem is, in part, that he cannot find an adequate language in which to make sense of his predicament, while Claudius persists right up to the end in a form of deceitful language that is ultimately exposed. In Macbeth the 'devilish' language of the agents of evil take over Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to the point where they accept as truthful ‘the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth.’ In Antony and Cleopatra two radically opposed forms of language are engaged in conflict with each other: the factual, rational language of Rome, and the seductive 'poetic' language of Egypt, with Antony caught between the two. These radically opposed approaches to the business of representation produces a series of tragic consequences that cannot be easily resolved. It is this conflict that has re-emerged in the comparatively secular world of modern secular politics, with its contestatory approach to 'truth' and to 'fake news'. Key words: Shakespeare, tragedy, post-truth, Hamlet, Macbeth, Language, conflict.
Readers can download the Abstract and the Article clicking following buttons:
