How English Became the Linguistic Internet of the World - Prof. Jiang Xueqin

So the Shakespeare. The question we are looking at today is how did Shakespeare transform English into the language of empire? So for the longest time, English is what they spoke on the British Isles. Okay? Okay? Not Not even the British Isles, primarily in England. So how did Shakespeare transform that into the language that everyone speaks today? Okay. English English really is the language of empire. You think when you learn English, you're not just learning grammar and vocabulary, you are really learning a culture, a philosophy, an identity. And what's amazing about English is that it has really created. It's really for soft power. Convince everyone to believe that Anglo American culture is really the best in the world, when objectively speaking, it is not. You can make the argument that Russian and German culture is far superior to Anglo American culture. But everyone, especially young people in the world today, believes that Anglo American culture is just vastly superior. And the reason why is because most people speak English and we absorb our understanding of the world through language. Okay? Okay? Right. So that's the question we're looking at today. All right, so before we talk about Shakespeare, I want you to understand some basic principles about language, art, culture, and civilization. Okay? Okay? The The first major principle is great art. Okay? Dante, Homer, Vermeer, Shakespeare. It lifts the soul of civilization and changes the neurological structure of societies, creating a new way of being and seeing. Okay? Okay? So this is a really important idea where you have to understand that civilization has a collective consciousness. And what great art does is it seeps into this collective consciousness and rewires the brain to make the civilization see the world in a new way, which causes people to behave differently. Okay? Okay? So So we discussed this about Homer and Dante, right? Especially Homer and Dante. Today I'll show you how Shakespeare radically transformed the English imagination. All right? Another Another idea I need you to understand is how poets transform civilization is they innovate in imagery, grammar and vocabulary, okay? And when they do that, poets expand a civilization's capacity to imagine, feel, and think. Okay? So we will discuss William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare did not live very long. He died at 52. Okay? Okay? So he was not alive for a very long time. But his accomplishments are amazing. In his brief life, he wrote anywhere between 38 to 41 plays, and he established the English cultural identity. Okay? Shakespeare is really a founder of English culture, and he established his English historical memory. Okay? Okay? And And he did this by writing a lot of plays, right? So tragedies, histories, comedies. You've read some of them in school, right? So his accomplishments are tremendous. The reason why we don't know how many plays he actually wrote, okay. Is he never published in his lifetime. All his plays were published after his death, but by his friends who are working with his note, as well as recollections from actors who participated in Shakespeare's plays. That's why. So we don't have actually anything written specifically by Shakespeare. Okay, so keep that in mind. In his plays, he used anywhere between 20,000 to 30,000 different words. So his range of vocabulary was just vast. What's really unique about Shakespeare is he introduced anywhere between 1700 to 3500 new uses of words, what we call a dictionary. Okay, I'll show you what diction is later on. To put this in context. Between the years 1500 and 1650, around 10,000 new words are being introduced into England because of revolutions in agriculture, in trade, in communication, in technology. Okay, so at this point in history, England is going out into the world and it's transforming its society, and therefore, it needs to bring in new words. What Shakespeare does that's really important is he transforms the British imagination in order to better absorb these new ideas. And it does so through new uses of words, what we call addiction. Okay, so this makes sense, guys. Okay, let's go into some brief history about Shakespeare. During the time of Shakespeare, theater is extremely popular around the country. And theater is primarily the means of mass entertainment, but it's also the means of mass education. If you want to know about history, if you want to know about culture, you go to the theater. The problem with this is that during the time of Shakespeare, around the 16th century, as we discussed last class, there's a major conflict going on between the Protestant religion and the Catholic religion. And so the Queen, Queen Elizabeth, is concerned about theater as a means of creating the scent in society. So what they do is they force all the theater productions to be placed in a suburb of London. That's where Shakespeare is going to work. By doing that, Shakespeare is being introduced to all the major theater all that time. Okay? So So Shakespeare never actually wrote anything that is unique. Okay? So So Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Othello, King Lear, these are all plays that are part of the British theatrical imagination. But what he does that's different is he reimagines the characters and introduces new diction into the plays to make it beautiful. Right? So this is the Globe, which is where Shakespeare performed much of his productions. Right, The Globe Theater. The thing also remember about this time is theater is low class. All right? So in this district, this theater district, there are lots of brothels. People go to theater and they get drunk. Okay? Okay? They're They're drinking, they're spitting, they're eating stuff. They're also participating in something called. In a gambling activity called bear baiting. Okay, Bear baiting is really strange, but the idea is you take a bear, you chain him up, you blind him, okay? And then you have dogs attack him, and then you bet who wins, the bear or the dogs. This is a really popular thing to do at this time, right? So it just shows you that we think of Shakespeare as very high class and we teach Shakespeare as high class. But at this time, Shakespeare is very, very low class. And Shakespeare's plays are performed right beside beer baiting venues as well as brothels. Right? But But this is important because if Shakespeare is reaching to the masses, right, he's educating the masses into a global imagination. All right? Shakespeare and theater, it's so detested by the upper class that from 1642 to 1660, the Puritans banned it from England. Remember we discussed the Puritans and how they're obsessed with control. They hate alcohol, they hate fun, they hate theater, especially theater. They hate Shakespeare, okay? So they banned it. So during this time, Shakespeare is extremely controversial. So having gone into history, let's discuss the genius of Shakespeare. Okay? Okay? You, you do Shakespeare in school, you've read quite a few of his plays. So I'm not going to go too deeply, but I'm going to focus on one example that distinguishes Shakespeare from all other playwrights. Okay? Okay? So So the example I want to use is Hamlet, okay? Hamlet, the story. You know, it's a very simple story. It's about this prince of Denmark called Hamlet. He's going to university in Germany, I believe Wittgenstein, which is where Martin Luther went. He comes home and he's visited by the ghost of his dead father. And the ghost of his dead father tells Hamlet, I was killed by your uncle Claudius, who now has stolen the throne from me, as well as married my wife, Gertrude, your mother. It is your responsibility as my son to seek vengeance against Claudius. Okay? So that's the mission of Hamlet. The problem is that Hamlet, he is a very analytical person. He thinks too much. Paralysis is analysis. Okay? Okay? So So he spends entire play thinking about how to kill him, kill Claudius, but also whether or not to kill Claudius. And this is why we believe that Hamlet is Shakespeare's best play because it is a very deep philosophical work. And in many ways, Hamlet is really the expression of Shakespeare. You may not know this, but Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet, and Hamnet actually died when he was young. So a lot of scholars of Shakespeare, and there are like thousand thousands of scholars on Shakespeare, believe Hamlet is Shakespeare's most personal play. All right, so we're going to go into a bit of Shakespeare and look at the most famous soliloquy in Shakespeare to understand how he thinks, how he writes. All right, so this again, this is adamic pentameter. To be or not to be. That is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by posing end them. To die, to sleep, no more, and by asleep to say we end the heartache and a thousand natural shocks. That flesh is here to Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's to rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. This respect that makes calumny of so long life does conscience doth make cowards of us all. And does the native hue of resolution in slick it over with a pale cast of thought and enterprises of great pith and moment. With this regard their currents turn awry and loosening of action. Okay, so some brief comments about the sliqui. First of all, as you can understand, it's beautiful, right? It's also, if you think about it, pretty easy to read. There are lots of really complicated words in the speech. But it's really smooth, right? If you read it for yourself, it's. It's really smooth. And that's the power of anec. Pentameter. If you really want to be fluent in English, just read Shakespeare aloud for a few months and your English will be perfect, okay? The British really are the best practitioners of English. If you read magazines like the Economist, it's really the best written magazine in the world, and you think to yourself, well, duh, the British invented English, right? No. Okay? Just because you invent something doesn't mean you're good at it. So the Chinese invented gunpowder, compass, printing paper didn't really get us anywhere. Okay? Okay? The fact of the matter is that in England, you're expected to read and know Shakespeare, right? So it's Shakespeare that allows the British to have amazing English. All right? So this is very complicated, but it's actually not that deep, okay? It's not like Dante. Dante is very, very deep. But Shakespeare is actually not that deep. All right? So let's look at what he actually means with these words. Okay? To be or not to be. That is the question against the misfortune in our lives. Is it more brave and good to bear it or to stand against it. I no longer want to bear this pain. Let me sleep. I no longer want to feel my heartache and my body become weak and injured. That is my wish. I want to sleep and to dream. But that is a danger, isn't it? When we are dead, we cannot control what we dream. And that is what frightens me. And that's why I continue to build more misfortunes around me. It is my own mind that has made me a coward. And why each time when I become determined, my resolve breaks apart and I cannot act. Okay, that's what he's saying. That's like literally what he's saying. No difference. But of course, when you do this, when you simplify Shakespeare, you. You lose the beauty and richness of Shakespeare. All right, so now question then is, why is Shakespeare so complicated? What's he trying to do with his language? Okay, so the first thing that he's trying to do is he's trying to use language as a mechanism to convey different realities, different meanings. Okay, so when Shakespeare, with each his plays, there are many different layers of meaning that can be true at the same time. All right, so let me show you an example of this. Let's look at the first possible interpretation of to be or not to be. Okay? Okay? You You can say it means to die or to live. I cannot decide. I do not know. It's more brave to live a painful life or to run away from it and escape into death. So this is saying that Hamlet is overwhelmed by the moral dilemma he's put it. Okay, he cannot escape. He has to avenge his father, right? Or he cannot sleep. But avenging his father means killing his uncle, who his mother loves. Okay, it's an impossible moral dilemma. He doesn't want to deal with it, so he wants to kill himself. Okay, that's one possible interpretation. Another possible interpretation is to kill or not to kill. I do not know. Is it more good to let those who do evil suffer their own fate? Or. Or should I stop their evil and end their lives? Okay, so you can interpret this as saying he's asking himself, how should he kill Claudius? Should he kill Claudius? Okay, that's a different interpretation. Yet another interpretation is, should I follow my fate or should I defy it? Is it more brave and good to do as I am told or to fight against my fate and in so doing, perhaps die? Okay, so this is much more deeper and richer meaning where he's talking about fate and life in general. He's making the argument that we are. We have no free Free will. We are forced into a situation where we must do what fate tells us. And in this situation, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have free will where you're controlled by the forces of fate around you? Okay, so that's a much deeper meaning. And then the last deep meaning is, what is the point of existence? I. I do not know. When we exist, we must face pointless questions in our lives. Should we suffer or should we fight? Okay, so this is the deepest meaning, where he's ask. He's. He's actually asking, what does. What is existence? What is the point of all this? How do we get here? What is the purpose of existence? Okay, so there are four possible interpretations of this speech, and they're all correct. You can interpret them any way they want. Okay, so it's the first power of Shakespeare, where he's forcing you to interpret his speech in different ways. Okay, the second power of Shakespeare is it's visual. Okay? In this tradition, in this oral culture, when no one reads and writes, well, most people don't read and write. Most people are accessing their information through words, right? And in this tradition, words are images. All right, so let's go over the soliloquy and see how these are images. Okay? Okay? So when Hamlet says, suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by posing endom, the audience is seeing these pictures. They're seeing a movie in their heads. Okay? That's the attraction of Shakespeare. Do you guys see this? Is it clear to you guys? All right? And because you're seeing pictures, they remember all this, okay? When you talk to an English person, it's amazing how much Shakespeare that person knows subconsciously. Another image, okay? In that sleep of death, what dreams say, come, we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause. All right, so this is an image of a person who's dead to a soul, goes up to heaven, but what's in heaven? What's in that sleep of death? No one knows. Okay, another image, the native hue of resolution is slicked over with a pale pass of thought. Okay, so this is a complicated sentence, but it's really about how something that is clear to us, once we think about it, becomes very dark and unclear. All right, so that's a power of Shakespeare. It's a visual language. All right, Another example enterprise of great pivot moment, their current turn awry and illusion of action. Right? So So imagine a ship. It's going very. It's going in direction. You're set on that path. But the moment you think about it, the moment you think deeply about what you're doing, the ship collapses. You don't know where you're going anymore, Right? So is that clear to you guys? All right, so let's summarize what we learned. Okay? Okay? Shakespeare turns English into the world's linguistic Internet, A platform in which all cultures, ideas and worldviews can meet and cross breed. Okay? So So Shakespeare is transforming English into this extremely flat, flexible, beautiful, memorable language which allows everyone to learn English well. If you want to learn English well, just read Shakespeare, okay? That's all you have to do. And then you can master English. So it's a linguistic Internet. For the first time, all cultures are able to meet together within the English language and communicate with each other. There's a problem with this. There's a problem with this. The problem is this. But this exchange is mediated through Anglo American civilization, which is at its heart utilitarian, skeptical, and empirical. All right, so when you embrace English, when you experience English, you're also experiencing British culture, history and philosophy. Okay? Okay? And And as we discuss the. The three main philosophies of British culture are utilitarian, skeptical, and empirical. Utilitarian, we discussed last class. It just means that we should do things that works as opposed to what is right. Skeptical is to be skeptical of our capacity to reason and to think. If you think you know something, you probably don't know it. Okay? And then empirical just means the only thing you know is things you experience. All right, so in other words, Anglo American culture, even though it dominates the world, it's, it's pretty lackluster. It's very narrow minded, it's very practical, it's pretty mediocre. Okay? If If you want to know what I mean by that, think about, think to yourself. What was the last great American novel you read? I mean, there are lots of great Russian German novels, right? So Russians, you have Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Common Punishment. The Germans have great philosophy. Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel. We'll go into that later on. Okay? Okay? But I struggle to think about what great art the Americans produce, have produced, even though they are the most wealthy, most powerful country that has ever existed in human history. Okay? And I mean, Shakespeare is great. I mean, like, like, like, I love Shakespeare. King Lear is one of the greatest plays ever written. But Shakespeare, compared with Dante, I mean, I don't know. Okay, Dante is like, you are in the mind of God. You can feel, this is divine. Okay? But with Shakespeare, you're like, this is beautiful, but is it a pretty nothingness. Okay, that's a question I have. And again, to be fair, it's been a long time since I actually read Shakespeare. I've read most of his plays, but it's been a long time since I've read Shakespeare. So what I want to do later on, maybe a few years from now, is actually teach Shakespeare and see if I'm wrong, okay? But right now, I have to say, Shakespeare is not as impressive as Homer and Dante. I think Homer and Dante are the two greatest poets who ever lived. All right?