Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #51 - Shakespeare's Language of Empire

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #51 - Shakespeare's Language of Empire

Okay, good morning. So this class we are focusing on William Shakespeare. But before I do that, I want to give you an overview of how we will end the course. To end the course, we will focus on the four great modern civilizations that have fought for global dominance these past 20 years. These four great civilizations are the Russians, the Germans, the British, and the Americans. Now, what's interesting about all four civilizations is that they all claim to be the ultimate Christian civilizations that are here to Rome. But because of the differences in their geography and their culture, they have different interpretations of Christianity and Romaness.

So let's compare and contrast these four great civilizations. The Russians, as you know, Russia is the largest landmass in the world. It is huge. It is also really cold and dark. So the geography transform the Russian character. Germany, in contrast, it is within Europe, and it does not have the natural boundaries that the other nations have. It is always being attacked and threatened by adversaries.

The British, it's an island fortress. The Americans are the most interesting because it is a continental fortress. It is not only invincible, it cannot be invaded, but it also has all the resources in needs in order to have a thriving, modern economy. Therefore, America can choose to isolate itself from the rest of the world. Now, because of the difference geography, you have differences in Christianity and in Romanists. So the Russians believe that they are here to the Byzantine Empire. And as such, they are the protectors of something called Eastern Orthodoxy. Okay, so to understand what

Eastern Orthodoxy is, think of Augustine. We read Augustine, City of God. So it is a very mystical, metaphorical, collectivist attitude towards religion. In contrast, the Germans believe that they are here to the Holy Roman Empire first initiated by Charlemagne. And as such, they are more Catholic than the Russians. Then you have the British who believe they are here's to the real Roman Empire. And their religion is Anglinism. Okay, remember, Anglicism, there's really little difference

between Catholicism and Anglicism. When in Anglicism, you swear allegiance to the King of England, In capitalism, you swear allegiance to the Pope of the Vatican. And then you have the Americans who believe that they are adhered to the Roman Republic, not the empire, the Republic, before the time of Julius Caesar, the best former government in the world. The religion, so the elite is something we call it dais, okay? So they believe in God, but God as someone who is removed. move from the world. You also have many different sects of Protestantism, okay?

So the religion in America is very diffuse, very diverse. So different cultural outlooks will also determine their cultural identities. So for example, the Russians, they have, the thing that differentiates of Russians is they have a very dark imagination. So some of the greatest literature, some of the greatest Music, philosophy actually comes from Russia. So think of Toy Stoy, Dasyevsky. In terms of music, you have Tchaikovsky and Szyvinsky. I will also show you that the Russians produce

the greatest geopolitical leaders in history. So in the 20th century, the greatest geopolitical leader was actually Joseph Stalin. And I will show you this is the case when we move to the 20th century. Today, the greatest geopolitical leader in the world is Vladimir Putin. So there's something about the Russian dark imagination that produces men of genius to lead their countries. The Russian cultural identity is the idea of Mother Russia, the land itself, the nation, the people. It is divine.

And so the main objective of all Russian geopolitical leaders is to protect its borders from enemies. Because Russia is so huge and encompasses two continents, it has a lot of geopolitical enemies. So that's the Russian civilization. We move to the Germans. The Germans are really interesting, because the Germans have also one of the great human civilizations in history. So rather than a dark imagination,

the Germans believe in the idea of will to power. We would discuss this when we discuss German philosophy, especially Nietzsche. But the idea is this, that we have the capacity to impose our will on reality. That's the idea of will to power. We are not subject to culture, we're not subject to reality. There are great men among us who can impose their will on all of us.

And that's why you have Hitler and the Nazis, okay? What the Germans believe in is the idea of Limbenshram. I know this is a hard word, it's a German word, but it's actually a pretty easy concept. The concept is called living space. So throughout its history, German, The German people have always been invaded, attacked by its adversaries. So to protect itself, it needs living space. It needs to move out and colonize its surrounding territories, Poland, Russia, Austria,

and make it more German so that the German nation can thrive. Versible concept, but this is the concept that drives the German military strategy in World War I and World War II. limits wrong. You have the British and the British as we discussed last class they are very practical people. The philosophy is empirism and utilitarianism, okay? It's not a question of what is right or what is ideal, it's a question of what works now. The British are extremely practical. The British Empire is based on the concept of white man's burden, meaning that the British culture is inherently superior to all other cultures and as such the British have a responsibility

to go out and civilize and educate and enlighten all others. Okay? So this is the philosophy that drives the British Empire. The Americans are interesting because they are a new civilization, and they try to base their culture on the ideas of the Enlightenment. So Rousseau, Kahn, especially John Locke. Their driving ideology is the idea of Manifest Destiny. So the idea of Manifest Destiny is that it is the obvious

will of God for America to control the entire Western Hemisphere. That's why Trump today is saying, we should take over Canada, we should take over Greenland, because that's always been part of the American understanding of the world. It is God's will that America will eventually control all the entire Western Hemisphere. The Canada will eventually come into America as well, and eventually America will drive out. America will drive out all European powers, including Denmark and Britain, from the Western

Hemisphere. Okay? So next slide we'll discuss America in greater detail. Today we will focus on the British Empire, which is founded by William Shakespeare. So we will discuss William Shakespeare today. Next week we'll start to focus on the Russians and the Germans. Okay. But these are the four great civilizations that will drive history from the, from the, you know, the

19th century up to today. Okay, and I will also show you later on that it is actually the conflict between these four great civilizations that will drive human creativity, science, technology, philosophy, okay? And that's why from about 1800 up until 2000, you had a tremendous flowering of ideas and culture. Okay? All right. So that's a game plan for the rest of the semester.

Any questions about this framework? Again, you don't have to know these ideas right away. I'll explain them in detail to you as we move forward. Okay? But understand the overall framework is there are four different civilizations that will drive human modernity and they are in conflict with each other. And it's because of this conflict that drives human innovation. Okay, let's move on.

So 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? Not even the British Isles, primarily in England. So how does Shakespeare transform that into the language that everyone speaks today? English really is the language of empire. You think when you learn English, you're not just learning, you're not just learning grammar and vocabulary,

you are really learning a culture, a philosophy, and 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? 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.

The first major principle is great art, 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. 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. So we discussed this about Homer and Dante, especially Homer and Dante.

Today I'll show you how Shakespeare radically transformed the English imagination. Another idea I need to understand is how poets transform civilization is they innovate. innovate in imagery, grammar, and vocabulary. When they do that, poets expand a civilization's capacity to imagine, feel, and think. So we will discuss William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare did not live very long. He died at 52, 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. Shakespeare is really the founder of English culture. He established his English historical memory, and he did this by writing a lot of plays, right? So tragedies, histories, comedies, you've read some of them in school. 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 by his friends who are working with his notes, 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. 30,000 different words.

So his range of vocabulary was just vast. What's really unique about Shakespeare is he introduced and he was between 1,700 to 3,500 new uses of words, what we'll call a diction, okay? I'll show you what diction is later on. To put this in context, between the years 1,500 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 in 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 he does so through new uses of words, what we'll call it diction, okay? So this makes sense, guys, okay? So let's examine how he does this. Let me give an example. Let's say the other word dagger, okay? Dagger means just a short sword.

And it's a very common English word. But what Shakespeare does is he uses it in a really imaginative, metaphorical way, way that forces you to reimagine the world around you okay so let's look at some examples and these are my examples but by the way they're not Shakespeare's examples all right we will look at Shakespeare examples later on all right so the first example is he is a dagger fat and short okay this is interesting because we see a dagger we think of something that is thin right

but saying this is fat all right so this forces you to to think about what dagger is as a metaphor and this makes your mind think oh here's a dagger fat and short so it's a possible that on the surface he looks fat and short but actually as a person he is lean and mean he's very very clever he's pretends he's stupid but he has he has very precise cleverness okay all right so that's what Shakespeare does he takes a traditional metaphor and he radically reverses or inverses it to force you to reimagine things in a new way all right that's the first example second example is I daggered him with questions now the

word dagger actually exists in English language but it means you carry dagger with you okay so if I say I am daggered it means my there's a bag my pocket and that's a traditional use of dagger but there's no reason why you can't do what Shakespeare does and says I dagger it with questions which means like I stab him with questions I'm threatening him with questions. I ask a lot of questions. And this is very visual, it's very imaginative, okay?

Now the third example is, his voice is daggrily. Dagli as a word does not exist. But because you know what the word dagger means, you can imagine what daguer could mean, right? A voice that is like mine, very high, high, high, and which you feel is jabbing at you. So that's the genius of Shakespeare. He takes words that we use every day, and he finds new ways of using it in his plays that forces us to reimagine the world in a different way.

All right, that's the power of Shakespeare. Now, what is the saying is this. What Shakespeare understands is that language can be a portal into the neurological framework of our minds. Right? So you might have some studies some neuroscience or psychology. You know like our brain it's structured by these things called synapses, okay? These pathways in our brain. And what Shakespeare understands is that by manipulating language in a new way, you can also perform a sort of surgery on these synapses. All right? All right. So Shakespeare asks music. The thing to remember about Shakespeare is his plays were meant to perform as musicals, okay? Today in school, we have you read Shakespeare, but remember, during the time of Shakespeare,

no one read him. You experienced Shakespeare by going to his plays, and his plays were musicals. When people spoke Shakespeare, it was as though they were singing, and also there were lots of dance routines within the plays as well. Remember, these are people who are extremely ordinary, okay, who are going to Shakespeare as a form of mass entertainment it's almost like the equivalent of like going to movies today and the way that Shakespeare creates

music in his place is through a device called Iamic pentameter okay I amic pentameter you know right it's Iambis is just the arrangement of syllables where you have one one that is deep and then another that's high so deep high deep high deep high deep high deep high deep high when you have ten syllables it's called pentameter okay so an example of course is to be or not to be that is the so so you understand how this works right low high low high low high low high and Shakespeare does that throughout his place that's why it comes across as musical but it's musical then then it's easy

to remember because it becomes like a song right it's really easy for us to remember songs so flat emmectometer Shakespeare's plays are memorable beautiful and resident meaning they touch our souls and again these are owner of people so through I'm a pentaminer Shakespeare's performing a surgery on the imagination of civilization right all right so having said that 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 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 the suburb of London okay and 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

Shakespeare never actually wrote anything that is unique. So Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Othello, King Lear, these are all plays that are part of the British theatrical imagination. What he does that's different is he re-emachers the characters, and he uses new diction into the place to make it beautiful. So this is the Globe, which is where Shakespeare performed much of his productions, the Globe Theatre. The thing also remember about this time is theater is low class.

So in this district, the theater, there are lots of brothels. People go to theater and they get drunk, okay? They're drinking, they're spitting, they're eating stuff. They're also participated in something called, in a gamut activity called bear baiting, okay? Bear bathing is really strange, but the idea is you take a bear, you chain him up, you blind him, and then you have dogs attack him, and then you bet who wins. the bear or the dogs. And this is a really popular thing to do at this time.

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 or perform right beside bear baiting venues as well as brothels. But this is important because if Shakespeare is reaching to the masses, 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 peritans and how they're obsessed with control. They hate alcohol, they hate fun, they hate theater, especially theater. They hate Shakespeare. So they banned it. So during this time, Shakespeare is extremely controversial.

So, having gone into history, let's discuss the genius of Shakespeare. You do Shakespeare in school, you've read quite a few ways 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. So the example I want to use is Hamlet. 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 Wickenstein, which is where Martin Luther went. He comes home and then 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 had 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. 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. So he spent the 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 Hamlet, and Hamlet actually died when he was young. So a lot of scholars of Shakespeare,

and there are like thousands of scholars on Shakespeare believe Hamlet is Shakespeare's most personal play. All right, so we're gonna go into a bit of Shakespeare and look at the most famous liquee in Shakespeare to understand how he thinks, how he writes. All right. So, again, this is an emic metameter. To be or not to be.

That is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them, to die, to sleep no more. And by asleep, to say we end the heartache in a thousand natural shocks. That flesh is here to,

To the consummation devotely to be wished, To die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream, Aye, there's the rub. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's respect that makes calamity of so long life. Does conscious, doth make cowards of us all,

And does the native hue of resolution It's slick it over with a pale cast of thought. And then it apprises of great pith and moment. With this regard, their currents turn awry and lose the name of action. Okay, so some brief comments about the slick way. 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 really smooth. And that's the power of amic metameter. If you really want to be fluent in English, just read Shakespeare aloud for a few months, and your English will be perfect. 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.

You think to yourself, Woldor, 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? The fact of the matter is that in England, you're expected to read and know Shakespeare. All 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. D'Ate. D'Ate is very, very deep, but Shakespeare is actually not that deep. So let's look at what it actually means with these words. 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 step against it? I no longer want to bear this pain.

Let me sleep. And no longer want to feel my heartache. 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 a more misfortunes around me. It's in 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. That's what he's saying. That's literally what he's saying. No difference. But, of course, when you do this, when you simplify Shakespeare, you lose the beauty and richness of Shakespeare.

So another question then is, why is Shakespeare so complicated? What's he trying to do with his language? 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. So when Shakespeare, with each of its place, there are many different layers of meaning that can be true at the same time. So let me show you an example of this. Let's look at the first possible interpretation of to be or not to be. 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. 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. It's an impossible moral dilemma. He doesn't want to deal with it. So he wants to kill himself. 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 should I stop their evil and end their lives? So you can interpret this as saying, he's asking himself, how should he kill Claudius? Should he kill Claudius? 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? So this is a much more deeper and richer meaning where he's talking about fate and life in general. He's making the argument that we have no 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 example? 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 asked 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 the first power of Shakespeare where he's forcing you to interpret his speech in different ways.

The second part of Shakespeare is it's visual okay in this tradition in this oral culture where no one reads and writes well most people don't read and write most people are accessing information through words right and in this tradition words are images all right so let's go over the siliqui and see how these are images okay So when Hamlet says, suffer the slings and eros of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them, the audience is seeing these pictures. They're seeing a movie in their heads. That's the attraction of Shakespeare. Do you guys see this?

Is it clear to you guys? And because you're seeing pictures, they remember all this. 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 you say come when we have shoveled off this mortal coil must give us pause all right so this is an image of a person who's dead so his 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 slinking over it with a pale cast of

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. In the price of great pivot moment, their current turn to rye and illusion of action. So imagine a ship, it's going very, it's going in the 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. So is that clear to you guys? All right. So another example of the power of Shakespeare is Julius Caesar. I'm not sure if you read Julius Caesar in school, but Julius Caesar, it's a very, I mean, the plot is very simple. Julius Caesar, he has defeated all his enemies in the Roman Civil War, and his friends, Brutus, Cassius, they're worried that he'll become a dictator. They're worried that he'll become king.

So they plot to kill him. And Buddhists and Cassius and all the conspirators kill Julius, and then Judas and Cassius think this is over. But Mark Anthony, who is Caesar's lieutenant, he swears vengeance. And Mark Anthony and Octavian will combine forces to destroy and kill Buddhist and Cassius. And that's a plot of Julius Caesar. Not very complicated, okay? But in Julius Caesar, you will find some of the greatest speeches in the English language. It's stunning speeches.

And in the speeches, you will find an example of how Shakespeare understands language as a surgery on the brain, how through speech making, how through language, you can actually transform the neurological structure of the human brain. So let's look at an example of this. Mark Anthony and Buddhists are going to engage in a speech competition. They're going to debate each other. Buddhist will be the first to give a speech and then he'll be followed by Mark Anthony. So the strategy of Brutus is you use a rhetorical strategy called the antithesis.

The antithesis is basically very simple. You have two opposing ideas. And there are opposed to each other. So the idea is, I am Buddhist, I am honorable. You know me as honorable because my name is Brutus, which is also the name of Lucius Buddhist who found the Roman Republic. You know me as honorable person.

Now, who is Caesar? Caesar is ambitious. Okay? Honor and ambition cannot go together. So I love Caesar, but because he was ambitious, he wanted to enslave us. I want to free us. Therefore, I had to kill him.

All right, so that's the idea of Brutus. He's trying to create an economy between Caesar and himself. If you know me Brutus as honorable, then you must believe that Caesar is ambitious. This rhetorical strategy is what we call the antithesis, okay? In the human mind, you just see these two things as separate from each other. Mark Anthony then responds to Brutus using something called the Chiasmus. The Chiasmus, it's really interesting. The Chiasmas tries to take these two opposing principles and combine them together.

All right? So what Mark Anthony will say is that Caesar was ambitious and honorable as honorable and ambitious as Brutus. This is what we call a chyasmir. It's called, it's an A-B-B-B-A structure. When you do that, when you have a chytocemus, you collapse the antithesis. Remember the antithesis are two separate ideas that cannot meet together exclusionary. The chasmuchel shows you like these are mirrors of each other. Okay?

When you do that, in the Roman imagination, the human Roman mind, you then collapse the economy between Buddhist and Caesar, and you see them as one and the same. But if it was Buddhist that killed Caesar, then Buddhist must be the less honorable and more ambitious one, okay? Does that make sense, guys? Julius Caesar. All right, so let's see an example of this. All right, this is Buddhist talking to the women crowd.

after the death of surely Caesar. He's trying to explain his actions before the Roman crowd. He says, If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer. You want to know why he killed Caesar? I'm going to tell you why I killed Caesar. Not that I love Caesar less, but I love Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and died all slaves

than that Caesar were dead to live all free men. This is an antithesis, right? I love Caesar, but I love Rome more. This is antithesis. This is also antithesis. Caesar, if you were living, he'll make us into slaves. If Caesar is dead, we will continue to live as freemen. Two exclusionary ideas developed by Buddhists. Now what Mark Anthony is going to do is he's going to collapse this. He's going to change your neurological structure. He's going to change the synopsis within you through his speechmaking. Let's look at Mark Anthony. Yet Buddhist says he was ambitious and sure he is an audible man.

So he's summarizing the argument made by Buddhists. I speak not to disprove what Buddha spoke, but here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not about cause. What cause withholds you than to mourn for him. This is a Taismus. Cause, cause, love mourn. Can I see that? He continues with the Taismus.

But yesterday, the word of Caesar might have stood against him. the world. Now lies he there and none so poor to do him reverence. O masters, if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds through mutiny and rage, I should do brutus wrong and Cassius wrong, who you all know are honorable men. I will not do them wrong. I rather choose to wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you than I will wrong such honorable man. Okay? This is two examples of Chiasmus where Word of Caesar and reverence match stood and lies match. For the Chiasmiths, he's collapsing this economy. Another example is here, okay?

The red match, the green match. This is what we'll call Chiasmus. Does that make sense, guys? Have I think you guys learned this before? Okay, it's really important. You know these ideas. All right, so that's the power of Shakespeare. Through his language, for his rhetoric, he's transforming the British imagination so that they

are more open, more fluid. They can absorb new ideas and they can be more innovative. Now as we discussed way back at the beginning of this course, Homer did the same thing. So let's compare and contrast Homer and Shakespeare. How was it able that they were both able to be founders? of great civilizations all right first of all they came at a time when there's a cultural tabular rasa okay tabula rasa just means blank slate so Homer came at a time after the branch age collapse of Greece the Mycenine civilization

collapse and now you have this the polar system okay so it's a tabula rasa saving with Shakespeare where Britain at this time it is not an advanced culture as much as the French and the Spanish. Second is rapid cultural change, where Britain is undergoing all these revolutions. When it's undergoing all these revolutions, people are anxious and they're looking for new ideas. Oral culture. We talk about this, where if you live in an oral culture, people have a stronger memory

and have a greater imagination. That's why they're able to sit through three hours of Shakespeare at one goal, at one one go and visualize his language. And this is like the most common person in Britain, okay? These are not the elite. These are just commoners. And so, with an oral culture, you have a stronger memory, imagery, vibrancy, and flexibility. Look, guys, I hate to say this, but back then, they were smarter than we are today.

We have, you know, Google and chat to UPT, but if you think about it, all these things are just making us stupid, okay? Open cooperative competition just means that in their times, Homer was just one of thousands of barts that are traveling around Greece and singing legends of the Trojan War and the Golden Fleece. So what they were doing was they were stealing from each other. Shakespeare was stealing from everyone else. And that allows for rapid innovation when you have an open cooperative competition. Democratic sensibilities, this is really important.

Homer was talking to ordinary people. Shakespeare was talking to ordinary people. The problem with today's culture is there's a lot of market differentiation where if you feel that you are high class, your university professor, you don't want to talk to common people, you want to talk to other university professors. That leads to segmentation and segmentation. Free market, really important idea where, how do you know if you look good or not,

Well, in a university, you know if you're good or not, if a professor tells you're good or not. But how do you know the professor knows what he's talking about? The free market provides an objective feedback loop which forces you to constantly innovate and improve, right? How do you know you're good? Because people come and listen to you. They pay attention to your place.

They want to pay for your place. And it turned out that because of the free market on open corporate competition, Shakespeare proved to be the best. Okay. And the last idea is poet as profit. This is a really important idea where, okay, yes, Shakespeare became very wealthy because of the place he was producing. He came from a very common background.

He was not very wealthy. He didn't go to university. That's why today there are scholars who believe Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare. Because he didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge. Christopher Marlow went to Oxford or Cambridge, but not Shakespeare. So you have a lot of scholars who actually believe because he's not well educated. He could not have written a place he wrote. But what drove Shakespeare and what drove Homer is the idea that you have a divine mission to spread the truth.

So Shakespeare and Homer, they were rich, they were popular, they were famous, but they were not driven by money. They were driven by a divine messianic mission to transform the world. Does that make sense, guys? This is really important to understand. Great artists are driven by a meditative mission to change the world for the better. They're not driven by money or power or fame. All right, so having done that, let's recap and summarize the three great poets that have impacted Western civilization, okay, and compare and contrast the three.

All right, you have Homer, we found the Greek civilization. You have Dante, who we discussed in great detail this semester. He's the founder of modernity. And you have Shakespeare, who is the founder of the British Empire. All right? So, again, Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare were all Democrats in their heart. Homer was a roaming bard who went around the different polices to sing and entertain the masses.

Dante was revolutionary because he wrote the line comedy, not in Latin, which was the language of the educated elite, but in the vernacular in Tuscan so that ordinary people could access it. And by doing so, he transformed Tuscan into the official Italian language that is spoken today. Shakespeare, again, was a playwright. He wrote to entertain the masses. That's why in Shakespeare you have such, I mean, it's very offensive, someone's language, okay? All right.

They have different exceptions of language, though. All right, and this is very key for us to remember. For Homer, language is a window into the human soul. So go back to the Iliad and the Odyssey. It was really about what drove us humans. Achilles was driven by the thirst for fame. Odysseus was driven by his love of Penaphti and his son Tamakis. So both the Iliad and the Odyssey were tremendous psychological studies of what it means to be human.

You have Dante. Dante uses language as a portal into the mind of God. What is the universe? How did God create the universe? What does God want from us? That's a Levine comedy. Shakespeare is very different. Shakespeare creates a new idea of language as a reality onto itself.

A reality onto itself. So what I mean by that is with Shakespeare, it's not a really deep meaning. very hard to find deep truths in Shakespeare but the language is beautiful and this is the culture we live in today where you know what people write novels they use beautiful language beautiful description great imagery but there's really not great truths deep truths grand truths in the novels that are written and produced today okay so let me give you an example of what it means to have language as reality to you onto itself.

So let me show you what this means. And to do so, I'm going to use a different poet. His name is John Keats. Okay, John Keats. And this is from his most famous poem to Autumn, which is considered the Greatish English poem of all time. So let's read it together, and then I'll show you how this is a reality onto itself.

Where are the songs of spring? Aye, where are they? Think not of them, thou has thy music to you. While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day and touch the stubble plains with rosy hue, then in a wulf of choir the small gnats mourn among the river shallows, borne aloft or sinking as like when lives or dies. And foreground lambs loud bleat from hilly-born, head-scargette

sing and now with treble soft, the red breast whistles from a garden crop and gathering swallows, twitter in the skies. Okay, so it's beautiful. What does it mean? All right. I'm going to show you what it means, okay? This is language as reality onto itself. It is language visualizing a new world. All right?

So you see how the words match, right? while barred clouds bloom the soft dying day and touch the stubble plains with rosy hue. It's a painting, guys. All right? This one sentence, it's a painting of a new world that you can see in your heart. Also, then in a welfare, the small gnats mourn among diverse shallows, borne aloft or sinking as a light wind lives or dies. You can see the music within this picture, right?

This is a, not just a picture, but it's a world that you can access. It's moving, it's alive. It's a power of language. Next sentence. And full-grown lambs, loud beat from hilly-born, head-tricket sing, and now with treble soft, the red breast whistfuls from a garden and croft. Okay, so you see what's happening where this poetry, it is entering your soul.

It is activating all your emotions, all your senses. There's the visual, there's a sound, there's a smell, there's a touch, and gathering swallows, twitter in the sky. Okay? What's what poetry is? Poetry is the expression of a new world that you can access. all right and when you access it when you enter it it transforms your soul and your imagination your capacity to think feel and imagine does that make sense you guys all right so let's summarize what we

learn okay Shakespeare turns English into the world's linguistic internet a platform which all cultures ideas and worldviews can meet and cross-breed okay so Shakespeare transforming English into this extremely flexible beautiful memorable language which allows everyone to learn English well 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 in within the English language and communicate with each other there's a problem this there's a problem with this there's a problem with

The problem is this. But this exchange is mediated through Anglo-American civilization, which is at its heart, Utitarian, skeptical, and empirical. So when you embrace English, when you experience English, you're also experiencing British culture, history, and philosophy. And as we discussed, the three main philosophies of British culture are, Utitarian, skeptical, empirical utitarian 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 you know is things you experience all right so In other words, Anglo-American culture, even though it dominates the world, it's pretty lackluster. It's very narrow-minded. It's very practical. It's pretty mediocre. Okay?

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 and a Koreanianian. War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, the Germans have great philosophy. Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, we'll go into that later on, 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, I love Shakespeare. Lair 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 right I think Homer and Dante are the two greatest poets who ever lived all right so let me give an example of what I mean by how British culture is kind of narrow-minded. All right so this is considered the greatest epic in the English tradition called Paradise Laws by John Milton and it's really about Adam and Eve right why did Adam and Eve eat that forbidden fruit and why would we banish from the Garden of Eden and look it's 12 books which is

model of the great epics of integrity Homer and Virgil. And there are some parts of Paradise Lodge which are beautiful. I mean, I love Paradise Lottes. I've taught Paradise Loss before. But the reality is this, as an epic, as a grand vision of the world, it doesn't really work. Okay. I mean, like, I don't really think the plot, the vision of Paradise Loss.

as fully form and as grand as Homer and as Virgil and as Dante okay and so Paradise Lost you might have a chance to read it in college one day but it's a very limited and narrow-minded epic all right so so let's conclude all right so we did Britain today okay and I hope you understand British culture It's an island fortress. It sees itself as Heard Roman Empire. It is an Anglin religion. It's driven by

the empiricists and uterus and philosophies. And Shakespeare is the founder of this great civilization. Next class, we'll do America. Okay? And then after we do these two cultures that now dominate the world, we'll move on to the Germans and the Russians. Okay? That's the game plan. But what's today's class clear to you.

Do you understand Shakespeare now? Does this make sense? Okay? Any questions? Anything you're not clear about? Any questions? Okay, yeah. So, okay.

So the question is, what is, like, like, so Shakespeare is played off, is performed all the time, and you are forced to read Shakespeare in school. So where is, where do we get these plays from? Okay. So let me explain to you what. happening all right okay so Shakespeare's plays all right so when Shakespeare was

alive he didn't really publish his place okay he didn't publish his place and there are many reasons why he didn't publish his plays first of all in this culture at this time there's no copyright so if you publish your play and someone steals it too bad so you're not incentivized to publish your play second of People don't really read it, right? So there's really no market for his plays. So even if he were to publish his plays, he would not make money off it, okay?

So what he did was he wrote his plays down primarily for his actors to memorize. But the benefit of Amic Metameter is that actually the speeches are pretty easy to memorize. And when he was alive, Shakespeare was a national celebrity. He performed his place in front of the king and queen. He was very, very well known, extremely famous.

He was looked upon by the nobles, but, I mean, he was very, very wealthy. And he himself will go on to purchase a noble title for himself, okay? So he was extremely successful. When he was alive, people didn't really fully understand his genius, okay? It's only about 100 years, 20 years afterwards when people really appreciate his genius. And his play spread throughout Europe, especially to Germany. The Germans love Shakespeare, okay? And it was only after his death that people realized what a unique genius Shakespeare was. So after his death, his friends, and I don't remember

their names, okay, but his friends want to remember him. They want to memorize him, okay? So they start to publish his plays. It's something called the first folio. So basically, what they did was, okay, they took the notes from Shakespeare, so some surviving manuscripts, not complete, okay, but some of his notes.

They also got the actors to basically write down what they remember, okay? They remember a lot because these are actors. Actors have extremely good memories, okay? So they were able to remember exactly the speeches. And then they'll make edits, okay? And this is the first portfolio, okay? But as you can imagine, over time,

there'll be lots of additions and mistakes. All right. But so today, there are thousands of Shakespeare scholars, And they argue over certain words, did Shakespeare really have this word? Or was it a later addition, okay? And I mean, it's a really silly thing to do. Because as I explained to you, the genius of Shakespeare

was to imagine language as this very fluid, flexible, imaginative tool for you to experience reality onto itself, okay? So to argue, I mean, like, was it a dagger? or datter or dasher okay and people argue this I mean like doesn't really matter I mean like a lot of Shakespeare is just wordplay right I mean like there's really no deep truth in Shakespeare and quite honestly I mean like these words are not going to change the deeper meaning of Shakespeare okay so it's something that I think

overpaid English professors do okay just because they're nothing better to do okay they argue about what was the in the first Fort Leo what was edited out was added to they're trying to figure out what was Shakespeare's original intention and I mean Shakespeare think of him as a musician okay he's I mean like he's trying to sing beauty and truth but a lot of it is not intentional a lot of it's not conscious a lot of this is being driven by inspiration and intuition and imagination okay right So when we go back to Hamlet, the Seligui,

if we change a few words, it doesn't really change the meaning of the Seligui, okay? Right? Okay, doesn't make sense, Eva? Great question though, right? Any other questions? Yes. Okay, okay, so it's a great question, okay?

What means burden? Okay, this is a concept that was introduced during the age of imperialism, right? At the end, towards the end of the 19th century, Robert Kipling, the white man's burden. We have responsibility as white people to go and civilize to dark people, in Africa and in China and other places.

What's the connection is Shakespeare? Okay, first of all, Shakespeare was not interested in the world. He was very provincial. He was interested in London, and that was about it. I'm not even sure if he traveled, okay? This is a debate whether or not he actually speaks French and Latin.

He knows a bit of Latin, but this is a bit of Latin, but this is a debate whether or not he speaks French. So Shakespeare was not an imperilist. He was not a globalist. He didn't really care about the world. But within Shakespeare is British culture, okay? He wrote of histories, tragedies, and comedies. There's like 38 to 41 plays.

And together they are the encapsulation of British. of British culture, right? So as Britain was going out into the world and conquering people and colonizing nations, they need to explain why this was happening. Why are you going and killing people for like no particular reason? And this is why Shakespeare is important. Because Shakespeare allows them to say, well, do you have a Shakespeare? Do you have like 38 to 41 plays that are really written well if you don't then that means you're not civilized okay we have Shakespeare you don't have Shakespeare that means we're superior to you and therefore we will teach you Shakespeare we will educate you

in Shakespeare we will civilize you okay so this is not just Shakespeare there are other individuals as well okay but primarily Shakespeare is really the greatest cultural product of the British. Right? So that doesn't make sense, Echo. So Shakespeare himself was not an imperiless. He didn't really care about that sort of thing. But his legacy would be co-opted by British imperiless

in order to justify and explain whether going out and killing so many people around the world and stealing their resources. Right? Okay, but we'll discuss this when we enter the age of imperialism, which is towards the 19th century. And then this will lead us into the Great Wars, World War I and World War II. Okay. All right.

Any more questions? Yeah, I answered the question. Okay, great. So you're doing Othello in class, and you're looking at Othello from the perspective of race and identity and culture, right? Okay, so let's discuss how Shakespeare wrote his plays. So he wrote around 40 plays before he died at 52, which meant that he was basically producing one, two, three plays a year. That's a lot, guys. If you read Shakespeare, the themes are extremely diverse.

You have Othello, who is a moor who kills his wife. Desimona, but you also have Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar. Okay, so there's a wide range of his plays. And so the question is, how did he do it? Well, he was stealing it from everyone, okay? Remember, this is a market, there's a huge market for theater. There are dozens and dozens of really talented playwrights in London, in England who are producing wonderful works.

So he's just stealing these plots from, from different playwrights. But what makes Shakespeare unique and special and superior to these other playwrights is, first of all, his characters. He has a deep empathy for his characters. He goes into the mind of his characters and he says, if I'm this person, how would I behave?

So that's one thing that makes him unique. Second, as we discuss, is his use of language. the fluidity and the beauty, okay, and the flexibility of his language. Okay, and the last thing is the realism, which is he's trying to make the plot as realistic as possible. He's trying to remove the supernatural elements, okay? He's interested in psychology. So when you look at Othello, He's asking himself, why is it that a man who loves his wife, what could drive him to kill his wife? Okay? That's the question he's asking.

He doesn't see Othello as a black person in a foreign culture. He doesn't see it that way. He just sees, I want to ask myself a question. If you truly love a person, what would drive him to kill her? Okay? but because the theme is so universal it allows you to impose cultural readings okay so him himself was not interested in the issue of race culture and identity quite honestly at this time in history there's no such thing as race or identity okay

remember I kept I can on saying this but for most of you of your ministry we did not differentiate ourselves according to race we differentiate ourselves according to community okay so within England people didn't care about the French or the Germans they hate but but you know what they cared about each other and they hated each other remember the main conflict in England at this point is the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants okay so they weren't focused on the world they were focused on each other so these cultural readings come later they come from today Shakespeare himself was only interested in

psychology what drives us humans all right and you can see that benefits itself in Othello and in Hamlet all right and quite honestly I'll be honest to you I think it's really unfair to Shakespeare that we're doing this all right I mean like like like isn't it wouldn't be much more interesting class we stopped asking ourselves oh Othello was a black person so how black people persecuted and ask yourself Othello is a man of great achievement. He's a man of great, tremendous pride and honor. But is it possible that in certain circumstances,

this can be used against him? And that's the plot of Othello, which makes it a Greek tragedy, right? The Greeks were concerned about hubris, arrogance, fate. These are the questions that the Greeks were concerned about. So in many ways, Shakespeare saw himself as continuing the Greek legacy. All right? And the fact that we're focusing on questions like race, culture, identity, it sort of like degrades the play.

Because it's saying like, oh, if you're a black person, then you may always be manipulated and persecuted. And quite honestly, it's also reinforcing certain racial stereotypes about black people as very violent and emotional. So if I were to teach Othello, it's a great play, and I've never taught Othello, but I would focus more on the human aspect of a fellow as opposed to the racial aspect of a fellow. Does that make sense? Okay? Great. Any more questions? That's a great question. How is Shakespeare able to focus on human psychology given the fact that he's not well-educated? Okay, I will make the argument it is precisely because he's not well-educated that he focused on human psychology. Okay? When you are educated, you're educated into cultural adity

norms and values of the elite but if you're not educated then what you do is you observe humans as they are without prejudice you want to know you want to know how are we as humans and you have not been indoctrinated to believe believe certain certain things okay if you go to school you don't want school and you go to your university but first thing you're taught is only what educated people are capable of deep psychological insights and that's a prejudice that's a failing because Shakespeare never went to school he's able to see himself as equal to other people and therefore he's able to have tremendous empathy for

other people and therefore he's able to understand the psychology in his own psychology all right he's able to see people as a reflection of his own psychology and that's what drives his genius and that quite honestly that's what also what drove Homer okay so um i mean um i i hate to say this okay but i did go to yale university i said the english literature there so i spent a year studying shakespeare and um i was not impressed with the education i got at at yale because again the problem with one of these elite universities is you're taught to think in a very rigid way that inhibits your empathy

your curiosity and your own psychological understanding. Okay? In fact, I'll be honest to you. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and like to do research for these talks. I'm always impressed by how these self-taught historians know much more about history than these academics at Yale, Cambridge, Oxford,

Harvard okay but I mean that's that's something that I've observed I'm you're much better off talking to an individual who has a passion for history and he's who spent his entire life asking himself what is history but never really got a former education never got a doctorate in history as opposed to a Harvard PhD in history okay that's that's that's that's a hard lesson I learned in my life it was very hard for me from for accept because I am an elite graduate of of elite university. But what Shakespeare understood intuitively is,

no, it's the common people, the ordinary people, that's where the truth lies. Not in books, but in people. And that's what makes Shakespeare so great. He is first and foremost an anthropologist, a psychologist of people. He wants to understand how people think and behave. When you read this place, that's what

you experience for your. self okay he's really interested in the psychology of Iago dezimona and Othello okay that's a that's what he's curious about he's not interested in these structural forces that drive conflict and persecution among these people okay that comes later that that's what we do to Shakespeare today but back then he was only he was only interested in what it meant to be a human being okay okay Does that make sense? Michael?

Okay, great. Any more questions, guys? You want to ask more about Othello? I'd be happy to answer, even though my reading of Othello might be different from what you're being taught in class. Okay. Okay, so the question is,

how does Shakespeare develop his themes? Okay, so Othello, sorry. So Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, all these plays are well-known stories. Okay, there's really well-known stories. But Shakespeare, he is curious about people, all right? Because every day, if you work in a theater, you deal with people all the time, okay?

Your customers are people, your actors are people. And what he discovered over time is people are very complicated, people are very emotional. People have their own psychology, there's diversity among people. Okay, and so what he does, that's really interesting is he takes these legends and he combines them together, okay? He takes these legends and he takes his observations of human individuals and it combines them together to create Shakespeare. In other words, what he does, that's unique, is he takes these characters, King Lear, Hammond, he turns them into people he's observed.

When you do that, you get a lot of interesting psychology. Right, so let's imagine you become Hamlet and you were in a certain sense where your father has come and told and give you a mission to go kill your uncle because he's sleeping with, you know, your mother and how would you behave? Well, you probably like Hamlet and you'd be like very confused, you'd be very distraught, okay? Does that make sense? Same with Othello where, let's just say that you're this great. champion you're this great hero well other people are me jealous of you right if other people are going to be jealous of you what they're going to do is figure out how to get back at you okay so it's not a racial issue it's a human issue if you're the top student

in the school and every day the teachers are praising you right i'm pretty sure that's just going to hate your guts that's a fellow right that's a human It's not a racial thing. It's not because he's black. I mean, it's because he's such an accomplished individual. Does that make sense? All right. Great.

Okay. So next class, we do the American Revolution. All right.