Hamlet Africana

The concept of something being universal is always some sort of vain comfort in a world devoid of all meanings, but the ones we impose upon it. In “Shakespeare in the Bush” we see an ethnologists attempt to take a “timeless” classic of our culture and bring it to another. The struggles she has in trying to present it to them are immense. This was fascinating as one could easily repeat this experiment a thousand times in a thousand more cultures. “Anthropological Study of Literature; a Study of the Timeless Classics of Our Culture, as Applied to Another.” It seems like it would be a good book title.

I wonder how applicable classics of another culture really would be to try as well, Camus’ The Fall, a story of a lost lawyer turned ‘judge’ in Amsterdam, may have certain themes we can all mostly recognize, but as our culture drifts farther away we wonder if even common occidental literature could remain timeless among each small group. I think this misinterpretation of the term timeless is the route cause of the problem. Themes and motifs are only as good as the circumstances they are structured around. Well we may enjoy an ancient literature we know little of the circumstances that it was structured around. The need to study the actual goings on to properly picture the text of that moment is crucial to understanding the meaning of that literature.

I feel the article was entertaining and roused a lot of really interesting questions I would love to find the answers to. The scene of the anthropologist stopping in the middle of the story to take notes on madness was particularly funny. If the experiment had been tried with another one of Shakespeare’s plays like “The Merchant of Venice” or “Richard III” would the same reaction come about? Especially since each play had certain subtle motives. Like Richard III, a propaganda play to reinforce the current monarchy’s position against its former opponent.