Is it nobler in the mind to leave or remain?
Would William Shakespeare vote to Leave, or tick the Britain Stronger in Europe box? Today is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and the nation needs to know: where, exactly, does the Bard stand on Brexit?
Shakespeare has already entered the debate: in February Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, tweeted: ‘‘To be, or not to be together, that is the question.’’ The Eurosceptic Tory MEP Daniel Hannan immediately fired back: ‘‘So much sound and fury, so little outcome.’’
Having invented some 1700 of our common words, often by connecting other words, Shakespeare would undoubtedly have approved of the term ‘‘Brexit’’. But like all of his work, Shakespeare’s attitude towards Europe is full of ambiguity and nuance.
At first sight, Shakespeare would appear to be a natural Eurosceptic, an intensely patriotic Englishman devoted to the idea of an independent nation, with barely a good word for continental foreigners. The couplet at the end of King John, an expression of new-forged national pride, could stand as a rallying cry for the Vote Leave campaign: ‘‘Nought shall make us rue,/If England to itself do rest but true.’’
Boris Johnson is writing a biography of Shakespeare, and it is surely only a matter of time before the most prominent Brexiteer begins spouting John of Gaunt’s soliloquy from Richard II: ‘‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle . . . this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England . . .’’
Shakespeare was spectacularly rude about almost all Europeans: ‘‘insolent Greece’’, ‘‘France is a dog-hole’’, ‘‘hasty Germans and blunt Hollanders’’, ‘‘the bragging Spaniard’’, and ‘‘rotten Denmark’’. The history plays are rife with anti-European propaganda.
The ‘‘confident and over-lusty French’’ come in for a particularly brutal drubbing, variously depicted as arrogant, touchy, pompous, comically unable to speak English properly, and treacherous: ‘‘ ’Tis better using France than trusting France,’’ says Hastings in Henry VI, Part III.
An Englishman, speaking for England, Shakespeare has come to represent wider Britishness, and the British Isles.
Yet Shakespeare himself has undoubtedly been stronger in Europe, where he is regarded not as a narrow propagandist for Little England (a phrase that appears in Henry VIII), but a playwright for all humanity and an internationalist of vital importance to European identity. The playwright was profoundly knowledgeable about European culture, notably that of Italy, where he set a third of his plays. Shakespeare probably spoke decent Italian, read the works of Giovanni Boccaccio and Matteo Bandello, and may have fallen in love with Italy in the form of the ‘‘dark lady’’ addressed in the sonnets — possibly an amorous tip of the hat to the wife of John Florio, who taught the Elizabethan court to speak Italian.
Italian Shakespeare scholars have even tried to claim him as their own, arguing that Shakespeare was a Sicilian named Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza or Scrollalanza (which broadly translates as ‘‘shake spear"), who moved to London to escape the Inquisition.
Shakespeare’s writing was absorbed with astonishing speed into the non-English speaking cultures of Europe, but nowhere faster or more completely than Germany, where he was adopted as German in all but nationality. August Wilhelm Schlegel called him ‘‘ganz unser’’ (entirely ours), while Goethe described Shakespeare’s dramatic world as ‘‘a huge, animated fair’’. German productions of Romeo and Juliet were touring Europe by the first decade of the 17th century.
Shakespeare is a good European, beloved of Europeans, who nonetheless champions England ‘‘against the envy of less happier lands’’ and mocks Europeans with mordant wit. On Europe, as on most matters, Shakespeare brilliantly presents both sides of an argument, without coming down hard on either. He was no ideologue, and yet politicians of every hue have attempted to recruit him down the ages.