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PARTISAN REVIEW
Aren't the ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of Othello with us still? Aren't
there still politicians who, like Cassius, have a "lean and hungry look"? Don't
we still have to find ways, as Hamlet said, to "prick the conscience of a king"?
The value of the past is not that it is past in the sense of long gone,
over with, but that it is present and alive. In conversation, we and
Shakespeare are contemporaries. He speaks to our condition and we to his.
In her autobiography
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings-think
about that
title for a moment-Maya Angelou writes about preparing for a recitation
in school. I'd like to close my remarks with her story:
Momma (as I called my grandmother) asked me, "Sister, what are you
planning to render?" So I told her, "A piece from Shakespeare,Momma."
Momma asked, "Now sister, who is this very Shakespeare?" I had to tell
her that Shakespeare was white, and Momma felt the less said about
whites the better, and
if
we didn't mention them at all, maybe they'd just
get up and leave. I couldn't lie to her, so I told her, "Momma, it's a piece
written by William Shakespeare who is white, but he's dead and has
been dead for centuries!" Now, I thought that she would forgive
him
that little idiosyncracy. Momma said, "Sister, you will render a piece of
Mr.
Langston Hughes,
Mr.
Countee Cullen,
Mr.
James Weldon Johnson,
or
Mr.
Paul Laurence Dunbar. Yes ma'am, little mistress, you will."
Well I did but years later when I physically and psychologically left
that country, that condition, which is Stamps, Arkansas..
.I
found
myself and still find myself, whenever I like, stepping back into
Shakespeare. Whenever I like, I pull him to me. He wrote it for me:
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope.
What I most enjoy contented least....
Of course he wrote it for me; that is a condition of the black woman.
Of course, he was a black woman. I understand that. Nobody else
understands it, but I know that William Shakespeare was a black
woman. That is the role of art in life.
Peter
Wood: Following Shakespeare is a bit difficult. I would like to dedi–
cate my remarks this afternoon to Mr. Eric Coyle, whom you may have
