This past week, I spent not one but two rather lengthy layovers in the Denver airport. Being the industrious person that I am, I decided to begin reading Hamlet (mostly in preparation for a college essay comparing the views of justice in Hamlet and the Oresteia, but it’s been on my list for awhile).
I try not to be snobbish about literature guides, but the more I read and learn about literature, the more I find myself disagreeing with them. My edition of Hamlet is a well-acclaimed one (I won’t name the publisher since I’m about to bash it), and yet I still found myself disagreeing with some the provided definitions for more obscure words.
To be fair, I’m no expert in Shakespearean English, and so it’s entirely possible I’m imposing modern understandings of certain words back onto the text in a way that’s incorrect or inappropriate. But even making that allowance, this edition veered sharply away from a metaphorical understanding of the text, instead defining words in a way that makes merely literal sense.
In a particularly glaring instance of this, Scene Four of Act One (in which Hamlet meets the ghost of his father) opens with Hamlet saying, “The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.” His friend Horatio replies, “It is a nipping and an eager air.”
Shakespeare can be incredibly confusing in places.
This is not one of them.
And yet, my edition of Hamlet helpfully explains that shrewdly means “keenly, intensely,” and eager means “sharp.” (Just in case anyone was confused and thought this was a mild breeze. Perhaps the glossary should have clarified that “bites” and “nipping” are used to indicate the wind is blowing hard, and that Shakespeare doesn’t actually think the air has teeth even though the poor ignorant man was born before the Scientific Revolution—alas.)
Again, I’m not a scholar of Elizabethan literature. But I read enough—and, perhaps more importantly, I love words enough—to be dissatisfied with these editorial notes.
Maybe that is what shrewdly and eager meant at the time of Shakespeare—plenty of other words have shifted in meaning in the last five hundred years. But I still take issue with the fact that the editors thought it was necessary to clarify that.
After all, if a wind can bite, why can it not be shrewd? If it nips, why can it not nip eagerly? The literal meaning of this text is perfectly clear to the intelligent reader (and I don’t mean myself—the average fifth grader would understand from those two lines that it’s cold and windy outside). Replacing Shakespeare’s delicate use of metaphor with words that have the same literal equivalent does not clarify the text—instead, it strips away the beauty that has earned Shakespeare the title of the greatest English poet of all time.
We lose a part of our humanity when we are unable to view the world metaphorically. Metaphor, properly used, does not detract from the literal function of the story (which is to convey the plot), but rather adds to it. Shakespeare’s wind in this scene is cold and sharp—but it is also shrewd and eager, rather like Hamlet himself, perhaps even like Hamlet’s murderous uncle. In the hands of a masterful poet, the wind becomes a character, without ever ceasing to be wind.
So why am I harping on a seemly petty concern about a scholarly and well-researched edition of Hamlet? And why on earth would I go so far as to say that the loss of metaphor takes our humanity with it?
Out of all God’s earthly creation, humans alone are poets—makers of things, in the Greek sense of the word. We are created in the image of God, and so we likewise create in holy mimicry of our Creator God. But our God is a God of beauty and not of practicality alone, and we don’t stop at building houses or writing instructional manuals. No, we fill our windows with stained glass and our bookshelves with volumes of poetry.
But the modern age—and even the postmodern—sees humans as nothing more than a genetic fluke. Where we used to be a little lower than the angels, we are now a little higher than the apes. And why in the world would metaphor matter if we are only thinking animals?
Much recent fiction is either highly literal or else completely disconnected from reality. We as a society seem to have lost the ability both to write and to enjoy a story that is literally sound while also metaphorically rich. And I suspect much of the reason rests in a modernist view of Scripture.
For most of history, Christians read the Bible on multiple levels, seeing it as literally true while also recognizing the richness of its symbolism. Around two hundred years ago, these interpretations of Scripture diverged. Rationalist Christians saw the Bible as a nice collection of nursery tales with good morals, while fundamentalists insisted every word of the Bible was literally true, sometimes doing away with metaphor altogether.
But as one of my college professors is fond of saying, why can’t it be both?
To the faithful Christian, the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God—a God who loves symbolism and word play. The fact that a Bible story is metaphorical does not mean it isn’t historically and literally true as well. I believe that there was a real shepherd boy named David who killed a real giant named Goliath and went on to rule a real nation called Israel. But I also cannot read the prophetic poetry of the shepherd-king without reflecting on the Good Shepherd who is my prophet, priest, and king.
On a societal level, we have lost the ability to read literature because we have lost the ability to read Scripture. The editors who clarify that eager means “sharp” would, in another field of study, insist that six days really means six eons, that “this is My body” means “this represents My body,” and that the resurrection of Christ is a lovely symbol of our spiritual eternal life even though the bones of Jesus of Nazareth are still rotting in a Palestinian tomb.
Faithful Christians have taken a courageous stand against enormous societal pressure to read the Bible as mere symbolism. For a time, that meant some rejected Biblical symbolism altogether, but I think we’ve returned to a better middle ground—seeing the Bible as historically and literally true, while also appreciating the rich imagery and symbolism God has placed throughout the greatest Story.
Dear Christians, it’s time to reclaim literature as well—to read it as great Christian authors have always meant it to be read. It’s time to declare that a Ring can be a ring and original sin and power and technology all at once, and that this makes The Lord of the Rings richer and not poorer. It’s time to declare that Mr. Darcy can be both a deeply flawed man and a picture of Christ’s sacrificial love for us (and Lizzy Bennet). It’s time to declare that Lewis’s foursome of children can be both a psychologically realistic group of siblings and personifications of the four classical virtues. (As the wise Professor said, “It’s all in Plato!”)
And as anyone who’s ever stepped out into a brisk autumn day would know, the eagerness of the air need not be reduced to an antiquated and irrelevant metaphor. As Hamlet tells Horatio in the following scene, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
And likewise, as all true lovers of Shakespeare—and all great literature—well know, there is more to an excellent story than merely an excellent plot. If you don’t believe me, try visiting the Denver airport sometime and see if you can really deny that our glorious Western winter wind is eager.