How Shakespeare conveys his meaning through our emotional involvement

The real value of a Shakespearean play is that its meaning is conveyed through our emotional involvement in the drama. Shakespeare conveys the meaning of his plays by making us live through them. The message of a Shakespearean play is not conveyed intellectually; it is experienced. 

To truly imbibe the message of a Shakespearean play, we thus need to feel and breathe the life of the drama as though it were real. We must plunge ourselves fully into the action and live through the performance. This is the experience of a true mystical theatre. It is learning through emotional participation, an encounter that always leaves a deeper impression than mere textbook learning. This initiatic quality is the very nature of the esoteric art of Shakespeare.

Let us look at how this works in The Comedy of Errors which was discussed here in my earlier post at: https://kenneth-chan.com/uncategorized/the-meaning-of-the-comedy-of-errors/

Recall that the real error—that the play focuses on—is our distorted perception of reality because we mistake the artificial labels—that we bestow upon ourselves—as being inherently real. So real, in fact, that one’s life can be forfeit for merely possessing the wrong label! (In Egeon’s case, the possession of the label “Syracusian” has resulted in his death sentence.) This error of reifying our labels is a tragedy that, in the real world, has caused wars and the death of millions throughout history.

To illustrate what I mean by Shakespeare conveying his meaning through our emotional involvement, let us look at a passage which is essentially the culmination of the play towards the end of The Comedy of Errors. Here, in Act V Scene 1, Egeon, on the way to his execution, spots his son, the Ephesian Antipholus.

In this poignant scene where Egeon pleads with the Ephesian Antipholus to recognize him—Shakespeare impresses upon our inner being the deeper meaning of the play. It is an emotional appeal, at a subconscious level, to our deeper psyche to appreciate the play’s main message—that concerning our misperception of reality and its profound spiritual significance.

Having been separated from Egeon since he was a baby, the Ephesian Antipholus naturally has no recollection of his father. But here’s the dramatic point: Egeon is Antipholus’s father, and he is now appealing to his son to recognize this to save his life.

Egeon’s life has been declared forfeit because of a mere label. The Duke, Antipholus, and the Ephesians readily recognize the label “Syracusian,” and falsely attribute so much reality to the label that even a man’s life is forfeit because of it. Yet, they are all ignorant of the real filial bond Egeon has with Antipholus. Shakespeare thus provides us with a powerful analogy of our real situation in life: we mistake labels as being real, labels that often demarcate and separate us, while we remain ignorant of the spiritual link that binds us.

In this culminating passage of the play, Egeon’s appeal to Antipholus progressively takes on an agonizing emotional intensity. Eventually he suggests that Antipholus may have difficulty recognising him because he has aged.

Egeon:

O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last,

And careful hours with time’s deformed hand

Have written strange defeatures in my face,

But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?

Both Antipholus and Dromio naturally still deny that they know him. Egeon continues to plead in anguished desperation. It seems impossible that he is to die over a label because his son refuses to save him. Egeon’s pain is profound as he is unable to comprehend why his son would not help him.

Egeon:

Not know my voice! O time’s extremity,

Hast thou so crack’d and splitted my poor tongue

In seven short years that here my only son

Knows not my feeble key of untuned cares?

Though now this grained face of mine be hid

In sap-consuming winter’s drizzled snow,

And all the conduits of my blood froze up,

Yet hath my night of life some memory,

My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left,

My dull ears a little use to hear.

All these old witnesses—I cannot err—

Tell me thou art my son Antipholus.

The anguish in Egeon’s plea to his son is palpable. It reflects the pain that would be evident in the wise who perceive correctly how we, in real life, fail to acknowledge the spiritual bond that unites us while being misled by the fallacy of attaching reality to labels that demarcate and separate us, even at times plunging us into mortal conflict.

In Egeon’s heart-rending plea for Antipholus to recognize him, we have the dramatic climax of the play. Here, Shakespeare presents an emotional appeal to our inner psyche to realize the tragedy of falsely reifying our labels. It is this key error that often splinters our spiritual unity into one of shattered strife and conflict.

This error of mistaking our labels as the reality is the prime error in The Comedy of Errors, and Shakespeare makes us experience it emotionally via Egeon’s desperate plea for his life. This is what makes Shakespeare’s plays such an important gift to humanity. Experiencing the meaning of Shakespeare’s plays is almost akin to learning by direct personal experience.

A full exploration of how Shakespeare conveys his meaning in The Comedy of Errors can be found in my book: The Mystical Art of Shakespeare Volume I: The Meaning of Much Ado About Nothing & The Comedy of Errors. (https://kenneth-chan.com/shakespeare/the-mystical-art-of-shakespeare-volume-i/  )