A talk by Marjorie Garber, William R Kenan Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University

13 February 2016, part of King's Shakespeare Festival

Review by Toonika Guha, MA, Culture and Creative Industries

Shakespeare is probably one of the most celebrated figures in the history of English Literature, and holds the status of almost a modern day celebrity. There have been many attempts to ‘know’ the man behind the pen. In her talk at the series of ‘What You Will’ lectures at King’s College London, Marjorie Garber broke down for us what ‘desperately seeking Shakespeare’ entails, even as we celebrate 400 years of The Bard. Thus, in a way, this talk was particularly interesting as it was rather self reflexive.

Through her talk, she laid down many methods by which there have been attempts to ‘know’ Shakespeare, methods that had been employed by scholars across the globe to create a coherent tapestry of who the man was supposed to be. However, as Garber lucidly explained, there indeed is no way of knowing. Speaking of a ‘certain kind of fiction’ that Shakespeare has grown to become, Garber explained that it is virtually impossible to map a perception of the real man. As Garber began her lecture, she happily surrendered herself to this inability to ‘know’. She seemed to revel in this instability, which opens up a multitude of methods one may employ in an attempt to understand Shakespeare.

Despite this open-ended approach of Shakespeare, the lecture seemed to be predicated upon Shakespeare as an ideal. That is, despite the fact that Garber showed a degree of comfort with multiplicity in the Shakespearian identity, there was still the presumed greatness of The Bard that the lecture centered around.

Garber used this discussion to further her lecture, talking next about the various ways in which Shakespeare studies have progressed over the years, often in rather unconventional methods. In order to do this, she divided the next half of her lecture into segments titled Shakespeare CSI, Shakespeare DNA, Shakespeare DVD and Shakespeare MIA. While the first three sections led the audience through an array of unconventional ways in which Shakespeare is being studied such as DNA studies, the last section brought her lecture a full circle where she once again acknowledged the inability to truly ‘know’ a man as historically celebrated as Shakespeare. This she concluded by saying, “Every age gets the Shakespeare it wants or perhaps even the Shakespeare it deserves”.