The Company We Keep...My Year With Wil
It has been said that we are the average of the five
people we spend the most time with. True or not, certainly our choice of
companions, and the time we decide to spend with them, molds us, shapes our
character, and thus carries moral and ethical import.
This is also true of the books and authors we choose to
read, to spend time with. And so it was with some trepidation that one year ago
I decided to devote 2022 to the reading of Shakespeare, all of Shakespeare, the
plays, the sonnets, and the lyric poetry. All of it, every word.
I was encouraged in this endeavor by my eldest daughter
Sara, who completed the task several years ago, after which she gave me her 3300
page “the Norton Shakespeare” and the outline laying out the daily readings. I
knew then I had no choice, at some point I would have to read Shakespeare, all
of it.
Of course, I was familiar with Shakespeare. Our paths crossed
in high school, but we never became friends – we never spent much time
together. It was not that I didn’t like him, it was just not the thing to do
back then. And few of my friends thought of him as a friend, so of course neither did I. I appreciated
his plays as movies (“Romeo and Juliet”) and some of the sonnets, but I was
never moved to make him a good friend. But now I decided to get better
acquainted, to become friends.
So on January 1, 2022 I opened a new Moleskine journal and
wrote: “January 1, 2022, the year of Shakespeare. After decades of delay, I
take up Shakespeare, all of him. Prodded by Sara my path through the Norton
Shakespeare will be guided by Harold Bloom’s “Shakespeare, The Invention of the
Human.” I will write down what I learn – both large and small – so as not to
waste a year, and to honor the Bard.”
Somewhat to my surprise from the first day forward, I was
intrigued, hooked and looking forward to the next day. Here was a man I wanted
to spend more time with. From the beginning I was learning history, new words,
philosophy, and wisdom about living, loving, dying, and the myriad forms and
complexities of human behavior. Mostly, I was living in the plays, not just a
spectator but feeling the emotions and living the lives of the characters. They
were as human as any living being, with all the beauty and blemishes. Non
perfect, all real.
And of course, with any friend, you also meet his friends
and acquaintances. And so it was with Shakespeare. Through him I met English
historians who inspired his plays, and the characters of his plays, and became
reacquainted with Homer, Plutarch, Ovid, the Roman, playwrights, Plautus and
Terrence, and of course, there was always Aristotle, Plato, and Montaigne in
the background, among many others. And of course, there were the hundreds of
characters that he brought to life, as alive as any human being, Hamlet, King
Lear, Iago, Henry the IV, Richard II, Juliet, Falstaff, Cleopatra, Macbeth,
etc. This was good company to keep.
In the sphere of human relationships, friendship is
unique. We do not choose our mother, father, siblings, nor our schoolmates, or
for that matter, our work colleagues, but we do, or at least we should, choose
our friends, those that we have no obligation to spend time with, but freely do
so, for all the benefits that friendship brings. Those choices reflect who we
are, who we think we are, or who we want to be or become. They shape and
develop our character by their example, interests, companionship, generosity,
honesty, integrity, and love. In short, our choice of friends is of the utmost
moral and ethical import, and yet we often if ever think of it in those terms.
Indeed, it is fair to say that developing true friendship is or should be, one
of the essential goals of the good life. Or, as Aristotle said, “[W]ithout
friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” And so it
is with the authors and books we choose to read, or not read, to those that we
are willing to devote hours, if not days, of our lives.
In previous eras it was common to speak of books as
friends and the subject of friendship and its importance to the good life was a
popular conversational and philosophical topic. It no longer is, but should be.
In the current culture, the word “friend“ has become so watered down. (think ‘Facebook
friend’) as to be almost meaningless. And yet nurturing friendships is still recognized as one of
the main goals of a good life. In our current environment it is rare to have
anyone speak about books or authors as their friends, despite the fact that on
closer investigation, we can see the connection between our true friends –
those that make us better – and the authors and books we treasure, and choose
to spend time with.
When we take up a book, we are accepting and trusting the author’s
invitation to enter and spend our valuable time in another world, to meet new
ideas, experience characters and the lives of others. If the invitation proves
false, or unworthy of our time, we can put the book down, we can move on, just
as with a friend or acquaintance who disappoints. But when the author becomes
our true friend, we are willing to forsake time with family, friends, or in
other activities, to be alone with them in their world. An imaginary world seemingly as real as the physical one we inhabit. We take up temporary residence there with the author, to experience other places, ideas and characters.
And so it was with me and Shakespeare. We spent time
together every day. (save a few holidays) for one year, and now we are best
friends. We had our disagreements (why all the senseless killing in Titus
Andronicus?), and disappointed (did Othello really have to kill his wife
Desdemona, and then himself?). But I’ve never spent time or learned more from
anyone as I did from Shakespeare, who I can now call Wil. He taught me many things, but most importantly he was a daily reminder of what it means to be
human. Or as Harold Bloom argues: “… the plays remain the outward limit of
human achievement, aesthetically, cognitively, in certain ways morally, even
spiritually…. Shakespeare will go on explaining us, in part, because he
invented us….”
Our best friends help us discover who we are and who we want to become, and
undoubtedly Shakespeare has given me that gift over the last 365 days. I am
better for having spent my year with Wil, and I expect to keep his company in
the years to come. After all, to paraphrase Aristotle, it is vitally important
to abide the company we keep. And there was no better company in 2022 than Wil
Shakespeare.
-Dominick Graziano
