Players and Spectators
June 24, 2005
The Washington Post ran two parallel stories today. The story on the left was about Rumsfeld coming under heat on the Hill, while on the right was a story about the Supreme Court ruling on property seizures. Both stories were about events that unfolded a few blocks from us, yet we felt no closer than anyone else in America to these events.. I mean, they might have occurred 1000 miles from here for all we could tell. That central picture of the aftermath of an explosion in Baghdad seems equally foreign.
Nothing could put in better perspective our role in the workings of this country.. It is no role at all. My wife has her Ph.D., and I am almost there, and we certainly have opinions on political topics, but we have no input or say in what happens here beyond our votes. We are spectators to all these events that grab headlines and shape our country.
I am not so sure that being a spectator is not exactly the right position. The ideals of our culture push us toward becoming a “player”.. taking up a grand role. But I find that push philosophically suspect. Certainly past philosophers have cast themselves explicitly into the role of spectator, and shunned the demand to be a player on any stage. Their goal was to drop the guise and learn to watch, to see.
After letting Emily disappear each morning into the Folger Library, I finally got a chance to enter with her.. not into the library, but into the small museum which had an exhibit on David Garrick, the 18th century actor who brought Shakespeare to life on the stage.. and had a hand in re-christening Shakespeare as the Bard. He brought a higher level of naturalism to the stage than had previously been present, staying in character throughout the play and showing a broad range of emotions.
Garrick managed to lodge his characters in the mind of the London public. The strength of these representations can be seen in the way certain physical stances gained an iconic status and were reproduced in prints or even on cups and platters. The picture on the promotional poster hanging outside the Folger portrays Garrick as Hamlet at the moment when he views the ghost of his father. With pictures like this we are present in the creation of Shakespeare.. or rather with the imagining of Shakespeare which continues to inform our own expectations.
From the letters of Garrick, his books, and the reports about him, it is plain that he was not only a player on the popular stage, but also a player in the social world of London. He knew the important people, got the right financial backers.. Yet I always get the feeling that such players are very much the pawns of their time.. so much about Garrick is interesting only from an historical perspective. Whereas a man like William Blake.. not too much later, and certainly no player on a grand stage.. seems immeasurably more free.