Out, Out, Brief Candle!

Today is St. Georges day, the day that we commonly observe both the birth and death of William Shakespeare.  To many, Shakespeare is the epitome of literary culture, particularly when it comes to his plays.  History is an interesting thing, it twists and turns in such unexpected ways.
When Shakespeare first appeared on the stage, he was hailed, more or less as a hack, who was making cheap knockoffs of work of the true geniuses of the day (notably Christopher Marlowe).  Indeed when one looks at Shakespeare's work on it's own merit, it is generally not terribly inventive.  He writes histories, tragedies and comedies and he's not above a little pandering to the audience with bawdy humor.
I thought about this as I was watching an advertisement for yet another re-make of Godzilla that's due out soon, and yet another edition of the Amazing Spiderman series. Don't get me wrong, I love me a good superhero movie, and endless remakes of old horror flicks, and I'm married to someone who can watch chick flicks with the most absurd premises and deliberately manipulative plot lines that you can possibly imagine, and it doesn't mean we're stupid.  What it means is that we like to be entertained.  I have watched some movies that break new ground; that tell really novel stories; that challenge me to think about the human condition; and when they were done, I thought, "wow, I'm glad that's over."
I would like to tell you that I watch nothing but inventive independent films that push the boundaries of cinema as an art form, but honestly, the last thing I rented was Thor, The Dark World, partly because I have a ten year old son, but partly because I just like watching stuff explode.
What Bill Shakespeare did, perhaps better than any writer ever, was slip some really wonderful words into his pandering, money-making machines.  I suspect he knew that there is actually very little artistic integrity in starving to death, and I think he would be somewhat amused or perhaps bemused by the fact that his plays are now considered by most high school English teachers to be the zenith of English literature.  What he did was present his genius in digestible chunks.
His blasts of witty dialogue are the foundation for the great masters of the golden age of cinema, think of the banter between Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep, that was none other than William Faulkner.  I can picture Ingrid Bergman delivering Rosalind's line from As You Like It: "I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine."
The histories and tragedies have those famous monologues that are the forerunners the rousing speeches in the war movies.  If you ever see Kenneth Branagh's cinematic renderings of Shakespeare's work, you will understand that plays were simply the movies of the Elizabethan era, and as such they had to satisfy a certain commercial appeal, which means catering to the masses.
And if you think that the masses were more literate, or more intelligent and discerning than they are today, you are sorely mistaken.  Shakespeare includes enough fart jokes, insults and sexual innuendo to keep the pub crowd happy, and then he slips in these monologues that really deal with our common humanity.  I guess that's what sets him apart.  Maybe that's why we read his stuff, instead of Marlowe, in high school English classes.
There is no shame in making art that people, even the low-brow, and unwashed, actually enjoy.  That's why Nicholas Sparks and Stephen King are freaking billionaires, they make stuff that is marginally valuable as literature, but people eat it up.  People that insist on a stringent artistic vision regardless of what people want, usually die broke.  There's no doubt in my mind that William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson are better writers than George R.R. Martin, but Game of Thrones is making that dude super rich and Thompson needed Johnny Depp to finance his funeral (granted that was a work of art too).
Ultimately Shakespeare's legacy is not reducible to just the things he wrote, he has become a cultural foundation stone.  And I suppose we ought to get used to the fact that our culture has been profoundly shaped by a man who was not above going for some cheap laughs with a page long fat joke (Comedy of Errors) or numerous thinly veiled innuendos that would definitely earn an R-rating.
Like it or not, mass appeal is something you probably need to consider when setting out on an artistic adventure.  It doesn't mean you have to dumb down, or always take the low road, but it does mean you should probably know your audience.  Shakespeare did, and he is now the Immortal Bard.