Thoughts on “How to Think Like Shakespeare”

I recently had the pleasure of reading Scott Newstok’s How to Think Like Shakespeare—  Lessons from a Renaissance Education—  and cannot recommend it enough. With distance learning via Zoom completely redefining my education as a high school and college student, I am compelled by Newstok’s argument, drawing inspiration from the life and times of the Bard, to present what a lifelong education can be. 

Author Scott Newstok is a professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College in Memphis Tennessee. Broken into fourteen chapters, How to Think Like Shakespeare utilizes the words of Shakespeare himself, as well as thinkers including William Blake, Martin Luther King Jr., and Virginia Woolf. Newstok expertly weaves in his own observations as a college educator and parent into his work, balancing anecdote with fact and narrative. It is an entirely manageable and engaging read for students (of every age), educators, and parents. I found each main theme of the fourteen chapters interesting and thought-provoking; I wanted to share my favorite quotes and takeaways for this post. 

1. Of Thinking
   • Newstok openly criques the current education system that emphasizes a measurable depth of skills over what he argues to be far more worthwhile: thinking.
   • “While we point to thinkers—  Leonardo, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Curie—  who model the disciplined, independent, questing intellect we claim to revere, we enforce systems ensuring that our own young people could never emulate them.”
   • Additionally, he quotes one of my personal favorite Ted Talks, Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity.” 
   • He points to studying Shakespeare in arguing for the value of critical thinking: “…But Shakespeare’s thinking does demand a deliberate engagement with the past to help you make up your mind in the present.”

2. Of Ends
   • Borrowing from Biron’s jest, “What is the end of study” (Love’s Labor’s Lost, 1.1.55), Newstok poses the question of why we learn, “to what ends.” He divulges into criticism of an education aimed at assessments (quantifiable learning), rather than for the simple pleasure of learning and bettering ourselves.
   • “As W.E.B. Du Bois challenged us: Is the end of study to earn meat? Or to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes? I’m worried we’ve tilted too much toward the utilitarian end—  study as the means to other ends, not for the enlargement of human capacities.”
3. Of Craft
   • In this section, Newstok redefines education as a craft, which “more accurately describes (and celebrates) thinking, whether in Shakespeare’s era or ours.”  Drawing upon the Renaissance ideal of craft being associated with higher learning, education is an ongoing process requiring training, practice, mentorship, and, ultimately, creating something. I particularly enjoyed Newstok’s anecdote of interacting with a self-taught piano tuner that used a lighter to fix a decrepit piano, used as an example of rhetorical learning—  learning through experience and apprenticeship—  rather than regurgitating facts and figures. 

4. Of Fit
   • Newstok begins this section with the use of the word “fit,” referring to the individually tailored craftsmanship of Renaissance fashion, as well as a prominent motif of gloves in Shakespeare plays. Then, he applies it to the crafts of teaching, writing, and thinking, which all require, “threading things in the right place, at the right time, and thereby strengthening them,” just as Shakespeare’s characters play with and rework their lines.
   •  “I love those subtle moments when Shakespearean characters seem to be tinkering with their own thoughts, to make them better fit the moment. Think of when Richard III imagines for himself a little grave, which he revises into A little, little grave—  what a delicate diminution. Or when Prosopero proclaims that the grandiose wedding pageant he has just blown the special effects budget on is melted into air—  and then, as if to capture the reverie at the insubstantiality of it floating away, resitiches this as into thin air.” 
   • Reflecting on my own experience as a student writer, I wholeheartedly relate to this idea of tinkering with how to clearly articulate your thoughts in a sentence, to get it just right. Equally as important, however, is the fact that there is no one correct method of creating this sentence, it can be infinitely altered and improved. 

5. Of Place
   • In a post-Covid age, Newstok’s advocacy for the benefits of a Shakespearean education in place, where all classes were in the same room, is intriguing. I identify with the diminished quality of learning I and many of my peers felt were forced upon us due to the pandemic by being physically separated from my peers and teachers. As Newstok points out, this disproportionately affects those already disadvantaged: “first-generation students; language learners; those from families without access to technology.”
   • “At its best, education is a dynamic and interactive conversation between a student motivated to think harder and a demanding teacher—  they fit together, in that same place.” With distance learning, it is difficult to be present and have these stimulating interactions because you aren’t in the same place as the teacher “physically, temporally, cognitively.”
6. Of Attention
   • Many, including myself, practice a dependency on the phantom limb, described by photographer Eric Pickersgill as a cellphone “used as a way of signaling business and unapproachability to strangers while existing as an addicting force that promotes the splitting of attention between those who are physically with you and those who are not.” I found this point very interesting and offered insights to the use of technology and its negative effect on my generation. 
   • “Loss of attention, distraction, is associated with madness in Shakespeare’s works: most notably Hamlet’s reference to his memory in this distracted globe (Hamlet, 1.5.97). He’s pointing literally to his own confused head, but obliquely the Globe Theatre and its audience, and perhaps even more broadly the entire, confounded world.” 
   • Newstok points out the value of performance and arts in education, in regaining shared attention: “The enduring power of dramatic performance, even in the face of endless distractions, confirms that there’s something peculiar about sharing something together. We ought to think of the studio, the classroom, the theater as focal points for practiced attention— perhaps even a rehearsal space for democracy.”
7. Of Technology
   • Building off of Newstok’s earlier point about the distracting role technology can play in education, he emphasizes the need for teachers, for a personal and human touch, to learn best and understand information (whether the form of technology is a computer or a textbook). 
   • I found this distinction between the instrument (use of technology) and the method of teaching very compelling: “If people were content with just “content delivery,” libraries and textbooks would have made schools defunct. People (and institutions) help guide us (and chide us) to confront demanding material….Too often we mistake the instrument for a method.” 
   • With references to an earlier Shakespearean form of technology, sand, Newstok emphasizes the issue of technology undermining or distracting from “the interminable yet rewarding task of confronting the object under study,” learning and thinking for yourself. 

8. Of Imitation
   • There are countless examples of Shakespeare borrowing from “poems, proverbs, romances, legal cases, biblical passages, popular ballads, short stories, historical chronicles, contemporary events, mythology etc.” What constituted originality in his time changed dramatically during the 19th century. Newstok negotiates the relationship between imitation, originality, and creation, tracing the definition of creative imitation, “a dynamic intermingling of reflection and practice, thinking and doing—  has been the hallmark of art and industry since one Homo faber copied the chip off another’s block.” As he plainly identifies, “We think through inherited forms, because we are a world of imitations, as Virginia Woolf marveled.” Bringing this practice to the present day, Newstok uses the example of instructing his students to double translate Shakespeare sonnets into another language or translating the Declaration of Independence into plain English (then back again) to gain a better understanding of Shakespearean prose. Borrowing and copying from good examples (from writing to athletics), “strengthens every human endeavor, from infant sensorimotor development to the grueling practice of Olympic athletes.”
9. Of Exercises
   • Newstok refers to studying Shakespeare and learning through practice as “cross-training of body and mind.” Back in Shakespeare’s school days, students “practiced language in the same way a lawyer practices law, or a doctor practices medicine: all the time, as part of their active identity.” Practicing writing as a state of mind and as a skill, the study of Shakespeare fosters “ambition to create something better, in whatever field,” in practicing “curiosity, intellectual agility, the determination to analyze, commitment to resourceful communication, historically and culturally situated reflectiveness, the confidence to embrace complexity.”
10. Of Conversation
    • Shakespeare soliloquies offer insight into the inner workings of his characters, where their internal dialogue and conscience is presented to the audience through questions, the “conversational clarification of the truth.” Examining the soliloquies of Hamlet and Falstaff, the questions they ask themselves lead to further thought and discussion from the audience. A Shakespeare education, through his characters’ many soliloquies, teaches students to defend and counter their own opinion. 
11. Of Stock
    • Newstok begins this chapter by tracing the etymology of the word “stock,” which “evolves from the material sense of “stores” or “stuff” (as in livestock or wordstock) to the more metaphorical sense of a stock of concepts, or knowledge, held in common.
    • With this, he emphasizes the importance of a commonly held knowledge in academia and beyond: “Without a stock of knowledge, it’s difficult to process (much less gather and build) more knowledge. It’s called the ‘Matthew Effect’: the perverse way in which those who have, shall receive even more in abundance; those who have less, shall receive less.”
    • Connecting the Matthew Effect to the educational and related wealth gap, “without a structured and graduated curriculum, the gap in vocabulary between poor students and wealthy students not only persists, but widens. The principled yet wrongheaded antipathy to intellectual stock reinforces socioeconomic equality.” In other words, cultivating a curriculum with works that everyone has read creates an equitable foundation for future learning. 
    • Shakespeare’s education allowed him to exercise creative imitation; his core curriculum “furnished him with a stock of words, concepts, names, and plots that he would reinvent throughout his career. He had a gift of telling a story (provided someone else told it to him first).”

12. Of Constraint
    • “Creators [like Shakespeare] work within, against, and through constraints.” 
    • As Paul Valery declared, paraphrased by W.H. Auden in Paris Review 57 (Spring Quarter, 1974): “A person is a poet if his imagination is stimulated by the difficulties inherent in his art and not if his imagination is dulled by them.” The creative difficulties and constraints that Shakespeare faced include the limits of sonnet, a 10-syllable by 14 line frame and a budget of 140 syllables, as well as keeping with iambic pentameter. Through and because of these limits, sonneteers like Shakespeare have “put Chaos into fourteen lines” (19, Select Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, ed. Holly Peppe (Yale University Press, 2016).
    • This idea is not only exercised through Shakespeare’s authorial actions, such as modifying the speaker and who he addresses in his sonnets, but includes the widening of the interpretations of Shakespeare’s works. Clearly expressed by Newstok, “How can we, as readers, read ourselves into dead poets from distant nations and ages? Shakespeare’s work has proved malleable across centuries, peoples, and language,” poses and answers the “Why Shakespeare ” question asked by students, scholars, and, I’m sure, quite a few readers. Supporting this claim, Newstok discusses his personal experience of teaching Shakespeare to female inmates in a penitentiary, where each woman took his words and shaped them to fit their own individual experiences. Maya Angelou universalized this claim that poetry, including Shakespeare, belongs to everyone: [His] poetry…has been written for you, each of you—  black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight” (Karen Swallow Prior, “What Maya Angelou Means When She Says Shakespeare Must Be a Black Girl,” Atlantic, January 30, 2013). 
13. Of Making
    • Myriad “makers” are written into Shakespeare’s plays, including “noisemakers, grave-makers, jig-makers, horn-makers, peacemakers, ballad-makers, ropemakers, gallows-makers, shoemakers, cuckold-makers, card-makers, widow-makers, sailmakers, and makers of manners.” Newstok compares this craftsmanship to formal writing (from Shakespeare’s sonnets to academic papers): in the same vein as pottery or architecture, one learns a craft from someone who knows it, perfect it in their style, and develop your own. Teaching about makers, playwrights, authors, and artists alike, is meaningful; it allows us to “participate in the general art of making, the mirror in which we see ourselves.
14. Of Freedom
    • The final chapter covers a LOT of ground—   a very ambitious ending to a book advocating for a Shakespearean education. It opens with a discussion of freedom of speech and thought before shifting to the balance of borrowing and inspiration.  with parallels between Shakespeare and Bob Dylan, an artist I had no idea borrowed from Shakespeare. I definitely plan to investigate this connection further in a future blog post. 
    • I found the argument for creative freedom in being able to borrow (with appropriate citations!) and make something new, applicable to writing at the college level as well.  Newstok supports this argument with a discussion of James Baldwin’s essay “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare;” Baldwin once resented Shakespeare as a chauvinist, then realized his “resistance to Shakespeare was a resistance to English itself,” and reclaimed the Shakespeare’s power of language by responding to his writing. 
    • “At first, Baldwin sought freedom from having to read Shakespeare; yet he came to relish the freedom to make Shakespeare his own. In doing so, Baldwin achieved a mutual recognition in Shakespeare that few of us ever reach—  an inner freedom which cannot be attained in any other way than through inhabiting other minds through art” (Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man).
    • Newstok acknowledges the necessary inspiration from others to produce original work, drawing upon the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Keep Moving From This Mountain” address to Spelman College: “Originality is a basic part of education. That does not mean that you think something altogether new; if that were the case Shakespeare wasn’t original, for Shakespeare depended on Plutarch and many others for many of his plots. Originality does not mean thinking up something totally new in the universe, but it does mean giving new validity to old forms.”
    • *Also of note, I learned that Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Shakespeare in his most famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Here, King Jr. used Shakespeare’s words in a completely new yet powerful context, the Civil Rights movement. *

The book concludes on a strong point, defending a liberal arts education as the “foundation to think and create what you want based on ongoing conversation with past thinkers.” Through ideals gleaned from Shakespeare’s education, I have reconsidered how I define the quality and content of my education. Most importantly, How to Think Like Shakespeare demonstrated how Shakespeare can have a presence in my life, reminding me of the significance of presence, discussion, flexibility, creativity, borrowing, and originality that will influence how I collaborate and present my thoughts as a storyteller.