Shakespeare, the email and texting

Jun 03, 2023

There was no electricity in Stratford or London (or anywhere else) in the age of Shakespeare. The sun still rose, of course and summers were still long and lustrous and full of light. But the long nights of winter followed summer’s long days and for at least half the year, night called out to night with blackest ease, the cloak of darkness lying heavy upon Stratford’s (and London’s) streets and homes (no street lamps!).

The canon of Shakespeare’s works running to more than 2,500 pages in small type includes 38 plays and 154 sonnets. Even if we accept that half of the plays were collaborations with fellow actors and playwrights, the pages of sublime poetry alone, that leap with luminous wings from the plays would have required many thousands of hours of concentrated work - without electricity.

Remember too, that the feathered quill was the only pen which carried the charmed words and pages and poems - and the the printing press had only recently been invented.

The great Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata is bigger than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined and also contains the profound, classic Hindu scripture, the “Bhagavad Gita” (“Divine Song”). Like the works of Shakespeare, it is attributed to a single person, the sage Vyasa, but is likely the work of multiple authors. The earliest references to the epic go back to the 6th century BC - and its first, complete translation into English was still completed in the era before electricity! In addition to darkness and the lack of modern stationery, the authors of the Mahabharata had to contend with snakes, scorpions, tigers, elephants and innumerable other lurking dangers in the immediate neighbourhood!

Fifteen hundred years later, there was certainly still no electricity and no proper stationery when the English missionary William Carey (1761-1834) started his translations of the Bible in India. Under lamplight and always under siege by both the then hostile natural environment in India and the British colonial authorities (who had no interest in the welfare of the Indian masses), Carey completed the translation of the Bible into multiple Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Bengali, Oriya, Hindi, and Marathi! Together with a fellow missionary, Joshua Marshman, he also completed the translation of the other great, ancient, sacred, Indian epic, the Ramayana from Sanskrit to English in two volumes! No electricity, no proper stationery, no help from the internet!

In fact, I should rather have written, no hindrance from the internet for William Carey, or Shakespeare, or those who wrote the Mahabharata!

For those of us who believe we are created in God’s own image, we ought also to acknowledge that the Creator has bequeathed to us the unquenchable urge to create. Those who do not believe in God, are still most fulfilled with their lives when they have unlocked the creative drive and created a new poem, a new novel, a new scientific advance, a new operation to cure an old malady, a new garment, a new culinary work of art.

Until about twenty five years ago, between knocks of the postman on our doors on weekday mornings (with the accompanying childlike expectation of new letters and the occasional parcel), we were free of any digital encumbrance. Most of us knew the postman’s name and some of us regarded him with affection. For several hours in both day and night, we had the ability to work unhindered and to create new things with a prolonged, burning intensity. We also had bright lights at the turn of a switch, all kinds of automatically flowing pens and as many types of paper to write on!

The reply to an actual, physical letter could take one day, a week, sometimes longer - and even be composed over several days.

There was no weekend mail or postman. And the telegram by wire was costly to send - and only sent when there was an emergency or a set of circumstances too happy to practice abstinence.

In contrast, as I write this on a Saturday morning, I have no doubt at all about the arrival of several unopened emails into my “inbox” - which I will probably examine before the day is done! Some of us would even feel guilty if the “inbox” in our email client is not examined more frequently and replies sent within 24 hours! In this sense, the inbox is like the devil himself, who the Bible refers to as the “accuser of our brethren!”

Could Shakespeare have composed his magnificent corpus of work alongside the intrusion of multiple emails/day, multiple email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Signal/Telegram groups?

And then came the cell phone! And texting! And the now ubiquitous emoji!

Anthropologists in future generations, long after we are gone, will no doubt also ponder with wonder, the desire of human beings of this generation to simultaneously enjoy beautiful, profound things that demand silence, reverence and solitude (like the moon on still waters on a windless, cold and clear night) - and then yield to an even stronger desire (and frenzy) to send photographs of the experience to multiple people far away (to whom the photographs are most often an unwelcome intrusion into their lives)!

During the years of the covid tyranny, the tyrannical authorities were no doubt rubbing their hands in glee and popping the champagne corks as multiple groups spent endless hours on circular Zoom calls, social media posts and group catharsis/therapy sessions - all of which kept people in narrowly defined support groups, with short attention spans and without actually doing anything to defy the tyranny. Which is also why Trudeau and his predatory globalist masters and colleagues were terrified of the Truckers Freedom Convoy and of the few people actually making a creative stand for freedom.

The corporate world has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in both stifling individual creativity and in holding the vast majority of mankind on the tight leash of digital dependance!

A few years ago, I wrote a poem of exasperation against my smartphone. It is part of my collection of poems, “To A Nurse Friend Weeping,” which was published in 2021 by Harp Press. I believe many/most/all my readers will share my exasperation - and might even remember a night like mine: