Shakespeare, The 21st Century, and Change

It's very easy to view Shakespeare as something completely removed from modern society. I know I certainly did until a few years ago, and I know many people who still feel that way. However, despite what the dated language and culture may seem to imply, the central issue of Shakespeare is something that is still very relevant today. In many Shakespearean plays, the characters are pushed into a very significant change, and the remainder of the play is spent watching how they react to this change. That not only makes the plays extremely relevant to this blog, but it also makes the plays relevant to today's ever-changing world, in which people are pushed and left to react to the change.

One of the best examples of this push from a change happens in Hamlet. After Hamlet finds out that Claudius killed King Hamlet to take the throne and marry Gertrude, his entire reality and purpose in life has changed, and for the rest of the play, we are able to see how he reacts to this play. His reaction is to become obsessed with this change, letting it consume him and become an ever-growing part of who he was. What was most interesting, however, was his ability to, in his obsession, twist his mission. Hamlet's mission, as given to him by the late King Hamlet, was to kill Claudius. That was it.

Instead, over the course of the play, Hamlet's mission changes, turning into a mission to kill Claudius in a way that would not send him to heaven, then a mission to show his mother how terrible she was, then a mission to kill Claudius, but in the bloodiest way possible. Along the way, this obsession twists his view of the world, making him more paranoid and delusional, causing him to do irrational things like killing someone behind a curtain with no evidence it was Claudius.

This sort of a reaction might seem fairly unrelated to the modern world, but that kind of a reaction to a change is depressingly common. Granted, it may not be as violent as Hamlet's reaction, but quite often, changes can cause obsessions and refusals to look at reality in a more objective light. In other words, dramatic changes cause ideologues, and that is something easily seen, especially in politics. For example, the Tea Party, the extreme right-wing branch of the Republican Party, saw a major change with the Obama administration, especially with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and so, they became obsessed with it, making it their mission to repeal it by any means necessary, then eventually twisting that mission to oppose anything that didn't exactly meet their demands, all while being delusional enough to think they could get widespread support that way.

This isn't the only relatable example of change and reaction in Shakespeare, nor do all the examples deal with negative reactions. For example, Kent and France both had rational, intelligent, and well thought-out reactions to the changes they faced in King Lear, and famously, Capulet and Montague had surprisingly sane reactions to Romeo and Juliet's deaths. The point is, Shakespeare, though it may seem antiquated, is all about stories of change and reaction that are ever-present in our modern society, and to that end, it remains highly relevant in the 21st century.