SHAKESPEARE AND EMPATHY

Jezik, književnost i empatija (2025) (466-480. str.)

AUTOR(I) / AUTHOR(S):Nataša Šofranac

SAŽETAK / ABSTRACT:

What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy is the title of a recent book by Yale’s Professor Paula Marantz Cohen. Indeed, is there anything more important to teach? Must empathy be taught or does it go without saying, i.e. is it innate? Essentially, empathy is humaneness. In what we nowadays experience as overwhelming dehumanisation, there are more and more vocal appeals to foster empathy, because it will prevent inhuman treatment, bullying, and cruelty in all ages and communities. Having said that, we must add that empathy is erroneously ”taught“ as an imposed value and societal norm, rather than showcasing the examples and stories from real life. Or from literature, where Shakespeare is so resourceful. Some of the scenes illustrating this are described by Shakespeare, in others it is other characters who invite us to feel for the pain and distress of their fellow-protagonists, or the grievous outcries of the tragic heroes speak for themselves. In her famous speech “The quality of mercy”, Portia teaches empathy to Shylock and all other attendees in the courtroom. The speech sounds almost like a sermon. It does not only do good to others, but to ourselves when we do acts of mercy. Stepping in somebody else’s shoes, looking through somebody else’s lenses, forgiving when we can relish retribution – enables awareness of Otherness and prevents navel-gazing. Dialogue, as Martin Buber suggests, is a two-way street where we accept and get accepted, embarking on creative processes that transform us more than others: “Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself – this is called Lucifer“ (Buber, 1958: 21). Empathy is food for soul. This paper aims at analysing two plays where empathy is not straightforward or seamless, because we question whether the characters deserve it. Again, what is the yardstick and who can exact the measure of empathy appropriate for Cordelia, or Lear, or Shylock? To sharpen it more, we provide a chapter on the extreme example of this challenge, an overview of Shakespeare in prison. Against the backdrop of crime, punishment and second chances, we shall endeavour to prove that Shakespeare is far beyond the “family silver” (Taylor 2001: 185) that English culture can boast of. In the post-humanist era, when humans increasingly resemble cyborgs from dystopian novels, it is empathy that will save us from dehumanisation. In that, applied Shakespeare is therapeutic and illuminating. He not only encourages us to empathise with others, but helps us find empathy for ourselves.

KLJUČNE REČI / KEYWORDS:

Shakespeare, empathy, tragedy, pity, humaneness

PROJEKAT / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

LITERATURA / REFERENCES:

Bloom, H. (1999). Shakespeare the Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books.
Bradley, A.C. (1903). Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Macmillan.
Bruk, P. (2018). Suština milosrđa (prev. Đorđe Krivokapić). Beograd: Kulturni centar Beograda. Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou, (1937) transl. by Ronald Gregor Smith, Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 2nd Edition New York: Scribners, Digitised in 2008. Available at: https://www.maximusveritas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/iandthou.pdf Accessed on 31 October 2024.
Coleridge, S. T. (1835). Table Talk, London, Routledge.
Edmondson, P. & Holbrook, P. (eds). (2016). Shakespeare’s Creative Legacies.
Klajn, H. (1964). Šekspir i čoveštvo. Beograd: Prosveta.
Maguire, L. (2006). Where There’s a Will There’s a Way: Or, All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Shakespeare. New York: Penguin.
Marantz Cohen, P. (2021).‘Of Human Kindness’. What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy. Yale: Yale University Press.
Mladenović, K., Kokanov, D., Hubač, Ž. (2019). „Projekat Šekspir: San letnje noći”, the National Theatre in Belgrade adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. [Unpublished manuscript].
Raber, K. (2018). Shakespeare and Posthumanist Theory, London: The Arden Shakespeare.
Taylor, M. (ed). (2001). Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taylor-Collins, N. (2022). Shakespeare, Memory and Modern Irish Literature, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
University of Notre Dame, podcast “Shakespeare and Possibility”, episode 10: ‘Pioneering the Shakespeare in Prison Movement’, https://think.nd.edu/bq/snd-10/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=August%2021,%20202 0 28 May 2025. Accessed on 12 June 2025.