Social life

Many academics and aficionados of William Shakespeare find it frustrating that the recorded biographical facts of his life are so scant. In Jonathan Bate’s new book, Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, Bates waxes prolix with conjecture, over the course of 496 pages. (The page length is of interest when juxtaposed to Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as a Stage, a mere 208). Due to the dearth of biographical fact, Bate takes the biography-of-the-mind approach. He traverses through close reads of Shakespeare’s texts to make suppositions on the mind of the man himself. The reader seeks to know William Shakespeare, to locate his personal voice, in order to understand him better. Bates performs ventriloquism, bequeathing Shakespeare a voice that readers will want to hear. In this way, the “voice” of Shakespeare, in spite of being lent by a biographer, can become a source of validation to the reader who wants access to this “voice.” In this way, one may better understand Shakespeare’s life and works.

Allowing one to speak: I observed this most recently this past weekend. I attended a poetry contest award ceremony in my hometown, in honor of my good friend who passed away three years ago. This poetry contest calls for poem submissions from students ages 5-18. What was important, in this community center on a humid Sunday afternoon, was not the awards bestowed upon each age category. It was bequeathing each young poet a platform to read his or her poem. This validation—reading their poems to an audience of parents, friends, local journalists, and community members—was all that these children needed to feel a sense of pride and purpose through writing. The awards were completely irrelevant.

To me, this is the strength of the IB’s foray into social media. As soon as we enabled and encouraged comments on our fan page, we have received an explosion of interactivity. We give the IB community a place to speak, and herein lies the strength of what we can offer: to show the community that we listen, and we care what you think.