Shakespeare Pt.2: Craft Over Self-Expression Leads to Self-Expression

What Hamlet Teaches Us

In this short series, I am presuming to draw on Shakespeare to write about writing. I have to search for quotes, as I am not well enough versed in the Bard, though I did play Katherine’s father in a one-act of Taming of the Shrew in the 10th grade, and also was given a role in The Twelfth Night because there are songs and I am a singer.

How did I research it? With ChatGPT, which knows a lot about Shakespeare. There, I said it.

This week, Hamlet.

The quote:

“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.”

If you have any experience acting, you’ll note that Hamlet is a poor director. Every theater student knows good directors don’t give line readings, but Hamlet has a purpose and he cannot risk the actor’s self-expression messing up his plans to shame his mother.

But I want to extract another rule from the line. Let’s pretend that Hamlet’s goal is not to give a crude line reading but to teach us about placing craft and submission to form above self-expression in our writing.

”Speak the speech…as I pronounced to you…” Submit to the craft of speeching!

Self-expression is a funny thing.

On the one hand, I believe it is necessary that your writing be a piece of self-expression. Speaking of ChatGPT, this is why it is not going to completely replace us, because all of us readers know we need the writer (or actor, or painter, or composer) to be IN the work. It’s meaningless if it’s not expressed by a real human.

But on the other and ironic hand…

No one achieved true self-expression without submission.

To what?

To God, for sure. But also, to craft and form. There is a long line of masters, whose self-expression led happily to new forms. When I was a music student, I learned in theory and music history that theory follows practice. Sonata Allegro was not decided on at the International Classic Era Convention for Composers. It was pioneered by the last of the Baroque crew and then taken over by Mozart and friends, then finally destroyed by Beethoven and company as they yielded to the Romantic era.

How wonderful!

But the names you know from music history yielded first to form and function, and in so doing, achieved self-expression so utterly that they created the great masterpieces we still play.

All art is that way.

This is a newsletter for “Christian” writers, so does the Bible offer any insight here?

Indirectly, but I think so…by treating speech as something that must be formed before it is trusted.

1. Words are trained before they are released

From Proverbs:

“The heart of the righteous weighs its answers,

but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil.”

(Proverbs 15:28)

Biblically, speech is not the overflow of authenticity but the result of deliberation.

The righteous person does not say what feels true. He weighs his words until they fit reality. That is formation, not expression. A stretch? I’ll give it to you.

2. Unfiltered speech is treated as immaturity

From James:

“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue,

but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.”

(James 1:26)

It is bridling, restraint, discipline. In Scripture, the unrestrained tongue is not honest.

It is dangerous. I know we’re not talking about art, but we are talking about the use of words, which is relevant.

3. Even truth must be fitted to the moment

From Ecclesiastes:

“There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”

(Ecclesiastes 3:7)

Truth does not justify speech by itself. Timing, context, and wisdom matter and speech must be rightly ordered. This is form.

4. Jesus treats words as weighty craft, not impulse

From Matthew:

“For by your words you will be justified,

and by your words you will be condemned.”

(Matthew 12:37)

Jesus assumes that words shape the speaker, and then speech reveals formation, and careless language carries moral weight. There is an accountability over which expressive freedom yields in submission.

5. Paul assumes disciplined speech as a spiritual practice

From Ephesians:

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths,

but only such as is good for building up,

as fits the occasion.”

(Ephesians 4:29)

There are criteria: It must be good for building up, and governed by a ruling purpose that is fit for the occasion.

That is craft, even if artistic expression is not the goal (And why does it have to be?).

My very favorite method of submitting to form is copy work. If it would be important to you to learn this concept of yielding to form and craft so that you can express yourself, but more importantly, express truth, then try it.

Pick something amazing and slowly, with your best penmanship, copy the paragraph several times. For a bonus, do it until you can copy it from memory. Here are three great examples of the best ever written in the English language.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard

I used to spend hours walking the fields around Tinker Creek, thinking of nothing at all, and watching the water move. If you concentrate on small enough intervals, you can see the hours pile up around you, like bricks. I learned to live in that layer, the now, and not to be afraid of it.

A Godward Life: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life - John Piper

Pray with me for that touch. If it comes with fire, so be it. If it comes with water, so be it. If it comes with wind, let it come, O God. If it comes with thunder and lightning, let us bow before it. O Lord, come. Come close enough to touch. Shield us with the asbestos of grace, but no more. Pass through all the way to the heart, and touch. Burn and soak and blow and crash. Or, in a still, small voice. Whatever the means, come. Come all the way and touch our hearts.

Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.”

Open - Andre Agassi (though I believe he had a ghostwriter)

I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hate tennis. The sport has never given me pleasure. From the moment I first picked up a racket, tennis has been a burden. It’s been an obligation, a trap, something I’ve done to please others, to survive, to make my way.

And finally, Paul to the Corinthians. Okay, this was not originally written in the English language, but it’s powerful and Paul doesn’t waist a word. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13:

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Have fun with these, and I pray the form does its work on you so that when God calls you to express truth in a way that is authentically you, you’ll be equipped!

Jeff

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