All human, no being

1If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s yet another biography of Shakespeare. It’s already remarkable that so much biographical material has been dedicated to a man about whom we know so little, and whose life – to the extent that we can discern it – was comparatively unexciting. He’s a far cry from Christopher Marlowe anyways. Who doesn’t want to read about a man who gets into street fights, counterfeits money, spies for the queen, and dies at the age of 29 at a disreputable bar with a knife in his eye? Now that’s entertainment.

2By contrast, the records we have for Shakespeare assure us of the man’s biological and bureaucratic existence, but little else. He lived, he litigated, he bought property, he died. That much is certain. But what about his personality, his character, his psyche? This, after all, is the stuff of biography. But there are no letters or diaries left by Shakespeare, and no sensational stories or accusations either. Just dull church records and legal documents.

3Well, that’s not completely true. There are also the portraits. You’ve seen them. A balding middle-aged man who refuses to cut the hair he still has on the back and sides; a recently divorced line manager who decides to spice things up by getting an earring. The one surviving portrait of Marlowe – which, by the way, is almost certainly not of him (but that’s another story) – presents a dashing young rogue with a look of detached mischief in his eyes. Will, by contrast, stares back at us blank and expressionless. All human, no being. Just like the archive of Shakespeare’s life more generally: all zōē, no bios.

The method of de-mastery

4And yet this may be precisely where the interest lies. Images of Shakespeare elicit two immediate and contrasting reactions: that’s Shakespeare and who was Shakespeare? It’s this strange mixture of recognition and incognizance that forms the foudation of Shakespeare’s unique magnetism, that tractor beam of fascination that drives writers again and again to revisit his life. The allure of William Shakespeare, in other words, is not your typical allure. It’s of an entirely different order. It has something to do with what is not given rather than with what is. In that empty space between the dry factual outlines of a man is where we put our imagination, our desires, our questions, ourselves. Between those lines is also where Shakespeare’s plays and poems live – the body of work which connects us to him because they are both his and ours.

5Philippe Forest’s Shakespeare. Quelqu’un, tout le monde et puis personne is unlike any other Shakespeare biography. This is not because it breaks with the tradition of Shakespeare biography, but rather because it puts the core dynamics of that tradition – the self-projection, the imagination, and the questions – centre stage. Rather than pretending they’re not there, rather than feigning scholarly piety, Forest embraces the space between the lines and amplifies it. Indeed, he turns the schematic drawing inside out. Imagination, speculation, and authorial subjectivity on the outside, pressed up against the lens of the reader’s experience; biographical fact and literary citation peeking out from behind. Rather than seeking to master the sources, Forest deploys what we might call a method of de-mastery.

6By « method of de-mastery », I mean a willingness to dwell in the fog and uncertainty and a commitment to welcoming readers into that space to join him. « Vous me suivez ? » Forest asks. « Moi-même, je m’y perds un peu » (p. 106). What I don’t mean by « method of de-mastery » is amateurism or dismissiveness. Forest does know his stuff. The texture of the book is in constant evolution – transforming kaleidoscopically from abstract to concrete, from speculative to objective – but when it settles for a time into an historical vein, we see an author with a nuanced understanding of complex topics like the European Reformation and sixteenth-century English dynastic politics. What I also don’t wish to suggest by « method of de-mastery » is any kind of traffic in Shakespearean conspiracy theories. Forest is clearly aware of this para-academic subculture, but he keeps it decidedly at arm’s length. This is a relief. The so-called authorship question is anti-intellectual and elitist. How much braver it is to actually live in the aporia of unknowability and create something there. Braver and more honourable than dubiously « solving » the puzzle by claiming that the academic establishment has had an ace up its sleeve the whole time.

The ghost in the house

7Shakespeare. Quelqu’un, tout le monde et puis personne is a haunted house, with chapters like a series of rooms sewn sparsely with the artifacts of personal memory, confession, and historical obsession. The ghost in the house is Shakespeare, flicking around corners, appearing in mirrors, whispering over your shoulder.

8Who exactly is the subject of this book? Forest or Shakespeare? Compared to just about any academic book on the latter, this one does more to conjure its author into presence than it does Shakespeare. At the same time, Forest’s own life and thoughts take form within the contours of Shakespearean detritus. There is a mutually constitutive dynamic between author and subject which makes the two difficult to distinguish. Each seems constantly to be in the process of appearing and then disappearing behind the other, like two figures in a twirling, dimly lit pas de deux.

9There are others, too, in this hallucinogenic choreography. Ever hovering between presence and absence, Forest’s Shakespeare melts freely into Moliere, Balzac, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, and others, all tied together by common thematic, speculative or experiential threads. This perhaps is the point of the book, a way of translating into literary form the key idea articulated in the subtitle that Shakespeare is « quelqu’un, tout le monde et puis personne ». He’s there, he’s gone . . . no wait . . . he’s everywhere.

10The world Forest creates will not be for everyone, especially in terms of style. Sometimes the narrative voice becomes indulgently formulaic and intellectually self-aware:

J’imagine à mon tour. J’imagine, bien sûr. Je le fais en toute connaissance de cause. Au roman qui raconte comment le jeune Shakespeare devint acteur et puis auteur, je veux croire. Je veux croire à ce roman…

11This kind of over-stylisation – « J’imagine… J’imagine » ; « Je veux croire… Je veux croire » – I confess I find grating, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one. On the other hand, I am aware that I am reading as an anglophone, which surely makes me more sensitive to this poetically incantational mode of writing for which there is no real equivalent in English. That I prefer the author’s plainer voice is a response no doubt as much cultural as it is aesthetic.

12With this difference in intellectual cultures in mind, I am going to venture another assertion: I don’t think the kind of book Forest has written would be possible in the anglophone world. At least not with a publisher of the equivalent prestige and visibility as Flammarion. This is a shame because Forest’s willingness to break with the pieties of both academic writing and popular writing, to cultivate the spaces in between memoir, philosophy, and literary history, rather than committing fully to the conventions of any of these genres, has resulted in something quite extraordinary. Shakespeare. Quelqu’un, tout le monde et puis personne does more than simply show us how we live, think, and feel through literature – in itself a rare and valuable achievement – it also embodies that coexistence at the level of form, memory flowing into history, Forest flowing into Shakespeare, us (the readers) flowing into all of it, with our own memories, beliefs, and questions in tow.

Wonder

13Perhaps because Shakespeare wrote in English, the anglophone world approaches him and his works with a different quality of reverence, one that is more cautious, more protective, and ultimately therefore more conservative than the sort of reverence that surely must have motivated Forest. In fact, reverence might not even be the right word in the latter case. There is a free-flowing wonder – that’s the word, wonder – driving Shakespeare. Quelqu’un, tout le monde et puis personne. It is this wonder, the human impulse to explore, understand, and connect, which is honoured in Forest’s book, rather than the object of that wonder. Ironically, this approach, which we might say writes around Shakespeare more than about Shakespeare, succeeds more fully in bringing the playwright to life than any of the traditional biographies I’ve read.

14The challenge that Forest’s book faces is one of acceptance and access. Some scholars will dismiss it as an ahistorical flight of fancy; many general readers will find its experimental combination of obscurity and density too difficult. But for those who are willing and able to take the plunge, the rewards are considerable.