Reading Shakespeare in the army.

Hamlet and Special Operations

Hamlet himself says, “As a stranger, give it welcome.” In other words, the odder that something is, the more you should embrace it into your life.

And, Shakespeare has this whole habit of going around the world and saying, ‘What’s different? What’s new? What’s surprising? How can I use that to generate a fresh story?’ Because a fresh story is a fresh plot, it’s a fresh plan.

So, I became totally fascinated with this, and I discovered that the more I forced the operators to read Shakespeare and engage with Shakespeare, the better they got at running special operations. And, the same thing with business people. And, I could spend hours and hours and hours and hours kind of explaining the science of this and sort of breaking down Shakespeare and how to use him. But, the reality is: Just read him. Just read Shakespeare. Your first experience will be, ‘This is really hard. This is really weird. I don’t know what’s going on here.’ But, then, the more you start to read Shakespeare and the more you start to read Shakespeare on your own, the more you will find your brain having surprising thoughts, surprising imaginations, and getting back in touch with its kind of root intelligence. So, yes, much in the same way that I’ve been converted to Army Special Operations, I’ve also been converted to reading Shakespeare.

That is Angus Fletcher in an Econ Talk interview discussing his book Primal Intelligence. I don’t agree with everything Fletcher said, be it about Shakespeare (Hamlet is full of action!) or about whether literature departments teach story structure (Russian formalism? narrative theory?), but who can dissent from the idea that Shakespeare expands your imagination? I also love that quotation he pulled. You could sum up the whole enterprise of reading great literature with the line “As a stranger, give it welcome.”