Shakespeare’s Cognitive Relativism and Pseudo-Political History
Abstract
Gruesome political intrigues and a moral vacuum, the real cost of any armed conflict, provide the framework for Shakespeare’s concept of history on stage. History plays can be classified as ‘linked productions’ as these ‘make a statement about a destiny for England’ and its people. These plays focus on the element of change in human life rather than on historical accuracy. As far as we travel back and forth in history, we find these plays shaping our inner states within the context of our own historical truths. The sublime in the art of Shakespeare is not, therefore, limited to poetic greatness, psychological insights and linguistic excellence; it is an art of the manifestation of the world as it exists and as it could have existed. Shakespearean art is uniquely ‘divine’ in a social sense. It questions the validity of our existing systems of governance, religious institutions, and concepts of cultural exclusiveness. It sends a warning to all the ‘powerful’ people crawling on the surface of the earth that their perceptions are wrong; in front of cosmic powers they are all vulnerable. Concept of ‘suffering’, consequently, becomes Shakespeare’s Philiosophia Perennis. ‘Perenniality’ in its earthly context is of a cyclical nature communicating the sense of something that subsists continuously. The terrestrial nature of humanity, with change as the only permanent truth of existence, constitutes the basic features of the plays classified as history or pseudo-history. This cycle is observed so intensely that it becomes impossible to ignore its significance as it starts corresponding to the age we live in.
Keyword: Theatrical cognitive relativism; history plays; chronicles; linked productions; psychobiography; metaphysical and socio-political understanding of life; Bosnia and Herzegovina, the story of an Albion; the Punjab; Philiosophia Perennis; the corruption of triumphalism and sobriety of perennial wisdom; Voices of dissent; normative doctrine; the tragicomical malapropism.
