The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with actor Eunice Wong and director David Herskovits on William Shakespeare as Oracle and their new production of Shakespeare's play Pericles

I carried copies of William Shakespeare’s plays into conflicts in Central America, the Middle East and the Balkans. When I was taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guard in Basra during the Shiite uprising following the first Gulf War, I had a copy of Anthony and Cleopatra in the pocket of my M-65 field jacket, along with Homer’s The Iliad. Sigmund Freud turned to Shakespeare, along with the Greek myths, to lay the foundations for Freudian Psychoanalysis. Karl Marx liberally quoted from Shakespeare, using The Merchant of Venice to explain economic theory. Writers such as Charles Dickens built on the foundations of Shakespeare. Herman Melville formed his characters in Moby Dick from the clay of the Bible and Shakespeare. Perhaps only the Bible rivals Shakespeare in its archetypical significance. Shakespeare invented thousands of words that remain part of our vocabulary – gloomy,  monumental, castigate, assassination, addiction, cold-blooded – to name a few. His power as a writer came not only from the beauty of his poetry, but his deep understanding of the ambiguities and contradictions that go into making a human being and a human society. He grasped that human history is merely itself. It moves towards no goal. The universe is morally neutral. The gods favor you one day and turn their back on you the next. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,” Gloucester says. “The kill us for their sport.” Good does not always triumph, indeed is often no match when pitted against murderous tyrannies. Anthony, in Anthony and Cleopatra, embraces love and passion and loses empire. Like Dido, by surrendering to love, he is no match for Octavius’s single-minded quest for power. Shakespeare brought hundreds of characters to life – King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Cleopatra, Malvolio, Falstaff, Romeo, Juliet, Othello – and created narratives of such power that they continue to haunt our imaginations. Joining me to discuss William Shakespeare is David Herskovits, the founder and artistic director of Target Margin Theatre, and the actor Eunice Wong. Target Margin will mount a production of Pericles at the Doxsee Theater in Sunset Park Brooklyn starting on February 25 and running through March 26. You can find out more at targetmargin.org.

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