Dancing with Difficulty

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—

It’s so elegant

So intelligent.

T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

I have heard tell that some people don’t love Shakespeare. They find his work too frusty, too old, too impenetrable. Heaven forfend!

But this is precisely why lawyers should be up for the Shakespearean challenge.

One thing that all lawyers have in common is that they all started their professional journey in the same way: having to read frusty, old, impenetrable material. One could even say that the sense of entitlement, of special awesomeness that lawyers feel on occasion is a function of how they got started—pounding their way through a mind-numbing wall of words, embodied in arcane case law, until reading case law “suddenly” became no big deal. And then, for some, reading cases even became pleasurable—even when the judicial opinions in question are not particularly well-written.

The intellectual pleasure associated with reading cases is akin to doing puzzles. It involves identifying the building blocks of arguments, the rationale that justifies a holding, and seeing how well things hang together. Pleasure also comes from figuring out what certain seemingly magical jargon actually means by unpacking the context clues. And most importantly, cases can be fun to read because they are always the product of a concrete, decidedly human drama. Looking carefully at the specific, factual details that underlie a legal drama is the only way that a person can really understand, remember, or care about the legal proposition for which any case is supposed to stand. And reading the case so as to bring that drama to life inside your mind can be far more illuminating (and scandalous) than any made-for-tv narrative.

Most non-lawyer mortals do not realize that the law is so complex and, in a common-law system, so dynamic, that the odds are extraordinarily high that the issues addressed in a case selected at random are likely to involve rules totally unfamiliar to any given lawyer or judge. Most lawyers have to figure out what the law is anew each time they are presented with a particular legal problem. If a lawyer specializes in a particular kind of law, which most lawyers ultimately do, he or she will, of course, see patterns and note trends. And if a lawyer practices law in the same forum routinely, which some, but hardly all, lawyers do, he or she will likely master the local rules that govern protocol in that particular forum so as not to have to look them up every time. But lawyers are routinely asked to seek out difficult texts that deal with some unexplored legal issue that they must then interpret, translate, and apply to a wholly new context.

That process—of finding, interpreting, translating, and applying—is the same when it comes to any difficult text.

I’m not saying that all texts that take time to decode prove to be worth the effort, let alone entertaining. But when it comes to a text that is well-crafted, laden with worthwhile information, and difficult, wrestling with the difficulty generally delivers a satisfying payoff.

Studying law at least teaches people how to stick with difficult texts—because it is a professional obligation. And I contend that making sense out of legal texts that are difficult can be its own reward—even when the texts themselves are not difficult for any reason that ultimately gives aesthetic pleasure. Ergo, making sense out of difficult texts that are difficult because they capture some meaningful insight using complex, yet exceedingly precise, language is generally going to reward you for the effort. If you are a fan of endorphins. And of thinking. And of the human drama in which we are all participating.

Let’s see if we can get ourselves a little pleasure “real quick,” as they say here in Texas. We’ll take apart a little Shakespearian ditty that may seem tough at first glance. (At least the first time I read the passage to my daughter, she responded aggressively, “I don’t get it!”). This text is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the beginning of Act V:

More strange than true. I never may believe

These antic fables, nor these fairy toys.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

This is Theseus, ruler of Athens, speaking. He has just been told a wild story about what supposedly happened the night before in the woods outside of his palace. The young lovers who have shared their adventures with him are a bit worked up. He expresses skepticism, comparing them (the lovers) to lunatics and, for good measure, poets—suggesting they all have the same cognitive problem, though it manifests itself in slightly different ways:

            One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman.

The madman imagines far more horrors than really exist.

The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

Lovers are as juiced up as madmen, which is why they can see consummate beauty (as Helen of Troy supposedly possessed) even in a face characterized (perhaps unfairly) by super-bushy eyebrows.

            The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to aery nothing

A local habitation and a name.

           

The poet, whose internal engine is equally overheated, can look all around and then pull from his very own head wholly knew creations. He then gives these mere fancies a concrete existence by describing them in words—such that they then seem as real as anything else.

And because all of these seemingly disparate characters—lunatics, lovers, poets—are all burdened by an overheated imagination, they all have a little trouble at times telling the difference between what they have merely imagined and what really happened:

           

Such tricks hath strong imagination

            That if it would but apprehend some joy,

            It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

That is, these crazy, overly excited characters—lunatics, lovers, and poets—if they experience something really vivid (like joy, ecstasy, terror), they then assume some verifiably real phenomenon caused them to have those feelings.

            Or in the night, imagining some fear,

            How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

When the mind is agitated with vivid sensations, which may really just be the product of one’s own powerful imaginings, how easy it is to impose special significance (a bear is after you) on some actually benign thing (a bush minding its own business).

If we take a little time to figure out what the hell the author is saying, when we go back and read the verse in a way that is fueled by that understanding—WOW!—it is so interesting, so stirring! It really captures the way some hyper-buttoned-up folks (like Theseus, Duke of Athens, as well as contemporary members of The Establishment) see poetic invention and lovelorn young people.

Try it for yourself:

More strange than true. I never may believe

These antic fables, nor these fairy toys.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to aery nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination

            That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

            How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

(V.1.3-21).

After my daughter’s initial, dismissive reaction to a reading of this monologue, I took a few minutes to walk her through it, as we did here. Then, “suddenly,” she loved it. And now, at age nine, a bit of Shakespeare is one of her favorite things to hear at the end of the day. Indeed, that last rhyming couplet has become a family joke because of how I deconstructed it for her.

“Remember the other day when we were driving, and I said, ‘Oh, look at the white kitty!’ And Daddy then pointed out that it was really only a plastic bag? And I said that was because Mama loves cats so much that she imagines seeing them even when they aren’t really there.”

So now, having worked her way through the difficulty, my girl squeals with pleasure and says: “Let’s do the one about how Mama thought a plastic bag was a cat!”