Shakespeare and Satisfaction

Last weekend, I attended a free production of a Shakespeare play held outdoors.  A big group of friends went, and there are few things in the world so comfortable and happy as spending time with good friends.  Two productions were running: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Antony and Cleopatra.  Not being a big tragedy fan, I planned on seeing Midsummer.  However, the organized side of my personality was pre-occupied with Hebrew and didn't check which show was running that night.  The result was that when we arrived at the park, Antony and Cleopatra was running. 


It was an entertaining show - quite funny on many levels.  I couldn't endorse it and probably won't see it again because it was quite a bit more descriptive than necessary (one of those times when it's not edifying to be familiar with Elizabethan English!).  But the value of seeing it was that it highighted the world's best.  Theater is a high form of art.  Antony and Cleopatra is great literature.  Shakespeare is considered to be the finest expression of love in the English languages.  But after the play, I thought, "Is this it?  Did I really just  spend 2.5 hours watching the highest form of English culture?"  Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time and hope to see the next Shakespeare production, but the whole thing had a hollow feeling about it.


Part of the reaction probably comes from not studying Shakespeare, but part of the reaction is similar to Solomon's in Ecclesiastes 2:4-11:

"I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.  I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.  I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.  I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.  I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the children of man.  So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.  And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.  Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun."

Solomon recognized that the world's best did not satisfy.  Trying to find satisfaction in landscaping, livestock, wealth, art, relationships, and Shakespeare is empty.  The world's best does not satisfy us because God did not make us to be satisfied by it.  God created man for fellowship with Himself, and nothing less than that will satisfy him.  Man's problem is that he looks for satisfaction in things and people instead of God.


C. S. Lewis wrote in "The Weight of Glory":

"...If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased."

When a person has been united with Christ in a saving relationship with God, he is satisfied in that relationship.  Then, he may enjoy the things that Solomon and Lewis mention because he is first satisfied in God.