In the Christmas issue of this brave new magazine our thoughts are directed towards birth. The birth of a child.  A beginning.  In Shakespeare's plays we sometimes witness the birth of a child, but there is another kind of birth in these dramas that calls our attention more strongly.  It is the birth of something new that arises out of a death.  This Resurrection theme seems more connected to Easter, but every birth is also a death.  The birth of a child, its arrival on earth, is the transformation of a connection with the spiritual world that is also like a departure, a death.  And this idea is strange only if we cannot get beyond the thought that death is an end.  Death and birth are two sides of a metamorphosis, and this metamorphosis is central to Shakespeare's dramas : the birth of something entirely new when something old is allowed to die, when something from the past is sacrificed.  A new beginning .

Our prejudices and preconceptions lead us to see Romeo and Juliet as a tragedy.  These young lovers die unnecessarily, too early, because of an apparently avoidable mistake.  That is a conventional and sentimental interpretation that is based on our assumption that life must conform to certain imagined standard norms.  Death is not always tragic.  If an old man dies at the end of a rich life full of achievement, that may well be sad for the family and friends, but surely not tragic.  If someone dies before he has fulfilled his task, before he has been able to forgive or be forgiven, before he recognises who his true destiny companions really are, that is tragic.  A life unfulfilled.  But if that that fulfilment is achieved early, a life task might in some cases be accomplished soon, then  early death is rightful.  Maybe painful for those who witness it on earth, but spiritually true.

From the Prologue of the play it is clear that the only event that can reconcile the bitter enmity between the Montagues and the Capulets is the death of their children for love.  The vendetta that has reigned for generations can only be healed, and healed it certainly is at the end of the play (despite the hackneyed platitudes voiced by the Prince), by the old men facing each over over the bodies of their beloved children.  It is nothing less than the love that their children bore for each other that awakens a sense of the need for a new step between their grieving fathers. Can we imagine that it was the mutually chosen pre-birth life task of Juliet and Romeo to bring about a healing of this old feud by living in the love they awoke to and then being willing to die for that love in order to awaken a new realisation in the older generation?   If that is so, then their death is not in vain, it is not tragic, it is something immensely wonderful,  miraculous.  All the old behaviour patters of these two families would lead us to expect that facing the death of their children these estranged old men would renew the hatred and bitterly vow fresh calls for revenge.  What is it that brings about the birth  in them of an entirely unpredictable change of heart ?  It is nothing less than the courage of their children to commit to the love that they recognised despite the blood feud  that divided their parents.  The fruit of their love was the birth of a new disposition in their parents.  And yet Juliet and Romeo could not know if their fathers would respond to this new opportunity.  A sacrifice is not a guarantee.  These old men are truly free.

There is a later play by Shakespeare in which the redemptive power of love also achieves a new beginning but this time without the need for actual physical death. And this too involves an unexpected interpretation of a familiar theme. In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare presents us with a story in which both protagonists come into the valley of the Shadow of Death, contractually bound to each other in law and in destiny.  Both Antonio and Shylock face the apparent certainty of death because of each other and are resigned to it, Antonio quite explicitly and Shylock implicitly in his lack of further argument.  The whole development of the play is a wonderful study in karmic attraction.  Whatever conscious motives lead them to "freely" seal the "merry bond", a deep sense that they need each other unconsciously guides their will and brings these two merchants in Venice into a situation where they hold the power of life and death over each other. 

In the Tragedies that come later we will see how the immanence of Death releases new live-affirming forces, but in this play it is enough for the apprehension of the proximity of death to bring about a change.  Antonio is certain that he is going to die, in a sense we can say he enters the realm of Death.  The absolutely unexpected redemptive genius of Portia releases him from actual physical death, nevertheless, the Resurrection impulse is awoken in the Duke who also quite unpredictably pardons Shylock`s life.   But the Resurrection impulse is also awoken in Antonio who mitigates the pecuniary punishment and then imposes an enigmatic condition.     It would be hard to imagine a more "un-Christiuan"  punishment than forcing someone to be baptised and become a Christian against his true will.  What value spiritually can such an imposed external ceremony have, especially if it seems to smack of punishment or revenge ?    Have we the courage to set aside our conventional way of understanding this aspect of the play ?

There is nothing at all in Antonio's words that carries a hint of punishment or revenge. The main element in all this is Shylock and his relation to his money and religion.  It is so easy to see Shylock as the victim of the manipulations and tricks of not very "Christian" Christians and feel sorry for him.  Of course he keeps his money under the bed, should he trust Christian bankers ? At another level it is easy to see why this play is interpreted as Antisemitic. But both these approaches (and indeed also any attempt to understand this dynamic in the context of the situation of Jews in London in Shakespeare´s day) come from images from the past, have their rightful place historically, but do not illuminate the inspiring and intuitive spiritual impulse in this play for us today.  Shylock's problem is his attitude to his wealth and religion, not his wealth or his religion.  He hoards his gold and he lies about it.  The contrast with Antonio, whose money circulates stimulating trade like blood that circulates in a healthy body, is obvious, however exploitatively he might treat his galley-slaves.  Shylock's tribal consciousness and repeated references to his own identity in terms of the group he belongs to, and his hatred of Antonio "because he is a Christian" are all unmistakable signs of an unhealthy disposition.  Any human being who derives his self-image entirely on such a historically derived group  basis is imprisoned in a paradigm from the past.  This is a condition that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and also Atheists are equally prone to, living in a mind-set that prevents progress.  The fact that such conditions may be entirely understandable and not be the "fault" of those thus caught in them is not relevant to the crippling effect of such a way of behaving and seeing the world. 

Nothing less an an externally "imposed" change will liberate Shylock from the two burdens that prevent his own personal development.  Alone he cannot transform himself, he rejects the offers to be merciful, of course he does, what else can he at that point do ?  But deeply he longs to take a new step.  Every human being longs to grow, and sometimes an outside shove is necessary.  He intuits (but does not entirely know how or indeed at all why) he has to bind himself to Antonio.  Even if the conscious motive is revenge, his unconscious will impulses lead him to make a connection with Antonio  that eventually will result in his being released from his fetters to material possessions and from an inhuman view of himself and the world.  Put simply, Shylock forces Antonio into the realm of Death.  There Antonio experiences an awakening, a quickening, a new impulse and he can confer the consequence of that on Shylock. Antonio releases Shylock into the the realm of Life.  Of course this interpretation may seem grotesque while prejudices from the past and sentimental sympathies cloud the issues. It is not our sympathies for any of these characters that matter in this context nor indeed the true historical considerations that can justify their behaviour. 

At the conclusion of the play Antonio's initial gloom has been dispersed through his "dying and becoming", the sterile law in Venice has been transformed through the fertilising impulse from Belmont, Antonio's retentive attitude to Bassanio is released through Portia's managing the rings episode, and Shylock is divested of what prevents him from becoming human.  His words "I am content" dont have to mean that he is cheerful, but neither do they have to be understood ironically.  Can they perhaps mean that my identity is now no longer what I posses or where I come from, but that I am the content of who I am ?  I am what I "contain", not what I possess or who my forefathers were.  This is an "I am"  moment in the deepest esoteric sense.
 
The birth of a child is part of the great cycle of human incarnations, each birth is new and individual, but physical birth involves a predictable healthy process that each incarnating soul makes individual use of for the beginning of a new incarnation.  There is no "normal" way of dying. Each death is entirely individual, and even if there are certain predictable physical elements in the dying process, the cause, the timing, the duration, and the characteristics of each death are all absolutely particular to each biography and destiny.
 
There is the great archetype of the earthly-human-cosmic event of the Resurrection achieved by Christ on the original Easter Sunday.  But whether, when and how this Resurrection principle comes to expression for an individual as the birth of New Life is entirely unpredictable.  What has to be given up and what new birth is thereby enabled cannot be known or calculated or expected or counted on in advance.  But our willingness for sacrifice is the unavoidable condition for the possibility of the freely given Blessing of New Birth.  At Christmas we remember and recreate in beautiful and intimate images in a reassuring annual rhythm for our children the Birth in Bethlehem.  As adults we can carry this Bethlehem Birth in a greater context, conscious that the first stage of its fulfilment was achieved in the Golgotha Death and Resurrection 33 years later.  Those unpredictable Easter events are a past historical fact : the eventual universal human fulfilment of that Turning Point of Time depends on our openness and goodwill for what is waiting to come to birth in us from the future.

Translated by Alma Bencze

This article has been published in the Christmas Edition of Anthroposophy, in 2010.