Foreign Policy Blogs

The Value of Talking Hamlet in Tehran

IRAN

Professor Stephen Greenblatt’s article “Shakespeare in Tehran” in the April 2 issue of the New York Review of Books describes his decision to accept a 2014 invitation to the University of Tehran’s first ever Iranian Shakespeare Congress. Greenblatt reconciles his “immediate” decision to go and his lifelong fascination with Persian culture with the fact that his Iranian academic colleagues’ analysis of “the tentacles of Zionist imperialism” sit neatly alongside the scholarly assessments of Shakespeare on their CVs.

Bearing no illusions about Iran’s current closed political climate, Greenblatt does carry with him his experience of the universality of Shakespeare’s work and its ability to bridge cultures. From his perch as the conference’s keynote speaker, he also describes Elizabethan England’s authoritarian atmosphere and the limits it placed on free expression in a carefully calibrated analogy to today’s Iran. The article is a great read in its own right. However, given the current state of U.S.-Iranian relations – the breakthrough of a framework agreement to govern Iran’s nuclear program even as both sides continue to cite mutual mistrust – it raises two additional questions that Greenblatt does not address. Why an Iranian Shakespeare Congress? And why now?

In his April 10 New York Times column, David Brooks reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, still speaks of the West as a nest of devils with America at its core. Crowds at an April 9 Khamenei speech chanted “Death to America,” embodying the caricature of Iran living in many American minds. Brooks concludes that the key question is whether this regime is on the verge on an Iranian glasnost. If it were, than a move to host a conference on perhaps the best regarded writer in the Western canon (Shakespeare) and invite one of America’s leading scholars (Greenblatt), would be the kind of nudge toward cultural openness characteristic of an “Iranian glasnost.” In a letter to the New York Review of Books in response to Greenblatt’s article, the University of Tehran’s organizing professor, Dr. Ismail Salami, suggested as much in an anodyne manner; the conference aimed, he wrote, “to bring people of different nationalities together.”

At the conference, Greenblatt finds an intellectually curious and engaged audience. Iranian students pepper him with questions that show not only an acute grasp of Shakespeare’s work but also a critical understanding of prior academic analyses of his plays. Greenblatt’s description of his Iranian audience is reminiscent of many descriptions of Iraq under Saddam Hussein: a highly literate, educated population with an active interest in cultures younger than its own; a population living under an authoritarian government but not in a bubble; honing its capacities for criticism and expression even while keeping them sheathed.

Greenblatt observes the power of Shakespeare’s work to speak across cultural divides, but more tellingly he points out how many parallels there are between the England Shakespeare wrote in and today’s Iran. Shakespeare wrote about the world, but he never left England. His plays were subject to censorship by the crown. As Greenblatt emphasizes, Elizabeth’s secret police were omnipresent, and England’s people knew it. As Greenblatt notes, criticism of authority of the type found in Shakespeare’s plays would have shocked them. One further parallel Greenblatt does not draw: Elizabethans feared what would follow their queen’s reign and whether her passing would mean war.

Greenblatt values his Iranian experience in personal terms, not for any political significance. Looking for any in it may be a stretch. The timeline of the current negotiations with Iran certainly suggest that any “Iranian glasnost” is likely to be slow and steady. Professor Salami’s response included an angry rebuke of Greenblatt for misconstruing the comments on Zionism in his work.

Responding in turn, Greenblatt notes that he may have breached Iran’s “code of civility” by pointing out differences between Iran and the West. His response exemplifies the depth of the impasse that current negotiations with Iran are trying to bridge. He writes, “I acknowledge, of course, that I may have violated that code by bringing up the sometimes painful differences in our perspectives, but how else can we hope to establish a secure basis for mutual understanding and respect?” How, indeed.

 

Author

Michael Crowley

Mike Crowley received his MA with distinction from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in American Foreign Policy and European Studies in 2003 and his MFA in Classical Acting from The Shakespeare Theatre Company/George Washington University in 2016. He has worked at the Center for Strategic International Studies, Akin Gump, and The Pew Charitable Trusts. He's an actor working in Washington, DC and a volunteer at the National Gallery of Art, and he looks for ways to work both into his blog occasionally.