How Shakespeare can help you write a really relevant speech

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts,

never to heaven go”

(Shakespeare, Hamlet,  Act lll , Sc.1)

President Bill Clinton was certainly a charismatic speaker. He attracted huge audiences and will be remembered as one of the most popular U.S. presidents since John F. Kennedy. But can any of us really remember the content of any of President Bill Clinton’s speeches, even though Clinton addressed the major themes of the day? The answer for many of us is probably no we don’t.

On the other hand, most of us remember the themes of Martin Luther King, especially his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Indeed, it would be fair to say that many people across the globe still take inspiration from that speech. Clinton addressed the themes of the day, while King went further and addressed the essence of the human predicament.

Obviously we in our speeches should not only address the themes of the day, but also place these themes within this human predicament . Perhaps William Shakespeare can help us in dealing with the human aspect when drafting our future speeches and ensuring that they are meaningful and lasting in our audiences’ memories.

Shakespeare, who wrote thirty-seven plays between 1588 and 1613, possessed a genius in that we, some four hundred years later, still feel as much part of his audiences as were the people who crowded into the Globe Theatre in London. Indeed, by 1600, London theatres like the Globe could take up to 3,000 people for the most popular plays. This reflective writer understood his immediate and future audiences, and wrote for them in a way that his messages are still as relevant to us today. Why this should be was summed up as follows:

 “Shakespeare reminds us of the line between good and evil running down the centre of all human hearts. And in showing us that the line is always there, easily and disastrously crossed, Shakespeare destroys the utopian illusion that social arrangements can be made so perfect that men will no longer have to strive to be good.” (Theodore Dalrymple – ‘Why Shakespeare is for all Time’)

Shakespeare, who lived in an age which has been described as the ‘Age of Humanism’, was optimistic about human nature, although he obviously accepted that evil took place. But evil was the villain’s role and was seen as unnatural.  So in unravelling human nature we see virtue being attacked, so to speak, by greed and egotism. Perhaps his deepest analysis of human nature can be found in such plays as Macbeth and Hamlet.

But in these two plays Shakespeare demonstrates how he clearly knows and understands his audiences . He knew that they sympathised with the truth and wisdom, while recognising the unwelcome existence of corruption. They accepted the existence of temptation and man’s faulty character to deal with life in a virtuous way. When Macbeth is tempted, for example, he fails to live up to this expectation of virtue. Indeed, the audiences understood this failure of character in Macbeth very well.  On the other hand, audiences also appreciated Hamlet’s quest for truth, a quest to know the why.

How many times have we heard speakers, no matter how polished, speaking in a way that little concerns us directly?  How many times have we sat through speeches that little concern us? Perhaps if we emulate that Shakespearean humanistic approach to his audiences, our speeches will have that impact that most of us desire.