7 Insights From Shakespeare On Building Your Character

‘Nothing Is Good Or Bad But Thinking Makes It So’

Shakespeare’s characters rise out of the world they are in and bend the universe to their will. Shakespeare did the same thing himself. He left roadmaps to the process.

‘What a Rogue and Peasant Slave Am I’

First up, the ‘I’ can change. You don’t have to be ‘yourself’. You can change yourself through the process of overhearing.

Hamlet is an over-hearer. He changes himself from a weak prince into a perfect King by listening to his thoughts, weeding a lot of them out, and redesigning his purpose.

He becomes conscious and intentional.

He was tough on himself and the annihilation of his ego went to the point of fully considering the point of existing at all. He didn’t let himself off the hook because he understood that he was responsible for the world around him.

‘That One May Smile, and Smile, and Be a Villain / At Least I Am Sure It May Be So in Denmark.’

You have to be hard on yourself because the world is full of lies and liars.

It’s not just enough to be tough on yourself. You have to adopt a critical view of the world around you, examine everything and everyone to see if their motives align with your purpose.

‘Get Thee To a Nunnery’

Hamlet’s mother, girlfriend, school-friends, Uncle, with varying degrees of intention and malice, are all parts of the plot to prevent him from creating his character.

As he grows and comes to know himself, he tests his friends to see if they have his best interests at heart — those that do he cherishes and puts at the center of his story. Off to a nunnery with the rest of them.

Shakespeare recommends verbally abusing one of them until she goes mad and commits suicide, stabbing another, and then forcing one to drink poison before stabbing him multiple times.* (*these may be metaphors).

‘To Thine Own Self Be True… Thou Canst Not Then Be False To Any Man.’

Hamlet knows the difference between real insight and honeyed B.S. Beware of self-help gurus. The words above seem persuasive but they are self-comforting, meaningless, and suggest a simplicity to the self which Hamlet knows is not how it is. Polonius is the arch-hypocrite and flatterer and after stabbing him, Hamlet calls him a ‘wretched, rash, intruding fool’.

Behind honeyed words of self-help, examine the speaker’s intentions.

‘’Nothing is Good or Bad but Thinking Makes it So’

Hamlet controls the show and he comes to understand the power of the mind. Your ideas determine the world and everything in it. You have the power to transform the world around you.

Your eyes do not see, they project, from the blueprints of your mind: rewrite the blueprints consciously based on what you value and what you want and you can create a world full of those things.

Do you think negatively about aspects of your life? Does cronyism in your workplace hold you back from promotion? Does your partner have traits/habits you wish they didn’t? Are rich people heartless? If you think these things, you are projecting problems into your relationship, your career, your financial future.

Work on getting on better with people at work, really care about things that upset your partner and prevent them from happening, look after your finances — you’ll find that work is a field of opportunity, your partner’s perfect, and money is coming in.

Other Plays

‘Angels Are Bright, Though One Fell’

Macbeth does everything Hamlet does — he examines his thoughts process and changes it, he pursues his own goals, he cuts out former friends who would oppose him, he becomes King.

Some confessions here. First, yes, alright, you got me, I’m a Shakespeare-geek and an English teacher. I don’t want to bore you by analyzing quotations but I really do think that reading is one of the holy trinity of ways to free your mind (along with travel and other people).

But books can give you a pessimistic worldview. Leaving university, I realized that my whole picture of life was like a shopping list with every item crossed out. Nothing was pure, nothing was good, everything was corrupt. According to that kid, there was no point trying because you could only spoil your character.

My Dad was always on about how corrupt politicians were, how profit in business was just theft from the working class, how everyone on TV wore a phony smile, how everyone who spoke about causes was only in it for themselves. Religion, Charity, Art — hypocrisy made them almost worse than straight-forward crime!

He certainly needed to think about the contents of his head — he was making all of this true by thinking it so!

But he does have a point. People are far from perfect. There are rich A-holes and lying politicians. Shakespeare spends so much time on his plays trying to unravel the deception of phony people who look like ‘the innocent flower’ but act like ‘the serpent beneath it’.

Some successful people are corrupt but this doesn’t corrupt the idea of success. The person who passionately chases their dream is not devalued by the cynic who manipulates someone else’s — to give yourself a chance to get what you really want, you have to shrug off the negativity and admit that though all that glitters is not gold, gold does glitter.

Angels are bright, though one fell.

Without believing that good wins, you won’t work to be your best.

You won’t go out there smiling and positive and you won’t attract success.

You must believe that Angels are bright.

So listen to your thoughts and take responsibility for your world, cast out negative people and ideas, figure out what’s important to you, visualize your success and be confident that your ambition is a good thing in this world.

Be the King

Prince Hal grew up to be King Henry and at the battle of Agincourt his little army was hopelessly outnumbered and he might have been fatalistic. But Henry spoke to his men, visualizing the anniversary of tomorrow’s battle — Saint Crispin’s Day — in the distant future when every soldier who died will be remembered as a household name,

‘And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhood’s cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.’

He won the battle, of course. He inspires people around him with his vision of the future and the strength of this vision made his victory inevitable.

He was only able to do this after a long course of ‘becoming’ which started with him in the taverns soaking up life and freedom and then as he matured saw him giving up those old habits and old friends and taking responsibility.

Final Thoughts: Prosper

‘We are such stuff

As dreams are made on’

In his last play, Shakespeare gave us Prospero, who knew how to harness the magic of his mind to create a perfect world.

Only Prospero finally prospers and fully wins the game of character. He does so by going beyond himself, losing everything, using the strength of his mind to win it back, testing everyone, and forgiving everyone.