He is fulfilling the colonizer stereotype perfectly, forcing his language and religion upon Caliban, who will have no use for it after Prospero leaves the island, as he will be the only inhabitant. But Prospero is the personification of redemption, and it’s because he listens and is willing to learn.

There’s no doubt Prospero is willing to learn. He values his books of magic over the lives of the people of Milan, which I’m sure is a reason his brother Antonio usurps him. Jealousy alone couldn’t possibly motivate such an act, but I could be wrong, which isn’t all that bad. The important thing is Prospero waits 12 years to get his revenge, and with his magic he could have reclaimed his rightful place as Duke of Milan much earlier. Perhaps he feels he hasn’t learned enough.

So Antonio and Alonso are returning from the wedding of Alonso’s daughter, and Prospero makes his move. He draws everyone closer and closer to him, as they conspire against him and against each other. Caliban falls in with a couple of drunks, Stephano and Trincula, and convinces them to help him kill Prospero. Not all that surprising given Caliban was displaced as “king” of the island with Prospero’s arrival and is now a slave. All the while Antonio and Sebastian intend to kill Alonso so Sebastian can become king, and Prospero convinces Ferdinand to be his servant after playing cupid with his daughter, Miranda. Again, Prospero isn’t exactly respectful and creates a potentially tragic state of affairs.

Like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, after reading the first three acts you’re sure things will end tragically, but Prospero escapes a tragic hero’s end by simply listening. Ariel, despite a lengthened sentence of slavery, helps Prospero realize how cruel he has been.

Ariel: “That if you now beheld them, your affections

Would become tender.

Prospero: Dost thou think so, spirit?

Ariel: Mine would, sir, were I human.

Prospero: And mine shall.

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,

One of their kind, that relish all as sharply

Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick,

Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury

Do I take part. The rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance. They being penitent,

The sole drift of my purpose doth extend

Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel.

My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore,

And they shall be themselves” (The Tempest, V-1, 2035-38).

The rarer action is certainly in virtue than in vengeance, and unfortunately, that’s even truer today. We Americans are a spiteful bunch. The fact that we compete for jobs, wages, and property can’t help. Even our religions have a sort of superiority attached to them. We’re God-cocky. There’s no empathy in the world anymore – only vanity. We all need an Ariel to knock some sense into us. Ariel saves the day and the lives of many, including Prospero. Had Prospero taken his vengeance, he’d only loathe himself the rest of his life. I just don’t think our culture allows too many Ariels to survive anymore. There are too many ulterior motives, means to an ends, and profits after taxes.

Despite our current cultural state, our belief structure, and lack of empathy, there is something we can all take from The Tempest. Forgiveness. Prospero gives us a model for dealing with the errors of others, and though it takes him awhile to get there (as it will us), our state of mind would surely benefit from committing acts of virtue rather than vengeance.

But wait, there’s more. Prospero finally owns up to his mistakes in “raising” Caliban, saying, “this thing of darkness! / Acknowledge mine” (The Tempest, V-1, 2349-50). It’s not a strong apology, but it’s better than what we get out of most of our political leaders. At the end of his final term, George W. Bush couldn’t recall one mistake he made, and later, after writing his memoirs, the best “apology” he could come up with was “mistakes were made,” as if to say, “Mistakes were made, but not by me.” This is the tragedy that suffocates our world: Our unwillingness to admit we’re wrong and apologize for it. Even our children are unwilling to say they’re sorry, and when they do they don’t mean it. I see this as the premiere problem of our culture, and until we all start empathizing with others, we’ll continue down this path that tears us apart inside. Schulz writes, “We can foster the ability to listen to each other and the freedom to speak our minds. We can create open and transparent environments instead of cultures of secrecy and concealment. And we can permit and encourage everyone, not just a powerful inner circle, to speak up when they see the potential for error. These measures might be a prescription for identifying and eliminating mistakes, but they sound like something else: a prescription for democracy. That’s not an accident” (311). So if you want to foster true democracy, the next time you wrong someone, apologize, and do it right. Tugend suggests that a “proper apology has three elements: an acknowledgement of the fault or offense, regret for it, and responsibility for it – and, if possible, a way to fix the problem” (217). Prospero acknowledges his fault, regrets it, and takes responsibility for it. Then he offers solutions. Not bad considering he certainly didn’t have Tugend’s Better By Mistake in his vast library. It seems Shakespeare had a better handle on handling the errors of others than we do now.

Like the Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is funny because the characters keep fucking up. The whole play hinges on mistakes. Puck mistakenly applies a love potion to the eyelids of Lysander instead of Demetrius when Oberon had hoped to teach Demetrius a lesson for treating Helena so cruelly. Puck’s mistake turns a potential tragedy into a comedy, as Oberon attempts to rectify the situation by giving Demetrius the love potion. Now Helena has more attention than she’s ever had and is sure both men are mocking her, but just before Lysander and Demetrius duel for Helena’s love, Oberon rectifies the situation.

Another mistake by Puck creates another subplot. He turns Bottom’s head into that of a donkey when he thinks Bottom has called him a jackass, when in fact Bottom was merely giving his name. Then Titania, who Oberon has already love-poisoned in order to acquire an Indian henchman, falls for Bottom after hearing him sing. Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. Of course, “all’s well that ends well,” and Oberon makes sure everything ends well.

In a way, Oberon guided the players to fear the decisions they had been considering. Hermia wanted to marry Lysander, but her father demands she marry Demetrius. Now she’s happy marrying Demetrius after seeing she could lose both of them to Helena. In fact, Oberon may have been the only player that didn’t learn anything. He gets what he wants in the Indian knight he acquires from Titania, and apologizes for nothing, but he did make everyone else conscious of her potential mistakes by providing consequences (albeit false consequences) to scare the pants off these young lovers. Maybe he deserves his bounty for keeping the peace, but dosing a bunch of people and fairies with drugs in a forest at night is not my idea of a righteous crime.

After recovering from this “trip,” the players are content with their lives due to the waves they thought could be made had they strayed from their paths. This is a great example of Frost’s idea of doubting decisions, and how it’s natural and necessary to do so. Oberon instills doubt in the players, and because of that doubt the players play it safe. And though playing it safe can be rather boring, in this case it saves lives. Schulz pounds home the idea that comedy requires error, saying, “wrongness and comedy are entwined at the roots. And not just wrongness and comedy: also wrongness and art, wrongness and learning, wrongness and individuality – even wrongness and survival,” (320). Schulz is rather optimistic when it comes to error, and virtually ignores the fact that error is also essential to tragedy, as I made clear earlier in this paper.

The mechanicals serve as the perfect segue to my next section because they are forgiven for their awful performance at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The audience not only tolerates but enjoys the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. The audience treats it like a comedy, laughing throughout, which is ironic given the potentially tragic ordeal they’ve all been through. They are laughing off their own tragic dreams, like recovering from a bad hangover with vodka and grapefruit juice or a stiff Bloody Mary. They can’t believe how silly their dreams have been and watching this hilarious tragedy helps bring them back to the comfy reality of their safe lives.

Of course, Puck takes the stage and begs the pardon of the audience. He hopes to “restore amends,” suggesting all they’ve seen could be a dream. Puck apologizes for his mistakes and those of the players, and that’s how you embrace error.

“If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended—

That you have but slumbered here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearnèd luck

Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long.

Else the Puck a liar call.

So good night unto you all.

Give me your hands if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V-1, 2275-2290).

King Lear should in fact been called King Learn. There are multiple indications that Shakespeare wanted his audience to know learning is driven by error, but that we are blinded by our own certainty. Schulz says “we feel that we are right because we feel that we are right: we take our own certainty as an indicator of accuracy” (74). This eternal rightness is a result of the decisions we make to survive everyday. It’s the small things like finding our keys, driving to work, feeding ourselves when we’re hungry. We use our own survival as a reason for our correctness. “Well, I’ve smoked weed everyday for years, and I’m still alive, so weed must be healthy.” I know, it sounds silly, but we do it everyday and don’t even realize it. “To be blind without realizing our blindness is, figuratively, the situation of all of us when we are in error” (68). All too often we don’t know how wrong we are until it’s too late, but if we are more careful in our decisions (like Hamlet), more conscious of our mistakes and embrace them rather than avoid them (like the mechanicals), we can live a longer, fuller life. But Lear isn’t conscious of his mistakes, and it takes Death for him to admit he’s wrong.

“You must bear with me.

Pray you now, forget and forgive.

I am old and foolish” (King Lear, IV-7, 3006-8).

Lear isn’t the only character that learns (far too late) the folly of his ways. Gloucester only realizes how blind he was after he loses his sight.

“I have no way, and therefore want no eyes

I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen,

Our means secure us and our mere defects

Prove our commodities. O dear son Edgar,

The food of thy abusèd father’s wrath,

Might I but live to see thee in my touch,

I’d say I had eyes again!” (King Lear, IV-1, 2268-74).

“Our mere defects prove our commodities.” You couldn’t say it better. Our deficiencies are what make us all the unique snowflakes our kindergarten teachers assured us we were. It is not our successes that separate us from the pack, but our failures, and our failures are what we should be cherished and loved for, because, hopefully, we’ll learn from them.

Through err we find truth. This is evident in the literature, but why haven’t we taken it to heart? According to Schulz, “In literature, it is always the fools (those who never had any sense in the first place) and the madmen (those who lost it) who speak truth to power” (39). Have we been ignoring the lessons of Lear and Gloucester the last 400 years, or are we so wrapped up in money and power that failure is no longer an option? Times have changed, but we are all just as lost as we were then.

Like Gloucester and Lear, we are all just wanderers. Lear wanders out into a storm and Gloucester off a “cliff,” and in doing so both men come to realizations about the nature of men and the nature of themselves. Schulz says, “To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves,” (42) but I like the way she says it a page later. “To fuck up is to find adventure” (43).

I made this my motto years before reading Schulz’s words. I used to be a perfectionist. I could never seem to finish anything I was working on, whether it was an essay I was writing, a drawing I was working on, or a painting. Hell, it used to take me hours to cut the lawn because the lines didn’t look like those of a Major League Baseball field. Then I started fucking up and getting into trouble, and life got interesting. I worried less about the lines on the lawn and more about the time I was wasting chasing after perfection. I was curious if I still exhibited signs of perfectionism, so I took a survey included in Alina Tugend’s Better By Mistake.

Randy O. Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College, designed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale for a study he was doing about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The survey measures perfectionism based on six categories: Concern Over Mistakes, Personal Standards, Parent Expectations, Parental Criticism, Doubting of Actions, and Organization. I scored above average on five of the six. Some of the categories I don’t have a problem scoring highly, like Personal Standards and Organization, and some of it is actually out of my hands, like Parent Expectations and Parental Criticism, but despite my attempts to dump my perfectionism, it persists. (Joachim Stöber, a psychology professor at Penn State actually suggests the Parental categories be combined as well as the Concern and Doubting categories.) The most important category to me, though, “Concern Over Mistakes,” I scored below average. Tugend states, “Highly perfectionist people fear making mistakes before and during a task, and they beat themselves up after they’re finished,” so at least I’ve eased off the throttle in my chase of perfection, and I think that’s healthy (35). Having high standards is not perfectionism, and the fact that I doubt my actions but don’t let my errors eat me up is a good sign. We should forever live in doubt (like Hamlet) and never let our errors be a burden, but a blessing (like the mechanicals).

Lear, on the other hand, is never in doubt and has no concern over mistakes because he’s never mistaken. He would have scored zeros on the Doubting of Actions and Concern Over Mistakes scales (but if there was a Daughter Criticism scale, he would have scored higher than anyone). Lear is clearly not a perfectionist, so he errs often and he errs tragically, but his most fatal flaw is a lack of empathy. He cannot learn from his errors because he has no concern for those he wrongs until they’re gone.

Though Frost’s survey may not be an ideal model for determining whether we’re perfectionists, there are certainly parts of it that determine qualities that hinder us from learning from our mistakes. It takes Lear the majority of his life, and madness brought on by old age, to finally realize his errors. And it takes Death for him to be sorry for them. Had he taken time to consider his decisions before making them, or adopted some qualities of a perfectionist (like Hamlet), his daughters may have lived. Instead, his arrogant decisiveness led to errors that brought about his demise and the demise of his daughters – a perfect example of how being conscious of our errors can avoid tragedy. It is unfortunate tragedy was necessary for Lear and Gloucester to learn. For your own sake, don’t make the same mistakes they did, and if you do, admit them, embrace them, apologize, and learn, just as they did far too late.

Hamlet would certainly not abide complacency or predictability, but he did in fact share this fear, which is why modern critics have described him as indecisive. Kathryn Schulz addresses this in Being Wrong. “[I]n the eighteenth century, the writer James Boswell remarked on ‘that irresolution which forms so marked a part of [Hamlet’s] character,’ and the description stuck. Over the next hundred years, and with help from additional commentary by the likes of Goethe and Coleridge, the Hamlet we know today was born: a man so paralyzed by indecision that he is unable to take action” (170). Schulz believes handcuffing Hamlet with this characteristic of indecisiveness is a result of his political stature, and I agree. Indecisiveness is not a characteristic we expect or accept of our leaders, and being a prince, Hamlet is expected to be swift in his revenge, like Harry Truman or George W. Bush. Instead he is more like Mitt Romney – a flip flopper. Schulz compares him to John Kerry, but I think Romney is a better and more memorable comparison. Romney supported a universal healthcare system in his home state of Massachusetts, but changed his mind when running for President because he didn’t want to alienate his base. It was a fear of appearing incorrect in the minds of his constituents that changed his mind, and a fear of losing that moved him more right.

Hamlet is “paralyzed” by the same fear, and he should be. Any one of us would have a problem murdering someone, let alone someone a ghost told us to kill. After a bit of research and number crunching, I found that less than .005% of the United States population was incarcerated for murder in 2008. That tells me a miniscule part of the world population even considers murder, let alone murder via specter messenger.

Hamlet may be indecisive, but given his situation, that’s a good thing to be. His character becomes unrealistic if he kills his uncle in the first act. Schulz writes “his doubt is commensurate with the genuine uncertainty of his situation, and with the magnitude and gravity of the action he is contemplating” (172). Unlike his mother, Hamlet is not impulsive, and in addressing his mother’s actions to run into a quick marriage, he makes his disgust with her apparent.

“Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion. But sure that sense

Is apoplexed, for madness would not err,

Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled,

But it reserved some quantity of choice

To serve in such a difference. What devil was ’t

That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,

Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,

Or but a sickly part of one true sense

Could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush?

Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax

And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame

When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn,

And reason panders will” (Hamlet, III-4, 2463-2480).

Strong words for the woman who gave birth to him, but you must admit he has a point. My mother did something similar to this after divorcing my father (not in weeks but months), but I didn’t have the heart to tell her how it made me feel, and luckily she realized her error before I ever told her (her husband ended up being bipolar and didn’t tell her). Hamlet says it better than I ever could anyways. What’s the point of a son utilizing reason if his mother refuses to do so and gives into desire? She’s not setting a good example, yet Hamlet still resists impulsive action. He is still afraid.

Tugend writes “the fear of making mistakes is a cudgel that hangs over so many of us, preventing us from not only taking risks in our personal and professional lives, but even more important, really accepting – not just giving lip service to – the truth that we all are human and imperfect” (5). Accepting this truth isn’t easy because many of us strive for perfection. I’m doing it right now in writing this paper. I wouldn’t take the time to write it knowing it would end up trash, or worse yet, kindling. “[W]e all tend to be on a continuum of perfectionism,” but it’s when we abandon this idea of perfection that we actually begin learning (31). There’s nothing wrong with pursuing perfection. We just have to realize perfection is unknowable and, therefore, unreachable. And if we can do that, embracing our mistakes as learning experiences is easy. Had Gertrude realized her error in marrying Claudius she may have learned a valuable lesson and saved her son’s life. Instead, she dies, as does Hamlet, who was only trying to make people realize the folly of their ways while trying to avoid his own.

We err in order to succeed. I understand that may sound a bit cryptic given errors are generally referred to as failures, but those failures allow us to succeed at life. Hamlet succeeded at life. He may die tragically, but at least he dies tragically. He lived a life in the red, with the pedal to the metal, and there’s nothing tragic about being damned interesting for the entirety of your life and dying young. The tragedy would be for you to be boring until the day you die and immediately forgotten. The tragedy is to pass through life as scenery. This is why it’s important to err: If we don’t embrace our failures, it’s harder to learn from them in order to succeed, and then when we finally do succeed, we can’t fully enjoy our success. Hamlet’s fatal flaw is not indecisiveness. It’s fear – fear of being mistaken.

After expressing my interest in Shakespeare’s sermons preaching err, a friend of mine told me to focus on the issue of class because most of his audience could neither read nor write. Though my friend has little experience with Shakespeare’s works, his words are worth noting, because a writer of Shakespeare’s caliber not only knows the golden rule of writing – write for your audience – but also knows the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” Some of Shakespeare’s family was believed to be Catholic after all, despite it being illegal, and though his audience wanted nothing more than to be entertained (not much has changed), Shakespeare took it upon himself to do more than simply entertain. He realized these people of the pit needed guidance and the only way they were going to get it was in that very pit. There were no public schools for them. There were no books they could read, no movies they could see. And, most importantly, there was no one that cared enough to educate them. It was in the best interest of the body politic to keep these people ignorant in order to take advantage of them, and Shakespeare wasn’t having any of that.

Instead of making “art for art’s sake,” art that has no moral or didactic purpose, Shakespeare did battle with his superiors using his pen, and though I won’t make you read the cliché, he won, despite our current state of affairs. The loss is our own, as we have moved further and further away from the teachings provided by William Shakespeare, perhaps due to a dwindling intellect, our commodified existence, or an extreme case of laziness. Whatever the reason, it’s not much of a reason at all. If Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are the best writers of my generation, we should probably keep reading the classics. Hell, we might learn something.

The idea that art requires no moral or didactic purpose, one that was advocated by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Théophile Gautier (who made it his motto), and even Allan Kaprow (who established an art of “Happenings,” consisting of performances of everyday life), is not an idea we should have a problem with. Art shouldn’t have to meet certain didactic standards, or any standards for that matter. If that were the case, we’d all have to meet the standards of Shakespeare, and not much would have been published or performed after his death in 1616. But all art is created with one thing in mind – value. Even Shakespeare was writing to feed himself and his family, and though his works’ value was inherently linked with its entertainment value, it was important to Shakespeare that his work did more – that it educated those who needed it most. The best way to receive that education is to take Shakespeare’s words to heart:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts” (As You Like It, II-7, 1037-40).

If we go through life acting as if the world’s a stage, it only makes it easier for us to learn from our mistakes. Life is but a rehearsal. We practice and practice at being the best actor we can be only to fuck up the performance over and over again, just as the mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But the mechanicals prove that putting on a great performance isn’t necessary to entertain or even educate. You can be an atrocious actor, or in our case an awful person, and still have an effect on people. It’s only your exit that is affected by your performance. Some of us just want to be scenery; others hope to exit early. But there are others looking to outshine the rest of the world for as long as they can, and those of us who would love to upstage the shining stars for just a few acts and bring them to their end. Everyone has his or her preference, but everyone exits. Everyone dies. The length of our stay on the stage depends on the errors we make and how we handle those errors – comically or tragically.

The following blogs will explain why Shakespeare wanted us to err and why it’s important that we do so. It will address what errors he considered educational and what errors he considered deadly. And it will interpret how Shakespeare thought we should deal with our errors, using his plays, sonnets, poems, and personal life as references.

Shakespeare used “err” or any of its derivatives 74 times. It appears in nearly every play (and the title of one), seven sonnets, and three of his four poems, making me think Shakespeare had a keen interest in human error and how to handle it. But my real question is this: Was Shakespeare encouraging us to err? And that’s a question that will take much more time to answer. I have 74 passages to look into, and each passage will require me to review each play, poem, and sonnet individually in order to uncover the bearing of each “err” and whether I can assess Shakespeare’s intentions in using the term.

Also, I’d like to know whether Shakespeare was a perfectionist, because if he was that tells me he took his own errors to heart, which in turn tells me why he focused so much on errors in all his work and it would be less likely that he was encouraging his audience to err. Alina Tugend writes in Better by Mistake, “Highly perfectionist people fear making mistakes before and during a task, and they beat themselves up after they’re finished” (35). If Shakespeare beat himself up over his own errors it’s not likely he would encourage erring, but if he embraced his own errors it’s likely that would be conveyed in his writing. I’m leaning toward Shakespeare not being a perfectionist, and that may be my bias, but Will was writing for money, and I find it hard to believe a perfectionist would ever finish enough work to feed himself.

These passages will be my “portals to discovery” in regards to error and Shakespeare, and I believe they will lead me to discover that to err is Shakespeare, and he wanted us to do it often.

Ariel

They cannot budge till your release. The king,

His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted,

And the remainder mourning over them,

Brimful of sorrow and dismay. But chiefly

Him that you termed, sir, “the good old Lord Gonzalo,”

His tears run down his beard like winter’s drops

From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works ‘em

That if you now beheld them, your affections

Would become tender.

Prospero

Dost thou think so, spirit?

Ariel

Mine would, sir, were I human. (Act V, Scene I)

Prospero requires Ariel to tell him how to treat his own kind. It would be like me asking a robot how to treat someone who had wronged me. Just another reason I have a problem with Prospero. In his 12 years of study you can’t tell me he came across nothing that allowed him to understand the human condition. What the hell was he reading? Obviously not too much literature, and since Ariel isn’t human, I think Shakespeare was trying to tell us more through Ariel than through Prospero. I see Ariel as a figment of fiction, a representation of everything Prospero was missing in his studies – art, music, literature – in a word, the humanities. He was exactly what Prospero needed to understand his people.

“Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,

Yet, with my nobler reason, ‘gainst my fury

Do I take part: the rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,

The sole drift of my purpose doth extend

Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel:

My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore,

And they shall be themselves.” (Act V, Scene I)

I have delved into this question of “virtue over vengeance” and found some very relevant reading in Alina Tugend’s Better By Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong. She writes, “Our response to errors grows out of deeply embedded cultural beliefs and values – beliefs and values we’re not even consciously aware of” (189). Prospero falls victim to his cultural beliefs and values, not even aware that he has erred in his treatment of his usurpers, Ariel, and especially Caliban. Prospero is remorseful for those errors only when Ariel tells him compassion will have a more positive effect on his enemies and revenge will only negatively affect himself. Prospero finally takes responsibility for Caliban saying, “this thing of darkness! / Acknowledge mine” (Act V, Scene I). It seems Prospero finally realized he had brought all this on himself in conducting his experiment on humanity, which is really all it is. The one thing he didn’t understand, humanity, couldn’t be found in the books he was reading, so he had to find another way to learn it – through a mistake.

Turgend quotes Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide, saying, “We need to learn from mistakes not just because it might be an emotionally healthier way to live, but also because, as Lehrer says, ‘expertise is simply the wisdom that emerges from cellular error. Mistakes aren’t to be discouraged. On the contrary, they should be cultivated and carefully investigated’” (25). It looks like I have plenty more reading to do regarding the benefits of mistakes and how Shakespeare was channeling this notion in his writing.

In reading The Tempest, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for both Caliban and Ariel. Sure they were slaves, but I felt Prospero was a bit of an asshole, and having no previous knowledge of this play, was expecting a tragedy after Act I. “In its dramatic form The Tempest is a comedy that recuperates what could have been a tragedy” (Garber, 4). I still find Caliban’s life to be quite tragic. Unlike Ariel, whose life was saved, Caliban’s life was stolen from him when Prospero arrived on the island. He was force-fed the customs of Prospero and Miranda, and though he attempted to rape Miranda, I don’t think that’s reason to be unsympathetic. Miranda and Prospero probably shouldn’t have been there, but Prospero’s prized possessions were his books and not his people, which is why he was usurped in the first place.

Prospero needed Caliban and Ariel not just to carry out his revenge, but to realize how silly he had been to choose his books and his magic over humanity. He was mistaken, just as his usurpers were mistaken, but he forgives them because he also is seeking forgiveness. He even asks the audience to forgive him at the end of the play.

“And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so, that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon’d be,

Let your indulgence set me free.” (Epilogue)

We might infer that Shakespeare was Catholic given all the forgiving, but that’s a question still unanswered because practicing Catholicism was illegal at the time, though some scholars claim a few of Shakespeare’s family members were indeed Catholic.

The important thing is Prospero abandons magic to acquire his old life as Duke, governing the people of his land. His books are no longer his prized possession – his people are. It seems he’s given up science for humanity. Is Shakespeare hinting that life’s meaning isn’t found through science but through the humanities? I’m not sure, but it does seem like Shakespeare was driving home the notion that we should accept the fact that humans are fallible and we should forgive them for their faults.

Alexander Pope wrote, “To err is human, to forgive, divine,” and though he wrote it after Shakespeare died, I think it’s an appropriate launching pad for my project. I’m investigating whether Shakespeare wanted us to embrace our errors, mistakes, failures, and flaws rather than avoid or ignore them, and I’m starting to feel he really did. Even his tragic characters (Hamlet, Lear, Romeo, Othello) are generally better remembered and more popular and I think it’s because they lived their lives in the red. Everyone should strive to die tragically, and I kind of wish Prospero would have. It would have made for a better story.

Carl Spackler may not realize it, but the Dalai Lama stiffed him. I’d like to think most of us receive total consciousness on our deathbed, unless you’re a bitter old man or woman unwilling to accept the truth. This truth, this total consciousness, is a bittersweet epiphany – the ’til it’s gone moment. The ’til it’s gone moment is that moment you realize how much you love what you have because it’s now gone, and this epiphany is bittersweet because we finally understand the meaning of our lives, but it took a lifetime to acquire this awareness and now we have no life left to live.

You can catch glimpses of this epiphany during near death experiences, of which I’ve had a few. Most recently (or just the one I’m most willing to tell you about…you decide), I was blown into a cement median on the interstate going 80 mph on my crotch rocket and was nearly run over by the semi-truck behind me. When I pulled the bike to the shoulder I collapsed and immediately went into shock as I had a laceration through every layer of skin running from my left knee to my left butt cheek. Before people arrived to help, all I could think about was my family and my girlfriend at the time. It’s absolutely sobering to have unconscious thoughts race through your mind and let you know what and who you really love. We spend our entire lives asking questions, the biggest of which being, “What is the meaning of life?” Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to answer and then we’re dead.

So why does this epiphany overwhelm us when we die? It’s because we’re vain, selfish, stupid pricks that make mistakes, and many of those mistakes take a deathbed, tons of morphine, and a light at the end of the tunnel to realize. Last rights aren’t read out of strict Catholic tradition, but because there’s a running tradition of guilty consciences awaiting death. So is the meaning of life to avoid making mistakes? Absolutely not.

“I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;

I stumbled when I saw: full oft ’tis seen,

Our means secure us, and our mere defects

Prove our commodities. –O dear son Edgar,

The food of thy abused father’s wrath!

Might I but live to see thee in my touch,

I’ld say I had eyes again!” (Shakespeare’s King Lear, Act IV, Scene I)

The meaning of life has more to do with embracing mistakes than avoiding them. If you’re going to avoid anything in life it should be regret. That way, when you’re ass is stuck in a deathbed you won’t long for the things you should have done and simply reminisce about what you have done. I’ve always been one to make plenty of mistakes because I always felt they made great stories and I fancy myself a storyteller. But I try not to make the same mistake twice, yet here I am about to do so, leaving a woman I love for love of the game, ironically, but I won’t have any regrets. I’m a firm believer that happiness is just a moment, and I’m living in that moment as often as possible. When one moment passes you move onto another. So Friday will be last day in class, as I am moving to Minneapolis to start an internship. I will continue to blog and my final project will also be featured on this blog, so keep on eye on it if you have an interest in mistake-making or finding those moments of happiness before the ’til it’s gone moment sneaks up on you. Catch you on the other side.

A mix of different interviews with Albert Hofmann, piecing together a 90 minute history trip about LSD, what impact it had on science, pharmacology, psychology and drug culture. He explains how it was discovered and how he experienced his first trip. It also has a few very interesting interviews with Timothy Leary and his academic colleagues. One of the members of The Merry Pranksters, Carolyn Garcia, tells how LSD affected the hippie culture and how [LSD] prohibition had more a negative effect than a positive one.

The Substance: Albert Hofmann’s LSD manages to stay objective about the use of LSD and other psychotropics such as psilocybin. Informing the viewer about the positive sides of a LSD trip, but also discussing how psychotropic drugs, with their profound effect on the mind, can also send the user on a very unpleasant trip. Furthermore it highlights how the prohibition of LSD had a huge negative effect on those who used it casually, and that it more importantly had a very negative effect on scientists that wanted to conduct research on LSD.

There is still a lot to learn about LSD and its effects on the mind. Studies have shown that it can have a positive effect on those suffering from depression, which is discussed towards at the end of the documentary. However, due to the prohibition, psychiatrists now rely on psilocybin, as it is not as restricted as LSD.

Because the documentary is using archived footage for some of the interviews and to provide context, it at times feels as if it is missing something, leaving you wanting to hear more from certain people in the documentary. Moreover, this feeling that something is lacking makes the documentary a bit slow moving, leaving the viewer asking, what are you really trying to tell me? All in all, it is still a very informative and thought-provoking documentary.

For more info about The Substance: Albert Hofmann’s LSD you can visit: BIFF & The Substance