Thank Goodness It's Monday #329

SHAKESPEARE & CO.

CAN THE BARD BOOST YOUR BOTTOM LINE?

The new movie, Anonymous, presents – once again – an argument that Shakespeare wasn’t the author of all things Shakespeare.

Rest easy. I’m not going to go into that issue today (sighs of relief all around) other than to say, the idea in all its variant forms has long been debunked.

Shakespeare's funeral monument
in Holy Trinity church, Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Installed after his death, it is,
along with the Droeshout engraving from the First Folio,
the only officially accepted face of Shakespeare. 
Created by Gerard Johnson, it pre-dates the First Folio of 1623,
since it is referenced in the Folio as 'thy Stratford Moniment'. 
Rendered in modern English the poem beneath it reads:

Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious Death hath placed
Within this monument: Shakespeare, with whom
Quick nature died, whose name doth deck this tomb
Far more than cost, sith all that he hath writ
Leaves living art, but page, to serve his wit.



However (uh, oh) --

Let’s take this opportunity to consider the question posed in today’s headline:

Can the Bard of Avon reveal some “new” strategies you can use to boost your bottom line?

No lesser authority than the son of the late, great Shakespearean actor Sir Laurence Olivier thinks so.

Richard Olivier, at one of the UK’s major business schools, Cranfield School of Management, teamed with Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and taught a course that mines the playwright’s work for advice on climbing the corporate ladder. (Should work for entrepreneurial types as well.)

The Olivier-led workshops at the Globe were two-day affairs, focused on one particular Shakespearean play. Also included were some basic acting lessons.

Speak the speech, I pray you… “This is not about teaching people to speak in verse … but simply about the power of speaking well,” Olivier was quoted as saying in an Associated Press report.

Participants learn to make rousing speeches and project confidence, useful life and leadership skills.

“Business leaders are, more and more, having to manage companies like kings and queens were managing nation-states 400 years ago,” Olivier adds. “Shakespeare’s plays deal with people in positions of power and responsibility. They explore how human nature copes with those stresses.”

For example? Olivier suggests that newly promoted leaders can find parallels with Shakespeare’s Henry V, who struggles to gain respect in his new role as king.

To weather acts of betrayal, you might turn to Julius Caesar, writes reporter Mara D. Bellaby.

The Winter’s Tale might be just the ticket for coping with midcareer changes.

Macbeth cautions about becoming obsessed with power for its own sake.

Hamlet can provoke discussions about the harmfulness of indecision and the necessity of action.

IMHO: Perhaps one of the greatest historical leadership feats recounted in a Shakespearean play is the triumph of Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt.

The play tells us Henry’s forces were outnumbered five to one on that St. Crispin’s Day – October 25, 1415. Yet, again by the play’s counting, 10,000 opposing forces were slain while Henry’s losses numbered fewer than 30.

Wow! Can it be so? More objective historians don’t dispute the triumph in the face of overwhelming odds. They do say that Henry’s success was due mainly to the superiority of the English longbow men over heavily armored knights on horseback, and this victory demonstrated the obsolescence of methods of warfare thought proper in the Age of Chivalry.

TGIM ACTION IDEA #1: Don’t say “C'est la guerre.” Translated as “This is war,” the sense of the phrase is a shoulder-shrugging attitude of resignation and inevitability; that “this cannot be helped.”

TGIM IDEA #1 IN ACTION: Say “C'est le V” -- Henry V, that is. Follow the Shakespearean leader and be like Henry V. Luck favors the technologically prepared. Are you keeping up? Or are you chivalrously clinging to strategies that will lead to your downfall?

Getting back to the Bard. In Shakespeare’s version of the Battle of Agincourt events, it’s the speech that Henry makes to his troops before the battle that inspires the victory.

Of course it’s the speech. That’s what plays are about. It begins with Henry suggesting that their small force is not a great disadvantage.

“The fewer the men, the greater the honour,” King Harry tells the assembled.

TGIM ACTION IDEA #2: Even if you and the Bard didn’t have the best of relations when you were supposed to read him, don’t be put off.

TGIM IDEA #2 IN ACTION: Read just the speech (Act IV, Scene III) with an eye to understanding the skills the king displays in just a few lines.

Known as the “Band of Brothers” speech, it acknowledges the difficult battle before them, envisions their triumph, and concludes inspirationally:

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Or, Take Five. Minutes that is, and enjoy Kenneth Branagh’s inspired and inspiring presentation here: Band of Brothers speech.

Putting it all together: Let’s give Shakespeare -- whosoever he may be -- the last word:

King Henry V: All things are ready, if our minds be so.  

Westmoreland: Perish the man whose mind is backward now!

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S. Hey! It’s Monday. There’s a week full of opportunity ahead.

                               Now, soldiers, march away:

                               And how thou pleasest, dispose the day!