Greenblatt blows!!!

In the two essays written by George Will and Stephen Greenblatt, the main focal point of the arguments centers on whether or not modern literature professors and analyzers are reading to much in to classical literature such as William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Will argues that “…by ‘deconstructing’ or politically decoding, or otherwise attacking the meaning of other literary works, critics strip literature of its authority. Criticism displaces literature and critics displace authors as bestowers of meaning”. This fine point is refuted by Greenblatt who states in his argument that “… Literary scholars investigate and encourage their students to consider, and [he] would think that the columnists who currently profess an ardent interest in our cultural heritage would approve”. Such an argument seems to be complete poppycock from my point of view. The way I see it is that Shakespeare was an artist; a man with a need to please a crowd and develop something on the stage that would change a person’s life for ever. Greenblatt on the other hand is an overworked blowhard who finds joy in connecting completely separate events and occasions by finding the smallest coincidences in life and exploiting them to their fullest potential. Through Greenblatt’s reasoning one might find that Obama is related to Christ, or Mr. Dominguez is intimately involved with Ms. Lederach. Such reasoning and justification is absurd when one truly thinks about it. Just because a person has a small occurrence with something in their life, does not mean that they will forever be changed by it. Even if Shakespeare had read Montaigne’s “Of Cannibal” as Greenblatt so adamantly points out, who are we to say 300 years later that he was writing about the views expressed in that book? I believe that Shakespeare and other great classical literature was written purely for the enjoyment of the people in that time and ours, anything else is just under gratified college professors trying to sound smarter than they truly are.