What Richard Hanania Gets Wrong About Shakespeare

An infinite monkey theorem doesn’t come close to explaining literary greatness.

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(Picture via Getty Images)

“The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue!”

William Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida)

Sometimes someone makes such a bizarrely awful argument that you hope it’s a joke so you don’t have to go through the trouble of refuting it—until he presses the point so adamantly that you become convinced he’s serious and, because of the argument’s extreme inanity, must be engaged. Richard Hanania, the controversial opinion writer, made such an argument last weekend. 

The sordid story begins, as so many do, on X/Twitter, where someone shared former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s speculation that, based on a back-of-the-envelope statistical analysis, William Shakespeare isn’t as good as everyone thinks. “What are the odds that the greatest writer would have been born in 1564?” he asked. As the Earl of Salisbury said in Henry V, “’tis a fearful odds.”

The musings of America’s favorite alleged fraud earned plenty of righteous ridicule, but Hanania offered his humble support:

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Richard Hanania is a troll. He totally said that just to get attention. He literally talks openly about how his playbook is to tweet stuff he doesn’t actually believe to get attention and push the envelope (and also challenge himself in a perverse way).

    This was a good defense of Shakespeare. It is common for those in our age of sophistry to sneer at him, but it’s hard to fully reckon with the body of his work and what he accomplished and not conclude that he was the greatest of all time. Hanania unwittingly makes this point. Despite the numerical probability being against him, and despite lacking every advantage of technology and historical hindsight and inherited literary tradition that we possess today, he did something nobody else has ever come close to matching. Western Civilization owes a great debt to Shakespeare.

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    John Lewis

    It’s not genius today when an 18 year old music major writes a quartet in the style of Mozart. Impressive maybe, but the exercise is derivative. And informative for the music major. It was however genius for Mozart to write a quartet in 1786 that showed the world for the first time that such music was possible. I’d apply the same line of thinking to Shakespeare. Hanania should try to show the world a new excellence in writing rather than something derivative and less than informative.

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    1. Clark.Monson

      Exactly. There's a difference between, say, Raphael and all of his imitators, or between Caravaggio and his imitators. We still look at Giotto and Masaccio with awe, though subsequent painters surpassed their skill, because they revolutionized the painting of their time.

      But I'd even go so far as to say that in consistency of poetry and prose, in characterization, and in entertainment value across what would even today be an impressive output, Shakespeare was not only a massive leap forward but has rarely if ever been bettered.

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      1. Avatar photo
        John Lewis

        True. I’m skeptical that someone from today, with some training, could be made to imitate Shakespeare at an equal level. And even if one could, what is the point? There’s value to experiencing art that has the power to regenerate itself from one generation to the next. This is maybe a side point, but I don’t think it’s unimportant. It’s cool to investigate quality art from the past. History has done a lot of editorial work for us, knocking off the filler. One might say it’s accidental who gets elevated and who gets lost, but I think only partially so. For some this might be true. But for someone like Shakespeare, or a Bach, it is their work that does the heavy lifting of falling through time.

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    Stomaino

    It is possible that all this idiot will ever be known for is writing this moronic article about Shakespeare.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Mike B

    "We’re looking for the Beatles, not the Archies."

    Even more apt might be a comparison of the Beatles to the Monkees - the latter were decently talented musicians in their own right, and produced some hits (mostly written for them, not by them) - but ultimately a pale imitation of the original.

    (This is my "infinite Monkees" theorem.)

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    1. John Boland

      Clever play on words, but I disagree on the merits. The Monkees may have started as a fake band, but, like Pinocchio becoming a real boy, transcended that state. Heck they made a movie with Jack Nicholson! Even the Beatles never did that. Mike Nesmith, in particular, had genuine talent. The Archies, however, were never more than an animated fabrication.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Mike B

        My wife was a big fan. She even, with a group of friends (and her mother's complicity), camped outside their hotel room and got autographs, and in my wife's case, planted a kiss on the cheek of Davy Jones. She also claims to have kissed Chuck Negron and Donny Osmond on the lips. Which puts me in some stellar company, no?

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  5. Trichwages

    Two things I know for sure: no one will remember Richard Hanania in 50 years (being extraordinarily generous) much less centuries from now, and not only does no one want to emulate Hanania’s writing, he has no substance nor original insight or intellect worth reading now. All pants and no trousers as the English say.

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  6. Bubba

    Classic internet argument.

    So what if there does exist or will exist a better writer?

    It doesn’t change the fact that Shakespeare is phenomenal. No one is preventing you from reading or preferring another writer.

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    Brian L.

    Writing in the style of Shakespeare resulted in one of my favorite fun books, The Empire Striketh Back: Star Wars Part the Fifth, by Ian Doescher. (There’s actually a whole series of them.) Very clever and entertaining.

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  8. Kevin M

    With ChatGPT we now actually have infinite monkeys.

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  9. Old reader

    Mr. Bananas (spell check changed his name but I left it for appropriateness) who once penned that all people with an IQ under 90 should be sterilized, certainly doesn’t understand one of the things that the Bard excelled at: irony.



    William Shakespeare mastered irony

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  10. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    Methinks Hananiah’s doth protest too much.

    Let’s see Shakespeare match that ! 😉

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    1. Avatar photo
      Mike B

      Methinks thou shouldst prevent the portal from striking thy nether quarters as thou hasteneth therethrough.

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      1. Avatar photo
        DougCLE

        Perfect 10!

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        1. Avatar photo
          Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

          Phil H would be jealous of how well he did!

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