From the Times, London (
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1062-1691649,00.html):
July 13, 2005
Double, double, teenage troubleMagnus Linklater
How can Shakespeare have any resonance for those addicted to internet war games?WALL-TO-WALL Shakespeare at Stratford that is the prospect. Whether tis nobler, in the course of a single year, to attend every play he ever wrote, from Titus Andronicus to Henry VIII, or to indulge the lesser-known delights of A Lovers Complaint and The Phoenix and Turtle, whose lines are more forgettable, ay, theres the rub. All we know is that, if the Royal Shakespeare Companys plans are fulfilled, there will be no escape. Every word tragedy, comedy, sonnet or poem is to be performed in the course of next year. For most of us, the programme is enough to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood. But will the bard have anything to say to computer-dazed teenagers, the generation weaned, not on the printed word, but on the internet?
Before gentle readers of The Times leap to the letters page in defence of the universal all-embracing language of Shakespeare, consider this: the worldwide audience that may, in any one year, see or read a Shakespeare play is outnumbered, every day, and possibly even every hour, by the hundreds of thousands who are watching something very different: an interactive, internet-based game called World of Warcraft, a never-ending, all-absorbing contest that has become addictive to hundreds of thousands of teenage players across the world. When, earlier this year, the latest version came on the market, it sold, almost immediately, two million copies. Some five or six million players are reckoned to play it on a regular basis. Parents be warned: your sons or daughters, sneaking up to their rooms to catch up on a little homework, are almost certainly taking part in a titanic campaign that has nothing to do with love s labours lost, but instead pits the forces of The Alliance against the fiendish armies of The Horde. It is a morality tale of our times but written English has very little to do with it.
I caught up with it last week in the company of Richard and his friend Toby, who are both 15. Both are intelligent and articulate. They are also, by their own confession, addicts. A little box in the corner of their computer screen revealed how much time they have personally accumulated, over the past six months, playing the game; it is measured in days not hours. Richard has spent 31 days logged on to his screen; Toby, who has been warned off by his parents, was only able to notch up 240 hours. Another box revealed that, during the time I watched, 64,000 people were playing, with another 238,000 logged on. Not many participative sports can match that.
Both boys admitted that, homework aside, the game left little time for reading. They did, however, believe that their hand-eye co-ordination had improved, and that I can believe. As I watched, Richard launched a daring raid across the war-torn lands of Azeroth, arming himself with weapons of mass destruction and throwing off attacks from malevolent creatures.
This is not a game for individual enterprise. Whole armies play together. At any one point, there may be 3,500 on one team battling with 5,000 on the other. They are drawn from all over the world. Richards allies are mainly based in Sweden and Spain. Toby prefers the Germans and the French. It seems that no one much enjoys playing with the Americans, they keep on trying to take over the world so very unlike real life. The setting is medieval, or rather Viking, with a strong touch of Tolkien mythology. Warriors have names like Skullcrusher, Bladefist, Storm Rage or Dark Sorrow, they have trades like leatherwork, shoe-mending or tailoring, they are controlled by barons who are known as gamemasters, they gain honour points , they become stronger by killing their enemies.
Death and destruction are, indeed, the running themes of the game. You win by killing more people than the other side. This overriding aim is assisted by material gain, the acquisition of territory and the accumulation of gold, silver and treasure whose only purpose, however, is to buy more weapons. Sex plays no part, which may relieve parents, but then neither does love, altruism, generosity or self-sacrifice. Both Toby and Richard claimed that playing the game was every bit as absorbing as reading a good book. But neither condoned the hours they spent in front of a flickering screen rather than going outside to play football or tennis. In their defence, Toby said: You get to know a lot of people, playing this game even though they all inhabit a rather strange world. Richard added: You speak to people you would never speak to in real life. But sometimes you have to kill them as well.
I wondered how on earth these latter-day Elizabethans would take to Shakespeare. How could they comprehend the tortured sensibility of a Hamlet, the eloquence of Portia, the absurdity of Malvolio, the tortured jealousy of Othello, when all they have to go on is death, destruction, power and final victory? And then I thought of Coriolanus, a screen-based warrior if ever there was one, whose valour cannot conceal his contempt for the common people. You common cry of curs! he snarls, whose breath I hate/As reek o the rotten fens, whose loves I prize/As the dead carcasses of unburied men/ That do corrupt my air . . . That perfectly captures the spirit if not the language of computer warfare. I thought of Macbeth, and his blood-stained ambition, of Henry V bestirring his compatriots to arms and Richard III, eliminating all who stand between him and ultimate power.
Perhaps the gulf that lies between the World of Warcraft and the world of Shakespeare does not yawn quite as wide as first I thought. Unless you think that words still matter.
