24 March 2016
To Be Or Not To Be – Who, Exactly?
Finding a Shakespearean alter ego.
By Chin Chin
It is always said that psychometric tests are hard to manipulate and I suppose that must be the case otherwise they would be completely useless. After all, most employers want exactly the same things: intelligence, diligence, a sense of humour, reverence for superiors and, of course, a reluctance to ask awkward questions or whistle-blow. If there was a standard set of answers which would demonstrate all these qualities, job applicants would be trained in how to provide them. No, those who put together such tests must have subtle ways of picking up character traits, and I was very conscious of this when I completed a recent online questionnaire to work out which of Shakespeare’s characters I most resembled.
The trouble was that the benchmark had already been set. My wife had come through as Mark Antony, a man who nowadays would probably have combined the Presidency of the Cambridge Union with the leadership of the Royal Marines, while giving interviews on what it was like to be a sex god. My daughter had bagged Viola, redolent with wit and charm and with the ability to express herself perfectly in sixteenth century verse. Clearly another A lister. I certainly needed someone pretty hot if I was going to shine in that company. Still, it wasn’t going to be enough to choose a character. I also had to persuade the test that I was like them. Better, then, to choose someone who I resembled.
The obvious place to start was with appearance, so I stood in front of a full-length mirror and asked myself which of the great Shakespearean heroes I resembled? To increase the chances of an honest answer, I emptied my mind and just let the impression form. Yes, there was something there. A memory was crystallising. I had it now, a theatre somewhere in North London, a storm scene, lots of rain and the audience focused on a single character. What was the scene from? I remembered. It was Lear and at the stage of the play when he was definitely coming apart. That wasn’t going to cut it in comparison with Mark Antony or Viola.
Actually, it worried me a bit. Did I really look like Lear, and were people who I passed in the street saying to themselves, “Poor fellow, it’s a disgrace how his children have treated with him”? No, I couldn’t believe that was the case. It must have been that trying to open my mind to my reflection in a new-age sort of way had given me a particular doolally expression. I would try again but this time clenching my face into a lantern jaw and wearing clothes which had a dash of the military about them. Luckily, I happened to have an old greatcoat which I had bought from an army surplus store, so I put it on, carefully brushing my hair to get rid of any Lear-like overtones. As I didn’t have a sword handy, I completed the outfit by sticking a carving knife into my waistband. Perhaps it was rather more Captain Kidd than martial hero but it certainly added colour to the ensemble. I stood in front of the mirror again.
This time the impression was much better. I was clearly in the heroic mould and one of Shakespeare’s more soldierly heroes seem to beckon. Who should it be? Coriolanus? No, I didn’t think I was as arrogant as that. Macbeth? Clearly a good egg in many ways but his behaviour didn’t always measure up to modern standards. After all he hesitated “like the poor cat in the adage” before dispatching Duncan. As someone who had worked in the City of London I would know better than to do that.
What about Richard III then? I tried a slight stoop and the sort of wicked cackle which is supposed to be attractive to women. Certainly he was one of Shakespeare’s more striking characters but, then again, if I was identified with him, I would have to put up with family ribaldry every time we drove into a car park. No, I would rather have a more straightforward hero. It had to be either Julius Caesar or Henry V.
Now although Julius Caesar has a play named after him, he is not really the star of it. The only truly memorable line he delivers is “et tu Brute” whereas Mark Antony’s funeral oration is one of the finest speeches ever written. Mark Anthony outshines Caesar completely as a character and I did not think I wanted to see the smirk our friends would give when they saw how my wife and I had been cast. Perhaps just a little too true to life.
No, it had to be Henry V, so the task was to give Henry V-like answers to each of the questions posed in the quiz. Actually that was harder than you might think because there are two interpretations of that particular play. Henry V can be played as the straight action hero, as in the Laurence Olivier version, or he can be played as subtle, manipulative and devious, as in fashionable fringe theatres in North London. That wouldn’t be much of a worry if the quiz brought him up as my alter ego. The branding would still work. “To my surprise I came out as rather a Henry V” would be a conversation stopper at a dinner party. The question was, however, which version I should assume when answering the quiz questions.
On reflection the answer was obvious. If the questions had been set by a soldier, the Quizmaster of the Brigade of Guards for example, there would have been little doubt. Answers in the heroic vein would have met the bill. The quiz had not been set by a Guardsman, however, but by someone in the media and we all know what a cynical load of pinkos they are. Clearly then the right approach was to pretend to be cynical and manipulative and to frame the answers accordingly.
It took me some time to complete the quiz. Being cynical and manipulative comes quite easy but being cynical, manipulative and regal requires a degree of concentration. Anyway I tapped in my answers and waited for the results. They took a few minutes to come through and I spent them thinking how I would introduce the subject of the quiz at the party I was going to that evening.
When the answer arrived it was not quite what I had hoped for and I looked at it for some time without moving. You see, it set me a completely new problem. By exactly what criteria could you say that Iago was nobler than Mark Anthony or Viola?
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