WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, PROCREATION, AND THE ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT Julian L. Simon* It shocks and humbles me that a long-ago poet -- even if the name is Shakespeare -- could, in the span of 14 lines and however long it took to write them, arrive at the heart of the demographic-economic vision for which moderns such as I had to struggle longer than a decade. Of course it may be romantic, contrary to fact, and even counter-productive to think that Shakespeare arrived at this vision in a blinding flash. Perhaps he, too, struggled for it through many years before he compressed it into a few rhymes. But without doubt he got there without the help of the great predecessors who built the steps and lighted the way of us moderns, and without the data collected over two centuries that now provide the sub-strate for the idea. Of course Shakespeare's Sonnet 1 does not comprise a theory of the human enterprises's demographic-economic development. Yet the sonnet takes up themes and expresses a vision uncannily parallel to a current theory of that subject. My aim here is to use the sonnet to illuminate that theory--to see the theory more clearly and show it to be more persuasive than it might otherwise appear. In connection with the exegesis, I shall also argue that this parallelism is a reasonable reading of the sonnet. Even if the reader does not agree that parallelism is to be found, however, it would seem unarguable that the sonnet strikes sparks that light off rich meditation on the subject. Surely poetry serves a great purpose if it can set our thoughts afire, even if the direction of the thoughts was not intended by the poet. For a poem to just provoke fruitful misreading is a great achievement. And I trust that using a poem for its power to illuminate is neither foolishness nor fraud. The "good" that Shakespeare wishes to advance is poetic truth, indistinguishable from beauty. This is the parallel to the natural resources and standard of living which are the subject of contemporary economic study of economic development. More about this shortly. Let us examine Sonnet l. (That number may be more than a coincidence, just as it is not a coincidence that the ideas in Genesis come at the very beginning of the Bible.) Sonnet 1 From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory; But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. Shakespeare begins by assuming that "From fairest creatures we desire increase"--that is, that there should be more of such creatures. By "creatures" Shakespeare means people, our human species. That Shakespeare has such a demographic-like process in mind is clear from his third and fourth lines--death preceded by birth and renewal. And we may suppose that Shakespeare is interested in the human race as a whole, not only in its most beautiful specimens. In The Tempest (v, i, 181, quoted by Knight, 1955, p. 139) we read "How beauteous mankind is! " If Shakespeare is indeed talking about people as if humans have a place different than other creatures in the scheme of things, the sonnet immediately takes its leave of those in contemporary society who believe that "other species have rights, too". These persons assert that when there is a conflict or trade-off between the increase of people and the increase of other species, the former must be constrained for the sake of the latter. As the eminent biologist and ecologist and environmental activist Garrett Hardin put it: If the space required to grow four redwood trees could be devoted to growing food for one person, we should say distinctly and bluntly that four redwood trees are more important than a person (quotation courtesy of Allan C. Carlson). A debate headlined "A Cow is More Important Than a Hamburger" produced such statements as "Other human beings certainly deserve my compassion, but laboratory rats and mice also deserve my compassion. The lives of laboratory animals mean a great deal to these animals just as our own lives mean so much to us." ( The Washington Post, January 11, 1986, p. A21, and February 1, 1986, p. A17). These thoughts do not square with Shakespeare's ordering of the species. The Sonnet's first line suggests that Shakespeare desires increase in the number of fair creatures for their own sake, just as many people look with satisfaction upon a populous prosperous community. This sets him apart from many people in our age, for whom the increase of the human population is not a value in itself. I do not suggest that Shakespeare was calling for an indiscriminate increase in people. Indeed, he mentions only the fairest, which we might interpret as the most talented. But perhaps if asked, Shakespeare would have agreed that talent is spread widely, and that most people create a bit more than they use or destroy. And perhaps he would also have agreed that it is so difficult to predict where the bud of talent may sprout -- he himself being a most powerful example -- that the best way to increase the number of the fair is to increase the total number of people. In his second line, Shakespeare gives us yet another reason for desiring increase: survival of humankind. Many persons today consider this idea "primitive" and logically unwarranted. Rather, the stabilization and zero growth of the population is seen as a value. And this value for the prevention of births, even when the children are wanted by the parents, is so strongly held that Americans of this persuasion lobby their government to conduct tax-payer-financed programs to convince prospective parents in other countries (and even in the U.S.) that they should want and produce fewer children.1 I believe Shakespeare would have been horrified. Human increase, or even just the births of the children who merely contribute to stabilization of the world's population, are of much less concern to many persons than is any mortal danger to those persons who are already alive. For example, a prominent newspaper carried an article entitled "Chinese Statistics Indicate Killing of Baby Girls Persists."2 That sounds terrible. But the article went on to report that "Life expectancy is now 69 years for Chinese women and 66 for men, an increase of 20 years over past three decades." What better news could there be -- unless one wishes there were fewer Chinese? Yet the story reads as if the small number of tragic cases of infanticide outweigh the large number of happy events that contribute to survival of the human species. Even for many among those who care about survival of humankind, survival of the race as a whole is subordinate to increase of their own ethnic or religious sub-group. And this preference is often sentimental rather than a matter of seeking larger numbers to help them prevail in political conflict. In contrast, Shakespeare's only special pleading is in favor of people who are "beautiful" and creative. Let us turn now to Shakespeare's description of the mechanism of the advance of civilization, the most remarkable aspect of this sonnet. For Shakespeare, progress rather than just stability is within our powers and possibilities; this is implicit when he writes of increase and abundance rather than merely maintenance and subsistence. Here is no pinched and dismal Malthusian vision of humanity's place on the globe, but rather an expansive and optimistic outlook of human dominion. But then Shakespeare warns that we humans may forego our opportunities by narcissistic preoccupation with our own luxurious living -- by taking from the common pot of humanity without putting back into it. "[C]ontracted to thine own bright eyes", Shakespeare tells us, humanity can make "a famine where abundance lies" by feeding our own "light's flame with self- substantial fuel". That is, we can fail to employ our capital, the true nature of which is the human drive to create and improve and advance. Instead, humanity may devote its energies to consumption and self-satisfaction, thereby burying within one's "own bud" our "content." I was taken aback by the combination of beauty and understanding of life with which these few lines are suffused. The lines surpass in both respects other writings on the subject, scientific and artistic. Here we must pause to discuss the nature of the "good" that might either be created in "abundance", or be made so scarce as to cause a "famine". That is, we must, with G. Wilson Knight and Mark van Doren (quoted by Knight) ask: "What was he writing about when his deepest imagination was engaged?" (1955, p. 78). Shakespeare certainly did not envision a process of economic development such as engages contemporary analysis of the subject, wherein we wish to increase the supply of consumer and investment goods, as well as natural resources, in order to live longer and better. Rather, Shakespeare cared about the world's stock of poetic truths such as he struggled to give us. And poetic truth is of course interrelated with -- perhaps is identical to -- the esthetic aspect of life which Shakespeare calls "beauty", and which may be physical or artistic or spiritual. Knight argues forcefully (pp. 84-103) that in the sonnets there is an interpenetration of the ideas of time (both past and future), material beauty, poetry, immortality, truth, nature, and art. A key idea is that the immortal "substance" of poetic beauty is "distilled" from the mere "show" of human beauty, "A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass" (Sonnets 5, 6). This transmutation of physical beauty into poetic truth provides the best of reasons for Shakespeare to write poems about a particular beautiful young man. And indeed, Knight writes that "The poet knows well that his poetry is more than his ordinary self. It is `the very part was consecrate to thee', his own `spirit', `the better part of me', to be contrasted with the element of `earth' which is `the dregs of life', bound for death ([Sonnet] 74). This `better part'...is a refined state of being, like the refinement of distilled essences" (Knight, p. 89). From an economic point of view, the good that we may call truth-and-beauty is conceptually no different than raw materials such as grain, or processed goods such as services and manufactured products. As information and knowledge constitute an ever-larger part of our economy with every passing year, and tangible goods (especially natural-resource materials, including energy) become an ever-smaller share of inputs, there should be less and less difficulty in agreeing that truth-and-beauty -- call it art, if you like -- is a good which may be construed theoretically in ways similar to the ways we construe other economic goods. A key respect in which truth-and-beauty is like knowledge, and thereby like the supply of natural resources that flows from knowledge, is that our stocks of both sorts of intellectual goods are not depleted by use, but instead continue forever to enhance human life. Then Shakespeare proceeds to tell us that we may waste our chances, not only by gluttony and self-devotion, but also by attending to conservation rather than creation. He tells us that a society "mak'st waste by niggarding." This is a striking apprehension of the nature of civilization. It may be seen as parallel to the following sequence: Increase in population size, and rise in the standard of living, force upon us new problems. These emerging problems lead to the search for solutions (though great developments may also arise in a more spontaneous fashion). And the solutions arrived at leave us better-off materially, and perhaps with more efficient social organizations, than if the problems had never arisen in the first place. (Hence we need our problems because eventually we benefit from them.) The resonance of the sonnet suggests that Shakespeare would have been sympathetic to this process. He would have felt at home, I think, with the notion that humanity not only needs to have problems solved, but also needs to impose bigger and better problems upon ourselves as a challenge to our creative powers -- for the benefit of the human spirit as well as for the eventual benefit of our descendants. So I say with Shakespeare, "Pity the world, or else this glutton be, to eat the world's due, by the grave and thee". ************** Is it far-fetched to read a "theory of development" in Sonnet 1? I think not because for me, as for James Cook, "Art is always concerning itself with more than it knows" (undated letter). Hence the poem may be used as one uses a copper mine; we extract the raw formless copper from its veins, and then convert it into a form that yields us a service. Agreement with the argument of this essay may be found in a essay on a very similar subject by the noted Shakespearean scholar Edward Hubler (1952/1957) who in fact entitles it "The Economy of the Closed Heart". He uses the word "economy" in a sense quite akin to my economic discussion here. Hubler begins, "There is no idea to which Shakespeare returns more often than the doctrine taught by the parable of the talents...The idea is, of course, the concept of man's stewardship referred to in the discussion of plenitude" (p. 417). And "talents" means here both human talent and the monetary unit of wealth (and both meanings stem from the same Greek word.) Hubler writes that "In Shakespeare's view the open heart must give itself away in order to maintain its existence" (p. 419), and "the quality in the young man which most disturbed Shakespeare was the prudence of the closed heart". Hubler certainly agrees that the sonnet is about the utilization of a person's talent for the sake of others, as he writes, "...the flower living to itself, and having therefore failed to fulfill its function, is incomplete, though it still has physical beauty; but if it should meet with infection (that is, if the expression of its function should be perverted), its odor (that is, its essence, its soul, its human utility as expressed in the deeds of the young man and the perfume of the flower) becomes worse than that of weeds, worse, that is, than that from which nothing was expected" (p.. 422). Hubler also emphasizes that "the distillation of essence is a symbol of procreation", confirming the link between procreation and usefulness which is crucial to my argument. Some readers desire that a connection be shown between what a poet had in mind and what we find in the poet, and the poet's motivation is relevant for them. Very well. I find support for some such connection in Giroux's The Book Known as Q (1982), and secondarily in Knight's The Mutual Flame (1955). Giroux's ideas are controversial, but within the realm of reasonable argument; that they be established fact is not necessary. And of course I do not claim that Shakespeare was setting forth a self-conscious theory that he hoped would instruct decisionmakers, as later on William Petty and Adam Smith did. The pertinent issue is whether the poet explicitly described a crucial aspect of the development mechanism as it acts through the long sweep of history. To ascertain whether this is so we must consider the purpose and the conditions of the sonnet's composition, difficult and controversial as that inquiry may be. Let us assume as follows: The object of the main batch of sonnets probably was the young Earl of Southampton. Shakespeare was hired by Southampton's mother to persuade him to marry Elizabeth Vere, the granddaughter of Lord Burghley, "the most powerful person in the realm next to Queen Elizabeth" (Giroux, p. 72). This business relationship is consistent with the tone in the first few sonnets, called by Giroux "impersonal" (p. 14). We ask: In such circumstances, what would be a sensible strategy for a man-of-the-world poet, who also has a high regard for his talent and a desire not to waste his rhymes on hackwork, yet who wishes to do the job he was hired for in workmanlike and honest fashion? ("Shakespeare, we must suppose, had some worldly wisdom; and we know that he possessed business instincts"; Knight, p. 9) In such a situation, it seems reasonable that Shakespeare would not simulate paroxysms of adoration for the young man, commonplace as such sentiment might be in the poetry of the times. The young man would know that Shakespeare had not sufficient familiarity with him to be able to write such adoring words truly; Shakespeare explicitly rejects phony comparisons to the "sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,/ With April's first-born flowers..." (Sonnet 21). Advertising and other persuasive messages must be credible if they are to be acted upon, Shakespeare knew well; "Let them say more that like of hearsay well;/ I will not praise, that purpose not to sell" (Sonnet 21). There is nothing worse than playing the whore in one's work and not even succeeding; if you do your best work and fail, at least you have the work and your self-respect. So instead of phony appeals, it follows that Shakespeare would muster the best possible array of believable arguments. He arrays the arguments in a battery, one after the other, all set forth with his full skill. Another consideration probably influenced Shakespeare, too: If he wrote honest stuff rather than fake admiration and false paeans of love, the labor would be enjoyable rather than detestable. Indeed, Knight writes that "Not only may we call them [the sonnets] sincere, but we may observe that sincerity is one of their leading themes...The jibes at any sort of artificiality are, as in the plays, where all exaggerated fashions are so regularly attacked, here also both strong and insistent" (pp. 18, 19). And "others employ `strained touches' of `rhetoric', whereas his is made of `true plain words'" (p. 19, quoting Sonnet 82). Is not this motive of wanting to write honestly consistent with our view of great talent -- "genius", in Giroux's word (p. 15 and elsewhere) -- and of what we can perceive of Shakespeare's nature from his work? This motive would likely have affected Shakespeare even if he thought that for a time the sonnets would be read only by Southampton. Shakespeare could look ahead to later publishing the material in other ways, either as sonnets or reworked into other form in plays, as he apparently used them in The Rape of Lucrece and elsewhere. Imagine Shakespeare thinking about the task before him. To tell Southampton that the girl is attractive in person and personality would fail; Southampton knows the girl and is not interested in her, and Shakespeare is personally unacquainted with her. Shakespeare cannot write that the match is good business and sound politics; this is hardly fit subject for a poem, and furthermore, Southampton has already heard such advice from Burghley and from his mother. But there are yet other respectable reasons the poet can adduce. The first sonnet encapsulates many of them, and weaves them into the full argument discussed earlier. I do not contend that Shakespeare was making his argument for the sake of the world; he may well have been writing to enhance his own situation. But his plea to the youth to marry for the sake of the world constitutes a powerful plea on behalf of the world. What matters here is that Shakespeare well understood the argument that he was making; it does not matter on whose behalf it was made, whether the world's or Shakespeare's. It is not implausible that Shakespeare was capable of such a subtle analysis of the development of society and civilization. The idea of progress was not invented yesterday, and certainly it was not foreign to the Renaissance period. A sound understanding of economic and social development does not require knowledge unavailable when Shakespeare lived. What was required was the ability to see farther and deeper than others. Shakespeare possessed such genius. Giroux gives precisely this one-word "explanation" for Shakespeare producing unexpected poetic and dramatic discoveries. One last point: Is it reasonable that Shakespeare would write such sublime verse and such subtle arguments in the service of the very earthy aim of inducing a young man to marry? If indeed Southampton's family hired Shakespeare to persuade the youth, then ipso facto they had some appreciation of a great artist and his art. And while it sometimes happens, there is no reason to assume that Southampton's family simply did the equivalent of hiring a great portrait painter to paint a picket fence. Such appreciation from a noble family, and from the youth who eventually became Shakespeare's patron (if indeed this is what happened) could have produced a strong reaction akin to infatuation in a low-born and striving artist such as Shakespeare. As Giroux puts it: "Their first meeting also seems to have endowed the youth in his eyes with a superior, almost sacred character. The word `sacred' is not an exaggeration." (p. 26) ************** Afternote. It is interesting to contrast Shakespeare's view of the course of civilization and productive economy with that of Bernard Mandeville who lived not much later. Mandeville also expressed himself in rhyme but he clearly was a social scientist by inspiration rather than a poet. (See the lengthy prose notes following the short rhyming pages of The Fable of the Bees.) Mandeville saw improvement and advance as inevitable, brought about by the same selfish qualities that Shakespeare lamented, qualities which Mandeville might also not have admired or enjoyed but nevertheless saw as a constant element in human nature. And Shakespeare referred (King Henry V, Act 1, Scene 2) to the same mysterious phenomenon of social organization and spontaneous cooperation among insects that Mandeville described in The Fable of the Bees; it may already have been a common insight in English culture by them. It is pleasant to imagine a meeting of the two men, each describing his vision and with the other instantly seeing the point and joining the other's vision to his own in a grand amalgamation. Shakespe 91-212 5-2-91 page 1/article1 shakespe/May 5, 1991 REFERENCES Carlson, Allan C., (undated correspondence) quoting Richard Neuhaus, In Defense of People (New York: MacMillan Company, 1971), p. 187, quoting Hardin. Giroux, Robert, The Book Known as Q (New York: Atheneum, 1982), pp. 72, 14, 15, 26. Hubler, Edward, "The Economy of the Closed Heart", in Leonard F. Dean (ed.), Modern Essays in Criticism, (New York: Oxford U. P., 1957), pp. 417-423. Originally in Hubler's The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Princeton: PUP, 1952), pp. 95-96, 100- 109. Kasun, Jacqueline R., The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control (Ottawa, Ill: Jameson Books, 1986). Knight, G. Wilson, The Mutual Flame (London: Methuen, 1955), pp. 9, 18, 19. Piotrow, Phyllis, World Population Crisis: The United States' Response (New York: Praeger, 1973). Simon, Julian L., The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), Chapter 21. Stillinger, Jack (correspondence, December 8, 1985). FOOTNOTES *I am grateful for extensive comments and generous editorial suggestions by Kenneth Elzinga. I also appreciate useful readings by Jim Cook, Stephen Louis Goldman, Stephen Miller, and Jack Stillinger. Cal Beisner enlightened me about the parable of the talents. 1If you have any doubt about this, please look at Chapter 21 in my 1981 book, or at the more fully documented book by Jacqueline Kasun, 1986, or the excellent history by an enthusiast of that policy, Piotrow, 1973). 2The Washington Post, July 11, 1984 page 2/article1 shakespe/May 5, 1991