Help, God is Forcing Me to Write This.
Does Shakespeare’s Iago have free will? Did God’s Shakespeare?
“I am not what I am.”
— William Shakespeare (“Iago”), “Othello” I.1
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
— William Shakespeare (“Jacques”), As You Like It (II.7)
“The heart of a man devises his path, but the LORD directs his steps.”
— Proverbs 16:9
The curtain rises on Central Park on a summer day. WILL is on one knee, holding a diamond ring in an open box toward MOIRA, smiling. MOIRA is standing next to a park bench looking at WILL and smiling not quite as much. They stand still looking at each other for a long moment.
WILL: Well?
MOIRA: Let me think, okay? Don’t get me wrong, I love you so much, and I want to say it, I just… I need to think.
WILL: Totally fine! Absolutely… I, uh…
Pause.
WILL: I just honestly didn’t think there was any question about whether you’d say yes. I mean, I really wouldn’t have asked if I —
MOIRA: Yeah. I understand. Just — …yeah.
WILL: No, sure, it’s — I mean, obviously it’s a big decision, so…
MOIRA: Right. Yes, a big decision I have to make for myself.
WILL: Absolutely. And Moira, I take this so seriously, and from the bottom of my—
MOIRA: Sorry, just — a minute of quiet okay? Because it’s my line. You already said your line, which was “Will you marry me?”
WILL: Yes!
MOIRA: I wasn’t asking you, I was quoting you.
WILL: And I’m… affirming your quotation.
MOIRA: Right, that was your line. Because you’re there, on one knee, in a beautiful park, and it’s like, there’s a script going on. The culture made us a little script, and we’re just playing parts in it, and now I know exactly what my next line is.
WILL: Yes!
MOIRA: No, like, I’m not saying I know what I’m gonna say, I’m saying I know what I’m supposed to say.
WILL: Okay.
MOIRA: And the question is: Do I just say it? Or do I change the line?
Pause.
WILL: People are — I mean, I know I shouldn’t care, but people are kind of staring. Should I just… Should I get up while you think about it?
MOIRA: Whatever you want, sorry.
WILL rises. He closes the ring box, then quickly opens it again. He sits on the bench with the ring box open on his knee. MOIRA sits next to him.
WILL: Not so scripty now, right?
MOIRA: Thank you, truly, for your patience. You must be — Listen, you know I love you, right?
WILL: Yes.
MOIRA: I just sometimes feel like my life wants to throw me down a path, like it’s so steep I’m just stumble-falling down it, like I’m not even trying to walk, it’s something just happening to me, you know? And I want to choose for myself. Even if it’s the exact path I want, I want to choose it!
WILL: Yes.
MOIRA: Do you think people have free will?
WILL: Uh… Yes and no. I mean — Don’t tempt me with that conversation, you know I love philosophical conversations like that, but actually I would rather talk about us right now.
MOIRA: We are. This is about us. Us us us — do us have free will?
WILL: Us do and us don’t. Look —
MOIRA: That doesn’t make sense. Free will, yes or no?
WILL: You can have this Will for free!
MOIRA: Har har. Yes or no? It’s one or the other.
WILL: It’s both.
MOIRA: How can it be both?
WILL opens the ring box. He looks at MOIRA. He closes the ring box and puts it in his pocket.
WILL: Let’s talk about Iago.
MOIRA: The parrot from Aladin?
WILL: Not the bloody parrot, you Philistine.
MOIRA: Gilbert Gottfried?
WILL: Shakespeare!
MOIRA: A parrot is an interesting question though. Talking without really understanding the words. Do parrots have free will? Is an AI like a parrot?
WILL: The villain in Othello! Iago. He schemes and lies to use Othello’s greatest weakness, jealousy, against him, until Othello strangles the love of his life.
MOIRA: Bet she wishes she wasn’t so quick to say yes at proposal time.
WILL: And the question is:
MOIRA: Did Othello have free will if Iago was manipulating him so cleverly?
WILL: Kind of, but even more so, did Iago have free will to do the manipulating in the first place?
MOIRA: Why wouldn’t he?
WILL: Well, Shakespeare wrote everything he ever said or did! Iago didn’t and doesn’t even exist except as Shakespeare’s creation. Every word and deed of Iago’s is Shakespeare’s choice. Shakespeare could have made him spend the entire play teaching Desdemona how to bake better scones, but instead he made him a heinous villain.
MOIRA: Okay, fine, so you’re right. All the choice is really Shakespeare’s. But that’s still not your professorly “yes and no”. Now it’s just “no.” No, Iago did not have free will.
WILL: But he does in the play.
MOIRA: You mean the people in the play think he does.
WILL: Not just that.
MOIRA: The people watching the play also suspend disbelief and kind of fool ourselves into thinking he does.
WILL: No no, more than that, too. I mean, within the world of the play, he literally does have free will. He is literally choosing what he wants to do, with absolute freedom. At any given moment, he has the same choice as you or I do about what to do, what to say, anything. He only exists within the play’s level of reality, and on our level of reality he doesn’t even exist, but on his own level of reality — to one hundred percent of the degree to which he exists at all — he has free will. On the play’s level of reality, he is completely unfettered and free in his choices.
MOIRA: But Shakespeare wrote all those choices.
WILL: And God wrote Shakespeare’s choices to do so, as He writes all of ours.
MOIRA: Not exactly helping my little hang-up about getting to choose, are you, Will?
WILL: Can’t help it. God wrote me that way! And what’s more, He wrote you to love me anyway, which is why we should —
MOIRA: But wait, you’re literally saying to me, free will for everyone in the real world is just as illusory as it is for Iago in Othello?
WILL: Just as illusory from an ultimate level, from God’s perspective, and also every bit as real from the level where we actually live our lives! From God’s perspective, we’re all just characters in His play and He writes our choices however He wants. But for us within this actual reality, we have all the free will anyone could ever reasonably ask, or even conceive of.
MOIRA: So there’s no free will except the same kind of illusion that makes fictional characters think they’re real? Whether I marry you or whether I don’t marry you, I have no real say? God is the one who really decides and I just think I decide?
WILL: No, you’re still not getting it! Fictional characters are real within the fiction. They’re just not real outside it. Inside God’s created world, we are absolutely real. And with free will, too! We’re not wrong to think we have it! There is no level where “we don’t”, because on the level where we “don’t,” there isn’t even a “we”! On every level where there’s an us at all, there’s an us with free will. And right here, on this level, there is an us. Speaking of which… (He takes the ring box out of his pocket.) You can marry me, you should marry me, and it when you do marry me, yes, on the highest level it will be God’s choice in the big typewriter in the sky, but here — (he gets down on one knee and opens the ring box) — in Central Park, on the Earth, in the Milky Way, right here today, it will be your honest-to-God choice! As truly free as it is possible to even think freedom could be. What do you say?
Pause. They look at each other.
MOIRA: The levels in your analogy are not equivalent levels.
WILL: Oh God.
MOIRA: We’re sitting here on the higher level —
WILL (closing the ring box): The middle level. That we know of.
MOIRA: — and we’re talking about multiple levels existing. But fictional characters don’t know there are multiple levels. They don’t reference multiple levels.
WILL (putting the ring box in his pocket and sitting back on the bench): What are you talking about? There are plays within the play in multiple Shakespeare plays! Hamlet! Midsummer Night’s Dream! There are probably more…
MOIRA: Okay, so they know about levels down, but they don’t know about levels up! Othello doesn’t feature a scene where Shakespeare stops by! Part of how fiction works is that you don’t mix the levels, especially not upward!
WILL: Modern fiction mixes the levels upward all the time. Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach ends with a dialogue where Douglas Hofstadter shows up and talks with his characters. And you might consider that even Shakespeare mixed the levels upward, give or take a bit of level-skipping. “All the world’s a stage,” right? Think one level higher than Shakespeare. I mean, Shakespeare doesn’t stop by in Shakespeare plays, but God does.
MOIRA: What? When?
WILL: Whenever a character prays or talks to Him. Look, I’m sure there are other examples in Shakespeare, but what jumps to mind is Claudius falling to his knees and praying in Hamlet. “O, my offense is rank…” Whatever. Any time there’s a character praying to God, on any stage, in any play, not just Shakespeare, anywhere at all — if a character talks to God, shakes his fist at the sky, or whatever — that’s a scene with God as a scene partner. A real scene partner, as real as any other actor, and actually more real. The actual God is right there, onstage, in the scene.
MOIRA: Nonsense.
WILL: What, just because there are no lines for Him? He’s a silent and invisible scene partner, playing Himself in a cameo.
MOIRA: How do you get to declare where God is?
WILL: It’s actually easy, because there’s nowhere He isn’t. But stop it, we’re off topic. You’re still trying to delay making this decision. I want to marry you!
MOIRA: I know.
WILL: What does this all even matter? Why all the philosophy? Can we let the ontological ratiocination wait until later? Like after our kids are in college, or at least maybe the wedding, or what about, even just the proposal?
MOIRA: Will… I just need this to be a choice I meaningfully make! I want to know that before I make it! I don’t want to be someone’s character, someone’s script. I need to be doing this all on my own, outside anyone else’s tidy little story of me!
WILL: Moira, do you love me?
MOIRA: Yes.
WILL: Do you want to raise a family with me?
MOIRA: Yes.
WILL: Cool. So what I’m saying here is (fishing out the ring), here’s a shiny ring. Let’s put it on your finger and call that a plan.
Pause.
MOIRA: Truly just one minute more.
WILL: Okay.
MOIRA stands up. She looks around. She walks to a lamppost and presses her thumb on it, then raises one foot to touch it as well.
MOIRA (still touching the lamppost with thumb and foot): Indefatigable horseradish!
MOIRA runs over to a patch of grass, rips one blade of grass from the ground, and runs back to WILL, brandishing the blade of grass.
MOIRA: This is my new friend, um… Smarmington. Smarmington The Grass.
WILL: What are you doing?
MOIRA: I am doing things that make no sense. Come, Smarmington!
WILL: Okay.
MOIRA waves one elbow, then hops six times.
MOIRA: Choo choo! What do you say, Smarmington? Nothing. No continuity, you suddenly don’t matter.
MOIRA drops the blade of grass and does a cartwheel.
MOIRA: What is the capital of Mongolia?
WILL: Do you want me to answer that?
MOIRA: You don’t have to, I know it! It’s Ulaanbaatar, with way way way too many A A A As!
WILL: What is happening?
MOIRA (gyrating and moving wildly and as randomly as she possibly can, with no pattern or beauty): Cartilege. Etruscan. Portly. Cupboard fart. No, not cupboard fart, that risks being funny. Ice cream. Sidewalks. Beige. Engineering. Barleycorns. Thumb tacks.
WILL: Are you having a seizure?
MOIRA (still moving wildly): Flibber dibber dibber dibber dabber dabber wee-oo! You can’t predict me! You can’t script me! Nobody’s writing me! No one would write this! This isn’t linear, this doesn’t advance anyone’s plot! It’s not funny, it’s not dramatic, it’s not interesting, it’s not helping anyone, certainly not me, it’s not advancing the plot, it’s not illuminating the character, it’s not anything. It’s not anything. You would cut this. If you wrote this, you would have to cut this. You’d be such an idiot not to. It even repeats things without being funny. It even repeats things without being funny. It even repeats things without being funny. It even repeats things without being funny. It even repeats things without being funny. It even repeats things without being funny. It even repeats things without being funny. It even repeats things without being funny. Nobody would write this. Do you get it? This is me! This is me! This is me! This is just me. Nobody’s puppet. Nobody’s character.
WILL: I get it.
MOIRA stops moving randomly and comes back to the bench.
MOIRA: Get on two knees.
WILL: Traditionally it’s one.
MOIRA: Two! Knees!
WILL: Yes, ma’am.
WILL gets down on two knees.
MOIRA: Ask me the question.
WILL (proffering the ring box): Moira, will you marry —
MOIRA (suddenly putting her hand over his mouth) Ha! Interrupted! There is no script! Yes! Let’s get married. Gimme the shiny ring.
WILL puts the ring on MOIRA’s finger. They kiss. Curtain.