Indent: From Shakespeare and Corona

The course of the pandemic can be described with quotes from Shakespeare. When the medical masks fall, the social masks return, writes our columnist.

—

You could sum up the whole pandemic with Shakespeare. “Is that a dagger I see before me?” (Macbeth) at the beginning. “The course of true love was never smooth” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) for household and relationship management during the measures. “Don’t be afraid of size” (Twelfth Night) for “We can Corona”. “If you stab us, won’t we bleed?” (The Merchant of Venice) for the vaccination campaign. ‘Too soon, I’m afraid; because my heart trembles” (Romeo and Juliet) for the first loosening. «Once more storms, once more, dear friends!» (Henry V.) for the last lockdown. “Now the winter is our dissatisfaction” (Richard III) for its effects. And to the still anxious question of what we think of the day the masks finally fell: “Should I compare you to a summer day?” (Sonnet 18).

It’s not just the weather that makes such a comparison difficult at the moment. For two years we moved through everyday life in a choreography of measures, until the more or less graceful arm position when putting on and taking off masks, the pirouettes when avoiding fellow shoppers who were too close in the supermarket and the grand plié when picking up fallen disinfectant bottles in meat and have spilled blood. «To be or not to be, that is the question» (Hamlet): Now that we have mastered our roles perfectly, should we be allowed to stop playing them? Finally working again without this “cabaret”, as the President of Gastro St.Gallen put it in this newspaper? Be ourselves again?

none. “All the world is a stage, and all men and women are but players” (As You Like It). When the medical masks fall, the social masks return. With the obligation to wear a mask, the freedom to go unshaven for croissants in the morning or to stick your tongue out at our neighbors from behind the mask (not that I would ever do something like that) is history, just as the end of the home office obligation is over with worn jogging pants, no make-up on your face and wild hairstyle experiments. Back to the world stage.

Where “Not Enough” is currently being played in Eastern Switzerland. Not enough roses on Valentine’s Day, not enough wives for our peasants, and not too many wolves, just not enough anti-wolf townsfolk. «Hell is empty, all devils are here!» (The storm). The social mask of Eastern Switzerland is back – and is cracking. In the transition between the obligation to wear a mask and the new old role mask, we can see and feel the old mask in the resistance that our Coronesque ballet poses oppose to the new freedom – the instinctive hesitation when greeting (kiss, handshake, fist, elbow?), the involuntary pirouettes when shopping . And maybe develop a new design for them, in the way that “Die Ostschweiz” described the New Faces Designer Award in July last year as “The big stage for young designer talents”: “Great design is the intersection of creativity , of extravagance with clear concepts; not least with a focus on the essential while maintaining the artistic aspect.» Well, we’re talking about clothing here, not road construction or tax policy, but even these could do with the artistic aspect, not to mention extravagance with clear concepts. “Let’s meet time as it seeks us” (Cymbeline).

Ulrike Landfester is Professor of German Language and Literature at the HSG. She writes this column every Monday in rotation with Toni Brunner, Samantha Wanjiru and Walter Hugentobler.