Sam Bankman-Fried, Brush Up Your Shakespeare
by Cory Franklin
December 17, 2023
The great Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw once said, “I pity the man who cannot enjoy Shakespeare … the imaginary scenes and people he has created become more real for us than our actual life.” Given this, I offer a suggestion for cryptocurrency trader Sam Bankman-Fried, recently convicted of fraud charges and facing decades in prison. Rather than make license plates, he should get the Oxford compilation of all Shakespeare’s plays and begin reading to help him to pass the time. It will be especially therapeutic for that expected long stay in jail.
Sam Bankman-Fried
Today, most young people in their mid-twenties who major in math and physics at MIT, like SBF did, are probably not avid Shakespeare readers.
So if one of them volunteers the opinion that Shakespeare’s characters were “one-dimensional,” his plots “illogical,” his endings “obvious,” and he was not likely our greatest writer, all of which SBF has said (and author Michael Lewis has recounted in his new SBF biography), no one would pay much attention or at most offer a cursory eye-roll at the ignorance. But when you are one of the world’s richest men, as SBF was briefly, people will listen to foolish opinions like belittling Shakespeare. As King Lear said, “Robes and furred gowns hide all.”
The irony is that Shakespeare’s plays now have much to teach SBF, because they are full of characters undone by their own ambition and delusions as he was. SBF failed to appreciate that those characters he deemed one-dimensional teach us eternal truths, and those illogical plots and obvious endings make us aware of our fate – through the words Shakespeare wrote.
Consider that not long ago Forbes put SBF on its cover as one of its 400 richest Americans, Fortune magazine speculated he might be the next Warren Buffett, and in 2022 Time magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Heady stuff, especially for a young man. But King Lear, the once all-powerful king, also cautioned, “They told me I was everything. ’Tis a lie. I am not ague proof.” Like Lear, SBF was not ague proof – immune to disaster.
As he accumulated billions of dollars in what was basically a high-tech Ponzi scheme, he might have paid attention to Macbeth, who decides to kill his friend, the King Duncan, to assume the throne. Yet even as he does, Macbeth realizes, in the back of his mind, that his ambition might end in his ruin, ” I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’ other.” But he is unable to resist, and his ambition ultimately leads to his death.
Shakespeare told the story of Julius Caesar, another man who aimed to take over the world more than two millennia ago. The assassins who stabbed Caesar to death stand over his body, and their leader, Brutus, assesses Caesar’s fate, “Ambition’s debt is paid.”
In prison, SBF can decide whether Caesar truly was ambitious or whether Antony, in his famous rejoinder to Brutus, was correct in saying “ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”
Perhaps the character most like SBF was Timon of Athens in the eponymous play. While he was giving money to stadium-naming’s, charities and politicians, SBF cavorted with the likes of Bill Clinton, Larry David, Tom Brady and Katie Perry. Timon, a leading citizen of Athens, also gave his influential friends gifts and held large feasts, expecting nothing in return. Eventually, Timon saw his money run out, leaving him destitute and pondering what it all meant.
Ultimately, a cynical Timon abandons Athens because he no longer belongs to that world, but not before he gives a speech about how quickly he fell from grace, “Who had the world as my confectionary; the mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men. At duty, more than I could frame employment, that numberless upon me stuck as leaves Do on the oak, hive with one winter’s brush fell from their boughs and left me open, bare for every storm that blows.”
SBF may have thought the same thing as he walked out of the courtroom after his verdict was read.
As he inventories all his losses, SBF might realize that, like Othello’s lieutenant Cassio, his worst loss was his reputation. Manipulated by the clever villain Iago, Cassio behaved badly in public and lost Othello’s respect. “Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”
Even after SBF leaves prison, he can never get that reputation back. So many characters, so much to teach: Hamlet, Othello, Henry V, Richard III, Portia, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice, Puck, Falstaff, Caliban – these are only a few and don’t include minor characters, so richly drawn. The panoply of human emotion is present in Shakespeare, and it takes a special kind of arrogance to dismiss his works so casually – the kind which probably contributed to SBF’s eventual downfall.
You could do nothing but study Shakespeare all day, every day, and still not absorb everything there is to learn from his writings.
As luck would have it, SBF might be one of those people with enough unencumbered time to do just that. However, there is one Shakespeare play that may not resonate with SBF and he may want to skip while in prison: All’s Well That Ends Well.
Tolle lege, (take up and read)
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He was director of medical intensive care at Cook County Hospital in Chicago for more than 25 years. An editorial board contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page, he writes freelance medical and non-medical articles. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Post, Guardian, Washington Post and has been excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Cory was also Harrison Ford’s technical adviser and one of the role models for the character Ford played in the 1993 movie, “The Fugitive.” His YouTube podcast “Rememberingthepassed” has received 900,000 hits to date. He published “Chicago Flashbulbs” in 2013, “Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” in 2015, and most recently coauthored, A Guide to Writing College Admission Essays: Practical Advice for Students and Parents in 2021.
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Comments 25
I gotta go with “King John” for the convicted lout to thumb-away the last decades of his mortal coil, Doc.
Let SB-F descant upon the The Bastard, my favorite Shakespeare invention. There is no more honest man in all literature, The Bastard rails against “Mad world, mad kings and mad composition” and that false tickling Commodity, who rules this globe.
“And why rail I on this Commodity?
But for because he hath not woo’d me yet:
Not that I have the power to clutch my hand,
When his fair angels would salute my palm;
But for my hand, as unattempted yet,
Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And say there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary.
Since kings break faith upon commodity,
Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee”
Only Milton comes close.
Great essay, Dr. Franklin!
SBF, and Eddie Burke, must write “Neither a borrower nor lender be, for the loan oft loses it self and a friend” on the blackboard 100 times. They will have plenty of time to write while in prison.
In addition to the First Folio, SBF might also want to peruse the Bible. I hear it’s never too late.
I remember when I was in my late twenties and early thirties and thought I knew something. Sadly, SBF is the standard-bearer for his generation which understands the digital world, but fails utterly to grasp human nature.
Thank you Dr. Franklin, any time we celebrate the Bard is an occasion of joy. I began my acting career in my early twenties in 1973 with an Apprentice Fellowship to The American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, CT and spent several years performing in many of Shakespeare’s classics. Met my wife in a production of ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC. and was lucky enough to hear Shakespeare’s words delivered on stage from some of our nation’s greatest actors. One of my favorite roles was Peter, the comical servant to Juliet’s Nurse in ROMEO AND JULIET, and the review I will never forget was by John Simon in New York magazine who wrote, “In this production of ROMEO & JULIET, Mr, Houlihan’s Peter stands out!”
You could play Peter without make-up, Houli!
“Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished
For never was a story of more woe….”
Offering Shakespearean insight to a Ponzi-playing Shakespeare scoffer, Dr. Franklin’s fine essay here recalls that “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” WS portrayed some “wise guy” types as well.
Truth be told, most US HS students find 16th century English rather hard to understand and [worse] far too few LAL [formerly English] teachers consider it worth the effort to try to get them to really read the plays or even to make it interesting. Showing a [usually bad] film too often substitutes for reading the play. Even the good [eg BBC/Royal Shakespeare Productions from the 70s & 80s with read along subtitles] versions are often ignored or unknown to them.
Shakespeare wasn’t written for high brows, he wrote for a mass audience that filled his theatre, hence the universal appeal across class and national lines. Like the loss of the Greek & Roman classics it speaks poorly for our declining standards. Yet when given a good presentation, students do respond well and many enjoy it. I speak from personal exerience as a teacher.
On the money, Sir! The unenthusiastic approach dominates far too many LAL departments. It takes an instructor with heft, the game and the tripes to present the jewels of our language to eager young minds and hearts. Sadly, gets have study guides tossed at them followed by silence, while the instructor scans Tic-Tok.
Glad that I retired, The above example was from an A.P. English class.
Great column!
We all could learn from Shakespeare. His understanding of human frailties and ambition are unparalleled (no offense to the Greeks). When I taught 8th grade, we would use the Charles and Mary Lamb prose version of Macbeth before delving into the 16th century iambic pentameter. Then we acted scenes in class. They loved it–of course the more gruesome the better for 8th graders.
We need Shakespeare more than ever in a time white Western civilization is being trashed.
Thank you for the column!
Bankman-Fried is not an individual of intellect (or morals). While studying math or physics, a person of intellect would also wonder about Plato, Socrates, Sun-Tzu, or Shakespeare. Bankman-Fried has a fundamental lack of intellect. So I think his reading anything like Shakespeare while killing time in prison is a waste of good literature. There is a phrase, I think attributed to the TV show Baretta, which might resonate more with Bankman-Fried: Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Bravo! Well said, and so apt.
SBF doesn’t deserve the exquisite texture and treatment of William Shakespeare.
Nope.
SBF has Edgar Allen Poe written all over him.
Too bad SBF didn’t get the great Classical College Classes he sadly needed. Patrick Henry College would have served him better and probably would have kept him out of prison? Hope all these early posters went to Church today! Isaiah 7:14, EZ 2 remember: how many homers did Babe Ruth hit!
Wonderful column today.
After Shakespeare reach out for Dickens.
A person’s integrity and reputation is everything.
Back when me’s was in collitch , before one was permitted to read S , one did two semesters of English Renaissance Litchur , like Gamer Gurtons Needle or such . Then you were allowed to read the guy …and then on to” T’is Pity Shes’s a Whore”/ “She Stumfs to Conquer”.
My guess is that SBF still doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. What does Shakespeare have to say about that?
I agree. In order for the readings of Shakespeare to be therapeutic, Mr. SBF would have to have some degree of self awareness … which he plainly does not have.
Doctor Franklin, I know you are right, but as a semi-literate south sider, I found Shakespeare difficult to read. Instead of trying to get an infinite number of monkeys to type up his work, perhaps we could a few people to translate his work into modern English. I had a hard enough time with 10 Things I Hate About You.
That said, you couldn’t be more right about that POS.
This is exactly what I was going to say. I’d probably appreciate Shakespeare more if I knew what he was saying. It looks like word salad to me.
The solution lies On-line as it does for everything these days:
https://www.litcharts.com/shakescleare/shakespeare-translations
Maybe a little lowbrow for y’all but he was like a moonshiner paying the sheriff on the side. He gave big money to the banking committee members in DC (both parties) and was praised by Maxine Waters. Not sure what play of Billy’s that would be but I think he did read “The Boss” and understood the protection racket in DC.
Merry Christmas to Y’all !!
Back in 1983, I got the 54-volume set of the Great Books of the Western World. It included a ten-year reading program which took me 15 years to complete. Having read where Machiavelli wrote about when a Prince should take advice in public and when in private, the next two readings were Macbeth and Othello. Years ago, I walked into the office around Halloween and a coworker was dressed for Halloween. I said, “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?” She had no clue what I was talking about. I asked about twenty coworkers where they went to school and have the read the Iliad? Only one had and he went to a Catholic High School. All the others went to Chicago Public Schools.
Great column. This reminds me of the Murdaugh case where Murdaugh at trial quotes a line from a famous poem, “Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive”. Though I only dabbled with Shakespeare as required reading in high school, and am an admitted low-scoring couch potato observer of Jeopardy, this seems like great advice to anyone doing time or anyone conflicted morally about tempting opportunities.