What a playful title! As a name of a fairytale creature in a ”honey-tongued” comedy or ”sugared sonnets” by a Shakespeare; an enchanted haze ascended out of a Midsummer Night's Dream!
Francis Meres' “Palladis Tamia” (1598) celebrates Shakespeare - in a way - as a renewer of the English language; it almost seems as if he is out in a nationalistic rave and using Shakespeare as a figurehead, as to assert the English against the rest of Europe (read France); it is as if Mr. Meres was inspired by Shakespeare's King Henry V's famous St. Crispin's Day Prayers before the Battle of Agincourt against the French Court, "We few, We happy few, We band of brothers."
While reading this ”Palladis Tamia” - notes by Francis Meres who highly estimates the work of Shakespeare’s tongue and creative writing by comparing and referring to ancient writers as Homer and others, I start more wondering about who this Mr Meres was, what kind of book this is and the origin of it's title – as the novice I am regarding Shakespeare and his time!
All of a sudden I wake up out of my metropolitan slumber and realize how coloured playwrights and literary scenes of this Elizabethan era must have been of ancient dramas and tragedies, just because an ex rural minister (!) as Meres uses a latin influenced phrase (well, every 16th century man of classical education did so, I suppose) which strongly recalls the southeastern Europe's historical heritage, claiming the greatness of native writers mention them alongside men of ancient genius.
In the light of the comparison ascends also the names of some of Shakespeare's characters, especially those in his comedies; as Mr Meres wants to pay tribute to their ancient masters by honouring them with giving trace of their greatness and importance to William's own development as a playwright.
After only 10 years as a playwright this Francis Meres considers Shakespeare's language and transformation arts comparable to classical masterpieces. The fact is that when ”Palladis Tamia” was published, both Francis and William were at the same age, around 35 years old – now, if the sources about their date of births are correct. Which playwrights would similarly be honoured today at such a young age? If we are to believe that Francis Meres pen is an expression of what the literary elite in London in general think - or is it his very own assessment dusted off much later, by a stratfordian?
Maybe Will & Francis earlier were companion at school at the King's New School in Stratford, or just educated during the same decay when the grammar school curriculum was standardised by a royal decree and provided both of them an intensive education in Latin grammar based upon Latin classical authors, and thus a little fragment of the origin of the source of their respective - if comparable - authorship.
Regarding comedy and tragedy Francis Meres accentuates Shakespeare in solitary majesty as ”the most excellent in both kinds” amongst the English playwrights and poets, even concerning the muses, the goddesses of the inspiration of literature, Mr Meres highlights that they ”would speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would speak English” without comparison to any other English author of the time.
Palladis Tamia” is a commonplace book – a note pad - which some modern writers of today look upon as an analogy to nowadays blogs, consisting discrete entries; which scholars today would regard web pages out of flashback.org as a relevant source of tracing, let us say, Lars Norén?
Maybe we are dealing with Francis Meres lost “Ipad”!
Thursday, 20 June 2013
A Midsummer Night's Dream
PLOTSThe play has three interacting plots: the first is the imminent marriage [and the sealing of a war victory] between Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons. A framework in which the play begins and ends; one might say, the timeline of the play and its ambassador [scholars believe that the play once was commissioned for an aristocratic wedding]. The second are the intricate love stories among four youths fleeing into the woods to be united in true love beyond rigid patriarchal rules which is required for love relationships by the legislation of the city of Athens. The third storyline is the quarrel in the same forest between Oberon, the King of Fairies and his beloved Titania, the Queen of Fairies about her refusing to give up to Oberon her Indian changeling boy, whom Oberon wishes to have as his knight.
A secondary but significant subplot is the male theatre company from the city – some “rude mechanicals” - who have taking advantage of the peace in the woods (from urban residents' curious eyes), and are busy rehearsing a play they want to perform at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding.
In this forest outside Athens the plots are linked together during a night of different phases due to Oberon's resourceful intervention by means of Robin Goodfellow (The Fairy Servant to Oberon). Using different herbal drugs Robin gets the male youths to choose their right sweetheart and Titania to hand over the changeling to Oberon. This latter incident is maybe altogether Robin's profit who, on a whim, or the speed of a thought, implicitly take advantage of the situation and help his master in making Titania fall in love, due to the magic juice Oberon has bedewed her eyelids, with a creature with a head of an ass on the body of a man [a Shakespeare's general tribute to Greek mythology and The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, but in particular paying tribute to Ovid's Metamorphoses and Theseus fight against Eurytus, the centaur, at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia]. Robin frankly transforms Bottom's head, the boaster of theatre company, into an ass's; the moment Titania awakens and looks upon the monster she is lost, in love. Oberon mocks and scolds her for betraying him, she gives in, and as a gift of reconciliation she hands him the Indian boy.
Another scene of reconciliation arises when Theseus - early in the morning of the day of his and Hippolyta's nuptial ceremony - with his hunting party encounter the sleeping youths, maybe at the edge of a forest brow [by the no-man's land of the rural areas from where the fairies once were forced to flee, maybe another Shakespeare's tribute - [perhaps a performed political statement] - to the old cultivated land and folklore as rigid laws had nullified; or just a solemn reminder to the audience about the importance of fairy tales in keeping the wheel of life turning].
The nuptial celebrations with the reconciled love couples bring together all events in the Duke's palace in the city of Athens; the play of Pyramus and Thisbe performed by Bottom [- drawer] and “the rude mechanicals” is the prelude of the wedding night and the fairies' blessings of the bride beds.
A DREAM?
[a bad dream awoke me this very morning; I dreamt I was climbing a steep mountain, the nano second before falling into oblivion I woke up with a heart beating and meandering like an alien inside my chest]
“But, however much A Midsummer Night's Dream is 'like a dream' it is not one'' (Holland 4)
As I read the play “A midsummer night's dream” there is just one, what I should call, typical dream; and even as Peter Holland puts it: “It [the play] contains only one description of something that may unequivocally be taken to be a dream, one ‘real’ dream, Hermia’s dream of the serpent.”(ibid.)
That conclusion do even I reach reading when Hermia wakes up in horror from her bed of sleep in a forest glade, believing that she has a serpent crawling upon her breast, which she cries out to Lysander, her friend of love, who a moment ago had his sleeping bed right next to hers.
Maybe she thinks she is still dreaming when she doesn't get his answer; how is it possibile that her great Love has deserted her, just left her alone - impossible! It must be the nightmare that still haunts her.
Here I believe that nightmare and true dream go hand in hand for Hermia. As readers, we know that Lysander did betray her with Helena when Hermia some moments ago still were sleeping and therefore we can infer that the serpent, she perceives having upon her bosom, probably is imaginary but has followed her from the dream world through the transition phase she passes between sleep and wake; the serpent is the horror that made her interrupt her sleep to get back to world of the living - and there she discovers yet another horror, Lysander's absence, which she fears will be her death unless she doesn't find him:
HERMIA: Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best
To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!
Ay me, for pity! what a dream was here!
//
Lysander! what, removed? Lysander! Lord!
//
Either death or you I’ll find immediately. (Shakspeare 2.2: 151-162)
We do not know if Shakespeare had read any work on classical divination when he wrote his own dream-play, but educated men, as William, had certainly some knowledge of theories in terms of dreams. E.g. Artemidorus work, The Judgement or Exposition of Dreams,was published in English for the first time 1606 (A midsummer night's dream, 1600), earlier it existed in Greek, Latin, French and German (Holland 7). But, anyway, its thinking had been in circulation in Europre since antiquity, in a classical study named the Oneirouitica by Artemidorus of Daldis written in the second century AD (ibid., 5).
Artemidorus emphasizes, as Peter Holland claims, that a dream-analysis must not only take into account what happening in the dream but also the name of the dreamer, his or her occupation, habits and attitudes.
Artemiodoru's basic distinction is between two types of dreams, a predictive and a non-predictive, the latter he terms enhypnion; from humans themselves and their anxious daily life: lovers may dream of their beloved, hungry people dream of food and thirsty people dream of drink, to obvoiusly connected to daily life and therefore without interest (ibid., 6). A predictive dream (or vision), which he terms oneiros, occurs to not anxious people and is about something not connected directly to daily life, as in Hermia's case, having a serpant crawling upon her bosom.
Hermia's dream is predictive and allegorical, which means that it signify replacement. Holland states that “Artemidorus does offer a precise explanation for Hermia's dream; dreaming that a serpent is "'entwined about someone and binds him . . . foretells imprisonment' and 'portends death for the sick' (ibid., 7).
Holland hypothesises that Artemidorus “would have been proud to interpret” Hermia's “rich oneiros [dream]” (ibid., 16).
“A freudian reading of the dream (which of course Shakespeare was unaware of) would find in the object of the phallic [serpent] attac, Hermias breast and heart, a displacement from her vagina // the sexual desire that Hermia has for him [Lysander] but that she has refused to acknowledge” (ibid., 14).
This modern interpretation of the dream has hit performances in recent times, e.g. Alexandru Darie's production for the Comedy Theatre of Bucharest [1991], where the audience saw a Hermia who, in her desire, with great effort, succeeded in keeping her clothes on (ibid.).
Round ups of Dream Chats in the play, some used in metaphores others to disguise, deny or to make believe in metamorphoses;
DREAMS ...
... as an enjoyable pastime:
HIPPOLYTA: [before the nuptial ceremony] Four nights will quickly dream away the time; (1.1.7-8)
.., volatile, fast and unnoticed:
LYSANDER: [about true love] Swift as a shadow, short as any dream (1.1.144)
…; daydreaming about something that seems unattainable:
HERMIA: [destiny of love] As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers (1.1.150-155)
… to trick that reality is – a dream, if the former didn't or doesn't deliver expectations or beliefs about how reality should be constituted, to make foolish human mortals let go of the present reality letting it fade away like a dream into oblivion, to disguise mad spirits' blunders or future elaborations:
OBERON: // When they next wake, all this derision Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision, (3.2.370-371)
OBERON: // May all to Athens back again repair And think no more of this night’s accidents But as the fierce vexation of a dream. (4.1.67-8)
[the morning before the nuptial ceremonies]
DEMETRIUS: These things seem small and undistinguishable
HERMIA: Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.
HELENA: [about Demitrius] Mine own, and not mine own.
DEMETRIUS: Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream.
//
DEMETRIUS: [reassured]Why, then, we are awake: let’s follow him
And by the way let us recount our dreams. (4.1.186 -197)
HIPPOLYTA: ’Tis strange my Theseus, that these lovers
speak of.
THESEUS: More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains (5.1.1-5)
ROBIN: If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend (5.1.414-421)
..: the pleasure was too wonderful to even leave a trace of bottom that it really occurred:
BOTTOM: // I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. (4.1.201-204)
.., belonging to the saturated silence of the night when the world is resting for a new day to come:
ROBIN: By the triple Hecate’s team, From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, (5.1.375-377)
… were true!
TITANIA: My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.
OBERON: There lies your love. (4.1.75-77)
HERMIA'S DREAM
If we take in consideration that Hermia actually sleeps in a forest where all kinds of wild animals rummage around it doesn’t need to be so surprising if something she worries about worms its way into her dream.
It is true that she doesn't express any concern for her night camp; instead Shakespeare let Titania's train inform us about it when their queen are going to a night's rest next to the place Hermia lain herself down to sleep. It seems that the Queen of Fairies requires a lullaby to calm her worries about all that strange fauna moving around her an Hermia's surroundings:
[She lies down. Fairies sing and dance]
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen. Philomel, with melody Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: Never harm, Nor spell nor charm (Shakespeare 2.2.9-17
One of the ancient great thinkers on dream analysis was Artemidorus, who said two important things about this context: a dream-analysis must not only take into account what happening in the dream but also the name of the dreamer, occupation, habits and attitudes, and the circumstances for the time being; lovers may dream of their beloved, hungry people dream of food and thirsty people dream of drink. Artemidorus considered dreams containing scenes from peoples anxious daily life without interest on dream analysis (Holland 1994: 6).
If one were to highlight Hermia's dream in that perspective, the serpent she dreams about is nothing more than the plausible serpent she was afraid of before she went to sleep (if one can go to sleep with such a fear - on the other hand, it goes to sleep a little to the left and right most of the time in that wood that night, and a little too unconcernedly, so to speak).
DEMITRIUS - a mortal's mirror
In my opinion Demitrius still being “under the spell of the flower's juice” is but just natural in the world where we all foolish mortal lives. Demitrius, like all the rest of us, have had his love elixirs during his lifetime, but as we all know, sometimes it just doesn't become the way we wish; for the moment it seems that Robin did the right thing, though.
Demitrius is just the Mirror Shakespeare is holding up to us, the crowd, telling us not to lose hope, that fairies one day or another will try their best to put things back in order, if needed.
The fact that we foolish mortals finally have had a glimpse of a moment how things really are codified is Shakespeare's Mirror-play simply an evidence of, if Shakespeare "should have restored" Demitrius, Shakespeare would simultaneously have annulled the world that “A midsummer night's dream” portrays and that would be saying, as everyone understands, everything is nothing but a dream – a poetical suicide, thus.
Works cited
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.. - A midsummer night's dream / William Shakespeare ; edited by Peter Holland.. - 2008[1994]. - ISBN: 978-0-19-953586-6 (pbk) Harvard
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., date last updated (19 February 2013). Web. Date accessed (18 February 2013). <http://en.wikipedia.org/>
PS About Bikes & Robin/Puck in the Movie from 1999 featuring Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer
A MOVIE audience never would let themselves be fooled into believing that upper class youths would leave a town without means of transportation, seven leagues is a pretty far trip walking; a plain way to present, as well as to convince a MOVIE audience that the character Robin Goodfellow is not human but a curious little rascal that will put things upside down; in a scene in this movie, while some youngsters are sleeping, he examines one of their bikes, as he never have seen one before (this is a strange adaption though, if Robin originally was, as in my opinion, partly representing a trickster [like Loki]; a puck, a lob pushing/forcing people to invent cultural artefacts, like bikes...).
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Hamlet as Oedipus according to Freud
It is very tempting to interpret Hamlet in the light of Sophocle's tragedy Oedipus the king, as Sigmund Freud (2013) reads it. Doctor Sigmund Freud uses it to explain the little narcissistic boy's feelings of guilt in wishing to overthrow his father who is blocking the way to the mother's affections. Freud's term for the dilemma is the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1955).
There are scenes in The tragedy of Hamlet which are related to what Freud was doing in his therapy based upon people's dreams. The question he puts in his work The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud 2013) related to Hamlet and the Oedipus complex is: “What is it, then, that inhibits him in accomplishing the task which his father's ghost has laid upon him?” (Freud 2013 p. 86)
Freud argues that it takes quite a while for Hamlet to act and really revenge his father's death and believes it is because Hamlet has scruples [Oedipus Complex], that Hamlet himself is no better than the sinner he will punish. But, is this true? Yes, it would be possible to understand Hamlet's delayed vengeance in the light of the Oedipus complex as Freud claims.
However, one can also look at the matter as a man's ethical dilemma concerning doing right or wrong, “to be or not to be” (3.1.55), in the world of God as a devout Christian, for the time being and for the eternity, “the dread of something after death” (3.1.77). Hamlet wants to be sure when he carries out the vengeance to not end up in a worse misery than he is living for the moment and later in “the undiscovered country”(3.1.78) killing an innocent. Before Hamlet proceeds his work he wants to establish beyond all reasonable doubt that it actually is Claudius who commited the fratricide. The spirit Hamlet met at the platform could be a devil's stage work, an apparition of Hamlet's “weakness and // melancholy as he [the de'il] is very potent with such spirits, abuses me [Hamlet] to damn me” (2.2.536-538). To be able to face God, Hamlet lingers with the revenge because he wants Claudius to reveal his occulted guilt.
The tragedy will run its course no matter how one interprets it. But, there are even separate scenes that support – with, however, some hyper interpretation - Freud's point of view:
Hamnet as the Ghost
“Just as all neuroticsymptoms, like dreams themselves, are capable of hyper-interpretation, and even require such hyper-interpretation before they become perfectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation.” (ibid 86)
The ghost who shouts for vengeance from heaven is'nt it Shakespeare's own son Hamnet? Shakespeare's son who died in the plague at the age of 10, whose name is identical to the main character of the tragedy? Pestilence also affected Oedipus' Thebes whose oracle said the disease would end if King Laios killer was expelled from the country (ibid 85).
It is as if William Shakespeare retells Hamnets and his own inverse Oedipus complex. Hamnets desire to have his mother by himself (which he had because Shakespeare was working in London [Greenblatt 2004]) and the displacement of the father leads to self-reproaches/plague and death. Father William survives his son with strong self-reproaches of having driven his son to death (Shakespeare didn't take part of the important drama; he wasn't present at home; Hamnet had free access to his mothers affections; combatting feelings of guilt towards someone not present – a ghost – is psycho/pathogenic) and now he lets his son haunts the tragedy of Hamlet as a ghost who is shouting for vengeance from the platform, revenge on William who didn't reproach Hamnet face to face about his jealous love towards the mother.
In Sophocle's tragedy Oedipus (2013) stabs out his own eyes at the knowledge he had married his own mother, and was father to their children. In the tragedy of Hamlet, the Ghost [Hamnet] open the very eyes of Hamlet [William] so that he obtains full insight into the horrid committed fratricide [infanticide] in order to dissolve William's feelings of guilt of not being present at home during Hamnet's childhood.
GHOST [Hamnet]:
The serpent [William] that did sting thy father’s [son's] life
Now wears his crown [William's free access to the affections of Hamnet's
mother/his wife]. (1.5.38-39)
Hamlet as Oedipus
Hamlet [Oedipus] kills his uncle [Laios] symbolically in the scene where he lets the theater group act the play-within-the-play with Hamlet's addition about how the fratricide was commited [Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx]. Thereby the way to his [Oedipus] mother's [Jocasta's] closet is open. Once there, he intends to “marry” her but suffers from self-reproaches as the child does when it experiences it is forced to overthrow the father (whom it loves):
QUEEN
Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
And, would it were not so, you are my mother. (3.4.12,15)
Hamlet invites her to sit down [lay down] and he'll show her innermost [completing the act of love]:
HAMLET
Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
QUEEN
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me –
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [Behind the arras]
What ho! Help! (3.4.17-22)
Through the mother's strong reaction she confirms Hamlet's incestuous thoughts, hence simultaneously giving him patronage and reprieve from the feelings of guilt, a time-out for Hamlet to carry out the act his emotions earlier prevented him from performing.
He draws his erected sword and, in the protection of, and through, the arras - which in this context has two meanings, partly it is a mother's virtue / love / hymen and partly it is the mask that depersonalizes anyone acting; the action is an archaic inheritance of the human psyche and not tied to the person (Freud 2013) - he finally penetrates the arras and kill someone (hurt badly).
HAMLET
How now! a rat! Dead, for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King? (3.4.21-24)
Now, Hamlet has, by his act of displacement, his mother by himself and can overwhelm her with his love, free from jealousy, and reproach her everything that rages within him.
But, as Freud soberly notes:
“It can, of course, be only the poet's own psychology with which we are confronted in Hamlet // the drama was composed immediately after the death of Shakespeare's father (1601)- that is to say, when he was still mourning his loss, and during a revival, as we may fairly assume, of his own childish feelings in respect of his father.” (Freud 2013 p.86)
Hamlet & Ophelia, Mourning and Madness
Prince Hamlet mourns openly his namesake and father, the deceased King, with his whole being. The succeding King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, find it honorable to grieve, but not at the extent Hamlet mourns. They think he should restrain his grief. Hamlet, by himself, is disgusted of how soon his mother has been able to remarry, moreover her late husband's brother and Hamlet's uncle. Claudius has not only ascended the royal throne but also Hamlet's mother. Hamlet tastes incest. It makes, as I understand, his existential anxiety to grow, but later on he uses it in order to reveal a fractricide.
There is no public perception in claiming that Hamlet is mad, everyone in the royal court has his own personal opinion about Hamlet's conduct. Polonius insists to emphasize, up to his death that Hamlet's madness is unrequited love:
“But yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.” (3.1.175-177)
The Queen thinks actually Hamlet is crazy, after seeing him in her closet, killing Polonius and talking about a ghost:
“Alas, he’s mad!
This the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in” (3.4.103, 135-137)
Claudius is suspicious and believes it is other than sadness and unrequited love behind Hamlets transformation.There's something in his soul:
“O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger – // (3.1.164-166)
What in fact has happened is that Hamlet and some guards in a apparition has been told that his father was murdered by his brother. Hamlet has asked those present to not breathe a word if they later on are seeing him behave strange and not to disclose his behaviour. Hamlet seems to imply having an intention with it, but does not tell why.
Then he plants and acts his theatrical arts of tricky wordplays and adopts a confused look and a careless dress style among people in the King's service to make them believe that he, Hamlet, is crazy in order to let it be known to Claudius. Hamlet [William Shakespeare] knows that Claudius knows that the holy fool in Christian tradition is a protected character that can call out things publicly on royal court with impunity. (Shakespeare 1997; Saward 1980) Hamlet knows that it makes Claudius doubtful about his own safety and could get him to reveal his crime.
Hamlet had Guildernstiern Rosenkrantz killed in a very sophisticated way, such a premediated murder does not match a fool's brain!
Now, how come Hamlet is the only one seeing the ghost of his father in the Queen's closet? Previously it has been seen twice by Horatio and some sentinels, out of which Hamlet was present once. But, this time it is just Hamlet who is seeing it. His mother believes it is his sick imagination seeing and speaking to a bodiless creation. She says, as to herself, that he is crazy. Then she asks how it is with him. She makes comments about his bewildered behaviour and says she notices him talking and gazing into nothingness. She says, what there is to see, she sees, nothing but themselves, as if she is the true measure of what Hamlet lacks.
The folly he has used up to now turns suddenly against him. He notices her not listening to what he is talking about - which he insistently wishes - but just how he expresses himself; in her world his crazy exterior obscures his words, he is speaking to deaf ears; she isn’t able to hear what he actually is saying. Hamlet perceives her comments as reasons to not listen to his speech. It gets him to pull himself together. He tells her a reasonable story about how he spots the occurrences concerning his father's death. There is something in Hamlet's litany that makes her suddenly start listening, receiving the garment of his madness to dispel. He requires her not to reveal his truth. She replies that she will not breathe a word about his acting mad and his ideas about the late king's decease.
Hamlet doesn't need the fool anymore, when he knows of Claudius' crime. He feels that he finally has his dear mother's undivided attention. If the ghost had appeared again that moment even she would have seen it. But, the ghost's exeunt is forever; Hamlet doesn't need it no more. The mission of the spirit is completed.
Ophelia is Hamlet's trump card in his acting of madness; he is her beloved, thanks to the love affair they had; she is the one who best and most clearly may confirm the inner circle of the royal court the changes Hamlet has gone through on all human levels: it is Ophelia, Hamlet sacrifices to get the most out of his dissimulation; but in his narcissim he does not comprehend that she is badly mistreated by his posture.
OPHELIA
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
// quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
//
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! (3.1.149-160)
Her own perception beats however back at her with full force, it makes her bewildered, especially after her father's tragic death; now she is alone in the world, even Hamlet has abandoned her, as she perceives it. Ophelia knows she is a lost soul, displaced and doomed to loneliness because she has lost her virtue and thereby offended her honor, her father's name and origin. That shame goes over her head and she loses herself and goes under:
OPHELIA
“You must sing 'a-down a-down', an you call him
'a-down-a'. O how the wheel becomes it. It is the false
steward that stole his master’s daughter.” (4.5.165-167)
Body Count: Hamlet v.s. A Midsummer Nights Dream: 6 - 0
The Tragedy of Hamlet Body Count; documented civilian deaths from violence; liquid & metal: 6
A Midsummer Night's Dream Body Count; " ; " : 0
[Hamlet] MARCELLUS: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” HORATIO: Heaven will direct it.” (1.4.90-91)
[AMD] THESEUS: “Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;” (1.1.12-15)
The tragedy of Hamlet is just to end and two noble families in the inner circle of the Danish court, a total of six people, are dead and destroyed by Hamlet; the bodies are still warm of life that a moment ago pulsed through their veins, now molested and dead, now the deepest tragedy and sorrow. The heavens have finally meted out the punishment Horatio pronounced on the condition Marcellus claimed reigned in the state of Denmark. Two entire families are wiped out, leaving behind an empire that overnight has lost its legitimacy. And Prince Fortinbras of Norway, by the gates, has nosed them up, embracing his fortune with sorrow and claiming his rights to the devastated terrene.
In A midsummer night's dream the play ends with a beautiful reconciliation and thirst of love, four couples reconciled to begin, or recover dear dealings, the full moon is huge, there is desire, lust for life, love and joy, it sparkles.
Hamlet's Polonius control his children with an instructive paternity leading his children to death, neither Ophelia or Laertes can manage on their own when they are alone in the world. Claudius and Gertrude can not master their child and they are very cautious in giving him advice. Hamlet lives his life of his own, taking his own decisions, free from parental involvement in how to act in the world.
What initially unites Ophelia and Hamlet in their respective family is that they each have lost a parent, she, her mother; he, his father. Regarding the difference, we never hear Ophelia talk about her loss, but we hear Hamlet the more talk about his. When she then loses her father she loses herself in a loss greater than the one Hamlet experiences, she disappears with all her being in her grief, so great that she loses herself, fades away and dies. Hamlet's grief strengthens him in his efforts to gather force for his war on one man, an attack when it is over will leave a veritable battlefield of dead bodies behind.
The ghost's appearing in Hamlet is radically different from those fairies buzzing around in AMD; revenge, blood and death, versus reconciliation, love potions, and life. The ghost seems to move with difficulty and reluctance in the visible world without the power to intervene itself and set things right, kill what is evil; the fairies act with ease and are playful, eager to help lovers making peace. Now, they are from two different worlds, one dead, the other alive. However, the revengeful ghost has far more difficulties to perform his power than the life-affirming fairies.
Shakespeare's Hamlet, a milestone in the history of human thought.
Shakespeare lets his character of Hamlet perform soliloquies as if he was trying out his thoughts loud and writing them simultaneously; reflections on being and acting in the world: he is weighing the pros and cons, he is hypothesising. Hamlet expresses his soliloquies, his lines in conversations, with an exceedingly refined literate finesse where a plausible thinking is pictured, a way of introspection based on a well acquired literacy, on the technologization of the word, as the late professor Walter J. Ong gently would have put it.
A number of times Hamlet confuses his interlocutors in literate twisting of words, entries and reflections; the illiterate ones lose the plot and believe Hamlet is crazy. They do not understand that it is their own illiteracy that is haunting them. Shakespeare never lets Hamlet lose his direction, but deepens his being in the play he continually is composing, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Without the existence of the art of writing man would not think the way he does, not only when he is busy writing, but also mostly when he is in the process of gathering his thoughts in oral form. The art of writing has more than any other single invention transformed human consciousness. That is why Hamlet seems so innovative; why he delivers his state of mind so focused, his puppet master Shakespeare lets him orally perform the development of Shakespeare's art of writing.
Through Hamlet's speech Shakespeare is paying his debt of gratitude to literature as the source of literacy acquisition.
REFERENCE LIST
Saward, John. Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ's Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Print.
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, Eds. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2005.
Shakespeare, William, King Lear, [New ed.], Nelson, Walton-on-Thames, 1997
Freud, Sigmund, and Rudolf Allers. The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis. Chicago, Ill: Gateway Editions, 1955. Print.
Greenblatt, Steven. “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet”
OCTOBER 21, 2004 http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/stephen-greenblatt/ Web. 11 March 2013.
Ong, Walter J., Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word, Routledge, London, 2002
King Richard II
The path of the Sun King Richard II; the rise and fall of a kingdom
The Sun; the ominous light of heaven and earth, is a frequent used symbol in the play for the rise, power and fall of medieval English monarchy.
When Bolingbroke before Flint castle is waiting for King Richard's answer whether the King will withdraw his exile Bolingbroke associates King Richard's appearance and impending downfall with the path of the sun across the sky and how it goes down in the west: “See, see, King Richard doth himself appear, As doth the blushing discontented sun From out the fiery portal of the east, When he perceives the envious clouds are bent To dim his glory and to stain the track Of his bright passage to the occident. (3.3.62-67)
King Richard likens himself - whether he has any identity any more - to a snowman melting to water standing before the sunshine of the successor king Bolingbroke: “O that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in water-drops!” (4.1.260-262)
In the same scene when he is looking at himself in a mirror, in order to understand who he will be, when he is no longer a King, he rhetorically reflects over his fading sun King images “was this the face That, like the sun, did make beholders wink? // A brittle glory shineth in this face: As brittle as the glory is the face” (4.1.281-288)
When an ally to King Richard says that his warriors have fled due to signs in nature, he associates King Richard's impending fall with a crying decline of the sun, as a shooting star.“Ah, Richard, with the eyes of heavy mind I see thy glory like a shooting star Fall to the base earth from the firmament. Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west” (2.4.18-21)
When Bolingbroke lets interrogate one of the lords about circumstances due to Duke of Gloucester's death, one of his allies insinuates that the questioned lord was involved, when he states the lord stood in the sun, e.g. blessed by King Richard II “By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand’st, I heard thee say – and vauntingly thou spaks't it – That thou wert cause of noble Gloucester’s death” (4.1.36-38)
Metaphors of England as Mother and Garden
To emphasize that the medieval King Richard is spending England’s wealth, both in economical and moral terms Shakespeare uses metaphors connected to the declining wealth of the nature, of gardening or farming, or predictor's interpretation of ominous signs in nature. The government King Richard has been leading is so unbalanced, it is destroying itself, and it will need some careful tending to come back to its proper state.
We are taught by John Gaunt that England is an “other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself // Is now leased out // Like to a tenement or pelting farm [by King Richard]” (2.1.42-43/59-60).
Returning from the war campaign in Ireland King Richard is told to be dead - due to bad omens in the surrounding landscape and in the sky - and thus all the allied warriors have fled: “The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change; // These signs forerun the death or fall of kings // our countrymen are gone and fled” (2.4.8-11/15-16).
The gardeners in the Duke of York's garden are talking in metaphorical terms about the state of England comparing it to the withering park they are trespassing and how it must be restored. They state “O, what pity is it That he [Richard] had not so trimmed and dressed his land As we this garden!” (3.4.55-57)
Bolingbroke directly – the gardeners indirectly - compare allies to King Richard as parasites destroying a garden that must be plucked away to restore England to a commonwealth: “Bushy, Bagot and their complices, The caterpillars of the commonwealth, Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away. “ 2.4.165-167 // her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars” (3.4.47 )
As Shakespeare associates the land to a mother's womb he stresses furthermore the delicate importance of nursing England's ground the right way. He gives voice to both Gaunt and Bolingbroke, father and son, proud of their linages, to declare reverential love to their native country “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings” (2.1.50-51) “Then, England’s ground, farewell! Sweet soil // My mother and my nurse that bears me yet!” (1.4.306-307)
“The fresh green lap of fair King Richard’s land” (3.3.47)
The Divine right to the Throne; King Richard II as a prehistoric divine King, Messiah and Christ in the Garden of Eden II, England
Shakespeare uses scenes from Christian biblical canons to emphasize a King's divine right to the throne; the medieval Christian concept of the king as God's representative on earth are based on biblical beliefs, so even King Richard II.
As a representative of the disciples Bishop Carlisle can not support a worldly dismissal of God's anointed. It would invalidate the order of the cosmos created by God and governed by divine law. It would turn England to chaos: “tumultuous wars Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound. Disorder; horror, fear and mutiny Shall here inhabit, and this land be called The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls.” (4.1.141-145)
Even the deposition and the sacrifice of a king can be explained in that context, which is heralded by John of Gaunt's mention of a king as “God’s substitute, His deputy anointed in His sight Hath caused his death [Duke of Gloucester] // Let heaven revenge” (2.1.37-40) and Gaunt's speech about an old England as "this other Eden, demi-paradise" (2.1.42) that know lays in ruins, a country which is sold out as a leased homestead due to the impious reign of King Richard. Such a sovereign must be sacrificed in order to cleanse the land from sin and to make a new Kingdom to resurrect. Sir Piers of Exton is the one who, under his own auspices, mechanically fulfil this holy mission in the end of the play as if he obeyed an archetypical vision. He is convinced that King Henry by the utterance "Have I no friend who will rid me of this living fear?" (5.4.1) has given him a command to kill Richard.
In scene 3.4, in the Duke of York's garden the gardeners are talking in metaphorical terms about the state of the country (before his leave for Ireland Richard appointed Duke of York to Lord governor of England) comparing it to the withering park they are trespassing and how it must be restored. The Queen who overhears their conversation refers to scenes in The Book of Genesis about an England as a second fall of the humanity, due to the temptation of the serpent, Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the paradise.
The body of a King, heavenly and human
Shakespeare's King Richard II is even give voice to the two bodies of Jesus Christ, both God and human. Richard himself emphasizes his being two natures. Richard's rhetorical use of the plural of majesty referring to himself, as “we”, “our” and “ourself” is a symptom of this. But, Richard is aware of his human aspect, and sometimes refer to himself in the first person when he is in control of a situation, of personal and human matters. When he wants to hide himself from God he also bring the first person in use: as Adam in the Garden of Eden, hiding from God because he has sinned (Richard probably ordered Mowbray to murder the Duke of Gloucester).
King Richard must literally split his divine and human descent to leave his mission of God and become an ordinary person, both before God, the successor King and servants.
A first indication is when Richard, occupied by the rebellion, understands, at the coast of Wales just having returned from the war campaign in Ireland, he has little support left, and for a moment he forgets his divinity but he forces himself to gather strength by giving order to himself to regain his divinity and not “Look not to the ground” (3.2.87).
A second hint is given, when outside the walls of Flint's castle Northumberland not is kneeling before Richard in the sense a servant should sanctify a God's substitute: “how dare thy joints forget To pay their awful duty to our presence?” (3.3.75-76). Richard reflects over this disrespect and tell him to beware, his “master, God omnipotent, Is mustering in His clouds on our behalf” (3.3.85-86).
When he asks of a mirror during the deposition scene, 4.1, it calls attention very clearly to an audience who gets to see two Richards, the one who reflects himself, and the image of the mirror. Richard transfers his divinity (and royal power) to the looking glass image. The moment he shatters the mirror to the floor he leaves his position as God's representative on earth. When Bolingbroke a moment later calls him “fair cousin” the descension is fulfilled. Now he is just human.
King Richard II as the mortified Christ
When Richard, in scene 3.2, believes he understand that some men of his associates have joined Bolingbroke, he bursts out in accusations of treachery and compares the situation with the Betrayal of Christ, with the Kiss of Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane. In scene 4.1 he links himself a second time to Jesus and Judas' betrayal of him; Judas the twelfth disciple who found allegiance with the other eleven in Jesus' crowd. Richard himself finds no support at all among his old allies of twelve thousand valiant men in England which he likens to a biblical army of Israel; he remember how they once celebrated him as their King, but now they have abandoned him.
When Richard, in scene 4.1, faces the Lord's mob, as he perceives it, and shall sign his abdication, he associates the situation with Jesus standing before Pilate who before the people washes his hands free of guilt before the crucifixion of Jesus: “Nay, all of you that stand and look upon me, Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself, Though some of you with Pilate wash your hands, Showing an outward pity, yet you Pilates Have here delivered me to my sour cross, And water cannot wash away your sin” (4.1.238-242).
References to the first (recorded) biblical murder: “Cain rose up against Habel his brother, and slew him” (The Book of Genesis, 4:1-8; Bishop's Bible).
To emphasize the gravity of the murder of Duke of Gloucester and the assassination of King Richard, King Henry refers twice to Cain's fratricide of Abel; the first time, as Henry Bolingbroke, he insinuates Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, of being Cain; Mowbray was probably ordered by King Richard who was related to Duke of Gloucester:“That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death // like a traitor coward, Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood // like sacrificing Abel’s” (1.1.100-104)
The second time, as King Henry, he indirectly accuses himself of being involved but cursing directly Exton of being Cain; Exton had interpreted a hint by Henry as an urge (Henry was related to King Richard): “Exton // A deed of slander with thy fatal hand Upon my head // though I did wish him dead, I hate the murderer, love him murdered // [to Exton] With Cain go wander through shades of night” (5.6.34-43)
Even when the Duchess of Gloucester is trying to incite John of Gaunt to avenge the killing of Duke of Gloucester, her husband, his brother and uncle to King Richard, she seems to insinuate a fratricide of biblical proportions:
“Thomas [H/Abel], my dear lord, my life // Is cracked // hacked down // By Envy’s hand [King Richard/Cain] and Murder’s bloody axe // Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine // thou livest and breathest, Yet art thou slain in him // In that thou seest thy wretched brother die // In suffering thus thy brother to be slaughtered” (1.2.16-30)
Holy Regalia
A sovereign's holy regalia are both literally and rhetorically brought to use by Shakespeare to charge that a medieval King's mission is ordained by God. The renunciation of the Crown and simply taking it off, the symbol of the sun and stars; the power of earth, is important in the deposition scene of King Richard II to undress his solemn duty. A King's sceptre is the shepherd's staff Moses and other religious leaders in The Book of Genesis uses as a symbol of their holy leadership: “I give this heavy weight from off my head And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand, The pride of kingly sway from out my heart; With mine own tears I wash away my balm, With mine own hands I give away my crown, With mine own tongue deny my sacred state” 4.1.204-209
(In scene 1.3 King Richard interrupts the beginning of the duel between Bolingbroke an Mowbray by ritually throwing down his warder whereupon the Lord Marshal announces “Stay! The king hath thrown his warder down (1.3.18). In scene 2.2 and 2.3 it is announced that Lords former loyal to King Richard have broken their staffs, e.g. before God they have renounced their mission as servants to the King.)
King Richard II, a round character
King Richard II becomes a complex character during the play as he has to stand up for himself. He has to adapt himself both to physical and psychological changes during the end of his life. He must in someway have been aware of his soon upcoming death.
From the picture of a respected and feared King of God's grace to a King who is gradually losing all his support and finally gets brutally murdered by a solitary madman in a dungeon.
The case is preceded by a King who descends as human and has to capitulate to his opponents' rhetorics while forging a new identity and some kind of role preparing to die. A very tricky task indeed.
Queen Elizabeth I on 4 August 1601 allegedly said “I am Richard II, know ye not that?”
There are some parallels between the historical King Richard II who reigned at the end of the 14th century and the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, circumstances of economic and military art that resembled her England of the time of Shakespeare. The Queen was forced to sell some royal estates and royal monopoly in order to maintain power to keep the kingdom going. A serious rebellion in Ireland took place; England was hit by poor harvests, social unrest and significant unemployment and vagrancy. All factors to bring down a Queen's popularity.
In Shakespeare's play King Richard II, approximately written 1595, is heading for Ireland, to pursue a war. To finance his war and to put down the rebels against the crown he has seized all of the late John of Gaunt's worldly goods. His son Henry Bolingbroke, banished from England by Richard, gets to know this and of course strongly disagree that his inheritance is, in his opinion, stolen. Bolingbroke rounds up an army and invades England in Richard's absence. Noblemen and commoners, fond of Bolingbroke and annoyed at Richard's running of the country, approve Bolingbroke's re entering and join his forces.
Among Elizabethan audiences Shakespeare's play King Richard II earned a reputation as politically subversive. Critics of the time often viewed the play as a delicate annotation on the monarchy. Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, an English nobleman and a favourite of Elizabeth I, is maybe trying to use this context to make a point of the administration of England by the Queen. As Richard and Bolingbroke were cousins the Earl was in someway related to Elizabeth I.
The Earl of Essex was politically ambitious, and one of the Queen's committed generals. But as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland he failed completely due to a poor campaign in Ireland during a war in 1599. He loosed his titles and was placed under house arrest. His basic income of the sweet wines monopoly was not renewed by the Queen.
On february the 8 in 1601 the ex Earl Robert Devereux led an subversive action against the Queen and was beheaded for treason a fortnight later. It is said that the day before the rebellion he had let his companions pay Chamberlain's men to perform Shakespeare's King Richard II, maybe to incite and instigate for City of arms the following day. Maybe Robert Devereux was sure to gather people to mock Elizabeth I the same way Shakespeare's Bolingbroke enters the streets of London crowded with cheering commoners with the humiliated and defeated Richard. A very risky task indeed that in fact ended the rebellion's life at the time of Shakespeare.
A couple of months later Queen Elizabeth I, during a meeting with her archivist William Lambarde, associated herself with Shakespeare’s Richard II, maybe reviewing historical documents relating to the reign of the historical King Richard II, with the famous remark, "I am Richard II, know ye not that?" In the same journal the Queen is said to have grumbled about that the play at the time was staged “forty times in open streets and houses".
To citizens and playgoers the play must have been a political comment on the contemporary situation, e.g. it seems that the humiliating deposition scene was lacking the quartos during the time of Elizabeth I, probably due to Master of Revels censorship powers.
The Chamberlain's Men do not appear to have suffered for their suspected association with the rebellions; they even staged a play - scholars don't know which one - for the Queen the day before the execution of the ex Earl of Essex.
Factual accuracy and English History plays
When Elizabeth I in August 1601 uttered "I am Richard II, know ye not that?" during a meeting with her archivist Lambarde, she surely likened the established factual accuracy in historical documents with Shakespeare's play and the quarto entitled "The Tragedy of Richard II” (lacking the deposition scene); though a tragedy she probably glanced at it as “history”.
For her it was a problem that this comparison was possible; as Shakespeare's King Richard II she mirrored herself in a looking glass and saw herself as the commoners saw her, the masses who were not being literate or not having access to the historical facts she herself had studied. Anyone could likened her to a so called historical character in a play but very few had read the very factual accuracy about it.
Elizabeth died in 1603. When the first folio edition of the play was printed in 1623, it was called “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”; a title more of a factual accuracy than a “tragedy” and listed among “Histories”. Twenty years after Elizabeth's death (and approx. 10 years after Shakespeare's) it was probably political possible and good PR to entitle Shakespeare's King Richard II more as a History play.
“The tragedie of King Richard the second As it hath beene publikely acted by the right Honourable the Lorde Chamberlaine his Seruants.” (Q1 1597)
"The tragedie of King Richard the second with new additions of the Parliament sceane, and the deposing of King Richard. As it hath been lately acted by the Kinges Maiesties seruants, at the Globe. By William Shakespeare." (Q4 1615)
Reference list
Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare's Boss: The Master of Revels Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. (2013-04-17) < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/shakespeareboss.html >.
Parker, Matthew (red.) (1568). The. holie. Bible. [electronic source]. Imprynted at London: ... by Richard Iugge … [Bishop's Bible] <http://classic.studylight.org/>
Shakespeare, William (2002). King Richard II. London: Arden Shakespeare
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Queen Elizabeth I.” SparkNotes.com.
SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 13 Apr. 2013.
Sonnets 127, 130, 144: Beauty; The Young Man & The Dark Lady
"In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on nature’s power,
Fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress’ brows are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so." (Shakespeare's Sonnets, 127)
In my opinion, I would say that the poet describes his “mistress” (line 9) both in comparison with nature and in opposite with it, in artificial terms; a mix, a kind of cross breed description.
“Raven black” (ibid) is to me a comparison with the colour of the plumage of the bird of prey: nature, or his “mistress” has cultured – coloured – her eyelashes; to help the reader understand that “dun” is a paler shade of white (!) the poet uses a colour from nature, “white as snow” (130.3); “black wires grow on her head” (130.4) must refer to something growing in nature, maybe twigs:
"My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare." (Shakespeare's Sonnets, 130)
Well, even the poet's counterpoints of beauty are in comparison with nature: “eyes nothing like the sun [nature] ” (130.1), “no such roses [nature] see I in her cheeks” (130.6).
When the poet counterpoints the breath of his "mistress" and the timber of her voice he uses cultural artefacts: “perfumes [culture] is there more delight” (130.7), “music [culture] hath far more pleasing sound” (130.10).
I interpret “a woman coloured ill” (144.4) literally, her skin, given by Nature (by birth) or by Culture (by cosmetics), contrasting the phrase with the previous “a man right fair [by Nature...]” (144.3):
"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn’d end
Suspect I may, but not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s hell:
Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out." (Shakespeare's Sonnets, 144)
Sonnets 7, 17 & 30; Death, Time, Future & Remedies
The poet thinks there are remedies that keeps the death away. The handsome young man the poet is addressing should get a son. It would be a way to let the beauty live forever."Lo! in the orient when the gracious lightLifts up his burning head, each under eyeDoth homage to his new-appearing sight,Serving with looks his sacred majesty;And having climb’d the steep-up heavenly hill,Resembling strong youth in his middle age,yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,Attending on his golden pilgrimage;But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,The eyes, ‘fore duteous, now converted areFrom his low tract and look another way:So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,Unlook’d on diest, unless thou get a son." (Shakespeare's Sonnets, 7)
Time in the poet's sonnets are often about the preservation of the young and beauty in relation to the old and dying; time of grief at the tomb, where spring and summer may stand as an imagery of youth and autumn and winter of ageing and transience, or the path of the sun into night which picture an arc of life and death, the budding of the plants in springtime or its the withering, or the sign of ageing in a man's appearance or his sadness of being left alone towards the end of life.
The reasons for his repeated calls is that he thinks it would be a shame to let such beauty go to the grave without giving life to an offspring. The Time is Future in the poet's sonnets. Of what Marcel Proust centuries later makes a response by saying that the Past is Future using a phrase from Shakespeare's sonnet 30:1-2 to entitle his own magnus opus, À la recherche du temps perdu:
“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past”
It worries the poet of the sonnets that generations to come will not believe his tribute to the beauty of the youth as he himself sees it. The inexorable passing of time is a recurring and overarching theme that the poet in different ways describe in relation to the beauty that will perish.
“The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage,
And stretched metre of an antique song” (Shakespeare's Sonnets, 17:7-12)
Reference list
Proust, Marcel & Scott-Moncrieff, C. K. (2006). Remembrance of things past. Volume 1 / .. Wordsworth Editions
Shakespeare, William (2010). Shakespeare's sonnets. Pbk. ed., Rev. ed. London: Methuen Drama
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Sonnet 18
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (18:1). The poet answers his rhetorical introduction by saying no; it is the poem itself, when it comes to life by being read that best carries out a clear and exalted and paradisiacal image about the one the poet is addressing, “thee”, “thou”, “thy“.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee."
By saying “Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade” (18:11) the poet seems to claim that since the death is a state of nonexistence it can nor express, nor emphasise. Thus the earthly dead comparative material become irrelevant and insignificant; it can never be any question of a parable.
“So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” (18:14). The vivid memory of someone is the eternal; the offspring of the poem comes to life the moment it is being read. The poet seems to refer to the magic of reading which brings an otherwise impossible comparison to life, an anthem to the beauty.
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