One of the most famous passages in Troilus and Cressida is Ulysses' speech to Achilles in act three, scene three, regarding the thankless nature of time. In it, he is trying to convince Achilles to become once again the great warrior that he was, and to avoid thinking that his reputation or his past services will be of any use to him in the future. And although Ulysses, in this play anyway, is known for his Machiavellian skills in manipulation, there is nevertheless great truth in what he says. And so I'll print it here in its entirety, and give you this wish for the new year. I hope it proves to be your greatest one yet, in terms of both happiness and achievement.

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done: perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;

For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;

For emulation hath a thousand sons

That one by one pursue: if you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by

And leave you hindmost;

Or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;

For time is like a fashionable host

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,

And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not

virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was;

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,

That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,

Though they are made and moulded of things past,

And give to dust that is a little gilt

More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

The present eye praises the present object.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye

Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive

And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,

Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves

And drave great Mars to faction.

Another thought struck me recently regarding Shakespeare's use of poetry (and I'm not referring to the verse only; even his prose is poetic). As we listen, we are very much aware that people don't speak in those ways - this was one of Tolstoy's beefs about Shakespeare, in fact - but we're also aware that people do feel in those ways. And like with music or dance, we know that we're witnessing an exaggeration, but what this exaggeration leads to is of such depth that it's unlikely that it could have been found otherwise. The poetry, therefore, helps us to think certainly, but just as importantly, it allows us to empathize emotionally.

Also, the poetic language makes us immediately aware that we're watching fiction (even when historical sources have been consulted), but the quick establishment of this fact permits the mind to go past the surface issues of story-telling and veracity to get to the real psychological and philosophical content. For an example, here's Cassius speaking to Casca (1.3) about the reasons for Caesar's ascension; in his opinion, it's merely a symptom of Rome's weakness. Note the poetic content of the words and the emotions they release. Then imagine the danger in even thinking them:

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?

Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf,

But that he sees the Romans are but sheep:

He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

Those that with haste will make a mighty fire

Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome,

What rubbish and what offal, when it serves

For the base matter to illuminate

So vile a thing as Caesar! But, O grief,

Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this

Before a willing bondman; then I know

My answer must be made. But I am arm'd,

And dangers are to me indifferent.

I've always considered Glenn Gould to be the greatest instrumentalist in the history of classical music. My reasons for thinking this probably belong on my other blog, so I'll keep them brief here. Basically, it's my opinion that no other artist so thoroughly challenged preconceived notions of the performer's role in written-down music to the degree that he did. He questioned every aspect of music with unparalleled intensity, and while the results (both musically and philosophically) didn't always please everyone, they were never less than fascinating.

OK, to my reason for writing about him on this blog: On Monday evening, I watched the PBS American Masters program, entitled "Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould", which mentioned, along with many other interesting facts about his life, that he was a great lover of Shakespeare. Apparently he enjoyed reading the plays aloud with certain of his friends, and Richard II was both his favourite play and part to perform (for reasons that went unexplained, and which I'll no doubt puzzle over in the days ahead). This led me to add another to the list of the reasons for my continually strengthening belief in the value of reading Shakespeare: Because it is composed of challenging thinking, it leads to more of the same in the lives and works of its readers.

During a bit of an aside in yesterday's post, I mentioned that it's my conviction that teachers, like governments should not go in for indoctrination. This reminded me of some of the remarkable scenes from Measure for Measure (2.2) in which Angelo and Isabella debate the nature of justice. I doubt that there's ever been a more concise and wise dictum regarding the role of authority than Isabella saying: "O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." These scenes should be required reading for anyone even considering taking on a position that involves holding power over others.

Further to the final statements of yesterday's post, I want to clarify my reasoning. First, Shakespeare is the writer who best understands both the human mind and human emotions. Ergo, a person who wants to maximize his or her achievements can only be helped by the wisdom found in his work. Second, unlike virtually every other writer, including playwrights, Shakespeare doesn't advocate particular viewpoints; his works illuminate but do not indoctrinate. (By the way, I'm also of the belief that teachers and governments should follow Shakespeare's lead in this.) My third and final point for today is that the study of Shakespeare opens up thousands of avenues for further learning; in the works themselves (unlike some of the commentary written about them), there are no dead ends.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the difficulty of finding the tone appropriate for writing about Shakespeare. Another question that his commentators have to ask themselves is this: What exactly am I trying to learn through the study of his works? I've mentioned before, several times, that I have no time for the authorship "controversy", not only because there isn't one, but also because it's a dead end. From our perspective, the most important thing should not be "righting" the past. Rather it's the future that's at stake. Wasting time and energy on futile pursuits (including some misguided critical approaches in use in universities today) moves us away from the point: Shakespeare should be studied by every young person in the world. Anything that doesn't contribute to making this happen is a mistake.

Near the end of Hamlet's opening scene, Horatio and the guards, Marcellus and Bernardo, are trying to warm themselves (both physically and psychologically) after a rough night. After all, they've seen the ghost of their previous monarch, dressed for battle, march by them twice without giving them even a small acknowledgement. They've also had their worst fears confirmed regarding the state of the nation - i.e. they are preparing for war and there is an immanent threat of invasion at hand. And so Marcellus tries to revive their spirits by recalling a set of beliefs related to the Christmas season:

Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

The unexpected mention of the holiday in an unlikely setting (the battlements of a castle) render the moment even more poignant. It can also make us consider the importance of imaginative ideals of peace and good will in an imperfect world. Let's hope that, with the help of great art, we continue to move in the right direction. Happy holidays.

I've had a few more thoughts on Frank Kermode's The Age of Shakespeare (2004), which I mentioned again yesterday. What's been on my mind is the fact that Kermode wrote, both in this book and in Shakespeare's Language (2000), of how he is an admirer of Shakespeare, like Ben Jonson, "this side idolatry". First off, I'm pretty sure that it is this phrase which has led to the punning description of Shakespeare worshipers as "bardolaters", amongst which, you may have noticed, you'll find me.

In Kermode's case, it seems as if the phrase affects very strongly the tone of the entire book (which I would certainly continue to recommend, by the way) because he seems to be always looking for ways to keep Shakespeare on the earth, but without going so far as to diminish his achievements. It's an engaging perspective for the most part, level-headed and learned, but occasionally we read a statement such as the following one, in regard to George Chapman, a poet mostly remembered for his translation of Homer (largely because of Keats' poem): "Chapman was an intellectual in a sense that probably excludes Shakespeare; like the aristocratic poet Fulke Grenville, friend and biographer of Sidney, he had a deep interest in the revived philosophy of Stoicism". At which point, I have to put the book down and say: "Sorry. No way. I don't care if Chapman had a deep interest in everything. There is no sense of the word 'intellectual' that excludes Shakespeare." And so the question remains: What is the proper stance for a writer to take vis a vis Shakespeare?

I received a very interesting comment to my December 18 post which asked whether George Kittredge's theory regarding dramatic necessity being the reason for the creation of the Porter gave enough credit to the actors that Shakespeare was working with - particularly, in this case, the comic actors Will Kempe and Robert Armin - for inspiring characters such as this one. After all, he had to provide them with work. I would definitely agree (in fact, in my post of December 10, I compared Shakespeare to Duke Ellington in this regard), and as I was re-reading Frank Kermode's The Age of Shakespeare (2004), I found that one of the greatest literary scholars of the last fifty or so years is also on this side of the argument. In the chapter on the Globe, he states that there is "no doubt that Shakespeare wrote with particular members of the company in mind", and for proof, he contrasts the earlier comic roles written for Kempe, with the more sophisticated ones (such as Feste in Twelfth Night and the Fool in King Lear) that were written for Armin, a more subtle actor in Kermode's opinion: "It is fair to say that if Armin had not joined the company these roles might not exist in the forms familiar to us". And I think it's fair to say that we owe both of these actors a round of applause.

I've mentioned the long, intricate second scene of act two from Hamlet in a couple of posts, and today I'd like to look at it again, but this time from the interactionist perspective that has been of considerable recent interest in my thinking about Shakespeare's characters. I've always thought of the scene as a sort-of "day in the life of Hamlet", as we watch his interactions with Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the players. (After all of this, it ends with the second great soliloquy that begins with "Now I am alone./ O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!") It's also occurred to me that it alone could be the basis of an interesting production, maybe a film version that employs a long single shot - similar perhaps to the one that opens A Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles, who was also an important interpreter of Shakespeare. Or perhaps this idea isn't original - I think Branagh's splendid version may have used this technique. Never mind.

Anyway, the main point that I'd like to make about its content is this: Hamlet's behaviours with the other characters cover a broad spectrum, and they are partially influenced by the reactions of those he is dealing with; but when he's left alone, he is as surprised by his own thoughts as he was by the interjections of the others.

Continuing with the topic of interactionist theory and Shakespeare, let's consider the play that comes immediately to mind whenever psychological and/or philosophical exploration becomes the issue. Hamlet, according to my theory anyway, was written for the purpose of finding a storyline that would allow the audience to watch a young, talented, honest person be turned inside out in a variety of situations. From this perspective, the best way to "understand" this complex and contradictory character is to realize that his actions are a surprise to him as much as they are to us. And assuming that the character has in his mind an over-arching plan for how he will behave throughout the entire play (or even a scene or line ahead) is an error; when the part is acted that way, boredom is the most common result. As I mentioned the other day, the character does not know what is going to happen next; the actor does, but that's quite a different matter. (Rupert Everett, when discussing his excellent performance in the film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream from 1999, said that he simply tried to say his lines as though he were just thinking of them.)

And to support my theory regarding the intentions of the playwright in this case, I would point out how Shakespeare often gives broad hints regarding his thematic subject matter at the beginnings of his plays, usually in fairly innocuous ways. The opening here is a simple question, but one that continues to puzzle human beings to this day: "Who's there?"

The Oxford edition of Antony and Cleopatra contains an introduction by Michael Neill that I've found to be very useful on several occasions, and it was again yesterday because it contains a passage that was largely responsible for the ideas regarding interactionism that I wrote about in yesterday's post. Here's the excerpt in question:

"'He whom you saw yesterday so boldly venturous,' wrote Montaigne, in a passage that might almost have been inspired by the vagaries of Antony's career, 'wonder not if you see him a dastardly meacock tomorrow next... We are all formed of flaps and patches and of so shapeless and diverse a contexture, that every piece and every moment playeth his part. And there is as much difference between us and our selves, as there is between our selves and another.' The 'self', in effect, is no more than the site of endless theatrical self-inventions and one should 'esteem it a great matter, to play but one man.' In Montaigne's analysis the self cannot be expected to 'hang together' in the fashion assumed by psychological naturalism, because it has no fixed and substantial existence."

I've mentioned a couple of times that I hold the opinion that the conflict that truly concerned Shakespeare was located in the audience, and not among the fictional (or historical) characters found on the stage. With this in mind, the dramas can be seen as unfolding in a way that includes every viewer and every reader directly in every action. They can become an endless resource for knowledge of both the self and the other. Or is that redundant?

It's my understanding that "interactionism" is a relatively new term, perhaps fifty years old or so, and that it's essentially a way of considering human behaviour as the result of the dealings we have with others. It argues that a human being does not have a fixed identity that will transcend any particular situation, but rather that the situation itself will be the cause of the resulting behaviour. So, for example, if A is in one position and B in another, their behaviour would likely switch if their positions were to. It's a relatively simple concept, but an important one, because it encourages objective, two-sided thinking about any issue that contains the potential for conflict. And it's become one of the central tenets in many fields, including sociology and psychology.

I said that it's a new term, but it's not a new idea. I would argue in fact that an interactionist viewpoint is the best one from which to understand the intricacies of Shakespeare's characters, as it allows for the fact that they (unlike someone who has read the play) don't know what's going to happen next. And each event that they face, therefore, is not only a surprise in itself but is also a moment of self-discovery - as they learn about themselves from their own reactions. I'll be trying to make the case for this, with examples, over the next couple of posts.

George Kittredge, the great Shakespeare scholar from Boston, in writing on Macbeth, gave all the credit for the existence of the Porter to the requirements that Shakespeare needed to fulfill at that particular point in the play: He needed a character to fill a period of time between the murder and the re-entry of the cleaned-up Macbeths, but it couldn't be a major character and it couldn't advance the story. The play also needed relief from the "extreme tensions" of the bloody regicide and the discovery of the body by Macduff et al, and the type of relief had to be of a dark comic variety. Thus the Porter was born. It's an intriguing theory - as it shows how Shakespeare's understanding of what the audience would need at a given point may have been crucial to the creation of some of his great minor characters. Others of this type that come immediately to mind: the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, the Gravediggers in Hamlet, the Clown (carrying the asp and figs) in Antony and Cleopatra, and the Gardener in Richard II. If the theory is true, and necessity was integral to their development, it shows once more Shakespeare's unparalleled emphasis on detail: even the smallest characters in the plays are fascinating and believable.

In Wednesday's post, I mentioned that perhaps the best way to see characters such as Mercutio and the Nurse is to consider their function in the play. It could be argued that both are given their meaning in relation to their role vis a vis the protagonists of the title. Mercutio allows us to see the much deeper imaginative and emotional potentials in Romeo (who has been seen by some as resembling a younger version of Hamlet). His famed Queen Mab speech is probably best understood as an imitation of imagination, as he reduces the contents of dreams to desires and fears. (Sound familiar? Freud would be entirely forgotten were it not for what he learned from Shakespeare.) The Nurse serves a similar purpose in her contrast to Juliet, and her scenes (and Mercutio's as well) allow the mood to be lightened and the audience to be taken away momentarily from the lyricism and foreboding that is the central emotional state of the play. Like an experienced chef, Shakespeare uses these characters and their variety to freshen the palate of the viewer, so that when the catastrophe does arrive, it appears even darker in comparison with what could have been. It's something that became common practice in his tragedies from this point on. Another example tomorrow.

I'm completely baffled by the fact that the new film version of The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor, appears to not be opening in theatrical release in Montreal. I hope I'm wrong, and it's just been delayed, but it doesn't appear so. Such a thing can't help but raise questions about the level of our society's cultural literacy. It's hard to believe that a film version of a unique and spectacular masterpiece, with a dazzling cast, and directed by one of the most talented of film-makers isn't even being given a chance to find an audience in a city like this one. And I'm not in any way placing the blame on young people when I refer to cultural literacy; it's not the fault of young people - they aren't the ones making decisions such as these. Rather it's the generation older than theirs, people of my age, who are clearly more concerned with money than content, who are responsible. I've spent enough time teaching in high schools to know that young people aren't interested in reading or seeing nonsense, and given the opportunity and the choice they will always opt to be engaged by superior work. But they're too infrequently being given that choice, which is sad. And baffling.

Is it harsh to include the Nurse among Shakespeare's villains (as I did yesterday)? There would be arguments for both sides, as is usually the case with characters as three-dimensional and true-to-life as Shakespeare's, but certainly in the scene in question (3.5) her conduct would be evidence for the affirmative. But at other points, she is so full of life and humour that it's hard to maintain that judgement. Of course, it could be argued that the question is beside the point, and that it's more important to see her in her dramatic function: how she serves as a foil to Juliet, just as Mercutio does to Romeo.

But there's another angle from which to see the Nurse's behaviour in the scene as well, and that is that it was influenced by the admonishment she received from Capulet only a few moments earlier (as she was attempting to assuage his anger over Juliet's refusal to marry Paris), in which he says: "Peace, you mumbling fool!/ Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl;/ For here we need it not." In this light, it's not impossible to sympathize with her for seeking the easiest way to avoid further conflict. Perhaps she even feels pushed past caring about the whole business, at least momentarily. Either way, and to return to the question above, there are no easy answers in Shakespeare.

Another point relating to yesterday's post (regarding the way time is perceived in the adult world versus the idealized one of the young lovers) is the manner in which the Nurse derives her knowledge of Juliet. She makes a very big deal of the fact that she knows exactly how old Juliet is ("Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour") and that she can tell stories of her very young days (and particularly the endlessly repeated one of how Juliet responded unknowingly to an off-colour question by her late husband), as if things of this nature are all that knowledge of a younger person entails. And over the course of the play, as Juliet grows to inner maturity, it becomes apparent that the Nurse doesn't know her at all. The final break comes, of course, when she recommends to Juliet to forget her marriage to the banished Romeo and marry Paris. It's a remarkable scene:

NURSE

Beshrew my very heart,

I think you are happy in this second match,

For it excels your first: or if it did not,

Your first is dead; or 'twere as good he were,

As living here and you no use of him.

JULIET

Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE

And from my soul too;

Or else beshrew them both.

JULIET

Amen!

NURSE

What?

JULIET

Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.

Go in: and tell my lady I am gone,

Having displeased my father, to Laurence' cell,

To make confession and to be absolved.

NURSE

Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.

[Exit]

JULIET

Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!

Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,

Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue

Which she hath praised him with above compare

So many thousand times? Go, counsellor;

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.

I'll to the friar, to know his remedy:

If all else fail, myself have power to die.

It's another example of the truth in Robert Penn Warren's statement: "All of Shakespeare's villains are rationalists".

There's a different sort of double-time effect in Romeo and Juliet, quite unlike the type found in Othello and King Lear. In this play, the contrast is caused by the very different perceptions of passing time that we get from the very different worlds of the play: the adult world provides a very strict sense of time, with many references to specific moments and the repeated use of words such as "day" (which appears sixty times in the play), "night" (sixty-five), "time" (forty-four), and "hour" (twenty-four). The world of the young lovers however, transcends this strict temporality with a poetic vision of time that is made to seem elastic in quality. Juliet in particular has many lines of this nature. Towards the end of the balcony scene, when Romeo asks her to send for him at the hour of nine the next day, Juliet responds, "'tis twenty years till then". As he leaves her after their wedding night, she says, "I must hear from thee every day in the hour/ For in a minute there are many days". And perhaps the most memorable moment of this type is said in soliloquy at the beginning of 2.5, as she waits for the Nurse who is to bring her news of Romeo and their engagement:

In half an hour she promised to return.

Perchance she cannot meet him: that's not so.

O, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts,

Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,

Driving back shadows over louring hills:

Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love,

And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.

Now is the sun upon the highmost hill

Of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve

Is three long hours, yet she is not come.

Had she affections and warm youthful blood,

She would be as swift in motion as a ball;

My words would bandy her to my sweet love,

And his to me...

It's partly for this reason (i.e. the conflict of imaginative time vs. the clock) that this play, with its story more known than any other, can still create tremendous tension in an audience.

I'm not sure that I can think of an equivalent example in any of the plays to the importance of dawn, as in the time of day, to Romeo and Juliet. Several commentators have pointed out the way the different sections of the play either begin or end with it. The play itself doesn't begin at dawn, but Benvolio's description to Lady Montague of having seen Romeo "underneath the grove of sycamore" refers to it. The second dawn arises at the end of the balcony scene in Juliet's orchard, and the third comes as Romeo leaves Juliet's window after their wedding night (and after their unforgettable discussion of whether it's the lark or the nightingale that they're hearing). The fourth arrives as the Nurse arrives to find Juliet seemingly dead, but only counterfeiting it with the assistance of Friar Laurence's potion. And the final one comes with the Prince and the remaining family members finding the dead bodies in the tomb. Clearly Shakespeare intended it to be part of the fabric of the play, and of course it can be taken symbolically in several ways. One would be as a representative of a fresh start (a "new day", as the saying goes) or a chance to turn the page, which nearly happens several times in the play but never does completely. And of course, the other would be that dawn is to a day what youth is to a life, which leads us to still more thematic considerations regarding time. More on these tomorrow.

I keep learning more about Shakespeare's technical treatment of time with every play that I re-visit. In Romeo and Juliet, time is particularly important in several different ways, and over the next few posts I'll be summarizing some of what I've learned recently. For today, the first thing that must considered in this regard is the way the story has been collapsed from several months in Brooke's narrative poem (which was Shakespeare's primary and perhaps sole source) to four days in the play. But somehow it still feels entirely believable. Perhaps it's due to the fact that our memories tend to work this way as well, because when we look back on our own lives, we tend to remember the big events, the ones that changed things, rather than the cups of coffee and so forth. And many years can get turned into recollections that might take only a few moments to re-live mentally. Tomorrow, I'll write about how the play is influenced both technically and thematically by a particular time of day.

The musician I was referring to at the end of yesterday's post is Duke Ellington, whose career provides a parallel with Shakespeare's in a couple of important ways. The first is that Ellington kept a big band together for over fifty years, which is an incredible achievement by itself, but he resembles Shakespeare in that his primary reason for doing it was to make it possible for him to hear his compositions immediately and as he intended them. Shakespeare was involved with theatrical troupes for the entire twenty years of his writing career, and it's clear that every word in the plays was written with them in mind. The second is that each wrote with not only the audience in mind, but also their own performers. Whereas Ellington used to ask his musicians if they all liked their parts after they'd played a new piece, it's not hard to imagine Shakespeare doing the same with his actors. And of course, both wrote to feature and/or challenge specific individual performers. I'm convinced that it's largely because of these factors that each of these artists is now considered simply a genre of their own, with only their last names needed for identification.

In an interview I saw on television last night, Stephen Sondheim said some very interesting things in regard to his writing process, which is also apparently the subject matter of his new book, Finishing the Hat. One of the points that he made was that no one ever writes a great work for the theater on the first try, because it's only after having done one that the writer realizes the importance of the audience. As he put it, the writer soon learns that the audience is "the final collaborator". Of course, this made me realize (once again) that only a full-time theater professional could possibly have written Shakespeare's plays. They were written with actors and a stage not only in mind, but in use - not amidst tea and crumpets. Of course, one of the central characteristics of Shakespeare's plays is how well they work in front of an audience. And it becomes increasingly evident, as one spends more time with the works, that this was always one of his primary concerns - at least equal in importance with their poetic and philosophical content. (Historical accuracy was not nearly as important to him as these three.) Tomorrow: a comparison to another twentieth-century musician.

It's interesting to note that the main concept that makes the plot engine run in Romeo and Juliet is ignorance. By this I mean that at one point or another in the play, virtually every major character is left to make decisions while unaware of a crucial piece of information. And the audience is left to squirm, laugh or cry, depending on the situation. (It could even be argued that ignorance is one of the play's themes, and that it's brought to our attention through dramatic rather than verbal means.) Of course, this device is commonly referred to as dramatic irony, i.e. when the audience knows more than the characters, but I think that in this play, it goes beyond that. I think we might need some new terminology here. Any suggestions?

The turning point in Romeo and Juliet, according to Harold Goddard's The Meaning of Shakespeare (), is the point at which Romeo is unable to free himself from his violent upbringing, to turn his back on the incorrect teachings of history, his family and the feud - and "give all to love" (in the words of Emerson). When Mercutio and Tybalt begin to tangle, instead of sticking to his plan to befriend Tybalt (a Capulet, to whom he's now related by marriage), he instead tries to fight violence with violence, or as Goddard puts it: "He descends from the level of love to the level of violence and attempts to part the fighters with his sword". Here's the specific passage:

Draw, Benvolio, beat down their weapons

Gentleman, for shame, forbear this outrage!

Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath

Forbidden bandying in Verona streets:

Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio!

There is an argument to be made that at this point Romeo either could have let them fight it out (which perhaps would not have resulted in a death), or he could have revealed everything, including his secret marriage to Juliet. Instead he tried to interpose with the use of force, with the results we know, including the pathetic moment when Romeo answers Mercutio's reasonable question, "Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm", with: "I thought all for the best." Mercutio then turns away from him in disgust, anger, disbelief (take your pick) and says: "Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint."

One of my favourite moments, of many, in Harold Goddard's classic The Meaning of Shakespeare (1951) is in the essay on Romeo and Juliet, in which he gives his theory of the turning point of the action. One of the most marvelous aspects of the book is that it is filled with descriptions like this one, where the outcome of events is held in the balance and determined by a fateful decision. And the importance of these decisions is not immediately apparent, but Goddard is very persuasive in virtually every case, and at the very least we're left with an increased appreciation of Shakespeare's mastery of plotting and suspense. I'm going to employ a little suspense myself in this case, and reveal the full theory tomorrow. But in the meantime, here's a hint: the irrevocable decision is Romeo's.

After having quoted from Emerson's poem, "Give All to Love" (http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/give_all_to_love.htm), Goddard writes the following: "The play is usually explained as a tragedy of the excess of love. On the contrary, it is the tragedy of the deficiency of it. Romeo did not 'follow it utterly', did not quite give 'all' to love." Tomorrow, I'll explain what he's referring to.

Caroline Spurgeon is quite a bit harder on Arthur Brooke (the writer of The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which was probably Shakespeare's only source for Romeo and Juliet) in her classic work of criticism, Shakespeare's Imagery and What it Tells Us from 1935, than even I was the other day when I contrasted Shakespeare's philosophical sophistication with Brooke's heavy-handed moralizing. In giving credit for the fact that Shakespeare took from Brooke the idea of using recurring images of light and darkness, she wrote the following: "He took the idea from the last place we should expect, from the wooden doggerel of Arthur Brooke, and the germ of it is in the sing-song line in which Brooke describes the attitude of the lovers: 'For each of them to other is as to the world the sun.'" I'm not sure I find that line, or Brooke's writing overall, quite as bad as Spurgeon does, but it is surprising to realize that Shakespeare didn't necessarily require a good source (i.e. an excellent writer such as Plutarch, for example) from which to fashion a masterpiece.

In her essential text, Shakespeare's Imagery and What it Tells Us from 1935, Caroline Spurgeon thoroughly examines the causes and effects of Shakespeare's visual references. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, he keeps returning to images of light and darkness: "In Romeo and Juliet the beauty and ardour of young love are seen by Shakespeare as the irradiating glory of sunlight and starlight in a dark world. The dominating image is light, every form and manifestation of it: the sun, moon, stars, fire, lightning, the flash of gunpowder, and the reflected light of beauty and of love; while by contrast we have night, darkness, clouds, rain, mist and smoke."

Re-reading the play with this statement in mind is an enjoyable experience, and it led me to another understanding: It's for this reason that many of the most powerful Shakespeare performances that I've seen have been done on thrust stages (like the Globe, of course), with no scenery or backdrops of any kind, except for the mental ones provided by the poetry.

One of the most important books in the history of Shakespeare criticism, Caroline Spurgeon's Shakespeare's Imagery and What it Tells Us, first published in 1935, contains many enlightening observations. One of the most telling is her comparison of Shakespeare's use of recurring image patterns with the illustrations found in the illuminated poetry of William Blake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake#Illuminated_books). First, she gives an astonishingly accurate description of these unique masterpieces, and in particular the illustrations found in them: "These are not, for the most part, illustrations in the ordinary sense of the term, the translation by the artist of some incident in the narrative into a visual picture; they are rather a running accompaniment to the words in another medium, sometimes symbolically emphasising or interpreting certain aspects of the thought, sometimes supplying frankly only decoration or atmosphere, sometimes grotesque and even repellent, vivid, strange, arresting, sometimes drawn with an almost unearthly beauty of form and colour."

She then brilliantly relates Blake's work to Shakespeare's by comparing the effect of these illustrations to the one created by poetic image patterns in the plays: "Thus, as the leaping tongues of flame which illuminate the pages of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell show the visual form which Blake's thought evoked in his mind, and symbolize for us the purity, the beauty, and the two-edged quality of life and danger in his words, so the recurrent images in Macbeth or Hamlet reveal the dominant picture or sensation - and for Shakespeare the two are identical - in terms of which he sees and feels the main problem or theme of the play, thus giving us an unerring clue to the way he looked at it, as well as a direct glimpse into the working of his mind and imagination." Tomorrow, I'll summarize some of Spurgeon's thoughts on the imagery of Romeo and Juliet.

Most scholars think that it's likely that Shakespeare only used one source in writing Romeo and Juliet. Arthur Brooke's long narrative poem entitled, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet from 1562 was part translation and part extrapolation of Bandello's Italian version. Brooke's attitude towards the young lovers is simple: This is what happens when young people don't listen to parents and other authority figures. He summarizes his purpose thus: "To this ende (good Reader) is this tragicall matter written, to describe unto thee a couple of unfortunate lovers, thralling themselves to unhonest desire, neglecting the authoritie and advise of parents and frendes...", and so on. It actually gets worse.

It's amazing to consider that from this, Shakespeare fashioned one of the most revolutionary pieces ever written. And the reason for its revolutionary nature is simple: Shakespeare wasn't trying to forward an agenda or purpose. He was trying to tell a story of love confronting hatred, which is something that still happens daily. And what he ended up with is perhaps the first work of literature that shows the parents being wrong, and the kids being right.

"What is the end of study?" is the question that Berowne puts to the king of Navarre in the opening scene of Love's Labour's Lost. Not only is it challenging to answer, and not only can it lead to many more questions of an epistemological nature, but it can also be interpreted in two diverging ways due to the fact that two senses of the word "end" suit it equally well. In the first, the word can signify a terminal point - and the question becomes something along the lines of, When have we studied enough? And in the second, it would refer to a purpose - and we get something like, What is the point of study? Of course, my opinion is simple: The answers to both of these questions are provided by the model of Shakespeare's career. Has knowledge ever been put to better use?

Reading complex matter is a bit like riding a horse at a high speed. Any misunderstood word can become an obstacle, and lead to an unplanned dismount. We have a tendency to think of reading as simply passing our vision through a series of words, and that after doing so, we'll "get it". But this isn't accurate. To improve at anything requires that we slow down and exaggerate the process. In terms of reading, this means that we must build the meaning of the material one piece at a time - letters, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. And because Shakespeare is both the most demanding and the most substantial literature, it is the best place to build these skills. Its complexity forces everyone to read like a beginner.

Love's Labour's Lost is known for its wordplay and the complexity of its syntax. This fits in with one of its primary themes: language itself, its use and misuse. For example, many of the characters speak in ways that are intended to hide their true natures, and much of the play's abundant humour comes from these discrepancies and watching them be found out. But there is a lot of work to be done to get to it - fortunately - as it is the most intellectually rewarding work to be found.

One of the most fascinating moments in Love's Labour's Lost, a play that concerns the place of scholarship in a productive life, is Berowne's seemingly simple question: "What is the end of study?" Berowne, along with two other young noblemen, has agreed to join the King of Navarre in making his court "a little Academe" by studying hard and living ascetically for a three year period - "plain living and high thinking", in the words of Wordsworth, but he finds the terms increasingly frightening as the day approaches:

So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,

That is, to live and study here three years.

But there are other strict observances;

As, not to see a woman in that term,

Which I hope well is not enrolled there;

And one day in a week to touch no food

And but one meal on every day beside,

The which I hope is not enrolled there;

And then, to sleep but three hours in the night,

And not be seen to wink of all the day—

When I was wont to think no harm all night

And make a dark night too of half the day—

Which I hope well is not enrolled there:

O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,

Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!

To which the King's reply is essentially: Too bad, you already agreed (I'm paraphrasing, of course; here's the full scene: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=loveslabours&Act=1&Scene=1&Scope=scene). And then comes the question above, which not only hovers over the rest of the play, but can haunt an audience member for some time afterward. More on this tomorrow.

Last night, I saw Love's Labour's Lost in a splendid production put on by the drama students of Dawson College. The performances were exuberant, filled with discovery and humour; I can't remember the last time I heard an audience laugh out loud so frequently during a play. And what a funny play it is, in both common senses of the word. It's not one of Shakespeare's most popular, I think it's safe to say. In fact, William Hazlitt once wrote, "If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it should be this". I learned of this unfortunate moment (in an otherwise fine career), and much more about the play's history and contents, in H.R. Woudhuysen's excellent introduction to the Arden Shakespeare edition (1998), which I'll be writing about in the next couple of posts. For now, let me recommend this: the next time that you hear of a student production of a Shakespeare play - go see it. I wish William Hazlitt had seen this one.

I ended yesterday's post by using an unacknowledged quotation from Hamlet. (By the way, it seems as if Shakespeare is the only writer whom it's OK to quote without citation - otherwise we'd be swimming in footnotes.) It's from Ophelia's mad scene, and it's another fascinating example of how some of the passages containing the greatest wisdom come from some of the most unlikely sources: in this case a character who has gone mad, and who beforehand, had revealed of herself very little, and certainly not this kind of philosophical depth. The exact line is this: "Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be", and it is often overlooked because it's hidden between two lines more in keeping with our perceptions of how a mentally troubled person would speak: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter" and "God be at your table!". But just as Lear's madness brings out his most sane reasoning - as opposed to the beginning of the play when he's technically sane but his actions are the opposite - so does Ophelia's. For the first time in the play, she understands the horrific results of the ambition, treachery and violence that have infected the court and her life. And although it is too late for her, she passes from the play with words and actions "no stronger than a flower", but which have retained their beauty and depth in the imagination of everyone who has read or seen the play.

While preparing for my upcoming lecture on Romeo and Juliet (next Wednesday at 11 am at the Atwater library), a realization came to me regarding Shakespeare's use of poetry. It occurred to me that no other form of writing could contain all the complexity of life - its changes and ambiguities, the fact that we have to search and think to find meanings in events, our psychological upheavals and lack of inner consistency, the way that words and objects can have meanings far beyond themselves - all of these are best expressed, and perhaps only expressed, through poetry. Shakespeare, the "Chief Poet", as Keats called him, allows us to see the workings and potentials of our minds through the unwavering quality of his poetic writing. And even his prose is poetic, as you know from this justly famous passage: "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" Shakespeare shows us not only what we are but also what we may be.

The final quality that should be considered in poetic diction, according to John Ciardi and Miller Williams' How Does a Poem Mean? (1959), is that "a word is a picture", by which they mean that the origin of most words can be found in some sort of poetic image. Shakespeare's work provides thousands of examples of this for two main reasons. The first, as we know, is that he created so many words himself. The second is that he never settles for a tired expression in his writing, and thus the reader is constantly surprised by its contents. For example, when Iago tells Roderigo his age, he doesn't say, "I'm twenty-eight years old", but instead, "I have looked upon the world for four times seven years", which gives us an entirely new way of considering the nature of existence. And for an example of pure imagery, have a look at this passage from Antony and Cleopatra (3.6), during which Octavius reacts angrily to being surprised by his sister Octavia's arrival. She's married to Antony at this point, we must remember, so Octavius is looking for reasons to be offended. But my point here doesn't regard the plot, rather it's the way the words evoke the power and splendour of Rome through the use of words as pictures:

Why have you stol'n upon us thus! You come not

Like Caesar's sister: the wife of Antony

Should have an army for an usher, and

The neighs of horse to tell of her approach

Long ere she did appear; the trees by the way

Should have borne men; and expectation fainted,

Longing for what it had not; nay, the dust

Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,

Raised by your populous troops: but you are come

A market-maid to Rome; and have prevented

The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown,

Is often left unloved; we should have met you

By sea and land; supplying every stage

With an augmented greeting.

The third of John Ciardi and Miller Williams' four sections concerning the nature of words (from their 1959 handbook, How Does a Poem Mean?) begins with the heading, "A word is a history", and goes on to explain why poetry has always played an inordinate role in the development of languages: "With a few exceptions every word traced back far enough is either a metaphor or an onomatopoiea." Therefore, the poetic concept itself is responsible for the creation of many words. Of course, Shakespeare is renowned for the number of words and expressions that he invented, but even more importantly, he set the template for the evolution of English into the world's most expressive language. And he is its de facto figurehead because of his way of working, which is at once deeply informed by writing of the past (and not only in English) as well as infused with creativity, flexibility and inclusiveness. To put it plainly, I really can't see how it is possible to have a serious appreciation for English without having the same for the works of Shakespeare. In fact, without them, it is very unlikely that the language would still be in use.

One of the most thrilling experiences that one can have as a spectator is to see a Shakespeare play acted and directed with intelligence and passion. Watching an actor explore the inner workings of his or her character, and then conveying these discoveries to the audience - and making them share in the emotions - is unforgettable. One of the biggest reasons that Shakespeare is the holy grail of actors is that his language allows so much room for their thoughts and projections. This brings me to the second of John Ciardi and Miller Williams' four characteristics to be considered by a poet making decisions regarding diction (from their 1959 book, How Does a Poem Mean?): "2. A word involves the whole body." This refers to the fact that spoken words require the human body to be produced, and interpreted, and that there is a purely musical or sonic aspect involved in each of them. And of course, this aspect is particularly important in poetic drama, where the words are the canvas on which the actors paint. So lines like the following (from Hamlet's first soliloquy, in act one, scene two) need to be spoken aloud, with real emotion, to be truly felt:

Within a month,

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

Try it. I think you'll find that the sounds themselves play a large part in getting the content across.

The first of the four considerations that enter into word choice, according to John Ciardi and Miller Williams' How Does a Poem Mean? (1959), is: "A word is a feeling". The main point here is that there is an emotional component in a word, its "connotation", as opposed to its literal meaning (i.e. dictionary definition) or "denotation". Thus, the word choice informs the reader about the attitude (or tone) of the writer, or speaker, in the case of drama. Let's take an example from King Lear. In act four, scene one Goneril (the daughter who swore her great love to him in the first scene) is in the process of starting a conflict with with the king, and as she accurately deduces, the best way to do so is to attempt to remove some of his royal trappings, in this case the hundred knights who follow him. And she also realizes that to take a formal and patronizing tone will help with it as well. Here is part of her lecture:

I do beseech you

To understand my purposes aright.

As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.

Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;

Men so disorder'd, so debosh'd, and bold

That this our court, infected with their manners,

Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust

Make it more like a tavern or a brothel

Than a grac'd palace. The shame itself doth speak

For instant remedy. Be then desir'd

By her that else will take the thing she begs

A little to disquantity your train,

And the remainder that shall still depend

To be such men as may besort your age,

Which know themselves, and you.

Note the condescending and distant (almost chilling) tone and how almost every word is calculated to achieve maximum emotional impact. "A word is a feeling" indeed.

I want to try to learn a bit more about what Shakespeare's thought process might have been in terms of diction. And for that purpose, I'm going to refer (again) to John Ciardi's highly useful handbook entitled How Does a Poem Mean? (1959). In Chapter Four, "The Words of Poetry", he points out that words have four qualities and that they should all be considered when making a decision regarding their use. I'm going to summarize Ciardi's points and give Shakespearean examples of each over the next few posts, but for now these are the headings unadorned:

1. A word is a feeling.

2. A word involves the whole body.

3. A word is a history.

4. A word is a picture.

And here, as an example of Shakespeare's diction, is a passage from act three of Henry V, in which the chorus asks us to imagine the English Navy's voyage to France:

CHORUS

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies

In motion of no less celerity

Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen

The well-appointed king at Hampton pier

Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet

With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning:

Play with your fancies, and in them behold

Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;

Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give

To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,

Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,

Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,

Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think

You stand upon the ravage and behold

A city on the inconstant billows dancing;

For so appears this fleet majestical,

Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow:

Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,

And leave your England, as dead midnight still,

Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women,

Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance;

For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd

With one appearing hair, that will not follow

These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?

One of the most interesting critical comments that I've read recently comes from the book that I mentioned in last Tuesday's post: Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, edited by Russ McDonald, and more specifically the essay entitled Rabbits, Ducks and Henry V by Norman Rabkin. The puzzling title is entwined with its premise, as it refers to a piece of op-art which "we can see as either a rabbit or a duck". Rabkin argues that the two possible interpretations of the character of Henry V (either as a great leader and king or as a vicious war criminal) are almost impossible to mentally compromise, and that this was done intentionally. Here is how he puts it: "I am going to argue that in Henry V Shakespeare creates a work whose ultimate power is precisely the fact that it points in two opposite directions, virtually daring us to choose one of the two opposed interpretations it requires of us." This strikes me as being both revolutionary and accurate, and it brings me back to a point I argued in an earlier post - that Shakespeare's primary interest was not the characters in his plays, but rather the people in the audience. The spectator (or reader) is the true protagonist of a Shakespeare play. She or he is the only real battleground.

Style in writing can be seen as the result of decisions made in two areas: syntax and diction, in other words, word order and word choice. This may sound like an over-simplification but I don't think it is, because both are extremely complex in nature, and they can be influenced by a very wide range of factors. However I do believe that it's helpful to recognize that the matter can be distilled to this point, and to keep the concept in mind when reading any writer. Of course Shakespeare is unequaled in both categories, and analyzing his work for the causes and effects of his decision-making in these regards leads to all kinds of interest.

For an example, consider the first words spoken by Claudius in Hamlet (2.1). He is in the delicate position of simultaneously mourning the death of his brother (hypocritically, of course) and announcing that he has married the widow, Gertrude. His psychological state and the difficulty of his task both contribute to the circuitous wording of a relatively simple statement:

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,

Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,

With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

Taken to wife...

The passage works like an overture to his story, which is one of a man conflicted between desire, ambition, guilt and extreme awareness of how he is perceived publicly. And it's just another glittering example of Shakespeare's style and substance, and how they're inseparable.

Shakespeare was a writer whose technique was advanced to such a point that he could transcend the rules (or conventions, if you prefer) that usually govern what can be done in written English. Therefore, his work is the best possible place to learn about syntax, grammar, sentence construction, poetic metre, rhetoric, and figurative language. A multitude of examples of each of the above are available for study and discussion, and the best thing is that all of it was done to create a combination of dramatic art, poetry and philosophy that still hasn't been surpassed. In other words, Shakespeare contains style and substance, both of which are necessary to engage young minds.

In Saturday's post, I promised that I would write about how Shakespeare provides starting points for learning about the many areas of study related to the English language. Well, either I forgot or got sidetracked, because a few days have gone by and here I am following it up now. Sorry about that. But anyway, here we are now.

OK, let's start with the wide picture: the humanities. Wikipedia's article on academic disciplines breaks down the humanities into seven fields: history; languages and linguistics; literature; performing arts; philosophy; religion; visual arts. I think it's clear that reading Shakespeare can begin a student's interest in any or all of them. Even the least obvious of the group, the visual arts, critical as they are to performance through costume and set design, can have a seed planted by the study of Shakespeare. And then of course, there is Sonnet 24 with its delineation of what it is that painters actually do, and how their work is not at all different in nature with that of poets (as Leonardo da Vinci put it: "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."):

Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;

My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,

And perspective it is the painter's art.

For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictured lies;

Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;

They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

I've just started reading Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000 (Russ McDonald, editor) from 2004, and it looks like it's going to be splendid. McDonald has selected representative essays from each of the schools of criticism that were (and are) prevalent in the recent study of Shakespeare and given each a brief but thorough introduction. I'll be writing more about the book as I make my way through it in the days ahead, but for today's post I'd just like to share my wonder at how a body of work written 400 years ago can stand up to being viewed from perspectives as diverse as those contained in the fourteen chapters of this book (have a look at the table of contents: http://www.amazon.ca/Shakespeare-Anthology-Criticism-Theory-1945-2000/dp/0631234888) and still not be exhausted in terms of meaning. I'd like to see any of the literature proposed as its replacement in the curriculum do the same.

In Macbeth: New Critical Essays (2008), edited by Nick Moschovakis, Michael David Fox has a fascinating piece entitled "Like a poor player: audience emotional response, nonrepresentational performance, and the staging of suffering in Macbeth" that brings out a very important aspect of the play: the concept of nonrepresentational performance, which to give a brief definition, is any aspect of the play that is designed to bring the audience into emotional or psychological contact with the actors as human beings, rather than as the characters that they're playing, and to therefore break through the theatre's "fourth wall" at certain points. This effect is achieved in the play's frequent use of asides (where the actors address the audience directly), its emphasis on the decision-making process during soliloquies, its use of sound effects such as the knocking at the gate and the alarum bell, its pervasive atmosphere of fear, its scenes involving the air-drawn dagger (where the audience's gaze is focused, along with the actor's, on an empty space) and the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth. The essay helped to sharpen my response to each of the film versions that I've watched recently, and it reminded me once again of why criticism is of crucial importance in appreciating these multi-layered plays.

The darkest moment in Macbeth, a very dark play, is the murder of Macduff's wife and children. It can be considered an illustration of what happens when a tyrant begins to feel threatened - that atrocity usually follows. The scene (4.3) during which Macduff is told the news (at the time he is gathering forces in England with which to oppose Macbeth) is very moving and thought-provoking. Malcolm repeatedly intercedes, hoping to convince Macduff to "let grief convert to anger", and we may feel torn, like Macduff, between the two. Particulary when we realize that Malcolm may be thinking rather more politically than empathetically - he needs Macduff to help him to reach the throne. At one point Malcolm tells Macduff to "dispute it like a man", and Macduff's reply is the following:

I shall do so;

But I must also feel it as a man:

I cannot but remember such things were,

That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,

And would not take their part?

Emotions and questions such as these continue to follow disasters to this day, and will continue to do so as long as injustice exists. My point with all of this is as follows: If we are trying to move toward a world without violence, treachery and dictatorship, wouldn't we have a better chance of doing so if young people get the opportunity to read Macbeth?

Another argument made against the use of Shakespeare in the high school curriculum is that English has changed greatly since Shakespeare's time and that therefore a good percentage of the verbal content of the plays is no longer useful. My response would be that, yes, there have been changes, but not as many as one might suppose, and that compared to Chaucer's Middle English (200 years before Shakespeare), not many at all. Isaac Asimov, in his very useful book entitled Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), argues that it was Shakespeare's work that slowed down the language's rapid evolution, as if it would've been too great a cost to move too far away from the ability to read it without relative ease. And to go a little further with the argument, it becomes clear that the body that exerts the greatest gravitational pull on English itself, its de facto source of direction, is Shakespeare. No other writer comes close to providing as many starting points for learning about the language itself. More on this tomorrow.

I've quoted the American poet John Ciardi several times before, and I'm about to do so again: "Poetry is like vodka;" he once wrote, "it has to be diluted". I bring this up because in trying to make my case for Shakespeare being at the center of the high school English Language Arts curriculum, one of the greatest attributes that the study of his work entails is the fact that it requires peripheral reading. Just as we would not visit a distant country without reading about it first, the same is required to understand and appreciate poetic literature. Criticism, history, philosophical parallels, performance practices, etc. are all areas of further, and necessary, study in trying to grasp the width and depth that Shakespeare contains, and this is precisely what schools should be encouraging. And, to put it simply, there isn't a better way to do it.

I suppose wisdom could be considered an antonym of delusion. In Macbeth, the title couple are infected by the latter to such a degree that the normal courses of life, its processes and stages, are taken away from them by their lack of the former. There is a telling moment early in the play (1.7) where Macbeth, in considering the nature of his ambition, recognizes that a goal can become so all-consuming that "here, upon this bank and shoal of time,/ We'ld jump the life to come." But it doesn't prevent what follows, and late in the play (5.5) after a series of atrocities and disasters, and the death by suicide of his queen, he speaks the famous lines (which I've come to understand better with time) wherein he describes a world without process and meaningful work towards goals - where time equals emptiness, and actions are futile:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Of course, the subtext (sometimes called the underthought) is simultaneously telling us something quite different, that life doesn't have to be this way, and that wisdom can prevent the errors in judgement that would lead to an end such as this one. Now where could wisdom like that be learned?

A fine example of Shakespeare's sophisticated method of exploring moral issues occurs in 5.3 of Macbeth, where the title character recognizes some of the things that his crimes have caused him to lose:

I have lived long enough: my way of life

Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;

And that which should accompany old age,

As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but, in their stead,

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

Auden, who had great insight into the play, said in his Lectures on Shakespeare: "Usually in tragedy a good person is made to suffer through a flaw in his goodness. In Macbeth this pattern is reversed: it is the streak of goodness that causes pathos and suffering." And now to return to the larger topic begun a few posts back (the importance of Shakespeare in the high school curriculum), this type of subtlety is exactly what is required when raising philosophical issues with young people. Any attempt at top-down moralizing will (rightly, in my opinion) be met with instant derision, whereas the discovery of moments like the one above, which are only found in the greatest literature, will not.

Of all the arguments against the teaching of Shakespeare in high schools, the one that is heard most frequently is probably its perceived lack of cultural relevancy. In other words, the belief goes, students of today will not be interested by characters and situations that took place 400 years ago. In my experience, the time gap is not a drawback - in fact, the opposite is true. Young people are aware of Shakespeare's place in literary history, and want to find out how he got there. Also, the characters don't see themselves as historical characters but as living beings - the same way that we do - and the astonishing amount of overlap that their experiences have with ours is a source of both learning and delight. "Poetry is the news that stays new," is how John Ciardi put it, and that won't change in the next 400 years either.

Shakespeare's writing is very demanding on the reader. Almost every line, every word even, requires reflection. It certainly isn't easy, but once understood the content is so interesting that no one ever regrets the effort - I've never seen it anyway. But its difficulty is important in itself, because it improves the skills that constitute reading comprehension, which is undoubtedly as important (at least) as any other academic ability.

So there it is: the literature that is the most interesting and the one that produces the greatest increase in academic performance is one and the same. What, you may be wondering, are the arguments against its use in high school? I'll summarize (and try to demolish) them tomorrow.

Objectivity is a quality that is central to the work of a serious dramatist. He or she must be able to present many types of conflict credibly, and to do so requires the imaginative comprehension of contrasting opinions. It is somewhat similar to formal debating, where a team will have to prepare to argue both sides of an issue. This is done for several reasons: for one, there are some issues that may provide one side with an emotional advantage over the other. (It's like changing directions in a soccer game at half-time so that both teams will have the advantage of the wind for a while.) But more importantly, it is to ensure that debaters "shed light not heat", or in other words, that "reason" maintain its "sovereignty", as Horatio put it.

Unfortunately, in political discussions, it often happens that people argue from an entrenched position that will admit no dissent - I've often felt that any position so constructed clearly disproves its viability - and that the party or politician that they support has all the answers, and that the other(s) do all the damage. This type of thinking is obviously flawed, dangerous even, but unfortunately it's frequently brought into classrooms, particularly those where literature has been replaced with social studies, when its opposite is really what should be encouraged.

Enter Shakespeare. One of the most astonishing things about his work is that it is impossible to pin down where it stands on political issues. For example, in the 404 years of Macbeth's existence, it has been seen from innumerable angles and used to support innumerable positions. And there's no end in sight. It will continue to produce thought and discussion of great sophistication - because it's dramatic art of the highest level, and because its author knew far too much to think that he (or anyone else) knew it all.

Over the next few posts, I'm going to try to outline my case for restoring Shakespeare (and poetry and literature) back to its proper place at the center of the high school curriculum. In Quebec (and other places too), instruction in English, over the last decade or so, has moved away from literature and toward what used to be called Social Studies. This, in my opinion, is a serious mistake, and I'll be doing my best to convince you to agree with me. At some points I may reiterate arguments that I've made in earlier posts - I apologize in advance for this - but at the very least I'll try to shape them so as to emphasize their relevance to this issue. I'll start tomorrow.

On another note, there are two lectures left in the 2010 Shakespeare Lectures series: Macbeth on Wednesday, Nov. 10 and Romeo and Juliet on Wednesday, December 1. Both begin at 11 am, and both will be held in the lecture hall of the Atwater library. Admission is $20 per lecture. I'll hope to see you. Also, I'll be announcing the program for the 2011 Winter/Spring Shakespeare Lectures in a week or so.

I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming Henry V, which is being put on by Persephone Productions, and in particular to what their interpretation of the title character will be. He's been staged as everything from a hero to a war criminal - and there's support for both positions in the text - even by Shakespeare standards, he's incredibly complex. Take for example, the scene where he stands outside the gates of Harfleur and warns the governor and the people of the town of what could happen if they don't surrender. It could be read as him trying to prevent the horrors that he's describing, or using them as threats if he doesn't get the capitulation he wants. Here's a link to the entire scene: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=henry5&Act=3&Scene=3&Scope=scene, courtesy of the excellent Open Source Shakespeare website, and here's a link to the information regarding the production described above: http://www.persephoneproductions.org/. Check out the video at the bottom of the page, where what looks like the entire cast perform the opening prologue.

If you are interested in Shakespeare, you will at several points in your travels have to deal with what has become known as the "authorship question". And it can be tiresome and frustrating, because it takes away from the entire point: the appreciation and enjoyment of the work. Sometimes, in fact, an interesting discussion can be marred by its very mention. When I'm asked my opinion, I usually say that if someone is accused of something (in this case, the most egregious example of intellectual theft imaginable), that at some point evidence must be produced, and since nothing of the kind has been, it's time to drop it. But I think that in the future, I'll amend my answer - and quote the following, from the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2001):

"The controversy has itself become an object of scholarly attention, as generations of Shakespearian critics have wondered why it should be so much easier to get into print with bizarre untruths about Shakespeare than with anything else on the subject. Many commentators have paid reluctant tribute to the sheer determination and ingenuity which 'anti-Stratfordian' writers have displayed—indeed, have invariably had to display, since any theory suggesting that the theatre professional William Shakespeare did not write the Shakespeare canon somehow has to explain why so many of his contemporaries said that he did (from Heminges, Condell, Jonson, and the other contributors to the Folio through Francis Meres and the Master of the Revels to the parish authorities of Holy Trinity in Stratford, to name only a few), and why none of the rest said that he did not. Most observers, however, have been more impressed by the anti-Stratfordians' dogged immunity to documentary evidence, not only that which confirms that Shakespeare wrote his own plays, but that which establishes that several of the alternative candidates were long dead before he had finished doing so. 'One thought perhaps offers a crumb of redeeming comfort,' observed the controversy's most thorough historian, Samuel Schoenbaum, 'the energy absorbed by the mania might otherwise have gone into politics.'"

After writing yesterday's post on recent television Shakespeare productions, I started to think about the general sense of dissatisfaction that many critics (including very famous ones like Harold Bloom) seem to have regarding the performances that they've seen. Also, certain roles (Cleopatra, Edgar and Iago come to mind) are often considered to be unplayable, or close to it, anyway. I think a big reason for these phenomena is a simple one: an actor has to make a final decision in his or her interpretation of a role, and a reader doesn't. Therefore, there is a finite quality to an actor's art that may not apply to what is done by a commentator and/or educator. We should remember however, that performance is the purpose of the work. Shakespeare wrote first and foremost for actors - he was one himself - and a large part of his genius rests in the fact that he wrote in such a way, and allowed actors so much room, that there never will be a definitive performance of any of his roles. But actors continue to give their all in trying; see the performances discussed yesterday for examples.

Over the last couple of years, PBS has broadcast productions of King Lear starring Ian McKellan, Hamlet with David Tennant and Macbeth with Patrick Stewart. All three were splendid, with inspired performances from the lead actors and thoughtful interpretations by directors and casts. McKellen's Lear, for example, is so intense that at certain points I feared for his safety. It's a daring and exuberant performance, even by his standards. It's still available for online viewing at the PBS Great Performances website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/king-lear/watch-the-play/487/.

Tennant's Hamlet is equally "wild and whirling", full of humour and originality. Patrick Stewart is excellent as Claudius as well, and it's interesting to compare his work in the role with the one he did thirty years earlier in the BBC production starring Derek Jacobi. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available for online viewing in Canada at this point - if I do find it, I'll let you know right away, but libraries will have it.

Finally, the recent version of Macbeth, with Patrick Stewart in the title role, might be the best filmed version I've seen, which is saying something because this play has been done very well many times over. It's not to be missed: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/macbeth/watch-the-full-program/1030/

Most scholars agree that Othello was written in 1604, a year before King Lear. Yesterday's post was concerned with how Shakespeare used Pliny's Naturalis Historia as a source for a considerable amount of Othello's vocabulary. And he may have retained the content of Pliny's dedication of the work for an important moment in King Lear, as well. Pliny's dedication is an unusual one: it's to nature itself. Here it is:

Hail to thee, Nature, thou parent of all things! and do thou deign to show thy favour unto me, who, alone of all the citizens of Rome, have, in thy every department, thus made known thy praise.

Now compare that with the first words spoken by Edmund, the treacherous half-brother of Edgar, and one of the most villainous characters in Shakespeare. Edmund, who believes in what might be called a dog-eat-dog or survival-of-the-fittest approach to life, is here delineating why his plan to frame Edgar and become the sole inheritor of his father's land and title is from his point-of-view "natural":

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines

Lag of a brother?

It certainly seems possible at least that the seed that created this unequaled subplot (the story of Gloucester, Edgar and Edmund) was planted as Shakespeare was reading for his work on Othello.

Another major source for Othello was Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, an encyclopedia published in approximately 77 AD. It was the likely source of some of the more exotic natural references found in the play, particularly in the speeches of the title character. According to Norman Sanders (see yesterday's post), it was where Shakespeare found "the cannibals, anthropophagi, hollow caves, mines of sulphur, gum-dropping Arabian trees, chrysolite, mandragora, colloquintida, the movement of the Propontic and the Hellespont waters, and possibly his reply to Brabantio's charge of seducing his daughter by means of witchcraft".

This fact helped to answer a question that I've always had in regard to the plays: How is it that each one has its own linguistic world, clearly distinctive from the rest? Part of the answer has to be that he allowed his reading to deeply influence not just the plots of his plays, but also their diction. At times, his work seems to be almost of a synthesizing nature - as he allowed his imagination (with its unparalleled education in poetry and drama) to be fertilized with the knowledge he found in the preparatory reading that he did for each play.

The assimilative nature of English is due to a number of factors, one of which is definitely the work of Shakespeare. The ever-expanding vocabulary of the language (already easily the largest in the world) at least partially owes its nature to Shakespeare's approach. For example, in working with the Italian prose tale of Cinthio in the writing of Othello, he seems to have made verbal allusions to both the Italian original and a French translation done by Gabriel Chappuys. At this point, I'll quote (at some length) Norman Sanders' introduction of the New Cambridge edition:

"There are four verbal links that draw the play and the Italian version together. Othello's demand, 'Give me the ocular proof... Make me to see't' (3.3.361-5) is closer to Cinthio's 'se non mi fai...vedere co gli occhi' than to Chappuys' 'si tu ne me fais voir'. [The first quarto's] use of the unusual word 'acerbe' ('bitter' in the Folio) at 1.3.338 may be an echo of Cinthio's 'in acerbissimo odio'; just as Iago's gloating 'I do see you're moved' (3.3.219) is nearer to the Italian 'ch' ogni poco di cosa voi moue ad ira', where describing the enchafed flood at 2.1.16, may have been influenced by Cinthio's Moor who speaks of the sea in a similar way in a passage omitted by Chappuys: 'ogni pericolo, che ci soprauenisse, mi recherebbe estreme molestia'.

Evidence that it was the French version that Shakespeare used is of the same kind. The words 'if it touch not you, it comes near nobody' (4.1.187) seem to echo Chappuys' 'ce qui vous touche plus qu'a aucun autre', where the Italian verb is 'appartiene'; and Iago's emphasis on the importance of Cassio's 'gestures', as Othello spies on them in 4.1, is nearer to the French 'gestes' than the Italian 'atti'. Perhaps more substantial than these verbal similarities, however, is one of Chappuys' additions to the original text. In the lines of the play concerning Cassio's request that Bianca copy the embroidery of the handkerchief, the phrase 'take out the work' (or a variant of it) is used three times (3.3.298, 3.4.174, 4.1.145) - a sense of 'take out' found nowhere else in Shakespeare. No similar phrase occurs in Cinthio; but Chappuys adds to the Italian passage dealing with Cassio's decision the phrase 'tirer le patron' (copy the pattern)."

It seems evident, therefore, that Shakespeare found ways of echoing other languages while writing in English. It is a trait that English has yet to lose. More on the sources of Othello tomorrow.

Wednesday's post concerned Shakespeare's use of Cinthio's prose tale as a source in the writing of Othello. Over the next couple of days, I'll discuss some of the other sources delineated by Norman Sanders in his introduction to the New Cambridge edition, and give some conjecture regarding Shakespeare's way of working with them. Incidentally, there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever left England. This puzzles some, who feel that first-hand knowledge must be necessary for someone to write so convincingly of settings as diverse as those found in the plays. I would argue that all the evidence points to Shakespeare being what Blake called a "mental traveller", and that his reading provided his imagination with everything it needed. And so, in honour of the upcoming film version of The Tempest, I'll end with an appropriate quote from Prospero (often considered to be an alter-ego of the author), who in telling his daughter Miranda about the treachery that led to their exile, recounts the kindness of Gonzalo who saved them and allowed Prospero to keep his most-loved possessions:

Some food we had and some fresh water that

A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

Out of his charity, being then appointed

Master of this design, did give us, with

Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries,

Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness,

Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me

From mine own library with volumes that

I prize above my dukedom.

The better that we know a Shakespeare play, the more interesting it becomes. As we become aware of how much it contains, and how deeply each part is related to the whole, our experience of learning from it and interacting with it becomes deeper. Also, knowledge of the play allows us to appreciate the scholarship, criticism and commentary related to it, which can lead to new ways of considering history, art, philosophy, political science, and the human condition.

In spending time with Othello recently, and writings related to it, I found that there was much more in the play than I had realized. Today, I'll mention just one area of revelation: the way that seemingly innocuous scenes contain thematic information vital to understanding the play. For example, the exchange between a clown and the musicians at the beginning of act three, where he asks them to play only if they "have any music that may not be heard" (in other words to stop), is usually considered to be little more than momentary comic relief, but as Harold Goddard points out in his essay on the play in his excellent The Meaning of Shakespeare (1951), it actually foreshadows a great deal more: the "sudden interruption in the music of Othello's love which is to be the subject of the act." This made me consider the nature of music itself, in that it can only be appreciated in certain states of mind, and that our attitude towards it and other subtle beauty in life is the result of our thought. It also reminded me that no part of a Shakespeare play should be overlooked.

One of the most remarkable things that I learned in preparing for today's lecture on Othello came from Norman Sanders' splendid introduction to the New Cambridge edition. In it, he gives a concise but thorough summary of the sources that Shakespeare used in writing the play. The most important of these was the original prose story version from Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi, or The Hundred Tales, in English. Shakespeare followed it quite closely, particularly in acts three to five, but he made many changes and additions as well. The most striking example of which concerned the small amount of original material that led to the creation of some of the play's most memorable moments: "A sentence in Cinthio to the effect that Desdemona's family wished her to marry another man is the seed that produced Desdemona's noble birth, her elopement and her distraught and racially prejudiced father, indeed much of the matter contained in the first three scenes of the play... Perhaps most remarkable of all are the breathtaking addresses to the Senate by Othello and Desdemona which Shakespeare conjured out of one bald statement from the Italian original: 'It happened that a virturous lady of wondrous beauty called Disdemona, impelled not by female appetiete but by the Moor's good qualities, fell in love with him, and he, vanquished by the lady's beauty and noble mind, likewise was enamboured of her.'" (The altered spelling of Desdemona is not a typo. It's Cinthio's.) It seems, therefore, that one of the ways that Shakespeare worked was to begin with a result (in this case, Desdemona's family's thwarted wish regarding her choice of husband) and to work backwards from it. Sanders' introduction has many enlightening moments such as this one. It's highly recommended.

Among the many expressions, idioms, aphorisms, etc. that come from Shakespeare, I think I may have found one that wasn't even intentional. I've never been convinced by the origins given for the phrase "brand new" in dictionaries - any that I've seen anyway. Some quote Shakespeare, correctly, as having used the expression "fire-new" several times. From there, the theory goes that people began to use the image of a brand as a substitute for fire - but why? And where is the first recorded use? Well, in sonnet 153 the two words appear together, but "brand" is used as a noun, not an adverb. It seems strange, but it may be that just the fact that they appeared together in a Shakespeare poem began their linked usage. Here's the poem:

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:

A maid of Dian's this advantage found,

And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;

Which borrow'd from this holy fire of Love

A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,

The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest,

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies

Where Cupid got new fire--my mistress' eyes.

The line in question refers to Cupid's brand, which had been put out by a maid of Dian's thus giving birth to healing hot springs ("a seething bath"), being reignited ("new-fired") by the eyes of the poet's mistress. The poet visits the bath hoping for a cure, but can only find it "Where Cupid got new fire - my mistress' eyes". Quite a poem, isn't it? I don't know that my theory is right, but I kind of hope so.

Another example of telescoped time can be found in 2.3 of Othello, which begins with Othello giving Cassio instructions for the evening's watch, and with Iago stating it is "not yet ten o' the clock." We then witness drinking and singing on the part of the soldiers - all of which is staged by Iago for the purpose of getting Cassio drunk and into a brawl with Roderigo, who is waiting offstage. When an awakened Othello intercedes, he listens to the accounts of the incident and admonishes and demotes Cassio on the spot. Iago then pretends to sympathize with Cassio, and suggests that he should present his case to Desdemona, who will, out of kindness, convince Othello to change his mind. Then follows a soliloquy by Iago during which he gives his real plan:

... whiles this honest fool

Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes

And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,

I'll pour this pestilence into his ear,

That she repeals him for her body's lust;

And by how much she strives to do him good,

She shall undo her credit with the Moor.

After this, Roderigo, who is both secretly in love with Desdemona and Iago's dupe, enters and is told to have patience and to go get some sleep, because "'tis morning''. The entire scene is usually performed in slightly less than twenty minutes.

Another example of Shakespeare's use of overlapping time frames occurs in act three, scene two of Julius Caesar. It is best known for Antony's speech which begins with "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears", and which ends with him having turned the throng completely against the republican side represented by Brutus and Cassius. In it, he proves himself a very able and cynical politician: He doesn't tell the truth about his intentions once. (I can't remember which humourist it was who defined a "gaffe" as "a moment when a politician accidentally tells the truth", but Antony would've concurred.) By the end of his oration, the crowd is beginning to riot, and Antony says to himself: "Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot/ Take thou what course thou wilt." Then enters a servant who brings news that Octavius is come to Rome, and that "Brutus and Cassius are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome". So in real time, the beginning of the riot and their escape would have a separation of about fifteen seconds, which would be most unlikely, if not impossible. But occasions like this one never feel wrong when we experience them in the play. They simply add to the momentum.

I've mentioned Fintan O'Toole's delightfully iconoclastic book called Shakespeare Is Hard But So Is Life (2002), and its demolishing of the fatal flaw theory, several times before. Well, here I go again. In this case, I'll be discussing his thoughts on the "double-time scheme" that Shakespeare employs to powerful dramatic effect in acts three, four and five of Othello. O'Toole's primary contention in this essay (titled "Othello: Inside Out") and in fact the entire book, is that Shakespeare's major tragic characters are trapped and torn between competing world-views, or time periods and their respective ways of thinking. In this play, Othello and Iago are moving in two historically opposite directions: Othello represents a new sort of man, one who has earned his place via merit and not birth or social standing; Iago stands for an older world-view, where things are done by convention and precedent. When Cassio is given a promotion that, according to this view, should have been his, he requires revenge. And as he pulls Othello into a psychological nightmare, both characters lose touch with the normal day-to-day world (which brings to mind Brutus' comment: "Between the acting of a dreadful thing/ And the first motion, all the interim is/ like a phantasma or a hideous dream..."). And they become, "out of synch with the times, Iago unable to reconcile himself to the new order, Othello ahead of the times as a man who has power but no status. This sense of the two men being out of their time becomes literal. We feel it and experience it as we watch the play - their fast, passionate time at odds with the normal unfolding of history." O'Toole's book is filled with thoughts like this one. I recommend it very highly.