Act 3, scene 3 of Othello, where Iago turns the title character from a happy man who loves his wife into a maniac with no thought but murder, is a technical tour de force. Its treatment of time has been written about and studied many times. Its psychological content, the way that a mind can be led a great distance with just a slight suggestion, is remarkable and unfortunately, very true-to-life. Today I'd like to look at one segment just for the power of its poetry. At this point, Iago's work is almost done: Othello is convinced his wife is unfaithful, and he wants revenge. Iago then pretends that he's trying to dissuade him from violence:

IAGO

Patience, I say; your mind perhaps may change.

OTHELLO

Never, Iago: Like to the Pontic sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont,

Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,

Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up.

What fierce and frightening power this metaphor contains. It brings to mind Alfred Whitehead's axiom that "language should embody what it indicates". (More on this scene tomorrow.)

Hi. I'm going to use today's post to invite you to a free lecture that I'll be giving this Thursday at 12:30 pm at the Atwater Library (1200 Avenue Atwater, Westmount, Quebec - (514) 935-7344). I'll be speaking about the four Shakespeare plays on the program for next year's Stratford Festival: Titus Andronicus, Richard III, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night. You're also invited to a series of six lectures, on the tragedies, that I'll be giving in the fall, at the same location. These will begin on Wednesday, September 15 and continue on every second Wednesday until November 10 - at which point there will be a three-week gap before the final lecture of the series, on December 1 (please see the schedule below). The cost of these lectures will be $20 each, or all six for $100. You can email me at georgewalllectures@gmail.com for further information, or to get tickets. I'll hope to see you there.

George Wall Shakespeare Lectures: The Tragedies

Wednesday, September 15 - 11 am: Hamlet

Wednesday, September 29 - 11 am: King Lear

Wednesday, October 13 - 11 am: Antony and Cleopatra

Wednesday, October 27 - 11 am: Othello

Wednesday, November 10 - 11 am: Macbeth

Wednesday, December 1 - 11 am: Romeo and Juliet

I keep using words like "useful" and "beneficial", when discussing Shakespeare's writing. I did it again yesterday in fact, while arguing that his work is more concerned with the future than with the past. Well, here's the case in point: The scene which takes place just after Hamlet has killed Polonius and has entered into a long confrontation with his mother, is often bypassed intellectually because we've been told that it shows Hamlet at a low point and reveals his character flaws and similar nonsense, but it actually contains a brilliant insight. First, we have to remember that Hamlet has just told his mother that she is now married to her first husband's murderer, and that she must try to stay away from him as much as possible:

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat

Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,

That to the use of actions fair and good

He likewise gives a frock or livery,

That aptly is put on.

(3.4)

Paraphrased, this means that human beings are very prone to "custom"(i.e. habit), and that our addictive personalities can either work for us, or against us. And if we get into good habits, we have a much better chance of reaching our potential - which I firmly believe is what Shakespeare was hoping to enable.

“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”

- Milan Kundera

There's a lot of truth in this, but I don't think it applies to the greatest people - people like Shakespeare, for instance. I think it's evident that he was concerned with the future, in the sense that the past is not where the real drama takes place. I believe he was writing for the stage itself in an eternal present, and that his work is intended to help us, not in fighting battles of the past, but to guide us into the future. Therefore, the anachronisms, the mixed-up settings, the disregard of the classical rules of drama - all of this was in the service of a higher principle: to tell the most honest, beneficial, and powerful stories that he possibly could. It's up to us, the living, to learn from them.

In the first era of Shakespeare criticism, there were many aspects of his work that were considered to be, well, outrageous. One of the biggest was the way that the three unities of time, place and action, first posited in Aristotle's Poetics, were not only not observed, but flouted. Consider A Midsummer Night's Dream which seems to be set simultaneously in ancient Greece and sixteenth-century England - and that's not including Puck, Oberon and Titania. What about the famous anachronism of the chiming clock in Julius Caesar? And how about Time, who acts as the Chorus in A Winter's Tale, beginning act four by stating that sixteen years have passed? Maybe flouted isn't a strong enough word. Also, there is a great deal of contention around Shakespeare's use of history. Many commentators feel, for example, that Richard III gets a very unfair treatment in the plays in which he appears, and that Shakespeare maligned him to win favour with Elizabeth I, a Tudor (and therefore a descendant of Richmond who takes the crown at the end of Richard III). Others say he did the same to Macbeth, and that this version of history flattered the new king, James I, who also had an interest in the occult, hence the witches, etc. What reasons could Shakespeare have had for these types of decisions? I'll give you my theory tomorrow.

Another concept that must be kept in mind in order to read Shakespeare is anastrophe. The best definition of this word is simply, "changing the normal word order for poetic effect". When we come across examples of this, we may at first find them annoying. Why would someone write, "Came the snow..."? Why not simply, "It was snowing..."? Well, the answer is that it makes us think. One of the reasons Shakespeare has retained so much popularity 400 years on is that his work requires participation and effort. He's not only an example of creativity - he's a cause of it. And it begins at the most minute levels - word choice and word order. Here's an example from Antony and Cleopatra. In this scene, a messenger from Antony is arriving at Caesar's camp - a schoolmaster though, rather than a high-ranking member of the military, as would normally be the case. This could be interpreted as a reference to Octavius' age - and therefore, a subtle but calculated insult, or as Dolabella does, a sign of decline in the number of Antony's followers. Either way, notice the unusual word order, which once understood, gives the lines lasting beauty and interest.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR

Let him appear that's come from Antony.

Know you him?

DOLABELLA

Caesar, 'tis his schoolmaster:

An argument that he is pluck'd, when hither

He sends so poor a pinion off his wing,

Which had superfluous kings for messengers

Not many moons gone by.

(3.12)

One of my students once put it very simply: "Once you get it, you wouldn't change a word."

Further to yesterday, where we considered the role of punctuation in conveying meaning in poetry, here is the Shakespearean example that was promised - the famed opening soliloquy from Richard III. It contains only six sentences, by my count - even though it is over forty lines long. So, clearly it cannot be read with a pause at the end of every line.

Richard III picks up immediately where 3Henry VI leaves off - with the York family triumphant in the War of the Roses and now the sole possessors of the English crown. The eldest of the the three brothers, Edward IV, is the new king. The second brother is George, the Duke of Clarence. And the third is Richard, the Duke of Gloucester - and by Act Four, Richard III. This speech is part recap and part prologue, and I've separated the sentences by alternating italics with standard type. In it, Richard does the following (I'll summarize it sentence by sentence):

1. With a sarcastic tone and meteorological metaphors, he describes how all the bad is now behind his mighty family.

2. He states that the exercises of war have been put away, exchanged for peaceful activities.

3. He personifies war itself as having been turned into a lover.

4. He explains that all of this has left him out. He can't participate because of his deformities and ugliness.

5. So he'll be a villain, instead - and try to achieve the crown by treachery.

6. In fact, he's started already. He's convinced Edward the king, that it has been foretold that he should fear the second brother, George, because of the letter "G" at the beginning of his name. (Apparently he didn't notice that "Gloucester" has the same initial.)

Here it is:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barded steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other:

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,

About a prophecy, which says that 'G'

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here

Clarence comes.

A spectacular opening, even by Shakespeare's standards, I hope you'll agree. (There are several excellent film versions, by the way, including Olivier's from 1955, Ian McKellen's from 1995, and Al Pacino's documentary, Looking for Richard from 1996. Each one interprets the above in a different and interesting way. But of course it's our own that matters most.)

John Keats once said something along the lines of Shakespeare being his favourite poet, because he wrote about how life is, and not how he wishes it were. This brings to mind a similar thought - Claude Monet saying, "I have no other desire than to live and work in accordance with the laws of nature." What I'm trying to get at here is that serious artists are people who explore life and its forces with honesty. And in literature, Keats is right, there is no one who does so better than Shakespeare. So, in honour of this astute observation, I'll use a John Keats poem, the sonnet entitled "Bright Star", to provide an illustration of the importance of paying attention to the punctuation when reading poetry.

When reading verse, we often have a tendency to pause or even stop where we shouldn't, because the lines are broken off in unusual places - like the middles of sentences for example. But just as with prose, it is the punctuation that should determine the breaks. This poem - which has as its argument that the narrator would like to be as unchanging as a star (an echo to Julius Caesar, perhaps) not so he could watch the oceans wash the world or snow falling, but rather to stay perpetually awake and suspended in meditation on the beauty of his love - is one sentence in length. Try reading it (aloud, of course) with that in mind:

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —

No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

Tomorrow: an example of the same principle from Shakespeare. (By the way, it was the Monet quote above, along with his paintings of course, that inspired my piano suite called, Impression: Sunrise, which is linked on your right.)

Today, I'd like to recommend two books by the great literary critic, Frank Kermode (who passed away last week at the age of ninety): Shakespeare's Language (2000) and The Age of Shakespeare (2004) are two very different undertakings that are both splendidly realized. They are entertaining, memorable and useful.

It's worth remembering how important criticism is in the appreciation of culture. Literature can't operate alone. To appreciate it, we have to read about it, as well. As a bonus, it can provide great pleasure and insight, and Frank Kermode provided as much of both as anyone.

I'd also like to mention the happy news regarding the announcement of the return of the great announcer Vin Scully to the Los Angeles Dodgers' broadcasts for a 62nd (!) season. He's 82, by the way, and over the years he's been frequently described as a poet. I would definitely agree. Like Shakespeare, he doesn't settle for stale ways of saying things. (I still remember his description of Kirk Gibson: "He looks as if he just got off a raft.") Even if you've never listened to a baseball game, or are not a baseball fan, you should listen to at least one game called by Vin Scully.

"Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,200 of them - more than occur in the whole King James version of the Bible - only once and never again."

- Louis Marder

"The limits of my language are the limits of my world."

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

In one sense, vocabulary is knowledge - because each word contains a concept. With the ability to name a concept, we can explore it further (and eventually, internalize it) by using comparison, contrast, definition, classification, causal analysis, illustration, etc. But if we can't name it, these processes become much more difficult to access. Shakespeare's awe-inspiring vocabulary has always been a point of contention among commentators, with some feeling that the verbal displays are not there for the right reasons. Others say that it is a barrier between the reader and the work.

My own take, you've probably guessed, is different. First of all, it's my belief that Shakespeare wrote with the intention of helping human beings to understand themselves, and to reach their potentials. And although this can't be proved (or disproved, actually), we can certainly choose to use his work that way, and I think we should. I'll write more on this in the days ahead, but today let's get back to vocabulary, and its role in reading.

Most reading experts say that we must recognize approximately 85% of the words in a text for it to be immediately understandable. But the key word here is "immediately", because Shakespeare provides everything else that could be useful in expanding our word recognition: context, logic, argument (it's important to remember that all the characters in a play are either trying to convince someone of something, or to accomplish something), story, and emotional content.

Let's look at two words from the excerpt in yesterday's post: 1. superflux - an archaic word (although it shouldn't be) that we may not recognize immediately, but with some thought we see its relation to the word "superfluous" and then it becomes clear. 2. physic - in this case, it's the sense in which it's used here that is no longer current - it means "medicine". And then of course, the word "physician" comes to mind. Shakespeare's plays are filled with opportunities like these, with which we can expand our worlds.

Further to yesterday's post regarding reading aloud with emotion, another scene from King Lear is a splendid example from which to learn. The eighty-year-old Lear, after having been denied a roof by the two daughters who had sworn their love for him in the first scene, is being guided toward a hovel in which he can be sheltered from a wild storm. However, before entering, he stops to say a prayer. But it's not a prayer for help or revenge. Rather he prays to the poor people of the kingdom, who he now realizes have been ignored during his reign:

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just. (3. 4. 28-36)

If we read aloud, we realize that great poetry contains all the attributes of great music: the sounds, the rhythms, the ideas, and of course, the emotion.

For several reasons, poetry is easier to understand when read aloud. Of course, with Shakespeare, we're dealing with drama as well. (Philosophy, too, come to think of it. Yeats summed up the relationship between poetry and philosophy this way: "For philosophy to be remembered, it has to be turned into poetry." Shakespeare, clearly, also knew that.) So all the more reason to do so. Over the next couple of posts, I'll be writing about this idea. Today, I'd like to discuss finding emotion in reading.

King Lear is a play that has as one of its themes the fact that we find wisdom through adversity. The two main characters, Lear and the Earl of Gloucester, both find knowledge through tremendous suffering. At one point in the play, Gloucester has lost everything - his family, his earldom, and in one of the most frightening scenes in drama, his eyesight. Shortly afterward, he is being led toward the cliffs of Dover, from which he plans to jump, by a poor man who is in fact his wrongfully-accused fugitive son, Edgar, in disguise. In the following excerpt, he first gives Edgar money, and then hopes that generosity will become a more frequent occurrence. Then he has an astonishing realization:

Here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens' plagues

Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched

Makes thee the happier: heavens, deal so still!

Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,

That slaves your ordinance, that will not see

Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;

So distribution should undo excess,

And each man have enough.

Those of us fortunate to have what we need do not "see" because we do "not feel". With literature though, we have the opportunity, at least. Therefore, the best way to read is not simply to "see" the words, but to "feel" them, and reading aloud is the best way to do that. (Tomorrow, I'll discuss another scene from this incomparable play.)

The three previous posts of this young blog can be summarized thus: 1. It is very important for the reader to make his or her own judgements, and not to be overly influenced by those of others. 2. Making cuts in a Shakespeare play is not a good idea. (By the way, one of the few filmed Shakespeares that includes a complete text is Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet from 1996. It's great to watch with a copy of the play in hand.) Now, for the next few posts, I'm going to focus on some of the things that I've learned regarding the reading of Shakespeare. At the top of the list is the importance of the imagination.

Ideally, the words in a text can be combined into appropriate groups that create images and arguments. It's a challenge to do this with writing as poetic and sophisticated as Shakespeare's. But, that's what makes it fun. There's a lot to be learned about this idea in the prologue to Henry V:

Essentially, the playwright is speaking through a narrator (called a chorus, in those days) who comes out on the stage and apologizes to the audience for the very existence of the play. He says that he wishes that materials appropriate to the subject matter were available, and that a small troupe in a small theatre ("this wooden O") cannot possibly stage a story that treats a war between France and England. Unless the audience uses their imaginations. Then, everything is possible (on the stage and elsewhere):

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,

Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirits that have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

So great an object: can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?

O, pardon! since a crooked figure may

Attest in little place a million;

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,

On your imaginary forces work.

Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies,

Whose high upreared and abutting fronts

The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;

Into a thousand parts divide one man,

And make imaginary puissance;

Think when we talk of horses, that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,

Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,

Turning the accomplishment of many years

Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,

Admit me Chorus to this history;

Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,

Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

As a reading (or listening) lesson, I've never come across its equal.

Further to yesterday, another section cut from Kenneth Branagh's film version of Henry V, although shorter than yesterday's example, is just as painful to think about. Later in the same scene (4.1), the king is visiting his soldiers the night before the battle, but he's doing it disguised with the help of a hooded cloak. At one point he enters into a lengthy debate with two soldiers regarding the moral issues involved with a king asking his subjects to fight for his cause. Now in medieval warfare, the capture of highly ranked prisoners was considered much more desirable than killing them, because they could then be ransomed back to their people for huge sums. (I suppose this is where checkmate in chess comes from.) If the battle were to go badly, therefore, an unscrupulous leader could save his own life by allowing himself to be captured and ransomed. The disguised king, in trying to pick up the spirits of the two (Bates and Williams), begins the exchange by saying the following:

I myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed.

WILLIAMS

Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but

when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we

ne'er the wiser.

KING HENRY V

If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.

WILLIAMS

You pay him then. That's a perilous shot out of an

elder-gun, that a poor and private displeasure can

do against a monarch! you may as well go about to

turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a

peacock's feather. You'll never trust his word

after! come, 'tis a foolish saying.

The italics are mine. What a wonderful illustration of futility - an individual getting angry at a monarch is the equivalent of trying to "turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather". It may be the best example of hyperbole I've ever come across, and it was cut from the movie! Here's my suggestion for those directing Shakespeare: Don't cut anything. (That being said, I do want to mention that this version of Henry V is my favourite movie. I recommend it without reservation, cuts and all.)

In the first scene of act four of Henry V, the English army face a near-impossible situation: They're sick, outnumbered, and isolated. And they face a battle against the entire army of France. The king greets two of his advisors, Gloucester and Bedford, with the following:

Gloucester, 'tis true that we are in great danger;

The greater therefore should our courage be.

Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty!

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,

Would men observingly distil it out.

For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,

Which is both healthful and good husbandry:

Besides, they are our outward consciences,

And preachers to us all, admonishing

That we should dress us fairly for our end.

Thus may we gather honey from the weed,

And make a moral of the devil himself.

The character of Henry V is a matter of considerable contention, and I myself have had conflicting opinions about him. (I'll be writing about some of them soon.) But these matters are beside today's point. It is the words and ideas that must be thought about, and the ones above are remarkable. At the center of the king's argument is an astonishing idea - that people and situations that we dislike are not only to be endured, they are necessary. The Beatles may have been partially wrong: We need love, certainly, but we may need its opposite as well, because many undertakings and accomplishments arise from what we normally term the negative emotions. What a thought is contained in lines 8 to 10! Our enemies function as "our outward consciences" and we make decisions to do our best in order to prove them wrong. Perhaps this concept can help to explain why people will divide themselves into factions for almost any reason. (Kurt Vonnegut once said that if religion, race and nationality weren't available, people would divide into groups based on the first letters in their names.) But seeing the biggest picture possible - which the greatest writers can help us to do - perhaps these divisions have "a soul of goodness" in them.

Welcome to Star of England: A Blog on Shakespeare. My name is George Wall, and I am a high school teacher and musician. My purpose here is to share my experiences in reading, teaching, and learning from the works of Shakespeare over the course of my career. My focus will be on the works themselves, and how to better appreciate and enjoy them. I hope you find it useful.

Today, I'd like to discuss how important it is to make up one's own mind in regard to Shakespeare. In language, words and phrases over time can have their meanings altered well away from what they originally meant. We call these types of phrases idioms, and once a group of words has become one, there's no going back - they've acquired a new, permanent meaning (e.g. a nest egg). The words have become fossilized, so to speak. A similar thing happens with opinions on Shakespeare. We often take the opinions and/or interpretations of others as truths, without investigating for ourselves. Thus, for example, we are told that some of the plays are weak (in comparison with the others, anyway) or that a line or a speech is not important to a play. But neither of these statements is true. Every Shakespeare play deserves to be read, seen and discussed. And every line is necessary in understanding each whole.

I had a teacher once who put it this way: In a work, it is not the events themselves that are of primary importance, but rather it's the way that one thing leads to the next. Tomorrow and Wednesday, I'll be writing about two sections that were cut from Kenneth Branagh's otherwise brilliant film version of Henry V. (By the way, the title of this blog comes from the play's epilogue.)