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.

The New Cambridge edition of Othello contains a brilliant introduction by its editor, Norman Sanders. From it, I learned most of the following: In 1850, John Wilson wrote a piece for Blackwood's Magazine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwood's_Magazine), in which he gave his theory of the "double-time scheme" in Othello. He noted that the first two acts depict real time - that they portray events in a period of time very close to what they would take to occur. But then everything changes. "Short time" is then used to keep a continuous flow of events, and "longer time" is used, primarily through the use of reference, to create a much larger temporal background. For example, the length of the marriage of Othello and Desdemona is hard to accurately ascertain. At some points, we are led to believe that they are newly wed, but at others, that their marriage has been going on for quite some time. And there are several other examples as well, involving virtually every major character in the play. Some critics have forwarded the theory that these inconsistencies are the result of Shakespeare's method of working on this particular play: i.e. that he wrote the final three acts first, followed by the first two, and that this led to the incongruity. It's possible, certainly. Others, like Fintan O'Toole, have postulated that Shakespeare did it deliberately, for reasons related to the play's thematic content. I'll summarize that position, and give a few thoughts of my own, tomorrow.

In Northrop Frye's essay on King Lear, he gives a wonderful description of Shakespeare's handling of time, first in general and then specifically in the play. I'll give you the passage in its entirety:

"Many critics of Shakespeare have noticed that there often seems to be two time clocks in the action of his plays, the events in the foreground summarizing slower and bigger events in the background that by themselves would take longer to work out. It's a little like looking at the scenery from the window of a car or a train, with the weeds at the side of the road rushing by and the horizon turning slowly. In the foreground action the scene on the heath seems to take place in the same night that begins with Regan and Cornwall shutting Lear out. In the background we pick up hints that Albany and Cornwall are at loggerheads, but are forced to compose their differences and unite against a threatened invasion from France, partly encouraged by Cordelia, although in the foreground action nothing has yet happened to Lear that would justify such an invasion."

Amazing. And I mean both Shakespeare's technical virtuosity and Frye's description of it. Tomorrow, I'll discuss the critic commonly given credit for identifying this "double time" effect.

The death of King Lear is, perhaps, an example of what some critics call "telescoped" time. With this technique, the events of several months are shown to us in a few minutes of actual stage time. In this case, Lear seems to die of heartbreak right in front of our eyes, which considering his ordeal is plausible. But it's interesting to consider as a possibility his death occurring, say, two or three weeks after Cordelia's, and that we see that amount of time condensed into the two or three minutes of the end of the play. Looked at this way, Shakespeare is doing something much more advanced than simply allowing large periods of time to elapse between scenes - which anyone can do - he is allowing them to elapse during them. (More on this, and another example, tomorrow.)

If you read commentary on Othello, you won't get far without running into a discussion of Shakespeare's handling of the passing of time. In this play (which uses the famous "double time" effect) and elsewhere, it is one of the aspects of his work that remains an area of study and contention. (By the way, I'm very glad that Shakespeare never wrote any how-to books for budding dramatists - not that they wouldn't have been useful, but I find his work retains its mystery more effectively with our continuing efforts to try to understand the principles and methods that he employed.) It is an area that interests me a great deal, and over the next little while I'll be reporting on some of my findings - including an explanation of the technique referred to above.

Here's another thought to consider: in Antony and Cleopatra, the action portrayed takes place over approximately twelve years, whereas a performance of the play takes approximately three hours. And each moment seems to flow convincingly from the last. How is this (what the Chorus in Henry V calls "turning the accomplishment of many years into an hour-glass") achieved? As I mentioned above, I'm going to see what I can learn about it. Stay tuned.

The character of Enobarbus continues to hold my interest. On Saturday, I discussed how he can no longer proceed after deserting Antony to join Octavius Caesar. In 4.6, there are a couple of brutal moments of recognition regarding how side-changers are treated. First, Octavius tells a messenger to instruct his second-in-command Agrippa to:

Plant those that have revolted in the van,

That Antony may seem to spend his fury

Upon himself.

In other words, Antony's soldiers would have to do battle initially against former friends - another example of Octavius' cool ruthlessness. Then Enobarbus recounts what he has heard of the fates of others in his position, and then reveals his remorse in a most powerful wording:

Alexas did revolt; and went to Jewry on

Affairs of Antony; there did persuade

Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar,

And leave his master Antony; for this pains

Caesar hath hang'd him. Canidius and the rest

That fell away have entertainment, but

No honourable trust. I have done ill;

Of which I do accuse myself so sorely,

That I will joy no more.

It's a particularly melancholy fate for a character who wasn't afraid to make jokes at a meeting of the triumvirate. He understands, only when both are gone, that his loyalty was his life force.

Further to yesterday's comments about Enobarbus, the sophisticated and cynical follower of Antony: He has some of the most memorable lines in the play. For example, when Antony and Octavius are reaching a tenuous agreement to form an alliance with which to confront Sextus Pompey, Enobarbus gives them some humorous yet truthful advice. He says that they can continue their disagreements (and return to their true natures) after they have dealt with the immediate threats, and once they have more leisure. Antony, in a tricky spot, then takes out some of his tension on him, to which Enobarbus' replies are highly amusing:

ENOBARBUS

Or, if you borrow one another's love for the

instant, you may, when you hear no more words of

Pompey, return it again: you shall have time to

wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.

ANTONY

Thou art a soldier only: speak no more.

ENOBARBUS

That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.

ANTONY

You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.

ENOBARBUS

Go to, then; your considerate stone.

His statement on telling the truth always makes me think of one made by another chorus-type character, the Fool in King Lear, when he says, "Truth's a dog must to kennel." Both characters show that humour is often used to camouflage its real purpose.

One of the masterful touches that Shakespeare applied to Antony and Cleopatra is the character of Enobarbus, who barely gets a mention in Plutarch. In this play, he acts almost like a chorus at certain times, keeping a cynical eye on the proceedings of the title characters - but at other points, he acts as a trusted aide to each of them. Shakespeare also uses his running commentary to keep us at a distance, which is appropriate for people of their fame. But like Enobarbus, we eventually get pulled in, and feel a strong emotional connection to them - no matter how poorly we see them behave. In Enobarbus' case, he is a cynic on the outside only, and a sentimentalist within. This, he finds out too late: When he deserts Antony's side - very understandably in a way, because Antony seems to lose his reason - the decision ultimately breaks his heart and ends his life. Here are his last words as he lies down in a ditch to die:

O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,

The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,

That life, a very rebel to my will,

May hang no longer on me: throw my heart

Against the flint and hardness of my fault:

Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder,

And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony,

Nobler than my revolt is infamous,

Forgive me in thine own particular:

But let the world rank me in register

A master-leaver and a fugitive:

O Antony! O Antony!

More on Enobarbus tomorrow.

Another great writer, the poet Algernon Swinburne, provided one of my favourite quotes on Shakespeare. It's one of the most accurate in acknowledging the centrality of Shakespeare to every serious writer and/or thinker who came after him:

"There is one book in the world, of which it might be affirmed and argued without fear of derision from any but the supreme and crowning fools among the foolishest of mankind, that it would be better for the world to lose all others and keep this one than to lose this and keep all other treasures bequeathed by human genius to all that we can conceive of eternity - to all that we can imagine of immortality. That book is best known, and best described for all of us, simply by the simple English name of its author. The word Shakespeare connotes more than any other man's name that was ever written or spoken upon Earth."

In honour of Swinburne's astuteness, here's a link to one of his powerfully musical poems, "Hymn to Proserpine": http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2088.html

Yesterday I wrote about the final exchange between Menas and Pompey, where Menas' offered assassination of the triumvirs is rejected by Pompey, for reasons having as much to do with public perception as ethical concern. Menas' reference to someone "who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd" never getting the chance again, brought to mind one of Brutus' well-known quotes from Julius Caesar. Where, as is often the case with him, he disagrees with someone else's plan and gives eloquent reasons for doing so. Here, he is speaking to Cassius, and saying that they shouldn't wait in a defensive position for the armies of Octavius and Antony to attack, but that they should make the first move:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

These lines are deservedly famed for their poetic content, and often they are quoted to support causes requiring action. Fair enough, but I think it's important to remember that Shakespeare doesn't provide us with dictums, only matters for thought and consideration, and that often the speaker and his or her words, and their results, are at odds. In this case, they do decide to follow Brutus' plan, and then lose the battle, and their lives.

One of my favourite moments in Antony and Cleopatra is during the scene on Sextus Pompey's barge (2.7) where one his followers, Menas, takes him aside and offers him the world - Pompey was surprised by the offer as well. Note the economical, yet charged language in the exchange (by the way the "three world-sharers" are Octavius, Lepidus and Antony, and they are on the barge after signing a treaty to make Pompey their equal, for the time being anyway):

MENAS

Wilt thou be lord of all the world?

POMPEY

What say'st thou?

MENAS

Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That's twice.

POMPEY

How should that be?

MENAS

But entertain it,

And, though thou think me poor, I am the man

Will give thee all the world.

POMPEY

Hast thou drunk well?

MENAS

No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup.

Thou art, if thou darest be, the earthly Jove:

Whate'er the ocean pales, or sky inclips,

Is thine, if thou wilt ha't.

POMPEY

Show me which way.

MENAS

These three world-sharers, these competitors,

Are in thy vessel: let me cut the cable;

And, when we are put off, fall to their throats:

All there is thine.

POMPEY

Ah, this thou shouldst have done,

And not have spoke on't! In me 'tis villany;

In thee't had been good service. Thou must know,

'Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour;

Mine honour, it. Repent that e'er thy tongue

Hath so betray'd thine act: being done unknown,

I should have found it afterwards well done;

But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink.

MENAS

[Aside] For this,

I'll never follow thy pall'd fortunes more.

Who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd,

Shall never find it more.

It's a remarkable moment; for a few moments the fate of the empire is in the balance. And Pompey makes his decision on political rather than moral grounds. Menas' last remark is prophetic, as well: Pompey would very shortly be turned on by Octavius, defeated by his admiral, Agrippa in the Straits of Messina, and ultimately captured and executed.

Here's a question: Why is it so often assumed that the sonnets are autobiographical? Couldn't a series of poems be as fictional as a play? It strikes me that writing 154 sonnets on intensely personal subjects would be a very demanding experience. The fact that he didn't write any others (that we know of) could be taken as evidence in either direction, I suppose, but my own feeling is that the sonnets were another grounded and well-researched work of invention. We'll never know, of course - perhaps I'm wrong and there were some events from his life in these poems, but really it's somewhat beside the point. As they tell us all the way through, it's the lines on the page that last, and grow.

The great poet W.H. Auden was also a very astute Shakespeare critic. (By the way, I use the term in its more useful sense, which refers to one who attempts to help the audience enjoy a work more clearly, not a thumbs-up/thumbs-down type of writer. The latter does not apply to people like Shakespeare. Northrop Frye said it best: "When a critic comes up against something the size of Shakespeare, it is the critic who is being judged".) When lecturing on King Lear, Auden noted that at this point in his career, Shakespeare was writing about states of mind rather than trying to create "believable" characters. In other words, we are not likely to meet someone like Lear, but we are likely to have instances arise where an emotionally-overcharged decision can have serious consequences. Another example: it's interesting how the character of Hamlet is someone with whom no one living has anything in common (a member of a ruling, not symbolic, royal family who sees a ghost and must revenge a murder - I've never met anyone in that position, anyway), and yet is one that has helped innumerable people understand their lives and the workings of their minds more clearly. Quite an achievement, that.

Between yesterday's post and the present moment, I came across a far more elegant rebuttal to Tolstoy's attack on Shakespeare (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27726.bibrec.html) than I could ever write. It's by George Orwell, so no shame there. Here's the link: http://www.george-orwell.org/Lear,_Tolstoy_and_the_Fool/0.html

Further to this, two things: 1. Tolstoy's opinion seems to come partly from the position that I tried to describe yesterday: the idea that literature should be used to some end, or to instruct. I don't concur, and I don't think Shakespeare did either. (By the way, yesterday's post also stated that commentators are getting into hazardous terrain when they try to figure out Shakespeare's motivations. That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be attempted, I often do it myself - I think it's important to try, but we have to remember that Shakespeare is always going to be out there ahead of us, to paraphrase Harold Bloom.) 2. Tolstoy was almost certainly the type of critic that T.S. Eliot was referring to in his essay entitled "Hamlet", i.e. the "most dangerous type of critic: the critic with a mind which is naturally of the creative order". Either that, or he was bonkers, as a commentator, anyway. Have a look at the two pieces above, and decide for yourself.

It's been said many times before that drama is the most objective art form, but the more reading that I do, the more I wonder: how many artists actually use it that way? Not very many, that's for sure. One of Shakespeare's greatest strengths, perhaps the characteristic that puts him in a class of one, was the fact that his writing is entirely free of any attempt at moralizing, or of the sense that he is trying to hold his life (or his thoughts) up as an example. Put another way, his agenda was not to have one. Commentators that write on Shakespeare only show the limitations of their own minds when they write of his "opinions" or "motivations". It can't be done. His work transcends human wishes. It shows life as it is, "the mirror up to nature", and allows participants to engage themselves with all its limitlessness, or as Philip Larkin put it, "the million-petaled flower of being here". Over the next few days, I'm going to post about some of the things that other famous writers have had to say about Shakespeare. Tomorrow, it's Tolstoy.

I used to think it was the time period that Shakespeare wrote in that allowed him the tremendous freedom that his writing employs. In other words, it was due to the fact that things such as spellings and grammatical norms were yet to be standardized. But now I think it was more than that. Now I think it was the fact that he considered himself first and foremost a poet that allowed him to simply do as he wanted. If a noun being turned into a verb (a process referred to as conversion) could create the desired effect, then good. If a word had to be invented, fine. I've always felt that it was Shakespeare's example that led, at least in part, to the extraordinary flexibility and omnivorousness of English (which has by far the largest vocabulary of any language). Here's an excerpt from Antony and Cleopatra that features both conversion ("spaniel'd") and invention ("discandy"). (By the way, conversion can work in other ways, as well. It happens whenever one part of speech is used as another. One you hear a lot these days is, "My bad...") At this point, Antony thinks that he has been thoroughly betrayed by Cleopatra and abandoned by his followers, that Caesar has conquered him, and that his suicide is imminent:

O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more:

Fortune and Antony part here; even here

Do we shake hands. All come to this? The hearts

That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave

Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets

On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is bark'd,

That overtopp'd them all. Betray'd I am:

O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,—

Whose eye beck'd forth my wars, and call'd them home;

Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,—

Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose,

Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.

The complexity of Shakespeare's poetry is always astonishing. It seems that with every reading, more is revealed. Some have found the demands placed on them as readers to be excessive. It can be hard work, granted. But always, the effort proves to be worthwhile. In other words, what we eventually will find in the convoluted syntax and dazzling rhetoric is wisdom and beauty. Something else we have to keep in mind: serious artists work at their crafts very hard and very often. They are not interested in repeating themselves. We therefore shouldn't be surprised if we have to do some background labour to keep up - using glossaries, references, criticism, and so on. Here's another excerpt from Antony and Cleopatra. Here, a messenger is notifying Octavius that Sextus Pompeius (Pompey), the son of the late Gnaeus Pompeius, a member of the first triumvirate (with Crassus and Julius Caesar), is rapidly gaining popularity and therefore strength in his naval powers. Caesar's response regarding the vagaries of popularity is remarkable both in style and content:

MESSENGER

... Pompey is strong at sea;

And it appears he is beloved of those

That only have fear'd Caesar: to the ports

The discontents repair, and men's reports

Give him much wrong'd.

OCTAVIUS

I should have known no less.

It hath been taught us from the primal state,

That he which is was wish'd until he were;

And the ebb'd man, ne'er loved till ne'er worth love,

Comes dear'd by being lack'd. This common body,

Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,

Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,

To rot itself with motion.

I'm preparing for my next lecture - next Wednesday at 11 am at the Atwater library - on Antony and Cleopatra, and I found a most interesting observation (among many) in Michael Neill's splendid introduction to the 1994 Oxford edition. He notes that three times in the play, at very important moments, Antony uses the simple phrase "to do thus". Once when telling Cleopatra that he no longer cares for Rome but only for her:

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life

Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair

[Embracing]

And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,

On pain of punishment, the world to weet

We stand up peerless. (1.1)

The next time (2.2) is when he meets the other triumvirs, Octavius and Lepidus, in Rome and the latter elegantly urges the two not to be too vehement in their own defenses. To which Antony replies that even if they were about to engage in civil war, he would follow such advice:

LEPIDUS

Noble friends,

That which combined us was most great, and let not

A leaner action rend us. What's amiss,

May it be gently heard: when we debate

Our trivial difference loud, we do commit

Murder in healing wounds: then, noble partners,

The rather, for I earnestly beseech,

Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,

Nor curstness grow to the matter.

ANTONY

'Tis spoken well.

Were we before our armies, and to fight,

I should do thus.

The third and final time is at his own suicide (4.14), after his servant, Eros, has chosen to kill himself rather than Antony (as Antony had requested):

Thrice-nobler than myself!

Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what

I should, and thou couldst not. My queen and Eros

Have by their brave instruction got upon me

A nobleness in record: but I will be

A bridegroom in my death, and run into't

As to a lover's bed. Come, then; and, Eros,

Thy master dies thy scholar: to do thus.

[Falling on his sword]

As we know, the thematic center of the play is in the conflict between Rome and Egypt, and all that they symbolize. So here we have Antony using the same phrase in showing his allegiance to Egypt (through Cleopatra), to Rome (through Octavius), and finally to neither. These types of small, intricate details keep coming up over and over again in Shakespeare's work. They are not matters of coincidence.

Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this, but the most interesting Shakespeare audition that I've ever heard of was also the simplest: The director would assign each actor to read one of the sonnets. That was it. Because all of the skills required to interpret a part are exactly those needed to properly read a sonnet. In fact, reading poetry (despite its incorrect reputation) is actually a highly creative activity. It requires intellect, emotion and practice - the more we do it, the easier it gets. Also, the plays themselves (as I've said before) are best understood as large-scale poems - so assigning the interpretation of a small-scale one is probably the best way to measure a Shakespearean actor's skills. Ready to try one? Here's Sonnet 17:

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say 'This poet lies:

Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

So should my papers yellow'd with their age

Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage

And stretched metre of an antique song:

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.

T.S. Eliot once said, "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood". Jackson Pollock once asked an interviewer: "Do you stand in front of a bank of flowers tearing your hair out and wondering what it all means?" The point I'm trying to make here is that there is a very large part of artistic endeavour that transcends simple comprehension. Perhaps the title of John Ciardi and Miller Williams' 1959 handbook on poetry said it better: How Does a Poem Mean? So when we're dealing with poetic writing, we must keep in mind that it gives off meaning in more and different ways than regular prose: it suggests, compares, symbolizes, even obfuscates (as Nietzsche noted when he said that writers sometimes write to reveal meaning, and at other times to conceal it). For an example of this, let's consider the following line from 2.2 in Hamlet, in which the prince is perhaps toying with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or perhaps not: "I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." In every annotated edition of the play that I've seen, those two sentences are given a different gloss. And the more interpretations I see, the more admiration I have, because I've come to realize no one really knows what they mean. Isn't that great?

Shakespeare's use of figurative language also facilitates the portrayal of large-scale emotion, the type that might be hard to render otherwise. Here is an excerpt from Henry IV, Part One that illustrates the point. The following takes place at the end of 1.2, during which we have met Prince Hal and his friends, Falstaff and Poins, for the first time. After an indescribable exchange which features the dueling wits of Hal and Falstaff, the latter leaves and Poins stays behind to try to get Hal to join in an elaborate practical joke to be played on Falstaff. Hal agrees and Poins, satisfied, leaves as well, at which point Hal speaks the following soliloquy - which shows him to be politically motivated in his dealings with his "friends". The nature of the character of the future Henry V is a divisive matter among Shakespeare commentators, but what I'm interested in here is the powerful imagery and emotion that the language conveys. The passage contains three extended metaphors: the first is the comparison of royalty to the sun (not a new one, but handled freshly here); the second involves the nature of human wishes in regard to play and work; and the third, the difference between a shiny substance and the ground. As a whole, the passage's poetic content allows the audience to enter into the emotional world of a young man considering a glorious future:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold

The unyoked humour of your idleness:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work;

But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

So, when this loose behavior I throw off

And pay the debt I never promised,

By how much better than my word I am,

By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;

And like bright metal on a sullen ground,

My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,

Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes

Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;

Redeeming time when men think least I will.

Another result of Shakespeare's poetic thinking is that there was a revision necessary, purely on a rhythmic level, for every line written. The metrical considerations therefore put the words through another level of thought, which can lead to improvements not only on a sonic level but also in terms of content. In an earlier post (August 26), I discussed anastrophe, which refers to the unusual syntactical structures (or wording, if you prefer) - and the reasons for them - that are found in poetry. While anastrophe can make the initial reading more difficult, what it creates in terms of beauty, insight and original thought makes the extra effort more than worth it. The following passage occurs when Horatio is revealing the existence of the ghost to Hamlet. Its content is quite simple, or at least it could be phrased that way: Horatio tells Hamlet that the two guards, Marcellus and Bernardo, had seen the ghost the previous two nights, and had described what the ghost was wearing and how it moved. It scared them. They then decided to tell Horatio about it, and when he joined their watch, he saw it as well - just as they had described it. Horatio then closes by saying that the resemblance between the ghost and Hamlet's father is just as strong as the one between his two hands. All well and good, but when the restrictions imposed by writing in verse were applied, we got this:

Two nights together had these gentlemen

(Marcellus and Bernardo) on their watch

In the dead vast and middle of the night

Been thus encount'red. A figure like your father,

Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,

Appears before them and with solemn march

Goes slow and stately by them. Thrice he walk'd

By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,

Within his truncheon's length; whilst they distill'd

Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me

In dreadful secrecy impart they did,

And I with them the third night kept the watch;

Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,

Form of the thing, each word made true and good,

The apparition comes. I knew your father.

These hands are not more like.

When we speak of Shakespeare as "using poetry" or "writing in verse", I think we may be missing the point. Shakespeare's brilliance is largely due to the fact that he was always thinking poetically, not simply employing it as a device, and over the next few posts, I'm going to try to prove this contention. Today, I'd like to consider Shakespeare's use of metaphor.

When something new is brought to the mind's attention, one of the processes that it employs in its apprehension is to compare it to something that it already knows. The flip side to this also happens, where something familiar can be understood differently, and often more deeply, by comparison with something new. Therefore, writing (which is, in one sense, simply recorded thinking) based on the metaphorical concept will lead to places that "realistic" writing won't. Here is an example from the opening scene of King Lear. This occurs as Lear is in the act of disowning Cordelia because he did not get the answer from her that he was expecting, either in form or content, to his question about the quantity of her love. The Earl of Kent, a nobleman of great personal loyalty to Lear, attempts to intercede and prevent disaster:

KENT

Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,

Lov'd as my father, as my master follow'd,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers-

LEAR

The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.

KENT

Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The region of my heart! Be Kent unmannerly

When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?

Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak

When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound

When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom;

And in thy best consideration check

This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgment,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

Reverbs no hollowness.

The last lines contain a metaphor of astonishing power: Kent points out that the heart of a person who does a lot of talking about love or loyalty can be like a barrel that produces more sound when it is less full. So here's the question: Would this remarkable observation have come into being if Shakespeare was not thinking poetically? My own feeling is that the poetry is more often the cause rather than the effect of moments like this one.