Kevin Spacey as Richard III? What an amazing treat that would be. After reading a sort of quasi-review of his performance in the production currently playing at London's Old Vic Theater (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/theater/richard-iii-at-old-vic-and-other-london-shows-offer-catharsis.html), I'm more than usually jealous of the cultural riches found in the capitol city of the oldest member of the Commonwealth. It seems like a role that Spacey would explore in an entirely new way, and the thought of it reminds me of how excellent he was in Al Pacino's must-see film, Looking for Richard (1996), in which he plays Buckingham. Of course, Pacino is great in that one as well, and I'm really hoping to someday see him in the (complete) role, as well (either stage or film would do).

It must be considered one of the most amazing things about Shakespeare that his work becomes more interesting with familiarity, not less. And that each time an actor gives a great performance, it makes an audience member want to see more of them. There is no such thing as a definitive Shakespeare performance, and there never will be.

Just a quick note re the comment to the July 10 post: Once again the anti-Stratford side is basically asking the impossible - to prove a negative. Everything is either about what's missing (he didn't mention books in his will, we don't have enough of his signatures) or coded messages (as if someone could have written the most imposing body of work in the history of literature almost by accident, because they were actually doing something else).

And the comment asks whether I have complete familiarity with the anti-Stratford side. I'll be really clear on this: I have far more familiarity with it than it deserves. Once there is a single piece of evidence (a document of any kind for a start) that even suggests that Shakespeare was a fraud or a pseudonym or whatever, then I'll be all ears. In the meantime, may I suggest reading his plays and poems thoroughly would be a far more valuable undertaking than this nonsense.

Just watched a video debate on the "authorship question" at the Shakespeare Adventure website (you can google it - I'm not going to link it because I really can't recommend the site, although the video in question is worth seeing) in which the Stratfordian side, led by the great Stanley Wells, absolutely wipes the floor with the Oxfordians, led by Roland Emmerich, the director of the upcoming "Anonymous". The debate actually provides a good summary of the evidence that exists, which is all, and I mean all, on the Stratford side. (Isn't it amazing that after all these years, and all of the allegations and accusations, that there is still not one piece of evidence for anything other than the established history?) It also shows the complete misunderstanding of art and literature that is put forward by the conspiracy theorists as proof of their contentions (the misreadings of the poems and plays that have gone into their arguments could be the subject of a hilarious book). I've still never met a conspiracy theorist that I would consider a strong reader of Shakespeare, and if that sounds a little harsh, so be it. As for Mr. Emmerich, I think that in the future he should stick with subjects such as Godzilla - in other words stories that have a possible, albeit tiny, hint of plausibility.

Came across a comment in Kenneth McLeish and Stephen Unwin's Faber Pocket Guide to Shakespeare's Plays (which is just excellent, by the way) that describes one of the essential qualities of Shakespeare's writing in a way so concise and accurate that it's worthy of its subject: "hardly a word is lazily used". Yup. That's exactly it. This thought comes the closest to describing one of the most enjoyable aspects of reading him - the fact that he can make even words or expressions with which we think we are familiar seem fresh and thought-provoking. It's that quality of poetry and/or art in general that Ezra Pound once described as "the combination of the obvious and the unexpected".

Anyway, I like not only the above comment but its context as well, so here's the whole passage: "His plays live not merely for the dazzle of the language - hardly a word is lazily used - or the dynamism and fascination of the story-telling, but for the way he roots profound moral, ethical and spiritual matters in every-day reality. Even in his most fantastical plays, real people, with all their contradictions, are placed in specific and meticulously-realized social worlds. Although some of the detail is now dead, the authenticity of those characters and those worlds remain: the plays provide images of truth. By constantly developing dramatic and dialectical opposites, Shakespeare creates the illusion of life stretching out in every direction".

Well said, chaps.

Just a short note today re Stratford's upcoming season (2012, I mean): I'm not sure why the name change to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival was necessary a few years back, because the bard content has actually significantly declined recently. And now, the news comes that there's to be only three next year. Bit of a drag, that, in my opinion. The plays in question (Cymbeline, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing) aren't the problem (of course). There should simply be more of them - at least five per season. Or else at least change the name back. (On the bright side, when they do them, they do them very well. I'm sure I'll be giving each of the three above-mentioned productions standing ovations a year or so from now.)

Finally got to see Julie Taymor's film version of The Tempest, and enjoyed it immensely. She takes a lot of liberties in some ways, but everything is done with real intelligence and style. The treatment of the play's songs, for instance, I found very fresh and interesting. (I wonder if there's another work of literature that comes so close to exposing the essence of music.) In fact, all of the thematic content resonates really strongly. There are some terrific performances as well, with Ben Whishaw as Ariel (his John Keats in Bright Star from 2009 was equally excellent) and Djimon Hounsou as Caliban standing out in particular. Also liked Russell Brand's Trinculo a lot, and Felicity Jones' Miranda was very strong. Her listening ability (crucial in Shakespearean acting) points to a big future. Some of the bigger names, Helen Mirren, Chris Cooper and David Strathairn, were surprisingly reserved in their interpretations now that I think about it, but I enjoyed them as well. I'm going to watch it again soon, and write more about it at that point, but I can certainly recommend it right now. Check it out as soon as you can, and the same goes for her version of Titus Andronicus (Titus from 1999).

I sometimes wonder how long it's going to be before people realize that the most important writing ever done - which has been an influence on almost every idea that came after it, and which holds the key to future ways of learning about life, art and literature - must be looked at with much more seriousness than is currently the case. Shakespeare must be made central to the educational experience of young people. For this to happen, it must not be treated frivolously: the various agendas of academic and other professional commentators must not be allowed to interfere, nor should nonsensical conspiracy theories such as the "authorship question" be the location of the division regarding Shakespeare. (Once and for all: there is no evidence for any of this stuff because it didn't happen that way. Every single piece of evidence in existence supports the established story. And in response to the question of why academics won't even entertain the possibility of another theory, the answer is simple. They can't. They must follow the evidence and only that, just like any other professional. By the way, I saw the trailer for "Anonymous", and it looks really dumb. No, check that - it is really dumb. Boycott it.)

Another thing that bugs me is that whenever Shakespeare's name comes up, people talk about the words that he coined as if this was his central achievement. Patronizing, that. The attitude that follows is one of, "oh yes, he was a good writer for his time, did a lot for the language, you know". This kind of thinking is naive. Shakespeare had accomplishments of similar consequence in many, many other ways as well. My solution for all of the above? Let's stop discussing Shakespeare, and start reading him seriously. And let's do everything we can to encourage kids to do the same.

If you take a look at the sources that influenced Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (his first tragedy as well as his first Roman play), Seneca's Thyestes and Ovid's story of Philomela from Metamorphoses, you'll see that the bloodiness of his play didn't come out of nowhere. Even by today's standards, these works are nasty. Not that Shakespeare didn't match them in this regard: he did. In fact, thanks to his unequaled verisimilitude, he surpassed them, and created a play that is harrowing to watch or read. But as I mentioned in my previous post, I think recent audiences and commentators are getting past this fact and seeing some of the many qualities that the play contains. I also mentioned in my last post that I think the writing of the play was crucial to Shakespeare, and that I would try to demonstrate some of the influence the play had on his later career. Here we go: 1. In the storyline itself, there are strong parallels with Coriolanus (particularly the story of Lucius joining forces with an opposing army to subdue Rome) and King Lear (not only are the opening scenes very similar in terms of stagecraft, but the subplots involving Edmund and Aaron are introduced and then integrated into the main plots in very similar ways). 2. The scenes set in the Andronici mausoleum can be seen as precursors to those in the Capulet tomb in Romeo and Juliet. 3. In terms of the story's arc, a very clear parallel can be drawn with Macbeth, as the two title characters go from being highly decorated and respected warriors to infamy in the eyes of their societies, from which point they discover their inner natures. 4. The theme of madness, real or assumed, as it pertains to Titus, of course brings Hamlet to mind. 5. Tamora's first speech in the play, in which she begs for her son's life by describing the importance of mercy, is clearly the seed that led to Portia's famous words in The Merchant of Venice. 6. The four other works set in Rome that he was to write later (in order of composition, The Rape of Lucrece, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus), which treat in every case a major turning point in Roman history, can all be seen as an attempt to answer the central question posed by this play (and which may have influenced the title of one of the most famous works in the study of history, Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire): What happened?

Poor Titus Andronicus. Not only does he suffer every possible indignity in the play named for him, but the play itself, actually a very important one in Shakespeare's career (and which is much better than most people realize, incidentally), is usually discussed with open derision. In fact, the dominant critical attitude toward it for the better part of four centuries has been the attempt to somehow prove that either a) Shakespeare didn't write the play, or b) if he did, he didn't really mean to. The primary reason for all of this is, of course, the play's violence, which even by today's standards (which have been "shaped" by the content of popular culture), seems shocking and/or disturbing. Fortunately, a great many commentators have set about trying to explain what Shakespeare was really up to in writing this play (for a long time, the assumption was that he wrote it entirely for profit and thus played up its sensationalism and horror). One of the best pieces that I've read on the subject is Alan Hughes's introduction to the 1994 Cambridge edition, in which he summarizes the history of the play in terms of its writing, performance practices, criticism and (I'm happy to report) its increasing appreciation over the last few decades. Highly recommended. In the next little while (my next post, I should say), I'm going to add my two cents regarding what I consider to be the play's most important characteristic: its importance in terms of Shakespeare's later career, and in particular the tragedies.

One of the very few plays that can stand with those of Shakespeare in terms of life, energy, language and the instigation of thought is Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which despite its reputation as a frivoulous comedy, was a very serious play indeed and actually one of the most direct challenges to the power structure of its time ever written. It achieved this in an ingenious manner - a plot that seems so ridiculous and superficial that it well hides the serious comments that the characters make, in apparently casual asides, about the class system and so forth. Of course Wilde didn't fool everybody, unfortunately, and it seems quite obvious in retrospect that his open criticism of the powers of the day were the cause of his two-year sentence to hard labour (and the destruction of his health), which had nothing to do whatsoever with any alleged "crimes" committed in his personal life. It occurred to me while reading a most interesting essay on Twelfth Night ("Twelfth Night, Gender and Comedy", by R.W. Maslen, reprinted in the edition on the play from Harold Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages series), that Wilde probably took his cue at least partially from Shakespeare, who often hid commentary of a serious nature in comedic settings. One example in Twelfth Night is of course the role of the fool, Feste, which functions as a tonic to the madness of virtually every other character in the play (with the possible exception of Viola).

Maslen's essay made another point regarding the relation of Wilde to Twelfth Night, and to the sonnets, as well. Rather than try to summarize, I'll quote it (despite its length): "Oscar Wilde supposed that the boy addressed in Shakespeare's sonnets could have been an actor, and there's something profoundly satisfying about the supposition. Boy actors represented a way out of an artistic dilemma created by Elizabethan views on women. Since women were not allowed to perform on the public stage, boys took the female roles in plays. And in doing so they drew attention to the possibility that gender itself might be a matter of performance. As the antitheatrical polemicists pointed out, men could be, or could become, effeminate, and the boy actor's craft showed just how easy it was to accomplish this particular form of gender-bending. Shakespeare's 'master-mistress' in the sonnets, and Viola/Caesario in Twelfth Night, are bodies in transit through time, altering as they move and attracting men and women alike. In them fantasies of maleness and femaleness intersect and mingle, making possible all sorts of relationships - sexual and nonsexual - that were not officially sanctioned within Elizabethan culture. Hence the polemicists profound unease about the effect of comedy on its audiences."

Has any other art form had more transformative influence on human society than comedy? I think we can safely guess what Wilde and Shakespeare would answer.

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will, another of his one-of-a-kind creations, seems to be a comedy example of what Fintan O'Toole wrote about regarding the tragedies in his 2002 book called Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life. Its central premise is that Shakespeare's tragedies get much of their power from the fact that neither the characters nor their stories can be contained by categories, and they are, in fact, about transition, in every way possible. Twelfth Night, although a comedy - and arguably his funniest - is also such a play. But I won't go into details just yet because I'm giving lectures on the subject over the next couple of days (to which you're invited, by the way - tomorrow, Tuesday, April 12 at 11 am or Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm at the Atwater library).

On another note, I've really come to like the 1996 film version of the play. It's worth seeing for Ben Kingsley's performance alone. His Feste (according to Harold Bloom, the only sane character in the play) is both funny and thought-provoking. I find it touches on the nature of comedy itself, as the play itself does. Of course, Feste has the ability to see through the pretensions of the various characters, and one of the really enjoyable aspects found in re-reading the play is to be able to take the time needed to decipher his coded comments. More on that to come with the next post as well. For today, here's a link to Kingsley singing one of Feste's great songs, "Come Away Death": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1X7kfjvQ4o&NR=1.

I've mentioned a few times that it's my opinion that The Merry Wives of Windsor is an unjustly neglected play. Neglected by scholars and critics, I should say, not by audiences, who've always enjoyed its light-hearted fun. A lot of that fun comes at Falstaff's expense, and that has not sat well with some commentators who quite simply idolize the character - there's no other word for it - and thus close themselves off from an even-handed attempt at enjoying the play. And they may be be missing more than fun in doing so. In the introduction to the Oxford edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor, the editor, T.W. Craik argues the play's merits very convincingly, and at one point, in a footnote, actually, Craik quotes from Hugh Hunt's book called Old Vic Prefaces, in which Hunt recalls addressing the cast of a 1951 production of the play that was put on for The Festival of Britain. He asks them to take their work on the play seriously, and to consider the importance of humour: "I have, I think, good reason for insisting on a realistic interpretation, since this is our Festival play and there are some who would criticize the choice of so minor a play as The Merry Wives of Windsor for such an occasion. I would like to justify it by showing the English humour of the play - the merry England which has played so large a part in building our institutions and national character".

Note to regular readers of this blog: Because I'll be working on some other writing projects for the next little while, I'm going to be updating weekly, rather than daily, for a bit. This applies to my music blog (Put Your Ears On, linked on the right) as well.

Having just finished preparing for, and delivering, a lecture on The Merry Wives of Windsor, and finding myself now in the process of getting ready for one on Twelfth Night, I can see the truth in Auden's observation that it's easier to talk about the less popular plays than it is the acknowledged masterpieces (e.g. the former and latter above, respectively). His point was that it's fun to attempt to prove that the neglected ones shouldn't be, and that they in fact contain a great deal of content deserving serious consideration, whereas it's trickier to find original angles such as these when dealing with the iconic ones. This is a problem, no doubt, but knowing it can only be helpful, because it delineates the task in front of those who try to tackle plays such as King Lear or Twelfth Night. And of course the challenge itself can be a lot of fun, not to mention the astonishing material itself. I'll be writing more on Twelfth Night after my lectures on it, which take place on Tuesday, April 12 at 11 am and Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm at the Atwater Library. (More information is available via the email address above.)

Having just watched a highly entertaining football match (or, as it's better known to my fellow North Americans, soccer, a derivation of "association football"), the fact that the sport's first mention in print occured in King Lear came to mind. It comes as a result of the first meeting of Kent and Oswald in 1.4., when Oswald the steward, having been instructed by Goneril to behave in an insolent manner toward the king in the hope of instigating a confrontation, answers Lear's rhetorical, "... who am I, sir?" with a reply that is all the more insulting because it's the truth: "My Lady's father". This leads to a moment of incredulity from Lear followed by some name-calling and some blows which are met with another haughty reply ("I'll not be struck, my lord"). At which point, Kent (disguised as Caius, the rough-and-tumble servant) knocks him to the ground and says, "Nor tripped neither, you base football player". As first mentions go, it's a bit of an inauspicious one, I suppose, but there you have it: England's national game and the world's most popular team sport first appear in print as part of an insult.

I'm in the middle of reading Stanley Fish's 2011 book, How to Write a Sentence, and enjoying it very much. When I finish, I'll write a post on some of the things I learned from it, but for today, I just want to show you an example of Shakespeare's ability in regard to sentence writing. (By the way, Fish uses a couple of examples from Shakespeare in his discussions, to good effect.) The following comes from 1.3 of Henry IV, Part Two, a scene in which various rebels are discussing how to go about removing the title character from the throne, a task that seems increasingly difficult given the reversals suffered by their side, particularly at Shrewsbury at the end of Henry IV, Part One. Lord Bardolph calls for tempered action based on information and careful planning, and to make his case he compares a military campaign with the planning and construction of a building. Depending on whether or not you consider the semi-colon a sentence-ending mark of punctuation, the passage could be construed as having as few as two sentences. It certainly has no more than four. But any way you look at it, the writing is as carefully put together as what it describes:

When we mean to build,

We first survey the plot, then draw the model;

And when we see the figure of the house,

Then must we rate the cost of the erection;

Which if we find outweighs ability,

What do we then but draw anew the model

In fewer offices, or at last desist

To build at all? Much more, in this great work,

Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down

And set another up, should we survey

The plot of situation and the model,

Consent upon a sure foundation,

Question surveyors, know our own estate,

How able such a work to undergo,

To weigh against his opposite; or else

We fortify in paper and in figures,

Using the names of men instead of men:

Like one that draws the model of a house

Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,

Gives o'er and leaves his part-created cost

A naked subject to the weeping clouds

And waste for churlish winter's tyranny.

The reason for the composition of The Merry Wives of Windsor is a fascinating thing to consider. Among several competing theories, it seems that the most likely is that it was written for a feast in celebration of an installation ceremony of (among others) George Carey, the second Baron Hunsden, and most importantly, the Lord Chamberlain (and thus the patron of Shakespeare's company), into the Order of the Garter on April 23, 1597. In the Oxford edition the editor T.W. Craik explains that Carey's commissioning of the play is a more probable reason for its existence than the legendary story of Queen Elizabeth requesting a play that showed Falstaff in love, which although charming, is not supported by any evidence. The play itself, however, contains references to both Elizabeth and the Order during the masque-like final scene (5.5). First, Pistol, disguised as Hobgoblin, refers to "our radiant queen" when giving directives to the town children (dressed as fairies) to make sure that the town chimneys have been kept clean. Then, Mistress Quickly, disguised as the Fairy Queen, gives them the following instructions almost in the form of an incantation:

About, about;

Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:

Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room:

That it may stand till the perpetual doom,

In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit,

Worthy the owner, and the owner it.

The several chairs of order look you scour

With juice of balm and every precious flower:

Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,

With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!

And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,

Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:

The expressure that it bears, green let it be,

More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;

And 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' write

In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white;

Let sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery,

Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee:

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.

Unfortunately, these wonderful lines are often cut from the play, and when this is done, so are its ties to its history.

One of the most dangerous things that can happen in a classroom is ideological indoctrination, and it happens a lot, and at every level. It's dangerous because it doesn't lead to creative thinking, only to intellectual submission, no matter how "good" are the perceived intentions of the instructor. Educators should keep in mind that their goal should be a search for truth, for both their students and themselves, and that even-handed consideration of every available viewpoint is the way to achieve it. Andre Gide once said it best, "Believe those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it". All of this is another reason for keeping the study of Shakespeare central in education, because as literature, it never loses sight of these concepts. It raises all sorts of philosophical and moral questions without answering them. And what educators of experience, from Socrates to today, usually find is that raising them is all that is necessary. The student, or audience member, will do the rest.

Further to yesterday's post on Shakespeare's reported lack of revision during the writing process, I was reminded of an observation made by a very great music teacher I once had. Essentially, he compared music to tissue, in which every part is dependent on every other part. Therefore, in the composition process, every move resounds with implications for the rest of the piece, and any change made early in a piece will require others to be made later. So it's in a composer's best interest to have thorough comprehension of all matters connected to form, both small-scale and large, before any decisions are made. This, evidently, is exactly what Shakespeare had as a dramatist. His plays are the proof of it; they are, for most commentators and readers, the most unified works of art in literature. And this brings me back to my summation yesterday: The primary concern in the study of Shakespeare should be the attempt to understand, as precisely as possible, what that knowledge entailed.

"The players often mention it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing; whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand.'"

Thus spake Ben Jonson on the subject of Shakespeare's use of (or lack of) revision during his writing process, which remains, for the most part, a mystery to this all-ending day. (I wonder if there's a more important area of study in regard to Shakespeare than the attempt to understand his methods of working. I can't think of one, to be honest.) And if it's true that Shakespeare didn't revise much, if at all, then we must consider the implications of the fact. Perhaps one way of considering it is to compare his process to that of a jazz musician, who must spend many years of study (on his or her instrument, harmony and rhythm, the history of music, and much more), in order to be able to improvise, or as it's sometimes called, "compose in the moment". In this style, no editing is possible. It seems likely that Shakespeare prepared himself for his work in a comparable way, and with the deadlines and responsibilities of a theatre professional always in the background, it may well have been a necessity.

By the way, I don't know what mood (or "humour") Jonson was in when he wrote the above, but I prefer to think of the following (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/benshake.htm) as a more accurate representation of his views on Shakespeare.

I'm not sure that there is an artist in any field that can compare with Shakespeare in terms of the depiction and understanding of time. Technically, his plays are largely the result of his treatment of it, and to get to know them from the point of view of craft, it's a vital area of study. I've mentioned it before in another context, but one of the many changes that Shakespeare made to his source material for Romeo and Juliet, Arthur Brooke's The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), was to telescope a four-month period into one of four days, while still allowing breathing room for characters such as the Nurse and Mercutio, and maintaining the audience's belief throughout. In terms of theme, time is central to many, perhaps most, of the plays, but some, such as Macbeth, are almost entirely absorbed by it: The play is perhaps best approached as a dramatic example of how people can destroy the present by obsession with the future. And in Henry IV, part Two, the king (i.e. Bolingbroke), nearing the end of his life, which was filled with civil wars, rebellions, illness, has these lines, as powerful as any in Shakespeare, about the entangled natures of life and time:

O God! that one might read the book of fate,

And see the revolution of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent,

Weary of solid firmness, melt itself

Into the sea; and other times to see

The beachy girdle of the ocean

Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock,

And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,

The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,

What perils past, what crosses to ensue,

Would shut the book and sit him down and die.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that a very important aspect of Shakespeare is the fact that the work has been both inspirational and educational to other writers. Not only the plays, but also the careers that allowed them to be written (by which I mean those of Shakespeare and his colleagues) are now touchstones for anyone involved with literature. Sometimes, it takes only a few well-chosen words to conjure up images of the Globe, the actors, the audience, which continue to symbolize human aspiration for truth, art and betterment of thinking. Here's an example from Auden's 1949 poem, "Memorial for the City":

Saints tamed, poets acclaimed the raging Herod of the will;

The groundlings wept as on a secular stage

The grand and the bad went to ruin in thundering verse;

Sundered by reason and treason the City

Found invisible ground for concord in measured sound,

While wood and stone learned the shameless

Games of man, to flatter, to show off, be pompous, to romp...

I wish I could find a link to the poem in its entirety; it's as powerful as this excerpt would suggest.

One of the things that I like the most about Shakespeare is the creativity that his work inspires in others. In fact, in the 400 years since, Shakespeare has probably taken on an importance at least equal to virtually any other body of literature, and knowledge of it is a necessity for anyone wanting to either get a comprehensive background in literature, or to participate in it as a creative agent. I'd go even further: for a young person with an interest in literature, there isn't a better place to start. A poem that argues all of this, in a subtle way, is John Milton's "An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare", which makes the interesting point that Shakespeare's true legacy (and lasting monument) is in the contributions that he made to the minds of other people. Have a look:

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,

Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dodt make us marble with too much conceiving;

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

In terms of the number of lines, Hamlet is the longest play in Shakespeare, and the title character the longest part. Of course, the fact fits in with one of its central themes: the relationship between words and deeds, and how they mix in human minds and lives. One great example occurs in 1.3. As Laertes is leaving to return to Paris, he says goodbye to Ophelia by warning her not to trust in Hamlet's romantic interest. The scene begins thus:

LAERTES

My necessaries are embark'd: farewell:

And, sister, as the winds give benefit

And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,

But let me hear from you.

OPHELIA

Do you doubt that?

LAERTES

For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,

Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,

A violet in the youth of primy nature,

Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,

The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.

OPHELIA

No more but so?

He then goes on to explain that Hamlet, as a prince, can't entirely speak for himself, and if Ophelia gets fooled by his words that she will lose her reputation permanently. This takes him thirty-five lines. Her answer, one of the most wonderful moments in the play, tellingly, receives less than one line in response:

OPHELIA

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,

As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;

Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES

O, fear me not.

Here's a link to the scene (http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/hamlet.1.3.html).

The Merry Wives of Windsor is not only one of the least respected plays in the canon, it's often openly derided, particularly by commentators who have taken a personal liking to Falstaff the character. It seems as if they find it hard to watch him suffer at the hands of the title characters, their husbands and other various pranksters. Some even question whether it's the "real" Falstaff who appears in the play: Harold Bloom calls this one, "pseudo-Falstaff". I find this a bit much. In fact, the Windsor-based Falstaff has several lines that rate with his funniest, including one from the opening scene, wherein he answers the accusations of Justice Shallow in his inimitable way:

FALSTAFF

Now, Master Shallow, you'll complain of me to the king?

ROBERT SHALLOW

Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and

broke open my lodge.

FALSTAFF

But not kissed your keeper's daughter?

ROBERT SHALLOW

Tut, a pin! this shall be answered.

FALSTAFF

I will answer it straight; I have done all this.

That is now answered.

I'll be writing more about this under-appreciated play in posts to come.

Having revisited Shakespeare's songs for the purposes of the last few posts, it occurred to me again that his knowledge of human emotion springs largely from his appreciation of the importance of love. In fact, one way of approaching a Shakespeare character is to try to understand where he or she is positioned in regard to it: Is it a promise? A memory? Has it been thwarted? Does the emotion confuse them? Do they feel abandoned by it? Swept away in it? Even the greatest villains are motivated by it (for an example, see the opening soliloquy to Richard III). Even the fiercest warriors can find themselves stopped by it (Coriolanus), and great lovers can be turned to raging fighters by its loss (Troilus). And what about the writer himself? Many look to the sonnets as possibly carrying autobiographical clues, partially because they are so deeply about love that they largely exclude settings, names, and stories, and leave us with virtually nothing but descriptions of pure emotion. And although I argued against the sonnets being interpreted in this manner in an earlier post (October 12, 2010), when I think about Sonnet 23, it's hard not to feel that I was wrong:

As an unperfect actor on the stage

Who with his fear is put besides his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart.

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,

O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.

O, let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love and look for recompense

More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.

O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:

To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

To close with my discussion of Shakespeare's songs in light of Stephen Sondheim's discussion of the importance of clarity, simplicity and perfect rhyme in song lyrics (which can be found in the opening sections of his 201o book, Finishing the Hat), here's a link to the Songs page from Shakespeare Online: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quotes/shakespearesongs.html. Give them a read and you'll wonder if Sondheim based his philosophy entirely on Shakespeare. (One could do worse.) And here's a link to a lovely setting, by John Wilson (onetime principal composer of the King's Men), of a song not found on the page above, from 4.1 of Measure for Measure and usually referred to as "Take, oh take those lips away": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65lozTGC0go&feature=related.

Here's another example of how the artistry displayed in the writing of Shakespeare's songs shows a great deal of overlap with the aesthetic theories of Stephen Sondheim, as presented in his 2010 book, Finishing the Hat: In the cleverly titled introductory section, "Rhyme and Its Reasons", he makes a case for the importance of rhyme in lyric writing, and a very specific type of rhyme, "true" or "perfect" rhyme, which he defines as: "two words or phrases whose final accented syllables sound alike except for the consonant sounds which precede them". He goes on to make a case against all of the types of rhyme that are known as "near" rhymes being used in writing songs for the theatre. He quotes another composer-lyricist, Craig Carnelia (best known for his work on the musicals, Working and Sweet Smell of Success), to summarize his case: "'True rhyming is a necessity in the theatre, as a guide for the ear to know what it has just heard. Our language is so complex and difficult, and there are so many similar words and sounds that mean different things, that it's confusing enough without using near rhymes that only acquaint the ear with a vowel... [A near rhyme is] not useful to the primary purpose of a lyric, which is to be heard, and it teaches the ear to not trust or to disregard a lyric, to not listen, to simply let the music wash over you.'"

Now, back to Shakespeare. In yesterday's post, I included Balthasar's song, from Much Ado About Nothing, as an example of another of Sondheim's principles: the importance of simplicity and clarity. But, amazingly, it works just as well as an example of the topic under discussion today. The song contains sixteen lines, with every one of them a part of a perfect rhyme.

Further to yesterday's post regarding the aesthetic principles that have guide Stephen Sondheim's approach to the writing of lyrics (which can be found in his 2010 book called Finishing the Hat), here is a telling quote that may shed some light on not only his own work but on some of the distinctive qualities of Shakespeare's songs, as well: "Poetry is an art of concision, lyrics of expansion. Poems depend on packed images, on resonance and juxtaposition, on density. Every reader absorbs a poem at his own pace, inflecting it with his own rhythms, stresses and tone. The tempo is dictated less by what the poet intends than by the reader's comprehension." (Before going further, I should mention that Sondheim includes a note regarding his decision to use the pronouns "his", "him", etc. to include both genders, "rather than hacking through a jungle of convoluted syntax...") The point of interest here is the fact that with a song, and particularly if it was written for the theatre, the music can't allow a listener to review and reconsider the words the way that poetry can, and therefore one of Sondheim's basic tenets is "Less is More."

OK, now have another look at the song from Love's Labour's Lost posted yesterday, and see if you find, as I do, that the simplicity and clarity that Sondheim values so highly were also thoroughly understood by Shakespeare. And here's more evidence, in the form of the song sung by Balthasar in act two, scene three of Much Ado About Nothing:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never:

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,

Of dumps so dull and heavy;

The fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leavy:

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

In Stephen Sondheim's excellent new book entitled, Finishing the Hat (2010), he delineates some of the aesthetic principles that guide his work. Some of these have to do with the differences between poetry and lyric writing, and over the next couple of posts I'm going to see if they apply to Shakespeare's songs, as well. My hunch is that they do, but we'll see. In any event, Shakespeare's songs are often considered as some of the most beautiful to have been written in the language, and I'm looking forward to seeing if I can learn something about the concepts that went into their composition by comparing them with Sondheim's approach. It'll take a bit of time, but I'll try to get it done in the next few days, if I can. In the meantime, for your consideration, here's the song that closes Love's Labour's Lost:

SPRING.

When daisies pied and violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he: Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,

When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he: Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear!

WINTER.

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail

And Tom bears logs into the hall

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-whit;

Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow

And coughing drowns the parson's saw

And birds sit brooding in the snow

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-whit;

Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

James Shapiro's 2010 book, Contested Will, is a very good summary of all of the theories that together comprise what's known as the "authorship question", or the belief that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. (You'll notice that I've written that the book summarizes the theories - summarizing the evidence in favour of the position is much easier. In fact, I'll do it here: There isn't any.) In April of last year, Shapiro also wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times about the forthcoming movie entitled, Anonymous, which according to its director, Roland Emmerich, will tell "how the plays written by the Earl of Oxford ended up labelled 'William Shakespeare'." In the article (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/11/opinion/la-oe-shapiro11-2010apr11), Shapiro devastates this statement, along with a couple of others made by Mr. Emmerich, including this one about what is, for me, at any rate, the crux of the issue: Why on earth would someone not take credit for creating the most astonishing body of art (literary or otherwise) the world has ever seen? "And the explanation as to why Shakespeare would have gotten credit for plays and poems the Earl of Oxford wrote? The 'real facts' had to be hushed up because a Tudor prince could never be seen to stoop to the lowly business of playwriting."

If the earl in question (Edward de Vere) had the talent to write the plays, would he not have also had the talent to persuade others of the importance of his work? Would he not have made mincemeat of any argument against "lowly" playwrights? Would a playwright, of "noble" birth, allow his life's mission to be openly derided without rebuttal, and then write these lines for Henry V (who says them in reply to his future wife Katherine informing him that it is not customary for unmarried couples of France to kiss before the wedding): "O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults..."

Having mentioned the Tower of London in yesterday's post put me in mind of Sonnet 64, which also mentions this particular type of structure. In this case, though, there's more than one, and the fact that they are "down-razed" has made the poem a reminder of 9/11 to many readers (including this one). It could be argued that the poem's central theme is that of time's cruelty and what we can do about it (not waste it, basically). But poetry is magic, as Auden once wrote, and themes change as our minds do, as does everything.

Sonnet 64

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main,

Increasing store with loss and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Perhaps the central controversy involved with Richard III is the degree of its historical accuracy. Many scholars are of the opinion that the play was written as propaganda for the Tudor dynasty, not unlike one of Shakespeare's primary sources for the play, Sir Thomas More's The History of King Richard III, as well as several earlier plays with the same subject. Of course, Shakespeare and the other playwrights of the time had to walk a tightrope when dealing with topics like this one. That's why it's so astonishing to find this bit of coded commentary on whether or not "history" can be trusted. It comes from the first scene of the third act, and it occurs as part of a conversation between Richard, his henchman the Duke of Buckingam, and the young Prince Edward, who should have been crowned Edward V, but was instead murdered in the Tower of London (at Richard's orders according to the play, but there's disagreement on the subject among historians). The young prince shows his intelligence in his remarks regarding the difference between history that is "upon record" versus the type that is "reported", and of course the remarks can be extrapolated to apply to the entire play. And it's worth noting that Buckingham's reply to the prince's follow-up question isn't true. Here's the excerpt:

PRINCE EDWARD

Say, uncle Gloucester, if our brother come,

Where shall we sojourn till our coronation?

GLOUCESTER

Where it seems best unto your royal self.

If I may counsel you, some day or two

Your highness shall repose you at the Tower:

Then where you please, and shall be thought most fit

For your best health and recreation.

PRINCE EDWARD

I do not like the Tower, of any place.

Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?

BUCKINGHAM

He did, my gracious lord, begin that place;

Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified.

PRINCE EDWARD

Is it upon record, or else reported

Successively from age to age, he built it?

BUCKINGHAM

Upon record, my gracious lord.

PRINCE EDWARD

But say, my lord, it were not register'd,

Methinks the truth should live from age to age,

As 'twere retail'd to all posterity,

Even to the general all-ending day.

GLOUCESTER

[Aside] So wise so young, they say, do never

live long.

PRINCE EDWARD

What say you, uncle?

GLOUCESTER

I say, without characters, fame lives long.

[Aside]

Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity,

I moralize two meanings in one word.

PRINCE EDWARD

That Julius Caesar was a famous man;

With what his valour did enrich his wit,

His wit set down to make his valour live

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror;

For now he lives in fame, though not in life.

Looking for Richard, Al Pacino's 1996 documentary about the process involved in preparing a production of a Shakespeare play, is starting to look like one of the best Shakespeare films ever made. Among its many qualities is the fact that it's an honest demonstration of the research that goes into an actor and/or director's work. In the film, Pacino never pretends to be something he isn't: he shows himself consulting historians, scholars and other theatre professionals as he tries to get inside the play. The film does show him to be what he is, though: a great actor, who brings tremendous life and excitement to his lines. We also see some very memorable (albeit brief) performances from several other actors including Penelope Allen as Queen Elizabeth Woodville, Kevin Conway as Lord Hastings and Kevin Spacey as Buckingham. Another thing that I like about the film is the fact that it doesn't attempt to turn the play itself into something it isn't. Pacino treats it as a history play, the correct approach, which should be presented accurately and then left for the audience to interpret. Many scholars and other directors, including some in the film, should take this cue. Here's a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8WG1OVBAHk.

Further to yesterday's post, I'll continue with my defense of Shakespeare's use of puns by having a look at a scene from Hamlet which shows how they are often used in argument. In this case (1.3), Polonius is questioning Ophelia about the nature of her relationship with the prince, and receives the reply: "He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders/ Of his affection to me". Both the answer and the word "tenders" infuriate him, and he becomes fixated on it and attempts to use it as a way into Ophelia's way of thinking. Thus we get the following, in which he puns on the word three times, while showing that he's aware of the device (almost apologizing for it), and repeating another word of Ophelia's ("think") which he also attempts to twist to his advantage:

LORD POLONIUS

Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

OPHELIA

I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

LORD POLONIUS

Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;

That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,

Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;

Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,

Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool.

I'd argue that it's a mistake to think of punning as no more than a stylistic choice. Rather, it's an integral part of conversation and argument, and happens all the time.

One aspect of Shakespeare's writing that has received quite a bit of attention, and a lot of it unfavourable, is his use of the pun. Samuel Johnson, a very astute Shakespeare commentator, thought it was his tragic flaw: "A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller! he follows it to all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible." On another occasion he compared Shakespeare's punning to Cleopatra's rejection of the world for love, which is a bit hyperbolic, but it does get his point across. Personally, I'm of two minds on the subject. At times, in certain plays, the wordplay seems to be a bit too prevalent, to the point of interfering with what's going on otherwise. At others, of course, it can be funny and/or thought-provoking. But I'm also starting to think that Shakespeare's decision-making process was similar to that of a great musician: he'd set up the situation (or problem) and let it resolve itself naturally according to the laws of physics and/or psychology. And the force in play in regard to puns is simply this: they are very, very important, an integral part of conversation and thought, and a source of generation for language itself. Over the next week or so, I'll be trying to support these contentions, and to demonstrate why they were so important to Shakespeare.

Here's an example of what I was referring to yesterday (i.e. the importance of building meaning line by line when reading Shakespeare). It comes from act one, scene five of Macbeth, shortly after we first meet Lady Macbeth. The scene opens with her reading the letter from Macbeth which informs her of the prophecies made by the weird sisters. She is delighted by the news, but is simultaneously worried that Macbeth's nature, "too full o' the milk of human kindness", will not allow him to seize the opportunity presented. She then resolves to bring him to it, perhaps more quickly than she has imagined, because immediately, a messenger enters with important news:

LADY MACBETH

What is your tidings?

MESSENGER

The king comes here to-night.

LADY MACBETH

Thou'rt mad to say it:

Is not thy master with him? who, were't so,

Would have inform'd for preparation.

MESSENGER

So please you, it is true: our thane is coming:

One of my fellows had the speed of him,

Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more

Than would make up his message.

LADY MACBETH

Give him tending;

He brings great news.

[Exit Messenger]

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements.

The final sentence of this excerpt is the really famous one, but unless we read line by line, building each new idea, image or piece of information carefully on what came before, we won't see that the "raven" referred to is, in fact, the colleague of the messenger in the scene, who rode so fast that he was "almost dead for breath", with "scarcely more/ Than would make up his message".

This isn't a new topic for me, but the importance of reading a Shakespeare text line by line occurred to me again today as I was reviewing the first act of Richard III. The unfortunate fact is that many strands crucial to understanding the plot are cut in most theatre productions (and virtually every film version) in a play that, as the conclusion of a tetralogy, is already quite complex on its own. Not only that, but virtually every line is written as a rejoinder to what was said immediately before. Therefore any excision will lead to a line being stranded on its own at the risk of completely baffling an audience member. Directors who make such decisions usually do so in the name of trying to simplify things, and it's ironic because what's usually achieved is the opposite. (And if the goal isn't simplification, then time considerations are brought up as the reason; my solution: pick up the tempo.) My main point with all of this is that the best, perhaps the only, way of thoroughly understanding a Shakespeare play is to read it with an effort appropriate to what went into its writing.

The comparison of the characters of Richard III and Macbeth is a critical consideration of long standing. The practice dates back to the eighteenth century, in fact, and a bit of thought on the matter makes it easy to see why. They are both monarchs who achieve their positions through treachery and murder, whose crimes become increasingly vicious until they eventually reach the level of infanticide, who lose all manner of human connection, who become conscience-wracked and are eventually defeated in battle by nemeses who personify the attributes that they've left aside in their pursuit of power. There's more, including the fact that both were renowned for their feats in battle before their turn to villainy, and that the historical counterparts to the characters each have quite a number of vigorous defenders who have argued that Shakespeare's depictions of them were unfair, and were meant to flatter his own monarchs (Elizabeth I in the case of Richard III, and James I in the case of Macbeth). But the really surprising thing in all of this, after all of the parallels that can be drawn, is that the characters have very little in common in psychological, philosophical or dramatic ways. And to paraphrase several commentators, a dramatist of lesser skill would have made them interchangeable.

Harold Goddard made some very interesting remarks in regard to the Henry VI plays in his brief essay on the subject in his 1951 classic, The Meaning of Shakespeare. His central argument is that Henry VI, as a king, is not meant to be interpreted as a weak ruler (and therefore as a partial cause for the Wars of the Roses), but rather as one who embodies all of the attributes desired in a monarch (as listed by Malcolm in Macbeth): "justice, verity, temperance, stableness,/ Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,/ Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude". The tragedy of the play is that the mindset of the people of the time would not allow such a king to rule, and these attributes, which are personified in him, are swept aside by the forces of ambition, greed, thirst for power, etc. And it's Goddard's feeling (and mine, too) that questions of this nature, which were initially raised by these plays, established Shakespeare's mission for him. In fact, it may have been put another way (albeit in a different context) in sonnet 65: "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea/ Whose action is no stronger than a flower?"

An important thing for a reader to keep in mind when reading commentary on Shakespeare, and this includes this blog, is that all of it is written after the fact. In other words, the commentator is dealing with a finished product, in this case a play or poem, and working from there. It is a very different situation from the one that Shakespeare was in when he was writing. He was on the other side of the process entirely. I mention this because it occasionally occurs when reading criticism that a mistake in tone reduces the effectiveness of the argument in question. By tone, I mean the writer's attitude toward the subject and toward him or herself. An error in logic occurs when a writer positions him or herself above Shakespeare in some regard simply because he or she came later, and therefore has read Freud, or has used a computer, or some such thing. This doesn't follow. There has not been a writer before or since with the accomplishments of Shakespeare, and a commentator who is not aware of the fact should not be taken too seriously. And if there is not an understanding regarding the difference between writing about a play and writing one, he or she shouldn't be read at all.

People are usually surprised when they learn that the longest soliloquy in Shakespeare doesn't occur in Hamlet, Othello or any of the other plays associated with the technique - I know I was when I discovered that it occurs in the second scene of the third act of Henry VI, Part Three where it is spoken by the third son of the Duke of York, Richard, the recently nominated Duke of Gloucester. In it, the audience discovers that the character, like his father before him (mocked and killed by Lancastrian nobles in a brutal scene in 1.4) has plans to take the throne, but in this case, it's his older brothers more than the House of Lancaster that are in his way. The soliloquy contains many of the qualities that we associate with later ones: the working out of problems and decisions in front of the audience, the psychological realism, as well as the sources of what would become known as the stream-of-consciousness technique. And it's interesting to note that the three Henry VI plays are panoramic in effect, with many important roles, but with none bigger than 400 words or so. But this speech was a turning point for Shakespeare, and this character (who becomes better known as Richard III, and who speaks 1171 lines in the play named for him that follows) was the impetus for it. Here's an excerpt from the soliloquy in question:

Why, then, I do but dream on sovereignty;

Like one that stands upon a promontory,

And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,

Wishing his foot were equal with his eye,

And chides the sea that sunders him from thence,

Saying, he'll lade it dry to have his way:

So do I wish the crown, being so far off;

And so I chide the means that keeps me from it;

And so I say, I'll cut the causes off,

Flattering me with impossibilities.

My eye's too quick, my heart o'erweens too much,

Unless my hand and strength could equal them.

The Henry VI plays were a major determiner regarding the direction of the rest of Shakespeare's career. It seems that scholars are not uniformly in agreement over these being the earliest of the plays, but they were, at the very least, among the first five. They were almost certainly written before Marlowe's English history play, Edward II (completed in 1594) and a big influence on its writing, the opposite from what popular opinion and culture (Shakespeare in Love, for example) tell us about which writer was learning and which was leading the way. And many scholars are now giving their support to what is known as the "early start" theory, according to which Shakespeare began his writing career in 1586, the same year as Marlowe's.

The writing of three Henry VI plays, it seems obvious, also taught Shakespeare a lot, because from the experience he found a way of working that would allow his greatest and most unique strengths to be incorporated into the process, i.e. his ability to find psychological realism in virtually any character in any situation. And from them, a character emerged who was to be the first of his many larger-than-life protagonists. I'll be writing about him tomorrow.

Even though the three Henry VI plays are some of the least performed and appreciated in the canon, their writing was an incredibly ambitious undertaking that had large-scale influence on the rest of Shakespeare's career. Today, I'd like to focus on the thematic content of the plays which treat English wars both foreign (the Hundred Years War) and civil (the Wars of the Roses) as well as the machinations and treacheries that led to them. In fact, one reason that the plays were not performed for most of the last 400 years (they've been seen somewhat more frequently since the 1960s), is their almost unrelenting darkness and brutality. And I'm not sure that this can be attributed to Shakespeare: aside from the telescoping and conflation necessary for dramatic purposes, the events are portrayed with great accuracy. The plays show things as they really were. Their creation must have been quite an affecting experience for a young writer on a psychological level, to say the least. My belief is that Shakespeare's submersion in the violence and chaos these plays contain led to the central mission of his career: the exploration for the causes of war and injustice and the examination of what it means to be human.

The three parts of Henry VI are dazzling plays by any standards other than Shakespeare's. Compared to his best work, there's no question that they come up short, but then that's not really a fair comparison, because the fact is that the writing of these early plays was what allowed him to learn his poetic and dramatic crafts so thoroughly. There's no way that the rest of Shakespeare's work would have been written without the earliest plays: Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, and particularly these three, because I think they were the most responsible for what followed, in terms of both technique and content. Over the next couple of posts, I'll try to convince you as to why, but for today let's simply consider what an ambitious undertaking it was for a young writer to adapt the Wars of the Roses for the stage. Michael Taylor puts it best in one of the notes to his excellent introduction to his 2003 edition of the Oxford Henry VI, Part One: "Many commentators have pointed out the sheer unlikelihood of conceiving a play in three parts at this time. A two-part play such as Marlowe's Tamburlaine was itself a daring venture; a three-part play, so the argument runs, would have been inconceivable. (Although it is always dangerous to talk about the inconceivable when we are dealing with Shakespeare.)"

I've written about the importance of the poetic aspect of Shakespeare's work a few times in the past, I know, but it's under-discussed as a central factor of his work in my opinion, at least in the commentary that I've been reading lately (which is excellent in other ways, however). My point today is the following: The evidence shows that Shakespeare took as much pride in being a poet as he did in being a dramatist (for example, the only works that he took the time to personally publish were the two long narrative poems, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis), and this forced his play-writing to match the highest qualities of the best poetry. Among the most important of these qualities is its truth-finding nature, because if a poem does not contain honest and accurate thoughts on the human experience, it quite simply doesn't work as poetry. And the fact that Shakespeare was always concerned with making his writing do so also explains one of the central paradoxes of his career: The writer known for his unsurpassed verbal prowess is also the one whose work is the most realistic in its depiction of human nature.

I've seen it mentioned a few times recently that Shakespeare's couplets, both those at the ends of sonnets and those used to delineate the ends of scenes in the plays (where they were used, the most prevalent theory goes, to prepare the actors in the wings for their entrances), are generally considered to be of a lesser quality than the rest of his writing. If we assume this is so, for the sake of argument, one reason for it, in my opinion, is that Shakespeare seems to have been the type of writer who found it technically more inspiring to write toward something rather than to end something. This would also help to explain the similar decision, albeit on a much larger scale, to write the history plays in the order that he did, i.e. working backwards, essentially, via the use of what we now call prequels. But the best explanation that I've seen is found in W.H. Auden's Lectures on Shakespeare (published in 2000), in which he states, regarding sonnet 65:

"Notice how frequently the concluding couplets of the sonnets are poor. Unlike many of even the greatest artists, Shakespeare is not interested in completely flawless wholes. He says what he wants to say and lets the sonnet end anyhow. But that is the fault of the major artist, for a minor one always completes the work carefully. For instance, when we read Dostoevsky, we feel, yes, this is wonderful, this is marvelous, now go home and write it all over again. And yet if he did, the effect might well be lost. Most of us, however, can't get away with that attitude toward our writing." Here's the poem referred to:

Sonnet LXV

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out

Against the wreckful siege of battering days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Further to yesterday's post on Gary Taylor's introduction to the Oxford Henry V, one of his most compelling arguments (which happens to fit into my theory regarding this play being Shakespeare's epic) is the description by which he shows the large-scale organization of the work. I'll give you the quote in full, which I believe is accurate, but it is from my notes, so I apologize in advance for any discrepancy. Taylor writes that the play "advances dialectically: no sooner is a unity established than we are made aware of what that unity excludes, until that too can be contained. After the divisions of the first two scenes, Henry and his court are by the end of act one united in their common purpose - and immediately we are shown Eastcheap brawling. After Southampton, Henry can leave behind an undivided England - and we are reminded, through Falstaff, and those who have loved him, of an entire world Henry has excluded. So the process continues until, after the achievement of Agincourt, in the consummation of the dialect, Burgundy insists that the harmony must include France as well as England."

My contention is that Shakespeare was writing an epic not only for the people of England, but for all people who want to live in a civilized and just manner. He used the very symbol of patriotism and empire-building to subvert those ideals, and to show us a way of thinking that we must aspire to if we are to have a peaceful future. The play shows us that differences of opinion (as are written into the role of the protagonist and the fact that he is shown having to accept views opposed to his own, even those of common soldiers such as Williams) are not a nuisance, they are a necessity. Only in tyrannies are opposing views silenced, and only in tyrannies is no thought given to the effects our actions might have on those not, at first glance, on our side.

The most concise and accurate way of defining "epic" is to consider it as a literary work designed to teach a people its own traditions. In the Shakespeare canon, the play that best suits this definition is Henry V. And over the next couple of posts, I'm going to try to explain my reasons for thinking this.

First of all, in the Oxford edition, edited by Gary Taylor, it's explained that there is no evidence that Henry V was a popular success in 1599 (a date for its completion that can be given with relative certainty, due to the fact that the still-in-progress Irish expedition of the Earl of Essex is mentioned in the Chorus to act five - the only reference to what we would call a current event in Shakespeare). And among the many possible reasons for this is the fact that the play is built on the dialectic concept, and thus the character of Henry V is much more complex than the rally-round-the-flag figure that they might have been expecting. This is still the case today, in fact, and the essay (which I've mentioned before) that comes the closest to delineating Shakespeare's method in the play is "Rabbits, Ducks and Henry V" by Norman Rabkin, which posits the idea that the author meant to show two equally compelling views of Henry (patriotic hero or Machiavellian war criminal) and force the audience member to choose between them. This would have thwarted expectations, and still does, I think it's fair to say. And the entire play is built on variations of this approach. More on all of this tomorrow.

In Roger Warren's very interesting introduction to his Oxford edition of Henry VI, Part Two (2003), he delineates the surprising complexity involved in working with a play that has only two early versions. In this case, there is the Quarto edition (Q) of 1594 that was given the title The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster as well as the one found in the First Folio of the plays of Shakespeare (F), published in 1623, where it's titled Henry VI, Part Two. The difficulties begin with the fact that "Q is roughly a third shorter than F, and differs from it in most of its readings, even though the basic material of each scene is the same. Only a handful of passages are identical in the two texts." As a result, there are two opposing positions regarding the relationship of the two versions. The first is the belief that the Quarto version is a "reported" text, i.e. one that was put together by people involved with the production, most likely some of the actors, and with very little involvement from Shakespeare himself. The other is that both versions were written by Shakespeare, with the Folio being the result of more time and a good deal of authorial revision. Warren's findings on the subject are surprising: he finds some evidence for both sides. From this, we might perhaps conjecture that Shakespeare may have used a reported version of his own work as the basis for the finished version - a fascinating hypothesis, with many implications for understanding Shakespeare's working methods and motivations. I recommend Warren's introduction very highly, particularly since my summary is, inevitably, an over-simplification of his thoughts on the subject.

One of the important areas of contention among editors of Shakespeare plays is explained very well in the introduction to the chapter entitled, Textual Criticism and Bibliography from Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, edited by Russ McDonald. In it, he summarizes the issue as follows: In the past the assumption was that "a skilled editorial weaving of folio and quarto readings will give us an authentic record of Shakespeare's original intentions..." But now there is a growing movement toward looking at the many quartos and the Folio in a very different way, that being that "the multiple versions in which the plays exist represent different, authorially created texts of these plays", and therefore the belief underlying the old attitude is a mistaken one, and there is no ideal, perfect version that editors should be trying to re-create. It's a very interesting field of study, certainly, and one with big implications for everyone interested in Shakespeare. And I mention all of this today for two reasons: first, to try to balance out yesterday's post in which I went off a bit regarding what I feel is a wrong direction in Shakespeare scholarship (i.e. appropriating his writing for ideological purposes). In other words, I think the opposite about this field of study - this one is a right direction for it. The second reason is that it relates to some interesting things that I learned about the different versions of 2 Henry VI, which I'll be writing about tomorrow.

Another musical analogy to Shakespeare's career occurred to me yesterday, this one from an anecdote I once heard about the great Hungarian composer, Bela Bartok. Apparently, a young music student once asked him, "How do you become a composer?" and got the reply, "I have no idea." The student then said, "But you became a composer", to which Bartok said, "But I didn't have to ask". This came to mind as I was thinking of Shakespeare's lost years, which were most probably either spent in an acting company (perhaps Lord Strange's Men) or teaching in a grammar school, but were definitely not spent at a university. It's obvious now that his independent course of study was the right answer for his work, particularly if the higher learning institutions of his time were anything like the ones in ours, i.e. overrun with ideologies and the co-opting of literature for agenda-driven purposes. I find it ironic (and disturbing, to be honest) that the study of Shakespeare, a writer who made it his mission to transcend petty thought, is now used in such ways. But there is some consolation: the people who do so, unlike their subject, won't be remembered in four hundred years.

Some of my favourite moments in Shakespeare fall into the category of hyperbole, which could be defined as exaggeration for descriptive purposes. And often there's a touch of humour involved as a bonus. A wonderful example occurs in act four, scene one of Henry VIII, as two gentlemen standing on a street in Westminster, having just watched the passing of the procession after the coronation of Anne Bullen (as she's called in the play), are joined by a third, who was inside the Abbey for the event. The first gentleman greets him with: "God save you, sir! Where have you been broiling?" He then receives the reply: "Among the crowd i' the Abbey; where a finger/ Could not be wedged in more..." That says it all, doesn't it?

I can't find the precise quotation at the moment, and when I do I'll post it, but the great poet and Shakespeare commentator Samuel Coleridge once wrote something about the goal of poetry being to turn the reader into an active creative agent. The thought not only goes a long way toward explaining why poetry is often considered difficult, but also why, paradoxically, the longest-lasting of the arts is usually the least regarded (or popular) in its own time: it requires a great deal from its audience. Of course the enduring and ever-increasing nature of poetry is one of Shakespeare's great themes, mentioned most frequently in the sonnets, but put into practice most fully in the plays, where it is virtually impossible to read more than a page or two without encountering an astonishing poetic image. One example that I came across recently is found in the opening lines of the first scene from act four of Henry VI, Part Two, wherein the captain of a ship carrying prisoners, including the disguised Earl of Suffolk (who is soon to discovered and beheaded), gives this grisly description of nightfall, which he personifies as being drawn in a chariot by "jades", which in this case seems to refer not to overworked horses (as is usually the case), but to low-flying dragons:

The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day

Is crept into the bosom of the sea;

And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades

That drag the tragic melancholy night;

Who, with their drowsy, slow and flagging wings,

Clip dead men's graves and from their misty jaws

Breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.

The very early history plays known as the three parts of Henry VI are the subject of my next lecture at the Atwater library (Tuesday, March 1 at 11 am or Wednesday, March 2 at 7 pm), and they have been unfortunately overlooked for the better part of 400 years. In fact, it was only in the 1960's that they began to be performed again, albeit sporadically. There were a number of reasons for this, including the undeniable fact that they compare poorly to the Henriad (i.e. Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V), but in comparison with these, what plays don't? Compared to the work of any other playwright, in other words, these plays stand up very well. Also, we have to keep in mind that these works were necessary to Shakespeare's development. Through them he learned more about his dual crafts of drama and poetry, while sharpening his philosophical and psychological insights, and, in my opinion, coming to a realization about the use to which he was going to put his incomparable talents. My contention here is that because the content of these plays is so relentlessly dark, treacherous and violent, they created a need for him to try to understand human motivations and to help his audience do so as well. If Harold Goddard is right in saying that the over-arching theme of Shakespeare's work is the futility and evil of war, then it was with these plays that it became apparent to him.

Further to yesterday's post regarding editors, I must mention Gary Taylor's splendid job in editing and commenting on Henry V for the 1998 Oxford edition. I highly recommend it for anyone who would like to gain insight into this astonishing play. Taylor's contention that Shakespeare's interest in the character may have been a result of his identifying with the experiences of a historical figure who had to choose between his perceived mission and the perception of his humanity by others is compelling. And while there can be no comparison made between the accomplishments of the two (Shakespeare's being infinitely more contributive and important), there are perhaps parallels that could be drawn regarding their philosophical and psychological development. And the thought that Shakespeare may have seen another point of comparison in his theatre company vis a vis Henry's happy few is a fascinating one. It's one of many in Taylor's excellent edition.

The work of editors is of vital importance to readers of Shakespeare. Their role is complex and demanding. It's their task to use the various existing versions of the particular play with which they're working to put together its clearest and most accurate version. Every word, every mark of punctuation requires a choice and sometimes several. They must then supply footnotes and introductory material to explain these decisions and to improve accessibility of the play's contents for the average reader. In fact, some of the most interesting and up-to-date Shakespeare scholarship can be found in these introductions. One reason for this fact is the sheer amount of time that an editor must spend with the play in question. And it seems like it never fails to be mentioned how that effort has led them to an increased appreciation and affection for it. The more time one spends with a Shakespeare play, in other words, the more one likes it. Thanks to the efforts of Shakespeare editors, the rest of us also have that opportunity.

I've spent a lot of time reading about and trying to imagine performances in Shakespeare's time recently and I keep coming back to a comment that I received regarding my December 20 post of last year. The gist of it was that Shakespeare may have incorporated comic characters into even his most intense tragedies, the Porter in Macbeth for example, to keep his great comic actors, such as Will Kempe and Robert Armin, in work. This strikes me as very likely indeed, and it has led me back to another comparison with Duke Ellington, who wrote parts with the specific personalities and talents of his leading instrumentalists in mind. It seems logical to assume that Shakespeare must have done the same. And like Ellington, who collaborated not only with his players, but with Billy Strayhorn and others throughout his career, the most important thing was always to get the work in front of audiences. I remain convinced that Ellington's career is the career that most closely resembles Shakespeare's in terms of working methods and results.

The Oxford edition of Henry V features an excellent introduction by its editor, Gary Taylor. Among its many interesting points is a discussion of the significance of the play's minor characters, and particularly the Eastcheap crew left behind by Falstaff (who dies offstage during the play): Mistress Quickly, Bardolph, Pistol, the Boy (a.k.a Falstaff's page) and Corporal Nym. One of Taylor's really interesting contentions is that each of them have specific verbal and behavioural characteristics that have inspired many twentieth century playwrights, more specifically Pistol's mixture of high language and low deeds influencing Steven Berkoff's play, East (1975) and the fact that "Nym's whole style anticipates to a remarkable degree the repetitiveness, understatement, incoherence, and menace now regarded as the unique preserve of the plays of Harold Pinter." Since I'm one of those who has always advised young people interested in writing to try to learn everything they can from Shakespeare, reading of this was an affirming moment.

Many current critical approaches to Shakespeare seek to place his work firmly in his time period, the product of the social and political forces of his day. But I'm rarely convinced that they're onto anything. Yes, it must be granted that these things were factors in his output (as was food to eat and air to breathe), but they were transcended by a superior power: the force of his mind. To not understand this is to not understand Falstaff or Hamlet or the history plays. In fact, it is the history plays that are often brought up in these contexts, and having spent quite a bit of time with them recently, I'm even more convinced than I was before: Any attempt to diminish Shakespeare's work, to consider it dated or of decreasing relevance is to bring these results upon one's own. Think about it: how could the creator of Falstaff, a character who easily slips out of any attempt at ideological restraint, allow it to happen to himself?

It's very interesting to think of the influence that the theaters used by his company during Shakespeare's career may have had on his writing. Apparently, the reconstructed Globe in London gives a unique sense of what it would have been like to attend an Elizabethan era play: one big difference, according to those who've been, is the visibility of the other members of the audience. This brings me back to a point I tried to make in a recent post about how much Shakespeare must have learned from his audiences. And it's interesting to consider that his plays did become more experimental when the company moved to the Blackfriars (and its picture or proscenium stage, rather than the thrust-stages of the earlier ones) in later years. By the way, if you haven't visited the Globe's website, here's the link: http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/.

Laurence Olivier's 1944 film version of Henry V is remarkable for many reasons. First among them is the framing device of beginning at the Globe, with a performance in front of an unruly crowd. Then, following the Chorus' exhortations to use imagination to "piece out" the story, the film becomes astonishingly panoramic, particularly in the Agincourt scenes, and just when the sheer size of the spectacle has made the viewer forget the opening, it returns to the "wooden O" for the conclusion. Like Shakespeare's plays, it is best consumed whole, not piecemeal (I think it was Samuel Johnson who said that those who try to convert people to Shakespeare by quoting passages are doing no better than someone who would try to sell a house by pulling out a piece of its brick from their pocket. There's some truth in that, but I would have to admit that I'd certainly be one of the targets of the comment), and, if at all possible, on a big screen.

I'll be writing more about this version, and Branagh's, later this week.

I think I would argue that Falstaff is to comedy what Hamlet is to tragedy: a character who embodies virtually every element of his genre, and more. And just as Hamlet's role, somewhat ironically, contains a lot of humour, so does Falstaff's in terms of sadness. Also, both characters are given great soliloquies that can be appreciated outside of the action. Falstaff's great aria on honour in 1 Henry IV, although perhaps not quoted as often as any of Hamlet's, strikes me as one of the most influential ever written. Not only did it supply Charlie Chaplin, and thousands of other comedians, with the subversive tone at the heart of their work, but it seems to be much closer to a twenty-first century mindset toward war and violence than anything written recently. Here's a link to the scene (http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=henry4p1&Act=5&Scene=1&Scope=scene). The excerpt I'm referring to is found at the end, and is the result of Prince Hal responding to Falstaff's request (to be defended if he's found on the ground) with a joke.

Normally I would write about Sonny Rollins on my other blog, but it occurred to me today that something that he said about his career might shed some light on one of the factors that helped Shakespeare to the heights of his particular profession. Rollins, now eighty years of age, said that he continues to travel and tour at an impressive rate for one primary reason: for how much he learns about his craft from audiences. He feels that the interaction, the feedback, the input to his thought process that is given to him by an audience is crucial to his continued development. This made me think of Shakespeare and the many performances in which he participated as both actor and playwright in front of crowds that, by all the accounts that I've read, were not afraid to hide their feelings. I don't know, but I don't think that there have been many writers that have had the opportunity for that much interaction with audiences. The poetry, the history, the philosophy, all of that can be learned from intensive reading, and was in his case, but the unparalleled dramaturgical skills would have required practice in the real world.

Having written recently about Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1965), it occurred to me that I may not have ever mentioned his powerful 1952 film version of Othello, which is a must-see for every Shakespeare fan. It's also a must-see for movie fans: It's simply amazing visually - in fact, its opening scenes (showing events that occur after the play's action) seem to me an obvious precursor and influence to such acknowledged masterpieces as Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) and several others. Like the play itself, the film takes many liberties with the order of events and the normal unfolding of time. But it's all done (in both cases) with a purpose: the portrayal of a mind in psychological torment. Welles, like Shakespeare, would never sacrifice the revelation of human truth for the sake of such relatively trivial matters as temporal accuracy.

In preparing for my Henry V lectures next week (email the address above, or see the January 5, 2011 post for more information), I've been re-viewing both Branagh's and Olivier's film versions, and I'll be writing a post comparing and contrasting the two within a few days. Today, I'd like to mention a character from the Second Part of Henry IV that keeps entering my mind, Justice Robert Shallow, and in particular the way Shakespeare brilliantly uses him as an alter ego to Falstaff. The latter treats him as a rube throughout, and does little but try to think of ways that he can bilk him and his position out of money. Falstaff's self-confidence and sense of superiority rest largely on his relationship with Prince Hal, of course, and it's an astonishing turnabout for the character as he becomes little more than Shallow, an insignificant man living in the past, by the end. And the comments that Falstaff had made regarding Shallow and his servants (in 5.1) take on an astonishing irony:

They, by observing of him, do bear

like foolish justices: he, by conversing with them, is turned

into a justice-like serving-man. Their spirits are so married

in conjunction with the participation of society that they flock

together in consent, like so many wild geese. If I had a suit

to Master Shallow, I would humour his men with the imputation of

being near their master; if to his men, I would curry with

Shallow that no man could better command his servants. It is

certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is

caught as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take

heed of their company.

Another memorable moment in Antony and Cleopatra may have provided us with the nounal form of the word "haunt", as in "a place habitually frequented" (Merriam-Webster). It occurs when Antony, mistakenly believing that Cleopatra is dead, resolves himself to suicide and imagines an afterlife where only the surface details of existence will change, and that he and his queen will go on being the centers of attention that they were in this world. And perhaps even more famous than they were, because they will then be able to challenge all the lovers in history. (By the way, W.H. Auden in the 2002 publication of his Lectures on Shakespeare makes the interesting observation that this play is the only one of the major tragedies that is never struck with inclement weather. His reasoning is that we're meant to consider the world in all its beauty and splendour to better realize what the protagonists lose for love.) Here's the passage in question:

Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand,

And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:

Dido and her AEneas shall want troops,

And all the haunt be ours.

Shakespeare is a writer who becomes more interesting with re-reading. There is always more to find in terms of detail, content, technical skill; it's endless. In fact, what Enobarbus says about Cleopatra, about her having "infinite variety", is even more appropriate for the writer who gave him the line. And the section that leads up to that moment, the famous description of Cleopatra on the Cydnus River, which begins, "The barge she sat in...", has a less well-known, but equally wonderful description of Antony's reaction when she finally arrives and makes the first moves toward "purs[ing] up his heart". Behold and see:

Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,

Invited her to supper: she replied,

It should be better he became her guest;

Which she entreated: our courteous Antony,

Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman heard speak,

Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast,

And for his ordinary pays his heart

For what his eyes eat only.