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.