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

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

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:

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

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done: perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;

For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;

For emulation hath a thousand sons

That one by one pursue: if you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

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

And leave you hindmost;

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

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

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

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

For time is like a fashionable host

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,

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

Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not

virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was;

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,

That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,

Though they are made and moulded of things past,

And give to dust that is a little gilt

More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

The present eye praises the present object.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye

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

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive

And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,

Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves

And drave great Mars to faction.

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

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

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?

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

But that he sees the Romans are but sheep:

He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

Those that with haste will make a mighty fire

Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome,

What rubbish and what offal, when it serves

For the base matter to illuminate

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

Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this

Before a willing bondman; then I know

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

And dangers are to me indifferent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

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

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NURSE

Beshrew my very heart,

I think you are happy in this second match,

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

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

As living here and you no use of him.

JULIET

Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE

And from my soul too;

Or else beshrew them both.

JULIET

Amen!

NURSE

What?

JULIET

Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.

Go in: and tell my lady I am gone,

Having displeased my father, to Laurence' cell,

To make confession and to be absolved.

NURSE

Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.

[Exit]

JULIET

Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!

Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,

Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue

Which she hath praised him with above compare

So many thousand times? Go, counsellor;

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.

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

If all else fail, myself have power to die.

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

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

In half an hour she promised to return.

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

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

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

Driving back shadows over louring hills:

Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love,

And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.

Now is the sun upon the highmost hill

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

Is three long hours, yet she is not come.

Had she affections and warm youthful blood,

She would be as swift in motion as a ball;

My words would bandy her to my sweet love,

And his to me...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Draw, Benvolio, beat down their weapons

Gentleman, for shame, forbear this outrage!

Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath

Forbidden bandying in Verona streets:

Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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