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

MESSENGER

... Pompey is strong at sea;

And it appears he is beloved of those

That only have fear'd Caesar: to the ports

The discontents repair, and men's reports

Give him much wrong'd.

OCTAVIUS

I should have known no less.

It hath been taught us from the primal state,

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

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

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

Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,

Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,

To rot itself with motion.

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

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life

Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair

[Embracing]

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

On pain of punishment, the world to weet

We stand up peerless. (1.1)

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

LEPIDUS

Noble friends,

That which combined us was most great, and let not

A leaner action rend us. What's amiss,

May it be gently heard: when we debate

Our trivial difference loud, we do commit

Murder in healing wounds: then, noble partners,

The rather, for I earnestly beseech,

Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,

Nor curstness grow to the matter.

ANTONY

'Tis spoken well.

Were we before our armies, and to fight,

I should do thus.

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

Thrice-nobler than myself!

Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what

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

Have by their brave instruction got upon me

A nobleness in record: but I will be

A bridegroom in my death, and run into't

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

Thy master dies thy scholar: to do thus.

[Falling on his sword]

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

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

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

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

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

Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say 'This poet lies:

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

So should my papers yellow'd with their age

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

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

And stretched metre of an antique song:

But were some child of yours alive that time,

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

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

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

I know you all, and will awhile uphold

The unyoked humour of your idleness:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

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

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work;

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

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

So, when this loose behavior I throw off

And pay the debt I never promised,

By how much better than my word I am,

By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;

And like bright metal on a sullen ground,

My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,

Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes

Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

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

Redeeming time when men think least I will.

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

Two nights together had these gentlemen

(Marcellus and Bernardo) on their watch

In the dead vast and middle of the night

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

Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,

Appears before them and with solemn march

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

By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,

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

Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me

In dreadful secrecy impart they did,

And I with them the third night kept the watch;

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

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

The apparition comes. I knew your father.

These hands are not more like.

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

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

KENT

Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,

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

As my great patron thought on in my prayers-

LEAR

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

KENT

Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The region of my heart! Be Kent unmannerly

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

Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak

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

When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom;

And in thy best consideration check

This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgment,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

Reverbs no hollowness.

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