Befriending Shakespeare

Patrick Stewart, MacBeth

2011-03-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

Patrick Stewart's MacBeth is now available. I personally preferred Ian McKellen's performance but hey it's awesome nonetheless.

very creative use of mysteriously fanatical nurses as the witches
'reality' show-like camera movements lend a never-before-seen ambience to this play
instead of floating heads we've got corpses talking
Banquo walks on the table! (see pic)

"Who else would soar above the view of men..."

2009-12-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

I love it when some lines 'hit' home. And you know you're encountering literary brilliance because even the non-literary seems more special as a result. I'm talking about particular Shakespearean lines which stand out, come at you and, well, 'stick'.

Today I've been reading Julius Caesar and that cryptic verse, "Who else would soar above the view of men / And keep us all in servile fearfulness" is awesome-ic.

In these words the colours and overtones of majesty, illicit authority, success, pseudo-divinity, totalitarianism, oppression fall upon my mental framing. Any surprise I'm now thinking about Malaysian political leaders?

Shakespeare Now!

2009-12-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

Simon Palfrey and Ewan Fernie started a series of small books on Shakespeare entitled Shakespeare Now! Check out the blog here.

I'm also delighted to know that two my fav philosophers, John Caputo and Richard Kearney have also contributed to one a book called Spiritual Shakespeare (ed. Ewan Fernie).

Not a Poem guy

2009-12-01T21:26:00.001-08:00

I realised I don't enjoy the poetry-heavy plays (e.g. Midsummer Night's) as much as I do the prose-oriented ones (e.g. Hamlet). Somehow reading pages and pages of poems turns me off - but a sexy rhyme inserted here and there? Now that's magic.

My next NoFear purchases:

Julius Caesar
Othello
Merchant of Venice (though I'm rewatching the movie)

Hath not a Jew dimensions?!

2009-12-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

I loved Al Pacino's rendition of Shylock; made me almost think of him as the 'hero' of the play. A top-quality scene of course was the one with the dark bluish background, where he was screaming:

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,

dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with

the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject

to the same diseases, healed by the same means,

warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as

a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison

us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not

revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will

resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,

what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian

wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by

Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you

teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I

will better the instruction.

Titania's Inconvenient (but very articulate) Truth

2009-11-01T20:06:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare on climate problems?:

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents:

The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable:

The human mortals want their winter here;

No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound:

And thorough this distemperature we see

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

To Be or Not to Be

2009-08-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

I wanted to quote Hamlet's famous soliloquy today in a mass email whilst hyper-linking key words to some postings on my department's blog.

Seriously, why isn't Shakespeare used more often in Malaysian speeches and formal communication?

Shakespeare on political darkness?

2009-07-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

In light of recent political repression in Malaysia, is there anything the good Bard can say to us? I recall some activists warning the incumbent government to, "Beware the tides of March"! What other plays can help give voice to the present political plight in the country?

Beginner's Resources

2009-07-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

A parallel text (e.g. No Fear Shakespeare)

CliffNotes - love the explanations at the end of each scene and the exercises at the back

Cambridge School - great pics and lots of ideas if you're planning a performance
Arden Shakespeare - good scholastic introductions
A contemporary movie! To get the full passionate flavour out!

Ariel's words

2009-06-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

I used 'flamed amazement' in an 'official' email today. How cool is that? :)

Prospero's Farewell

2009-05-26T06:33:00.001-07:00

I've finally ordered them: No Fear Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer's Night Dream". Can't wait to dig in.

My interest in Tempest was peaked when an ex-colleague gave me a hard-copy of Prospero's 'farewell' in Act V:

 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,  And ye that on the sands with printless foot  Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him  When he comes back; you demi-puppets that  By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,  Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime  Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice  To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,  Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd  The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,  And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault  Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder  Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak  With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory  Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up  The pine and cedar: graves at my command  Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth  By my so potent art. But this rough magic  I here abjure, and, when I have required  Some heavenly music, which even now I do,  To work mine end upon their senses that  This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,  Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,  And deeper than did ever plummet sound  I'll drown my book.

Sandwiches

2009-04-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

There's something that Shakespeare does to one's writing. I'm not saying it necessarily improves it, but it sure as hell spins it quite a ways.

E.g. today I wanted to tell a group of colleagues that there're plenty leftover from the tea break. This is what I wrote: "As I write, there is a huge plate of sandwiches left unvisited..."

That last word was inspired by Hamlet's, "winds of heaven visit her face too gently."

What other word could be used?

Fav lines

2009-03-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

Some of my favourite lines:

"I love with all my heart that none is left to protest!" (Much Ado About Nothing)

"I love you...more than eyesight and liberty" (King Lear)

"Then let our lips do what our palms something-something" (Romeo & Juliet)

"I have thee not but I see thee still..." (MacBeth)

Gilbert and Shakespeare

2009-03-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

Always like it when books have all their chapters start with Shakespearean quotes. Dan Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness - a great work on how our minds 'process' happiness - does.

What's Needed in Commentaries: Emotion!

2009-03-24T00:14:00.000-07:00

It makes a huge difference if you read scenes like a character would do it on stage i.e. with emotion, passion, feeling.

I doubt I'm the only one who's looked at pages and pages of script and felt they were lifeless - until I read it like I was the character. (E.g. try watching Ian McKellen as MacBeth, then read the Banquet scene again)

This is why I need to watch the movies to get the emotional gist of the play prior to reading the original text.

To Buy or Not To Buy

2009-03-20T18:40:00.000-07:00

That is the question.

Whether it's nobler in mind to :

1. read CliffNotes No Fear Shakespeare online (save cost, but tough on the eyes and impractical for travel), or

2. buy the SGD11 books (most practical, should sput greater interest and speed up reading, but it costs money), or

3. buy other parallel translation books (better than option 2as there's more variety, but costs higher)

Hendiadys

2009-03-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

MacBeth's 'bank and shoal of time', Hamlet's 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' (and many more) - hendiadys. A motley pair not merely repeating each other but providing different takes and angles to that deed which they flavour.

Lear's Fool

2009-03-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

Only this morning my colleague mentioned in passing that his favorite character in King Lear was the Fool. As I had only reached Sc.iii of the first Act, I had no clue who was being referred to.

But now, after reading Sc.iv, I'm intrigued. The Fool is no fool but an revealer of fools. He speaks wisely, because indirectly and in riddle (or shall we say parables?). Almost a prophet, the Fool is bold, daring, forthright, sparing none in his sharp gaze.

My thoughts float to the likes of RPK, the OT Prophets, and other public subversives. And yet the Fool also offers scintillating advice, akin to Polonius':

Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest,
Leave thy drink and thy whore
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.

Does the world need more of Lear's fools?

"Fool" (by Christopher Moore)

2009-03-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

A certain Christopher Moore has a new book out, Fool, based on King Lear...Tom Dodge reports:

The Tragedy of King Lear is William Shakespeare's most complex play. Its arcane, archaic vocabulary is out of the reach of most educated readers today, and its theme is dismal enough to counteract a year's dosage of Wellbutrin.

Its comic relief, represented by the court jester, a.k.a. the fool, is not comic and not relief.

The fool and Lear seem fixated on the word "nothing," a comment on the nature of life.

Lear says, "That way madness lies," then goes that way.

The Earl of Gloucester, an important and sympathetic character (though like Lear, discernment-challenged) gets his eyes gouged out by Lord Cornwall, who says, "Out, vile jelly!" Gloucester's comment on life: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods / They kill us for their sport." At the end, all the major characters die violent deaths.

After 600 years of dreary old addled Lear and his doomed daughters, associates and enemies, Christopher Moore comes to the rescue with this retelling of Lear in modern prose and mostly invented slang. (Moore is the author of You Suck, The Stupidest Angel, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.)

This one takes us into the comic world of sibling rivalry, poor estate planning, elder abuse and the blood bath that results when brothers and sisters go to war over a demented parent's leftover stuff. It's a raunchy saga motivated by two intertwined family struggles, narrated by the libidinous fool, a.k.a. Pocket, a punning, manipulative mastermind of perversity. It's what Richard Armour tried to do a few decades ago but lacked the demonic mind to carry off. In style, it's like Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' retelling of Mary Shelley's classic novel.

There's even an Igor-like character: Drool, Pocket's apprentice fool, who has the gift of mimicry, as well as a way with the fair ladies of the court, including Lear's insatiable daughters, Regan and Goneril. Drool sleeps on a dung heap for warmth, the aroma of which apparently does not diminish his sex appeal. This novel is chock full of such uplifting information.

There are also many of the familiar Shakespearean contrivances we have come to love, such as witches, wenches, ghosts, forged letters, incarcerated nuns, love potions, poofters, crones, mistaken identities, anachronisms, coincidences and swordplay.

And also wordplay. Lots of wordplay. As for anachronisms, we have a reference to a ruler named George who governs a land called Merica and ruins the world. We have a sour breakfast item called Green Eggs and Hamlet. And, oh yeah, the three witches are named Parsley, Sage and Rosemary. "What, no Thyme?" says the Earl of Kent. Ha, ha.

And, like the Sweet Swan of Avon, this Weird Wankster of Logophilia is a lover of the labyrinthine plot. No move, no twitch of any character goes unrecorded. A mercifully brief example:

"Edmund will dispatch your Lord Albany, thus releasing your lady to other affections, only then will we reveal to Cornwall that Edmund has cuckolded him with Regan, and the Duke will dispatch the bastard, at which time, I will cast the love spell on Goneril, sending her into your own ferrety arms."

Thus spake Pocket, the fool. And thus speaketh the fool throughout, parceling out his limitless planning, plotting and manipulating, most examples of which are suitable to read only in secret.

Often funny, sometimes hilarious, always inventive, this is a book for all, especially uptight English teachers, bardolaters and ministerial students of the kind who come to our doorstep on Saturday mornings.

Difficult!

2009-03-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

I got almost completely lost with Goneril's chiding of the king:

I had thought by making this well known unto you
To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful
By what yourself too late have spoke and done
That you protect this course and put it on
By your allowance—which if you should, the fault
195 Would not 'scape censure, nor the redresses sleep
Which in the tender of a wholesome weal
Might in their working do you that offense,
Which else were shame, that then necessity
Will call discreet proceeding. (King Lear, Act I, Sc.iv)

Shakespeare on Film

2009-03-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

A little help in en-Shakespear-ing the MTV generation:

McKellen as MacBeth

2009-03-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

Ian McKellen's rich performance in the MacBeth banquet scene was one of the first videos I showed the Year 7s' in Literature class. Some of the students were pleasantly surprised that McKellen was 'saying exactly what was written in the book' (fancy that).

Self-Made Folly Blamed on Non-Selves

2009-03-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

In King Lear, Edmund the bastard reflects on the curious manner in which we tend to blame our characters and misfortunes on impersonal forces, meta-beings, the stars and such.

This is the excellent foppery of the world that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting-on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!
King Lear, Act I, Sc.ii

Edmund is clearly no fan of any theology unduly emphasizing the "potter's hands" !

Venting clamor from the throat of Kent the Prophet

2009-03-10T22:49:00.001-07:00

"...kill thy physician, and the fee bestow

Upon thy foul disease....

Or whilst I can vent clamor from my throat,

I'll tell thee thou dost evil."

(King Lear, Act I, Sc.i)

Why Shakespeare?

2009-03-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

1. It's simply breath-taking, pleasurable - I can spend hours toying around with the passages, getting into a bliss...it's almost like the most devout prayer

2. My writing needs life, flavour, colour. As someone who blogs (and talks) often, I find myself repeating the same phrases, almost as if my mind can think no other (despite 'thought being free', Twelfth Night, Act 1, Sc.iii)

3. The New Testament epistle of Phillipians admonishes to constantly keep in mind that which is pure, lovely, etc. (Phil 4:8). Shakespearean prose is exactly this.

4. The verses give you new linguistic vehicles to perceive the world, new models by which to live/enjoy life

More than Eyesight, Space and Liberty

2009-03-10T08:47:00.001-07:00

I first came across these words by Goneril during Parents' Day at my previous school. I was reading a young readers' edition of King Lear which highlighted the below, and made me go Wow in the dull hours of the morning:

Sir, I do love you more than words can wield the matter,
Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty,
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare,
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor,
As much as child e'er loved or father found—
A love that makes breath poor and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
King Lear, Act I, Sc.i

Black and Deep Desires

2009-03-10T08:41:00.000-07:00

"...Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."

MacBeth, Act I, Sc.iv

Are sinister political parties thinking this?

Tears

2009-03-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

"...like a cloistress, she will veiled walk
And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine..."

The Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene i

How Do I Read?

2009-03-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

1. What new words/phrases are there?

2. What's disturbing about the passage? What's breath-taking about it?

3. How would the verse(s) apply to:

Malaysia (politics, culture, etc.)
Christianity
Teaching/Learning
Business / Marketing

4. What do I find out about myself?

Shakespeare Well Done

2009-03-10T02:59:00.000-07:00

Simon Palfrey's Doing Shakespeare is one of the most under-named books around. You would hardly expect much of a work with such a name but I'm more inclined now to take the age-old advice of not judging a book by what you see in the front.

Because when you turn the pages the power of the writing hits you like a body-slam. Rarely have I come across such natural and unrestrained verbosity and flair in writing.

Yet, again, despite of the fact that, the book's structure is uncomplicated. Palfrey has organised his discussion around understanding Shakespeare's words (metaphor, hendiadys [e.g. "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", "backward and abysm of time", etc.] repetition, 'high style', rhyme, prose and puns) and his characters (what are these 'speaking things'? where is a character? soliloquies, sex[!] and a focus on Iago and Hamlet).

So there I am in the car, waiting for my wife to get some groceries, just 'flipping through' the first chapter and I see something like:

"(A) drama committed to original metaphor as a primary means of making its worlds means...that language is not primarily there to descibr what is arleady known and observed. Instead, it is itself finding out what might be present; it is its own barometer of possibility. It is at once tangible and speculative, rooted in the body's immediacy but commited to an almost magical apprehension of what might be.

"Above all, it gives us minds and societies in process. Dramatic character, plot and scene can be understood as experiments in language's capability of embodiment. There is nothing safe or static about this sort of language. Everything is up for grabs, and as perilous as precious." (p.38)

Wow! And this was all available for studying in A-Levels?? Darn, life's unfair, isn't it?! ;>)

This was just after 1.5 pages commenting on Hamlet's "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,/Thaw and resolve itself into a dew", about which Palfrey writes:

"Is 'dew' a metaphor? (Does it) represent blank annihilation(?). But as the word completes the thought, it also stops one thought and inaugurated another; or perhaps secretes a certain wistfulness within the enveloping despair. For Hamlet concentrates himself - literally - into this image (which) becomes a concentration of the hero's dramatic possibilities.

"So, a 'dew' can suggest dawn, youth and freshness. It aestheticises both conception and birth, removing one from the taint of sperm, the other from the taint of woman...The phrase's miniaturist transcendence suggests some kind of reincarnation or redemption; or perhaps hibernation, a burying away until circumstances are more auspicious."

"Hamlet is fully aware of literary cliche and generic models: but he wants to shake the image out of any pastoral complacency and claim it as his own. Hence the three verbs (melt, thaw, resolve) that work to so concentrate the climatic noun...(this) simple surplus of meaning creates a sort of supra-context, an alternative world in which a play's or a character's most vital preoccupations find their air." (p.35-36)

So now I'm gasping for air...(smile)...do all Literature commentators write like this? Or is it a British thing? I almost suspect it is as British theologians (Wright, Fiddes, Gunton, Crossan, etc.) seem to put more serious colour into their language than American ones.

Back to Palfrey. One of my favorite passages was about the pun.

"Consider the basic architecture of a pun: it is multiple, folded, or at cross-purposes; things lurk or move at angels; it beckons toward different pasts and possibilities; it evokes alternatives within predetermination, a 'virtuality' to rival actuality, perhaps a consciousness of waste.

"All of this makes the pun peculiarly able to concentrate, intensify, and unfold a moment's situational and psychic layers. Shakespeare's punning becomes almost the least dispensable of his techniques." (p.157)

Hey, I'm a converted punner now!

The only downside for me is that my brain circuitry really ignite only when three plays are mentioned: Hamlet, R&J, As You Like It. But if the worth of a book can be judged by the force with which one is inspired to be more acquainted with its subject matter, then Doing Shakespeare has done it for me. I simply must look deeper in MacBeth, Othello, Henry V and Merchant of venice (for now). [Bought a 2006 production of MacBeth the other day - yuck!]

Even if you're a seasoned Shakespeare enthusiast, this book should still be invaluable, if nothing more than as a great example of how to write like and about the great dramatist.

Best yet, it cost about RM30. I've paid three times more for stuff which made me want to rip the pages off for more excitement.

"And This Gives Life to Thee..."

2009-03-10T02:53:00.000-07:00

Shall I compare you to a summer's day? (this sets the theme of the poem, or at least I think it does...)
Thou art more lovely and more temperate (the poem in some kind of summary: "you" the beloved are more wonderful than summer - what follows are the 'failings' of even such an incredible thing as summer):

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (flowers fall?)
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: (summer ends too soon?)
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (tropical people should know)
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; (British weather?)
And every fair from fair sometime declines, (not sure if the 'fair' here refers to summer, or is it physical beauty in general? What I am sure of is that this is a super phrase: "Fair from fair"? Oww!)
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade (ahh, so the 'summer' which is/(of) the beloved lasts like for-ever)
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; (as does her beauty...)
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: (the beloved's beauty and stature increases over time?)

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee. (ever-lasting and ever-enriching life of/for the beloved? I'm blown away - seriously.)

Read the poem slowly. Don't be satisfied until you can translate every mind-busting line into everyday-language prose. And the next time you want to express your heart to someone or about something, say it like Willie does. It's a dash of bright colour on the bland, vulgar and grim canvas of language.

Like a normal weekend given life by some exciting firsts.

Polonius' Homily

2009-03-10T02:51:00.000-07:00

The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

Watched about 30 minutes of Franco Zeferelli's Hamlet last night. Blown away by the language. Shakespeare's got a hell of a way with words. I loved the fatherly advice of Polonius to Laertes:

Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Wasn't that just refreshing? If only sermons could sound more like this! Who needs explanations but if you want you can find some here.

Still, couldn't keep my eyes open for long. I'm used to watching killers saying, "Die, mother-f*cker!" so I guess I'm a little unused to people saying things like, "A little more than kin, and less than kind." I'll watch it act by act, methinks. Should be fun studying one of the best-known dramatic tragedies ever (I just found out from Wiki that The Banquet, Zhang Zhi Yi's latest, is a Chinese adaptation of Hamlet). One eye on Gibson, Close, Bonham Carter and gang, and another on sites like Open Source Shakespeare ("An Experiement in Literary Technology") and SparkNotes with its loads of online study guides (FOC).

You just gotta admire the 'sentence-construction'. How did the man think of these things? And I thought people like Mitchell, Roy and Naylor were verbiose. Shakespeare makes their works look like Ladybird books.

Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe...Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past that youth and observation copied there...And thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter.

You have GOT to be high to be able to write thousands of pages of stuff like this. Like Livingstone searching for the Nile's source, I'm in for the ride. I wish I had taken this stuff in A-Levels (except at that time I'd probably end up hating it - so, yeah, no point)

Hooked on Hamlet

2009-03-10T02:48:00.000-07:00

I swear I've got a problem with old books.

I dropped Lord of the Rings at the point where the big eagle rescued Gandalf from Saruman's steel perch (I recall it was just one almost insignificant line, not unlike the short description of Arwen and her white steed hurrying Frodo away from the Nazgul). I gave up on the Great Gatsby after two attempts, before I got a third of the way. I quit a class studying Romeo & Juliet something like midway through the first scene of the first act. I dropped Nietzche's Beyond Good & Evil after about twenty pages, his Thus Spake Zarathustra after five. I decided not to finish A Hundred Years of Solitude just as I approached the end (simply didn't feel it was worth it). And I struggled through The Old Man & The Sea.

What is this ambivalence I have with books written long ago? Am I doomed to never find delight in the classics?

Which is why, when Hamlet (a 400-hundred year-old play) can keep me hooked for almost a week now, I feel reborn. I'm not incapable of appreciating this stuff after all! A tone-deaf turned soprano couldn't have felt more elated.

I've been reading parts of Hamlet continuously. I whisper "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", to the friendly ridicule of my wife, my colleagues and students. I pounce at a chance to throw a line at an appropriate time.

Say 'sleep' and I'll say, "and perchance, to dream". Say 'seems' and I'll do that whole gig in Act I, Scene II which end with, "these are but the trappings and suits of woe." Something unusual (or anticipated) happens and I cry, "O my prophetic soul!"

It all sounds weird, I know. You might think I've emerged from some cactus-infested island (or maybe I should be left in one to recuperate).

But I've discovered that filling your mind with these incredible verses has a soothing and clearing effect. My love for the language grows. Where I used to see words as tool pieces to be rearranged according to what fit the need, now I think of them as colours which await ever new shades, tones and juxtapositions as per what life says they must be.

I used to think of language as just one violin, versatile and able to create all manner of tune. But Shakespeare lets me hear a full symphony. And I doubt I've heard true music until I read Hamlet.

I play, flip and turn those words around in my mind, letting it sink in. I find my spirit soaring as I try to relive the mood and the depths of the verses. How can one remain glib and trivial when thinking (out loud) about, "...the whips and scorns of time, the law's delay, the pangs of disprized love (you gotta say all this slowly and with conviction, ok? or it doesn't work!), the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes."?

I imagine that you could sell me my own shirt if you wrapped your pitch in Hamlet-like prose. And I can't wait to adorn with this wondrous gift of language the equally breath-taking gift of life, truth and love, to name just three more. I seem to have some missing part of me, eagerly seeking re-union with the rest of Being.

'Tis a consumation, devoutly to be wished.

Lorenzo on Song, Portia on Shylock

2009-03-10T02:44:00.000-07:00

The New Swan Shakespeare commentary, from the beginning, was full of praise for one of Lorenzo's speeches in the final act, declaring it some of the best lines ever written on the subject of music. But I didn't want to skip acts, so I accepted the suspense. And it was wonderful at first.

I enjoyed Antonio's Job-like dialogue with his friends ("It wearies me, but you say it wearies you") and Portia's dismissal of her courters ("I am much afeard my lady his

mother played false with a smith"!).

However, my untrained-ness betrayed itself again and I couldn't proceed many more pages without fast-forwarding to Act 5, where the introduction once again heaped praises on Lorenzo's ode to music. Which exact lines were being referred to here? So I skimmed and skimmed until, alas, I found it:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Wow. Ok. I confess my hair isn't blown back immediately but I'm in for the learning. The music of the night is sweet and drop-dead beautiful? Music is present even in the orbiting of the planets in the sky ("the floor of heaven")? Whose harmony mirrors or brings forth the music of angels? I can buy that (smile).

Such a divine cosmic harmony, such purity of purpose and depth, one can also find in souls. Only we can't feel this heavenly song in our hearts given our earth-boundedness ("this muddy vesture of decay"). Except perhaps during the "soft stillness of the night" when the moonlight caresses the landscape and evoke within us our truest cry of connection with the heavens. (A little over-board, but better to err on the side of trying too hard than not hard enough, eh?).

I asked a student today if she's read this particular play. She said yeah and her favorite portion is also one of the most famous in Shakespearean repertoire, voiced by a disguised Portia (see pic above):

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood
The words expressly are "a pound of flesh"
Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
Unto the state of Venice.

No wonder Lynn Collins is on the verge of breaking out in smile.