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Great Shakespearean one-liners

Posted in Shakespeare on February 25th, 2010


Image from here.
 
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
He that loves to be flattered is worthy o' the flatterer.
' Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.
They do not love that do not show their love.
There is no darkness but ignorance.
The object of art is to give life a shape
So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
O, had I but followed the arts!
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.

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Thwaite, Grief, Hamlet and Suicide

Posted in Shakespeare on January 28th, 2010
John Everett Millais: Ophelia
Mark Thwaite treats us to a moving, personal take on his struggle with grief, and how reading Hamlet has helped. 

He ends with these beautiful paragraphs:

In my own minimal madness, I read "Hamlet" and I heard Hamlet call. Heard him speak to himself, of himself and half-realise he could hardly keep up with even that utterly, definitionally, self-limiting performance. I realised, along with Hamlet, lesserly, that my own disquiet was perforce undone by its (limited) creativity and coherence: the coherence of my incoherence mocked my incoherence. But, better, more simply, I read. I sat still and I read. And I read some more.

It turns out that almost every other line in "Hamlet" one already knows. The play reads like a sourcebook to all that has been written since. Bloom suggests that Shakespeare invented the human (a sense of the secular, self-questioning subject). I doubt that. Hamlet uninvents the (notion of a) coherent self even as the most fully human character the stage has ever seen steps forth — at the birth of subjectivity, Hamlet, our extreme contemporary, shows the subject to be a kind of fiction. Hamlet validates and allows for the self's self-incoherence; the undoing of the self is the self's own self-making. My local madness will pass. Our general madness will not. Something comforting therein is almost claimed.


A year or two ago I hosted a roundtable discussion on Hamlet here, surmising that:

[Hamlet] feels isolated in the world (he's an only child), surrounded by people who lack empathy; who are in fact, his enemies.  How can he trust anyone if he can’t even trust his mother to do right by his father, a man she supposedly loved, indeed worshiped. What chance is there that he will find genuine, honest faithful love in the world, love that he can trust and rely upon? There is no chance.

When love is thought to be impossible, when the prospect of it seems hopeless, this is when people turn to suicide.

***

And now that we're on the topic…look what kills Ophelia: conflict between her heart and the authority of her father. What renders Hamlet paralyzed? Conflict between competing authorities and sets of rules. Which to obey: his father's wishes,  the Church's strictures, his own sense of decency, right and wrong?

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Narrative, Evolution and Self Preservation.

Posted in Shakespeare on October 22nd, 2009
Several weeks ago I wrote a post on Jerry Coyne’s contention that James Wood thought evolutionary biologists who venture into the literary jungle ‘a pack of morons.’  William Flesch, author of a book on the evolution of co-operation [ Comeuppance, Harvard, 2007] commented that Coyne’s remarks were puzzling, given that Wood had included Comeuppance on his list of favourite books of 2008.

I have only read the first chapter of Flesch’s book, however one objection (which could well be addressed in later pages)  immediately shows itself:

Flesch tells us that "narratives tend to contain or at least to suggest the possibility of three basic figures (though there may be more or fewer than three characters who ‘instantiate’ them): an innocent, someone who exploits that innocent, and someone else who seeks to punish the exploiter…The biological origin of this propensity is part of what has come to be called the "evolution of cooperation." which provides the insights that are central to this book."

Shakespeare had as hearty a grip on human nature, I’d say, as any narrative writer in history. Plenty of innocents get expoited in his greatest plays, plenty seek to punish the exploiters…more often than not plenty of all three end up dead in pools of blood, prostrate on the stage boards. How is this co-operation?
 
Flip over to ‘real’ life: Hitler exploited the Jews. Used them as scapegoats, blaming them for hardships faced by the ‘German’ population. Then he exterminated millions of them. The Allies, despite knowing at least some of what was going on, were uniformly reluctant to provide safe haven for the innocent, let alone  ‘punish the exploiter.’ They acted against the exploiter only when their own safety was in jeopardy.

This is not co-operation. It’s self preservation. Let us not forget, typically there is carnage before there is co-operation. 
 

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MacBeth and what was in the Witches Brew

Posted in Shakespeare on October 2nd, 2009

 Knotweed

  Eye of Newt, and toe of frog,
    Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
    Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting
    Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing

Pretty gruesome stuff, but likely just herbs by other names….names designed to gross out the masses, to stop them from practicing magic. Here are some  translations:

Eye of Newt Mustard Seed
Toe of Frog Buttercup
 Wool of Bat Holly Leaves
 Tongue of Dog Houndstongue
 Adders Fork  Adders tongue
 Lizard Leg Ivy
 A Hawk’s Heart: Wormwood
 Ass’s Foot or Bull’s Foot:  Coltsfoot
 Bear’s Foot: Lady’s Mantle
Calf’s Snout: Snapdragon
Graveyard Dust: Mullein
Sparrow’s Tongue: Knotweed

 

Source(s):

Hans Dieter Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation including the Demotic Spells, Univ. Chicago Press, 1986

and here.

 

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Flowers, Shakespeare, and the horror of bad smells

Posted in Shakespeare on September 19th, 2009
NB Flowers
I first came across the Alcuin Society Awards for best Canadian book design several years ago when researching for this interview with multi award winner C.S. (Scott) Richardson. I recall being rather pleased that I actually had several award winning books in my collection, including Atmospheres Apollinaire by Mark Frutkin (Porcupine’s Quill, 1988). Ever since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for award winning books, which of course means that Procupine’s titles now rarely go unexamined or unbought at book sales. The most recent incident (National Library Annual Used Book Sale): acquiring A Gathering of Flowers from Shakespeare, with woodcuts by Gerard Brender a Brandis, quotation selection and interpretation by F. David Hoeniger.

Printed on Porcupine’s patented laid paper, and containing delicately embossed floral free end papers, the book highlights various flowers referred to by Shakespeare, with woodcut illustrations and accompanying commentary. If you dig flora, the bard, and beautiful books, this one’s for you. So, incidentally, at least on the first two counts, is Caroline Spurgeon’s amazing Shakespeare’s Imagery. Talk about a enlightening, entertaining companion. Here she is on smells:

"…Shakespeare seems more sensitive to the horror of bad smells than to the allure of fragrant ones. Naturally he loves ‘the sweet smell of different flowers’…he notes the sweetness of the violet, the eglantine (sweet briar) and the damask rose; but it is suggestive that in his most sustained and exquisite appreciation of the rose, what chiefly appeals to him is the fact that, unlike other flowers, roses even when faded never smell badly, but that
      Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
What he shrinks from especially is a fair flower with ‘the rank smell of weeds’, or a sweet-smelling flower which turns very much the reverse when dead. We can sense the repulsion in the words,
     Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
 

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Audio Interview with Prof. Joseph Khoury on: Succession in King Lear and Hamlet

Posted in Shakespeare on August 20th, 2009

Charles H. Cameron as King Lear (1872) / print by A.L. Coburn, ca. 1915, Photo by

Julia Margaret Cameron

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet before James l came to the throne. Events in the play reflect many of the real world concerns that  Englishmen had about being ruled by a foreigner. At the play’s end, Denmark’s line of  rulers is extinguished, and a foreigner (Fortinbras) takes the throne.  James was married to Anna of Denmark, some feared that if he were to attempt a military takeover,  he might call on the forces of his brother in law Christian IV of Denmark.

King Lear was written after James’s succession. At the start of the play Lear is firmly established as king of a united Britain. This reflected James’s wish to be ruler of a fully united kingdom. In fact he approached Parliament, without success, in 1607 in hopes of securing a closer political union.

The names of the Dukes in King Lear are taken from real life. James had recently made his sons Henry and Charles the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany respectively. In the play Albany is an honest man who realises too late the evil doings of his relatives. Once aware, he works to restore natural order. At the end,  hope for the monarchy rests with him,  Albany from Scotland, who is free to reunite the fractured kingdom. In this he represents what James wanted to achieve with his succession.

Listen here as Prof. Joseph Khoury, from St. Francis Xavier University, and I discuss the themes of succession and the divine right of kings  in Hamlet and King Lear.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Chicago’s MacBeth Angry and Awful

Posted in Shakespeare on January 4th, 2009

 

Here’s an immediate, not entirely considered  — yes, exactly what bloggers are excoriated for by haughty traditional media types — gut level response (one that may be re-visited) to last night’s MacBeth, performed by the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre:

It knows only one emotion. Every character on stage spits and seethes with anger.  When news that fathers and wives and children and kings are murdered, when daggers and the dead appear, when forests move, wives die and witches meow…anger is the only response. The result is one of the worst presentations of this play I’ve ever attended. 

I can only assume, because of the uniformly uni-dimensional acting performances, that director Barbara Gains ordered her toupe to attack the text with only one thing in mind: hostility. It guts the play of all subtly. Murders its humanity. Renders it unaffecting. MacBeth is a decent man who gradually descends into hell on earth. He’s torn, conflicted…as with most of Shakespeare’s important characters he changes. Ben Carlson’s MacBeth doesn’t change. From the moment he steps onto the stage a victorious general, to when he leaves it with a dagger in his gut, his MacBeth is the same man. We feel no sympathy for his awful ordeal. No loss. It signifies nothing.

This, despite some clever conceits. Gains has her witches play paparazzi and strippers. False unreliable prophets, frequented by de centered, hollow men. those unloved. Motivated by cheap sex and celebrity worship. MacBeth is in constant need of affirmation and external validation.  Lacking center he is insecure about his manhood. Goaded into action because of a fragile sense of self, he loses his soul. His behavior contradicts his morals.

There are some good ideas here. Some good visuals too. Karen Aldridge’s dead, Marat-like,

Lady MacBeth in a transparent bath tub full of diluted, outed blood is particularly striking.

What this production lacks is life.

 

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Serpent Flower

Posted in Shakespeare on August 13th, 2008

Photo from here.

"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t." Macbeth (Act I, Scene V)

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The coolest man in the history of the world.

Posted in Shakespeare on July 4th, 2008

Amazing what a simple pair of shades can do.

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Sovereign eyes, golden faces

Posted in Shakespeare on June 23rd, 2008

Darek Smid’s Photo.  

XXXIII.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

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