Shakespeare’s Genius in Four Words

“The air bites shrewdly.”

These four words occur in Act I Scene iii of Hamlet. They’re followed by: “It is very cold.” It’s not a famous soliloquy but in these four words, eight words perhaps, Shakespeare’s genius appears in miniature—a mind that perceived strife, competition and drama animating not just human endeavors but the inanimate. What often goes unmentioned in Shakespeare studies is not just the human drama, but the contest of wills in nature itself, or in Shakespeare’s nature—in the inanimate. There are hundreds of plays within plays that bubble up like quantum particles in the vacuum of the page. Some are almost fully realized while other dramas, like the four word play above, disappear as quickly as they appear. (Shakespeare was born to write drama the way Mozart was born to compose music.)

The first thought that occurred to Shakespeare was the cold, and Shakespeare straight away perceived that not as a condition but as an ongoing struggle between two characters—the speaker and the shrewd and biting air. For a bubbling instant, the air becomes a character, almost like an Elizabethan humor—and having as its humor a shrewd and intelligent aggressiveness—shrewdly biting. How? The four words tell us as much about the speaker as the air. If the air can bite, then the speaker’s clothes, like another character in the play, must be a poor and ineffectual servant. We can guess that there must be holes in the speaker’s clothes, or they’re ill-fitting or too thin. The air doesn’t just bite, but does so shrewdly, with intelligence and cunning. In this little play, the air outwits the speaker’s defenses.

If Einstein’s peculiar genius was to see the world relativistically, Shakespeare’s genius was to perceive world and all its various parts as being in a never ending and creative contention. When Shakespeare wrote that “all the world’s a stage”, he meant it and with a comprehensiveness exceeding what most think he meant. The world isn’t just a stage where we play our parts, but the stage itself is in contention with itself and with us. Where you and I might feel an icy wind and call it a cold day—these being the static and inanimate properties of the elements—Shakespeare might perceive the elements as having intelligence, motive and intention, contending with or against us on the world’s stage. He perceived a different world than most of us do—or at least the adults among us. You could think of Shakespeare as the great animist—whose perception of the world as intelligent, in all its parts, gave to his poetry and drama a vibrancy and life beyond the human characters on stage.

Perhaps one of the finest examples of Shakespeare’s animist world bubbling up and becoming a play within the play, like a small morality play, comes from Titania’s speech in Act II, Scene i of the Midsummer Night’s Dream (one of my favorite speeches in all of Shakespeare).

These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.
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 cheer:
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
Fall 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.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original. 

The play within the play begins with “Therefore the winds” that pipe “to us in vain”. The wind is like a character, a musician, whose intention is to entertain, but who pipes “in vain” due to our own contention. This makes the winds vengeful and so they suck the water from the sea to pelt “our lands” with it, and that makes the rivers, now another character in the play, “proud”. Shakespeare perceives the rain and flooding as their own characters in a play—the vengeful wind and the proud rivers suddenly full of water—water like a proud King’s train that topples all where the King strides. The green corn, among those who suffer, rots before it can grow a beard. The moon, who Shakespeare’s imagination makes a governess in the dye of his enlivening imagination, washes the air with “rheumatic disease”. “old Hiems”, meaning winter, is mocked with a crown of “sweet summer buds”. (The frost mocks the air shrewdly bites.) The seasons and angry Winter—because in drama every character’s action has its consequence—are made like confused characters at the close, who “change their wonted liveries”. The worlds elements are full of contention and consequence and with an intelligence of their own—and of which we are an unwitting part. In other words, Shakespeare didn’t see nature as a dumb force to be acted upon with impunity, but as an intelligence having its own course that will contend with us or benefit us. (Shakespeare still has much to teach humanity given our treatment of the natural world.)

Try seeing the world the way Shakespeare saw it—the great poet. When the wind shakes the last leaves today, what does the wind want and what do the leaves take away? Think of the elements as characters in a play—the rain, frost, moon, or the sunlight cannily peering through the rigid trees. Find out the “humor” in the inanimate. See the drama staged around you every day and maybe see the world a little like Shakespeare.

Modern Shakespeare Portrait

After writing yesterday’s post, I was noodling around looking at other Shakespeare portraits and found this from 2016. It’s a painting done by Geoff Tristram for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Mr. Tristram’s aim, according to the article, was to make him look real: “I turned him into flesh and blood, like a chap you might see down the pub.” The Droeshout Portrait is said to be the most faithful portrait of Shakespeare and confirmed as such by Ben Jonson. The modern portrait, based on the Droeshout portrait, likewise makes that claim while adding a sense of immediacy and realism.

Reading The Winter’s Tale after the Trump Years

With my novel finished, I’ve gotten back to work on some languishing poems. To get my head in the right space, I decided to read Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, which I read years ago, and is replete with some of Shakespeare’s most transcendent poetry. What immediately struck me, though, was how much I disliked both Leontes and Polixenes. In truth, we’re supposed to dislike them. Each, in their turn, is vicious, cruel and tyrannical, but what disturbed me now was less their viciousness than the assumed prerogatives of wealth and class that allowed them to act without compunction or consequence—ostensibly a play about two rich and entitled men who inherited their wealth (and haven’t we had enough of those these last few years)?

The aristocracy and royalty were the oligarchical billionaires of their day, and almost uniformly corrupt. The Europeans who fled to the United States in the 18th century were damned well fed up with these kinds of families. At the founding of the United States, the following was added to the Constitution:

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8. No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

If Prince Harry were to become a naturalized US citizen, he would have to renounce his title. But none of this has prevented the US from creating its own aristocracy. The only difference is that we call them one percenters instead of “Your Excellency”. And just as in the Europe of prior centuries, they wield outsize influence on the political process through their wealth and loyalists (read Royalists if you like). They are the Koch brothers, the Murdochs and the Trumps, rewarding their loyalists with the cash needed to maintain and share in their political power. The loyalists, in turn, reward these families with lower taxes, fewer regulations and the government levers needed to crush unions, depress wages, write laws that favor them or, more mundanely, seize federal lands for their own profit. The Trump years subjected the United States to a family who treated the US no differently than the various royals, aristocrats and theocratic mobsters of pre-20th century Europe—who asserted, in one form or another, their entitlement to rule and their entitlement to the wealth over which they ruled.

So when I read the first act of The Winter Tale, I felt like I was reading about a familiar family, class and wealth bracket. I was much less interested in their tender fates as compared to the first reading and wasn’t even sure I desired a happy ending for any of them. The play begins with Leontes suddenly seized by a rabid fit of jealousy that would have embarrassed Henry VIII. He suspects that his wife, Hermione, has been cheating on him with his childhood friend, Polixenes. What does a rich and entitled man with unimpeded power do? He considers murdering her as though her life were nothing more than a formality to be relievedly dispensed with:

Say that she were gone,
Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest
Might come to me again.

Winter’s Tale Act 2.3: 7-9 | Norton Digital Edition

He orders that his erstwhile best friend, Polixenes be murdered first, by poison, then that his pregnant wife and child be burned alive.

A callet
Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband
And now baits me. This brat is none of mine;
It is the issue of Polixenes.
Hence with it, and together with the dam
Commit them to the fire!

Winter’s Tale Act 2: 90-94 | Norton Digital Edition

It needs to be emphasized that Hermione, at this point, is nine months pregnant. Leontes’ comments are in response to Paulina, wife of a nobleman and vociferous defender of Hermione. What does Paulina get for defending Hermione against a rich man with absolute power? She’s all but called a bitch and her husband pussy whipped: says Leontes of Antigonus, “He dreads his wife.”

In short order, the character Hermione gives birth, off-stage, to Leontes’s daughter (presumably precipitated by the horror of Leontes’s jealous rage). When Paulina brings the newborn to Leontes, he also orders the newborn burned alive:

Thou, traitor, hast set on thy wife to this.
My child? Away with’t! Even thou that hast
A heart so tender o’er it, take it hence
And see it instantly consumed with fire.
Even thou and none but thou. Take it up straight.
Within this hour bring me word ’tis done,
And by good testimony, or I’ll seize thy life
With what thou else call’st thine. If thou refuse,
And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so.
The bastard brains with these my proper hands
Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire,
For thou sett’st on thy wife.

The Winter’s Tale Act 2.2: 130-141 | Norton Digital Edition

So. Shakespeare really piles it on. It’s clear that we’re not meant to like or feel much sympathy for Leontes. However, the play is considered a romance in the sense that there will be redemption and a happy ending. This is where I get tripped up. After witnessing four years of cruelty, corruption, banality, and incompetence, and after being subjected to the sneering lies of Trump and the Trump family, I’m not interested in redemption or, as the party of Trump cynically labels it: “unity”. Before having witnessed this kind of corruption first hand, the characters of Leontes and Polixenes were fairytale-like figures—the kinds of stock characters that simply serve as foils. The fabulists and tellers of fairy tales who riffed on Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses didn’t do so out of any love for these people, but because they were the Marvel super heroes of their day. They possessed unlimited power—not confined by poverty or social class. The story teller didn’t need to explain how or why a given character had the freedom to do X, Y, or Z. If they were a prince or princess, their extraordinary privilege was assumed, along with the extraordinary trials that confronted them. What evil fairy princess, after all, is going to waste her time cursing the daughter of some serf or peasant? What Prince is going to give a damn if some peasant girl is buried alive in a glass coffin by a bunch of dwarfs?

As it turns out, it’s just this dynamic that plays out in Act 4. In Act 2, Leontes orders Antigonus to take his newborn daughter (who he believes to be the bastard child of Polixenes) into the wild and leave her there (hopefully to be torn to shreds by a passing carnivore). As it turns out, the baby, Perdita, is rescued by a Shepherd. Act 4 moves us forward in time and Perdita is a marriageable, teenage girl. And as it happens, Polixenes son, Florizel, stumbles on her and straightaway falls in love. No one suspects that Perdita is actually the child of nobility and so Florizel’s amorous attention is a deadly threat to Perdita and she knows it.

Oh, but sir,
Your resolution cannot hold, when ’tis
Opposed, as it must be, by th’ power of the King.
One of these two must be necessities,
Which then will speak that you must change this purpose,
Or I my life.

Winter’s Tale 4.4: 35-39 | Norton Digital Edition

By “I my life” she doesn’t mean my life will be changed, rather, I will lose my life. But that doesn’t stop Florizel who, until meeting Perdita, has presumably lived a life of entitlement. Despite her protestations, he insists that not only will he marry her but that he would rather surrender all the benefits of his wealth and station than not marry. Shakespeare intends the audience to appreciate Florizel’s earnest love, though not, perhaps, his naïvety. Sure enough, his father, Polixenes, shows up in disguise and susses out what’s going on. Things don’t end well. Polixenese, who, until this point, had been the sympathetic and wrongly accused childhood friend of Leontes, turns out to be just as much of a tyrannical SOB:

Mark your divorce, young sir,
Whom son I dare not call. Thou art too base
To be acknowledged. Thou a scepter’s heir
That thus affects a sheephook? —Thou, old traitor,
I am sorry that by hanging thee I can
But shorten thy life one week. —And thou, fresh piece
Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know
The royal fool thou cop’st with—

SHEPHERD Oh, my heart.

POLIXENES —I’ll have thy beauty scratched with briars and made
More homely than thy state. —For thee, fond boy,
If I may ever know thou dost but sigh
That thou no more shalt see this knack—as never
I mean thou shalt—we’ll bar thee from succession,
Not hold thee of our blood—no, not our kin—
Far than Deucalion off. Mark thou my words.
Follow us to the court. [to SHEPHERD] Thou churl, for this time,
Though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee
From the dead blow of it. [to PERDITA] And you, enchantment,
Worthy enough a herdsman—yea, him too,
That makes himself, but for our honor therein,
Unworthy thee—if ever henceforth thou
These rural latches to his entrance open,
Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,
I will devise a death as cruel for thee
As thou art tender to’t.

Winter’s Tale 4.4:408-432 | Norton Digital Edition

Polixenes has learned nothing from his experience with Leontes. First he declares that Perdita, who everyone still thinks is the Shepherd’s daughter, too low class for his royal and aristocratic blood. His son “thus affects a sheephook?” he asks. Next he declares that he will hang the Shepherd (the girl’s father), regretting only that the Shepherd is so old as to make the effort hardly worthwhile. After that Polixenes declares that he will have Perdita mutilated: “thy beauty scratched with briars and made/More homely than thy state.” How dare any mere commoner presume to marry into Polixenes’ aristocratic/royal family? He further declares that if Perdita nevertheless pursues Florizel, he will have her killed as cruelly as possible.

All the while, Shakespeare plays around with a common trope (found elsewhere in his other plays) that there is something intrinsically superior to the aristocratic/royal class. (It’s easy to see how this very prevalent attitude eventually led to the race “science” of the Nazis.) Earlier, both Polixenes and his advisor, Camillo, comment on Perdita’s aristocratic bearing:

POLIXENES This is the prettiest lowborn lass that ever
Ran on the greensward. Nothing she does or seems
But smacks of something greater than herself,
Too noble for this place.

CAMILLO [to POLIXENES] He tells her something
That makes her blood look on’t. Good sooth, she is
The queen of curds and cream.

Winter’s Tale 4.4: 155-161 | Norton Digital Edition

She is “too noble” for this place. One need not imagine that the nobility of our own age fancy themselves intrinsically superior to the common run of human being. Trump has on numerous occasions made clear his contempt for dirty, low-class Americans (including those among the exceedingly gullible mob who stormed the capitol building); and has done so in just those terms. His family has also made clear that they share his contempt for the average American. There’s a reason Trump didn’t pardon a single protestor among those who stormed the capitol—they were dispensable. They weren’t worth his time. They were a means to an end (which didn’t materialize) and nothing more. They were like the easily dispensable peasants with whom European aristocratics waged war. True to form, Trump’s children all married within their class and station.

Florizel and Perdita flee, of all places, to Leontes (under the manipulative advice of Camillo who, literally, is merely looking for an excuse to see Leontes again). He couldn’t give a damn about Perdita, who, he well knows, will straightaway be murdered by Polixenes (once they catch up to the couple); but he knows that Polixenes will pursue Florizel and Perdita and so he’ll get a free ride to Sicilia. But what is that to the noble Camillo? As far as he knows (at this point in the play) Perdita is merely a dispensable means to an end; and once that end is achieved, she will be brutally and rightfully dispensed with. But so what? T’were as much as hang a dog from a tree. One wonders to what degree Shakespeare bought into all this. First thing to know is that this was not Shakespeare’s plot, but based on a story by Robert Greene (a deceased playwright and erstwhile rival). Was he just exploiting the literary tropes of the day? I think so. Shakespeare might have bought into the belief, to some degree, that class was intrinsic and not economic; but he was also keenly aware that the nobility didn’t behave any better than anyone else and wrote dozens of plays based on just that reality (Shakespeare had a keen nose for hypocrisy).

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Sonnet 44

It’s my own belief that Shakespeare’s sonnets come closest to personal utterance. Those who exercise power without restraint, he suggests, though they might be deemed the very flower of their class and station, are “outbraved” by the basest weed in dignity. I personally doubt that Shakespeare would have had much sympathy for Leontes or Polixenes (neither could be said to have been like stone or to temptation slow) but he used the tropes of the day to dramatic effect. That said, it’s thought that Shakespeare endorsed the political hierarchies of the day. In his plays, at least, he comes down on the side of rule by aristocracy (which is really as much as to say that he preferred a functioning government—such as it was—to mob rule). Whenever Shakespeare gives voice to the common people they’re generally portrayed as a mob—as a dangerous and destabilizing force. That used to disappoint me, but having witnessed the mob instigated by the Trump family, I see it from Shakespeare’s perspective. It’s not that he thought particularly highly of the aristocracy, but he probably saw in them the closest thing to political and social stability that the Middle Ages had to offer. And why shouldn’t he? The enlightenment was still decades away.

When Perdita’s pedigree (as Leontes’s lost daughter) is finally revealed/discovered at the end of Act 4, then everything changes (though nothing about Perdita has changed). She was still raised by the Shepherd who discovered and saved her life (demonstrating incomparably greater integrity and kindness than any of the noblemen). Not only does Leontes recover his daughter (who he had threatened to burn on the very day of her birth and/or strangle with his own hands) but he also recovers his wife, Hermione—revealed to him by Paulina in the guise of a statue. (This is the same Leontes, in the same act who would have killed Perdita at Polixenes bidding prior to discovering her identity). All in all, I find it an undeserved happy ending for Leontes and Polixenes—or any of their venal hangers on (apart from Paulina). That said, if there’s a difference between Leontes and Trump, it’s that Leontes had enough self-awareness to spend his life, until his discovery of Perdita, regretting his wrongdoing and expressing humility. Trump isn’t even intellectually capable of the insight granted to a fictional pre-Christian King portrayed by a dramatist of the middle ages.

All this is to say, reading Shakespeare after the Trump years has changed everything. I now have a little taste for what life must have been like for those in the Middle Ages—ruled by entitled fools along with their retinue of corrupt courtiers, hangers on, grifters and opportunists. Some part of me still buys into the fairy tale tropes, but the greater part is not so inclined to overlook the venality of the nobility in The Winter’s Tale. If Leontes and Polixenes had accepted Perdita, as a Shepherd’s daughter, prior to discovering her true pedigree (probably an inconceivable outcome in Elizabethan England) then there might be some measure of redemption, but there is none. Both tyrants only accept the outcome after they get what they want. The prerogatives and entitlement of both men is reinforced rather than examined. That’s not redemption. No lessons are learned. I do recognize that Shakespeare’s job was to write a successful play and that involved fulfilling certain conventions and expectations. The Winter’s Tale should probably be read or watched as a kind of implausible fairy tale; and it’s success or failure should likewise be premised on its dramatic effectiveness rather than its moral or ethical assumptions. In that regard, I do get the sense that Shakespeare’s heart wasn’t really in it or that he was conflicted. He gives Paulina, who excoriates Leontes, all the best lines; so much so that the other characters comment on her unrealistic bravery (but maybe she speaks for Shakespeare). By the fifth act, rather than dramatize the revelation that Perdita is really Leontes’ daughter, Shakespeare assigns the revelation to a conversation between two Lords who rattle off the occasion with efficient and workmanlike prose. Should we read Leontes and Polixenes as little more than fairy-tale absurdities? One of the arguments Oxfordians put forward is that Shakespeare too accurately portrayed the court and court politics to have been, well, Shakespeare. But, as better scholars have pointed out (including near contemporaries), Shakespeare’s portrayal of the nobility and the court was patently inaccurate:

It follows, therefore, that the background of life in the plays is, and at the same time is not, the background of Elizabethan life. As an example — old Capulet is an admirable picture of a testy Elizabethan parent, and his behaviour to Juliet in the matter of the match with Paris reminds us instantly of the perpetually quoted account that Lady Jane Grey gives of her own noble father and mother. The human reality is faithfully portrayed, and at the same time the detail of the portrait is contemporary. If, however, we go on lightheartedly to assume that old Capulet in his behaviour as a “nobleman” bears any resemblance to an Elizabethan noble of similar standing we shall be hopelessly misled. If we compare him with the genuine article we realise at once that the intimate “realistic,” or Elizabethan, scenes in which he appears are purely “romantic,” or, if we prefer, untrue to the facts of contemporary noble life. Shakespeare may label Capulet the head of a noble household, who can treat Paris, “a young Nobleman, Kinsman to the Prince,” as his equal, and a proper match for his daughter; but when it comes to a scene like Act IV, Sc. iv, which shows the home life of this supposed nobleman, we realise that the setting is not Verona but Stratford, and that the most likely person to have sat for that very realistic portrait is John Shakespeare, or any of the good burgesses who were William’s father’s friends.

“The Social Background” | A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, edited Harley Granville-Barker and G. B. Harrison.

So, one could treat Leontes’ and Polixenes’ entitlement and murderous threats as more figurative than literal (if one were to act the play as a contemporary city drama); and I could accept that. On those grounds I might let the play’s “happy ending” slide (and the poetry of Florizel and Perdita’s love for each other is to die for); but taken at face value? No. We don’t live in the Middle Ages. I’m not feeling the happy ending of The Winter’s Tale any more than were the corrupt billionaire Donald Trump to escape the consequences of his crimes.

up in Vermont | February 6th 2001

The Minimalist Poet | A Place to Start

What inspires this first post (of several I hope) are the various bloggers and vloggers, in German and English, who were initially inspired by Minimalism, vloggers like Matt D’Avella and Anthony Ongaro at Break the Twitch. I’ve also enjoyed recent articles like Kyle Chayka who criticize the more (ironically) insipid and commodified aspects of “minimalism”, close quotes. She writes: “The literature of the minimalist lifestyle is an exercise in banality.” Hopefully, I can avoid that.

Since Minimalism isn’t solely about how many forks and spoons one owns, I thought I’d explore what the aesthetic of Minimalism might mean to a poet, even if it risks being ahistorical and anachronistic. If you’re not familiar with minimalism, the best place to start is probably with The Minimalists. You can watch a trailer for their autobiographical movie here. At the heart of minimalism is the belief that neither possessions nor the pursuit of possessions will bring you happiness. There’s freedom in loving what you have and only having what you love. And there’s a freedom in living a life that costs less. All possessions come with costs that can be anything from the obligations of ownership to the debt incurred by their acquisition.

There are some minimalists who go so far as to limit their possessions to 100 items or less, and why not? But for most, I think, minimalism means knowing the difference between the meaningful and the superfluous; and that will be different for every person. And as far as that goes, Minimalism is hardly new. If you go back to Stoicim, the Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium, you will discover that his writings and beliefs are eerily similar to current Minimalist literature, right down to their own version of mindfulness and the implicit moral “goodness” of fewer posessions. As Wikipedia writes: ” According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to eudaimonia (happiness) for humans is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself…” Modern Minimalism can easily be understood as a modern variant of stoicism.

I originally started this post meaning to define minimalism the way one defines good poetry verses bad. But if there’s one lesson for Minimalists, it’s that there’s no one right or wrong way to simplify ones life. There’s not a set number of possessions that defines minimalism. And while Minimalism may seem like a lifestyle only the well-off can afford, living beyond ones means is hardly the province of the rich. Too many allow themselves to be defined through their possessions rather than by self-possession. As The Minimalists like to say: Love people, use things; the opposite never works. How does one define a possession when writing poetry? I would say it is when the poet makes a possession of his or her poem: when the poet treats the poem as a storehouse rather than a meeting place, when the poet is unwilling to give ownership of the poem to the reader but dictates to the reader how the poem should be interpreted or how the reader should feel.

Just to start out with, and to demonstrate that this concern with possessions and lifestyle is hardly new, I thought it might be interesting to read opinions from two of our most famous Elizabethan poets—Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. If there’s a cynical difference between Hellenistic stoicism and modern Minimalism, it’s that the former rationalized the reasons we shouldn’t want (and were better off without) the kinds of possessions we weren’t about to get a hold of anyways. Call it Sour Grape Minimalism: The “Didn’t want it anyways and am morally superior with out it”-Minimalism.” Current day minimalism assures us that we shouldn’t want (and are better off without) all the possessions we did actually managed to horde. Ultimately though, the goals of Stoicism and Minimalism are largely the same—to be happy with less.

Shakespeare most directly addressed his opinion on excess in the character of King Lear:

    O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars 
    Are in the poorest thing superfluous. 
    Allow not nature more than nature needs, 
    Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady. 
    If only to go warm were gorgeous, 
    Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st, 
    Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need—
 
        [Act II, iii 261-267]

Beyond the contradictory testimony of his poetry, we know nothing of Shakespeare’s personality. We only know through legal documents that while he lived frugally in London, he became, as Bill Bryson put it, “one of the most conspicuous men of property in Stratford”. His bequest included four houses. If he lived like a minimalist in London, perhaps to avoid taxes, he was no minimalist in Stratford. Back then, a lack of property and possessions most commonly meant a short, if not brutal, life of servitude. In Elizabethan England, if you weren’t the hustler, then you were the hustled. But in his art?—poetry? If he were alive to day he might have written:

Allow literature not more than the words needed, and poetry is as cheap as prose.   

The line between traditional poetry and prose, in Shakespeare’s day, wasn’t remotely as stark as it is today. But maybe you get the drift?  Traditional poetry has been stripped of what made it “gorgeous”—meter, rhyme, figurative language, metaphor, form. But insofar as semantic content goes, all these traditional techniques are superfluous. Stripping poetry of this superfluity hasn’t made it beastly, but it has made it prose. So my own approach to minimalism (as regards the aesthetics of poetry) is to keep some of the clutter around. Shakespeare, for his part, did more than keep some clutter around. His earlier works were baroque in their excess, their puns, their extended conceits, and convoluted eddies into, for all intents and purposes, plays within plays.

 So makest thou faith an enemy to faith;
 And like a civil war set'st oath to oath,
 Thy tongue against thy tongue. O, let thy vow
 First made to heaven, first be to heaven perform’d,
 That is, to be the champion of our church!
 What since thou sworest is sworn against thyself
 And may not be performed by thyself,
 For that which thou hast sworn to do amiss
 Is not amiss when it is truly done,
 And being not done, where doing tends to ill,
 The truth is then most done not doing it:
 The better act of purposes mistook
 Is to mistake again; though indirect,
 Yet indirection thereby grows direct,
 And falsehood falsehood cures, as fire cools fire
 Within the scorched veins of one new-burn’d.

          [Act III, Scene I] 287-

And Shakespeare goes on like this for another twenty five lines. The link to this site actually explains, in equally convoluted modern English, what Shakespeare is trying to say. He could have simply said: Keep your vow to the church. Instead, as was the fashion of the day, he wrote an extended conceit that is, in essence, a kind of play within a play. Shakespeare literally must have seen the world as a stage. Not only did he observe human beings as characters in their own dramas, but the very words they spoke were like characters on the stage of their psyches, competing for dominance. Shakespeare regularly personified inanimate objects with motive and desire. In the conceit above, Shakespeare makes faith an enemy to faith, a kind of character competing against itself. Then he makes the vow a character who, as if in a morality play, first performs his promise in heaven (on heaven’s stage)—champion of the church—only to be perplexed by the moral ambiguity of dueling vows. In the conceit, the vow becomes a character in and of itself, directed or misdirected against itself by the King.

None of this is minimalist and Shakespeare was criticized for his excess by none other than Ben Jonson, his friend and colleague.

I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech.

And he continued:

Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, “Caesar, thou dost me wrong,” he replied “Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause,” and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.

In Jonson’s example, Shakespeare’s excess leads to folly. But there’s more to it than that. Jonson adhered to the Aristotelian notion of the three unities:

• unity of action: a tragedy should have one principal action.
• unity of time: the action in a tragedy should occur over a period of no more than 24 hours.
• unity of place: a tragedy should exist in a single physical location.

In a sense, you could interpret this as Jonson’s effort to prune what he perceived to be the excesses/maximalism of his fellow dramatists. He didn’t care one whit for Shakespeare’s flighty Prologue wafting audiences from England to the fields of France, or for the Prologue of The Winter’s Tale who not only ignored unity of place but unity of time. He critiqued Shakespeare’s maximal prologues in his own “Introduction” to Bartholemew Fair.

So, in temperament, at least, Jonson was very different from Shakespeare, and it’s interesting that we have a passage from one of Jonson’s plays that can stand in almost direct contrast to Shakespeare’s King Lear.

             Who can endure to see
The fury of men's gullets and their groins?—
What fires, what cooks, what kitchens might be spared?—
What stews, ponds, parks, coops, garners, magazines
What velvets, tissues, scarfs, embroideries,
And laces they might lack? They covet things—
Superfluous still; when it were much more honor
They could want necessary. What need hath Nature
Of silver dishes or gold chamber-pots?—
Of perfumed napkins, or a numerous family
To see her eat? Poor and wise, she requires
Meat only; hunger is not ambitious.

[The Staple of News Act III, Scene 4 45-55]

Jonson starts with “who can endure to see” men’s avarice or, in so may words, the fury of their gullets and groins? Then asks, who can bare to see the cooks and kitchens that might be spared (if they weren’t so avaricious), and what stews, ponds, etc., they could just as easily go without—”they might lack”. We covet superfluous things, writes Jonson, when it were of “more honor”, morally and ethically, to only lack and pursue what is necessary—”They could want necessary”. (“Want”, in Elizabethan parlance, more commonly had the meaning “to lack”. ) Then he asks who has need of gold chamber-pots (a fad that continues into modern times)? Jonson, it would seem, also considered a “numerous family” to be a superfluous luxury. Nature, being poor and wise, needs only meat. Hunger, says Jonson, is not ambitious but something necessary and for that reason virtuous. What does a human being need besides their next meal? All the rest is ambition and vanity (gold chamber-pots). Shakespeare’s King Lear would answer that such a parsimonious attitude toward human potential makes a “man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s”.

To be fair to Jonson, the words of the Second Peni-Boy are those of a character in a play, just like Shakespeare’s words are those of King Lear’s, but given what we know of Shakespeare and Jonson, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to read a bit of themselves in what they wrote. Whereas Shakespeare wasn’t about to be embarrassed for the enjoyment he took in his success and acquisitions, Ben Jonson, the rough and plain-speaking bricklayer’s son had a strong distaste for pretension of any kind, and made fun of Shakespeare, among other reasons, for his desire to obtain a coat arms. Non Sans Droit said Shakespeare’s freshly acquired coat of arms, meaning “Not Without Right”. In Jonson’s Every Man Out of his Humour, the socially ambitious fool Sogliardo is a country bumpkin, newly arrived in the city, and eager to show off his freshly purchased coat of arms. Another of Jonson’s characters recommends that Sogliardo use the motto, “Not Without Mustard”.

Whereas Shakespeare’s material positions increased, his poetic art was a steady trimming of his youthful excess. In a sense, and to use a current term, he decluttered his verse. Wolfgang Clemens, in The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery, devotes a book to describing just how Shakespeare does this—how Shakespeare learns to create the illusion of imagery arising organically from the circumstances at hand (subsumed by the drama of the moment) rather than as, in effect, an elaborated aside. To give just one example from Clemens’s book:

Exaggeration is characteristic of many of the conceits of the early plays. In The Two Gentlemen it is said of Proteus’ mistress:

She shall be dignified with this high honour—
To bear my lady's train, lets the base earth
Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss
And, of so great a favour growing proud,
Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower
And make rough winter everlastingly. [II. iv. 158]

This conceit, too, is carried out for its own sake and for the sake of an exaggerated inventiveness. But what points to Shakespeare’s early period is not the fact that nature has here been violated, and that it is somewhat extravagantly demanded of her that she take consideration of a woman. For Shakespeare has also used this motif at a later time. When, for example, after the happy landing of Desdemona in Cyprus it is said by Cassio of the wild rocks and foaming seas:

Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel,—
As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their mortal natures letting go safely by
The divine Desdemona. [Othello, II. i. 70]

we have here, too, a violation of nature and a motif like that of Two Gentlemen. But the difference is that the image from Othello results organically from the joyous excitement over the rescue of Desdemona in the storm just experienced: the rescue appeared to the hard-pressed seafarers in a miraculous light, and Cassio rivets this imrpession with an image. But this organic relationship is still wholly lacking in the image from Two Gentlemen in which the two friends outbid each other with praises of their mistresses. And out of such mutual rhetorical rivalry grows the conceit.

The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery P.35

The decluttering of Shakespeare’s imagery from the early to the late plays is remarkable. It’s also interesting that so few modern poets are aware of Shakespeare’s innovation. While modern poets don’t avail themselves of the Elizabethan conceit, those few who strive to introduce some metaphor and imagery into their poetry (most contemporary poets write discursively) most often do so with similes and prepositional metaphors—conceits in miniature. They don’t arise organically but most often have the feeling of cluttering a poem’s momentum. As an example, one of our previous Poet Laureates, Charles Wright, begins his poem Archaeology

The older we get, the deeper we dig into our childhoods,
Hoping to fin the radiant cell
That washed us, and caused our lives
    to glow in the dark like clockhands
Endlessly turning toward the future,
Tomorrow, day after tomorrow, the day after that,
    all golden, all in good time. 

with a four line simile that is as long as a Shakespearean conceit, the kind of thing John Fletcher, Shakespeare’s younger contemporary, availed himself of, having learned only a little from his elder collaborator.

Getting back to Ben Jonson: Whereas Shakespeare, in a sense, decluttered his verse and created an ever more elliptical style, Jonson’s poetry gradually became less austere until, by the time he was writing his last and unfinished play “The Sad Shepherd“, his lines touch on the superfluous lyricism (with echoes of Cymbeline and Midsummer Night’s Dream) that might have been described by Lear as “gorgeous”.

                      Earine,
Who had her very being, and her name
With the first knots or buddings of the spring,
Born with the primrose, or the violet,
Or earliest roses blown; when Cupid smiled;
And Venus led the Graces out to dance,
And all the flowers and sweets in nature's lap
Leap'd out, and made their solemn conjuration,
To last but while she lived!

        [Act I. ii]

Or Jonson’s description of the witch’s dell:

Within a gloomy dimple she doth dwell
Down a pit, o'ergrown with brakes and briars,
Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey,
Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground
'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house,
Where you shall find her sitting in her fourm,
As fearful and melancholic as that
She is about; with caterpillars' kells,
And knotty cob-webs, rounded in with spells.
Thence she steals forth to relief in the fogs,
And rotten mists, upon the fens and bogs,
Down to the drowned lands of Lincolnshire;
To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow,
The housewives' tun not work, nor the milk churn!
Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in sleep,
Get vials of their blood! and where the sea
Casts up his slimy ooze, search for the weed
To open locks with, and to rivet charms,
Planted about her in the wicked feat
Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold. 

[Act II. ii]

If Jonson had been a minimalist, you might say that he made room for a cup of flowers and knick-knacks on his mid-century Swedish table. One might broadly say that Jonson and Shakespeare met in the middle—Shakespeare’s poetry became more elliptical and organic, while Jonson discovered a new and generous lyricism. (The Elizabethans also understood austerity vs. excess as masculine and feminine attributes, respectively. Shakespeare went so far as to dramatize the tension between austerity and excess in the characters of Coriolanus and his mother Volumnia. Coriolanus typified the ideology of Seneca in his verbal austerity while Volumnia typified, as Elizabethans deemed it, the hyperbole, excess and artifice of the Ciceronian, feminine style. Shakespeare later fused these contradictory ideologies—much to Jonson’s distaste—in the romances.) As far as Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd goes (and lyricism aside) there is still not one conceit or simile in the above passages and adjectives are few. They are gorgeous purely in their evocative and concrete descriptiveness. Jonson is still a “minimalist poet”, rooted in a broadly Senecan taste for the plain and masculine, but finds a place for the gorgeous within that ideology.

So, anyway, that’s my first post on minimalism and poetry—a very brief look at two of our greatest poets and their conflicting notions of the necessary and the superfluous, the austere and the hyperbolic. Hope you enjoyed.

upinvermont | January 7th 2020

What’s with Shakespeare’s ‘Poet’ in Julius Caesar?

 

Because I was having trouble focusing on my own poetry, I flipped open my complete Norton Shakespeare, to a page at random, and started reading. I had stumbled into Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 2 — the argument between Brutus and Cassius — one of my favorite dramatic scenes. The swift give and take between the two characters is beautifully imagined (naturally enough, this is Shakespeare). At the very end of their argument, do you remember this part?

Cassius Hath Cassius lived
To be but mirth and laughter  to his Brutus
When grief and blood ill-tempered vexeth him?
Brutus: When you spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.
Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Brutus: And my heart too.
[They embrace]
Cassius: O Brutus!
Brutus: What’s the matter?
Cassius: Have you not love enough to bear with me
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?
Brutus: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth,
When you are over earnest with your Brutus,
He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.
[Enter Lucillius]
Lucillius and Titinius, bid the commanders
Prepare to lodge their companies tonight.  etc.

Some readers might have a vague memory of this. Others, much more familiar with the play, may notice something or someone missing — the Poet. The Poet is a character who only appears once in the entire play, without any warning, without any preamble, and only between the lines above (which I removed).

Now, if you’re anything like me, the first thought that occurs to you is: Huh? Where did this utterly superfluous and arbitrary character come from? And why? What purpose does he serve? And where did he go? The scene works just fine without him. So I got to thinking about it and came up with an almost completely baseless theory proceeding from the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. But hear me out. The first thing to notice is that I could excise the passage without messing up the lines (meter). This may be complete coincidence, but it may also hint that the passage is an interpolation added later.

However, knowing that Shakespeare based Julius Ceasar on Plutarch,  I first wanted to see if “the Poet ” is in Plutarch. In fact, he is… sort of.  Here’s the relevant passage from here:

Brutus now summoned Cassius to Sardis, and as he drew near, went to meet him with his friends; and the whole army, in full array, saluted them both as Imperators. 2 But, as is wont to be the case in great undertakings where there are many friends and commanders, mutual charges and accusations had passed between them, and therefore, immediately after their march and before they did anything else, they met in a room by themselves. The doors were locked, and, with no one by, they indulged in fault-finding first, then in rebukes and denunciations. 3 After this, they were swept along into passionate speeches and tears, and their friends, amazed at the harshness and intensity of their anger, feared so untoward a result; they were, however, forbidden to approach. 4 But Marcus Favonius, who had become a devotee of Cato, and was more impetuous and frenzied than reasonable in his pursuit of philosophy, tried to go in to them, and was prevented by their servants. 5 It was no easy matter, however, to stop Favonius when he sprang to do anything, for he was always vehement and rash. The fact that he was a Roman senator was of no importance in his eyes, and by the “cynical” boldness of his speech he often took away its offensiveness, and therefore men put up with his impertinence as a joke. 6 And so at this time he forced his way through the bystanders and entered the room, reciting in an affected voice the verses wherein Homer represents Nestor as saying:—

“But do ye harken to me, for ye both are younger than I am,”

and so forth. 7 At this Cassius burst out laughing; but Brutus drove Favonius out of the room, calling him a mere dog, and a counterfeit Cynic. However, at the time, this incident put an end to their quarrel, and they separated at once. 8 Furthermore, Cassius gave a supper, to which Brutus invited his friends. And as the guests were already taking their places at the feast, Favonius came, fresh from his bath. Brutus protested that he had come without an invitation, and ordered the servants to conduct him to the uppermost couch; but Favonius forced his way past them and reclined upon the central one.b And over the wine mirth and jest abounded, seasoned with wit and philosophy.

So, a mystery is afoot. If Shakespeare was solely being faithful to Plutarch, why introduce Favonius as a “Poet”? And if faithfulness was at issue, why exclude Favonius from Brutus and Cassius’ drinking bout? And if faithfulness was not at issue, why introduce Favonius at all? How does he advance the play? In Plutarch’s original, it was Favonius’ interruption (and Brutus and Cassius’ mutual contempt for him) that united them and ended their quarrel. In Shakespeare’s version of events, Brutus and Cassius had already embraced prior to the “Poet’s” appearance, so there’s no reason for Favonius, or the Poet, to enter the scene (let alone the play). None.

So, what’s going on? Well. I have a theory.

My theory, which I’ve already alluded to, is that the Poet’s appearance wasn’t in the original play, but was an interpolation added by Shakespeare (most likely) at some point after the play was originally written. Why? I think the clue is that Favonius was changed to a poet. Right about this time, the famous (or infamous) “Poet’s War” was getting started (Ben Jonson being in the middle of it). I think the “Poet” was Shakespeare’s jab at Jonson. There’s reason to think that Shakespeare made other jabs at Jonson, and Jonson appears to have lampooned Shakespeare in his plays (setting aside his satirical characterizations of Webster and Dekker). The Poet’s War was no secret and the Elizabethan audience was in on it. They were well aware of who was being satirized and lampooned — and they loved it.

But, you may object, the character of Favonius was never referred to as “a poet”. How would the audience have been in on the joke? My answer? Probably because he was dressed like a poet, or dramatist, and possibly was even made to look like Ben Jonson. And furthermore, going completely out on a limb, my bet is that Shakespeare (to really capitalize on the joke) played the part of the Poet. But before we go any further, let’s take a step back. Would Shakespeare really “mar” one of his masterpieces for the sake of a joke?

We know that Shakespeare was involved in the poet’s war because of a reference to Shakespeare and Jonson made by an anonymous author at St. John’s College in 1601-2, in his A Return from Parnassus. My source for this (and all that follows) is Shakespeare & The Poet’s War by James P. Bednarz. Bednarz writes:

 …the anonymous author has the students impersonating Richard Burbage and William Kemp not only reveal that Shakespeare participated in the struggle but also affirm that by the strength of his wit he managed to overcome all other combatants in the process. “Kemp” especially exults in Shakespeare’s victory over Jonson:

Why here’s our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up Horace giving the Poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit. [p. 21]

The rest of Berdnarz’s book is dedicated to teasing out exactly what this “purge” might have been. All critics agree on the “pill” — Jonson’s denunciation of Marston and Dekker in Act 5, Scene 3 of Poetaster, but there’s no real agreement on the “purge”. First to the pill. Jonson was in a snit. Marston had gotten things going by, among other things, stating that Jonson was little more than a translator who stole the works of others. Jonson’s riposte was to satirize Marston’s turgid style and mannered vocabulary in the character of Crispinus. The specific passage is about half way down, but I’ve copied this much because it begins with the “pill”. As Bednarz points out, “Crisponus disgorges fourteen words and phrases that can still be located in Marston’s prior work: ‘barmy froth,’ ‘chilblained,’ ‘clumsy,’ ‘clutched,’ [etc…]” p. 215]

Hor. Please it, great Caesar, I have pills about me,
Mixt with the whitest kind of hellebore,
Would give him a light vomit, that should purge
His brain and stomach of those tumorous heats:
Might I have leave to minister unto him.
Caes.
O, be his AEsculapius, gentle Horace!
You shall have leave, and he shall be your patient. Virgil,
Use your authority, command him forth.
Virg.
Caesar is careful of your health, Crispinus;
And hath himself chose a physician
To minister unto you: take his pills.
Hor.
They are somewhat bitter, sir, but very wholesome.
Take yet another; so: stand by, they’ll work anon.
Tib. Romans, return to your several seats: lictors, bring forward
the urn; and set the accused to the bar.
Tuc. Quickly, you whoreson egregious varlets; come forward. What!
shall we sit all day upon you? You make no more haste now, than a
beggar upon pattens; or a physician to a patient that has no money,
you pilchers.
Tib. Rufus Laberius Crispinus, and Demetrius Fannius, hold up your
hands. You have, according to the Roman custom, put yourselves upon
trial to the urn, for divers and sundry calumnies, whereof you
have, before this time, been indicted, and are now presently
arraigned: prepare yourselves to hearken to the verdict of your
tryers. Caius Cilnius Mecaenas pronounceth you, by this
hand-writing, guilty. Cornelius Gallus, guilty. Pantilius Tucca–
Tuc. Parcel-guilty, I.
Dem.
He means himself; for it was he indeed
Suborn’d us to the calumny.
Tuc. I, you whoreson cantharides! was it I?
Dem. I appeal to your conscience, captain.
Tib. Then you confess it now?
Dem. I do, and crave the mercy of the court.
Tib. What saith Crispinus?
Cris. O, the captain, the captain—
Bor. My physic begins to work with my patient, I see.
Virg. Captain, stand forth and answer.
Tuc. Hold thy peace, poet praetor: I appeal from thee to Caesar, I.
Do me right, royal Caesar.
Caes.
Marry, and I will, sir.—Lictors, gag him; do.
And put a case of vizards o’er his head,
That he may look bifronted, as he speaks.
Tuc. Gods and fiends! Caesar! thou wilt not, Caesar, wilt thou?
Away, you whoreson vultures; away. You think I am a dead corps now,
because Caesar is disposed to jest with a man of mark, or so. Hold
your hook’d talons out of my flesh, you inhuman harpies. Go to,
do’t. What! will the royal Augustus cast away a gentleman of
worship, a captain and a commander, for a couple of condemn’d
caitiff calumnious cargos?
Caes. Dispatch, lictors.
Tuc. Caesar!                   [The vizards are put upon him.
Caes. Forward, Tibullus.
Virg. Demand what cause they had to malign Horace.
Dem. In troth, no great cause, not I, I must confess; but that he
kept better company, for the most part, than I; and that better men
loved him than loved me; and that his writings thrived better than
mine, and were better liked and graced: nothing else.
Virg.
Thus envious souls repine at others’ good.
Hor.
If this be all, faith, I forgive thee freely.
Envy me still, so long as Virgil loves me,
Gallus, Tibullus, and the best-best Caesar,
My dear Mecaenas; while these, with many more,
Whose names I wisely slip, shall think me worthy
Their honour’d and adored society,
And read and love, prove and applaud my poems;
I would not wish but such as you should spite them.
Cris. O–!
Tib. How now, Crispinus?
Cris. O, I am sick–!
Hor. A bason, a bason, quickly; our physic works. Faint not, man.
Cris. O——retrograde——reciprocal——incubus.
Caes. What’s that, Horace?
Hor. Retrograde, reciprocal, and incubus, are come up.
Gal. Thanks be to Jupiter!
Cris. O——glibbery——lubrical——defunct——O——!
Hor. Well said; here’s some store.
Virg. What are they?
Hor. Glibbery, lubrical, and defunct.
Gal. O, they came up easy.
Cris. O——O——!
Tib. What’s that?
Hor. Nothing yet.
Cris. Magnificate——
Mec. Magnificate!  That came up somewhat hard.
Hor. Ay. What cheer, Crispinus?
Cris. O! I shall cast up my——spurious——snotteries——
Hor. Good. Again.
Oris. Chilblain’d——O——O——clumsie——
Hor. That clumsie stuck terribly.
Mec. What’s all that, Horace?
Hor. Spurious, snotteries, chilblain’d, clumsie.
Tib. O Jupiter!
Gal. Who would have thought there should have been such a deal of
filth in a poet?
Cris. O——balmy froth——
Caes. What’s that?
Cris.——Puffie——inflate——turgidious——-ventosity.
Hor. Balmy, froth, puffie, inflate, turgidous, and ventosity are
come up.
Tib. O terrible windy words.
Gal. A sign of a windy brain.
Cris. O——oblatrant——furibund——fatuate——strenuous—
Hor. Here’s a deal; oblatrant, furibund, fatuate, strenuous.
Caes. Now all’s come up, I trow. What a tumult he had in his belly?
Hor. No, there’s the often conscious damp behind still.
Cris. O——conscious——damp.
Hor. It is come up, thanks to Apollo and AEsculapius: another; you
were best take a pill more.
Cris. O, no; O——O——O——O——O!
Hor. Force yourself then a little with your finger.
Cris. O——O——prorumped.
Tib. Prorumped I What a noise it made! as if his spirit would have
prorumpt with it.
Cris. O——O——O!
Virg. Help him, it sticks strangely, whatever it is.
Cris. O——clutcht
Hor. Now it is come; clutcht.
Caes. Clutcht!  it is well that’s come up; it had but a narrow
passage.
Cris. O——!
Virg. Again! hold him, hold his head there.
Cris. Snarling gusts——quaking custard.
Hor. How now, Crispinus?
Cris. O——obstupefact.
Tib. Nay, that are all we, I assure you.
Hor. How do you feel yourself?
Cris. Pretty and well, I thank you.
Virg.
These pills can but restore him for a time,
Not cure him quite of such a malady,
Caught by so many surfeits, which have fill’d
His blood and brain thus full of crudities:
‘Tis necessary therefore he observe
A strict and wholesome diet. Look you take
Each morning of old Cato’s principles
A good draught next your heart; that walk upon,
Till it be well digested: then come home,
And taste a piece of Terence, suck his phrase
Instead of liquorice; and, at any hand,
Shun Plautus and old Ennius: they are meats
Too harsh for a weak stomach.
Use to read (But not without a tutor) the best Greeks,
As Orpheus, Musaeus, Pindarus,
Hesiod, Callimachus, and Theocrite,
High Homer; but beware of Lycophron,
He is too dark and dangerous a dish.
You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms,
To stuff out a peculiar dialect;
But let your matter run before your words.
And if at any time you chance to meet
Some Gallo-Belgic phrase; you shall not straight.
Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment,
But let it pass; and do not think yourself
Much damnified, if you do leave it out,
When nor your understanding, nor the sense
Could well receive it. This fair abstinence,
In time, will render you more sound and clear:
And this have I prescribed to you, in place
Of a strict sentence; which till he perform,
Attire him in that robe. And henceforth learn
To bear yourself more humbly; not to swell,
Or breathe your insolent and idle spite
On him whose laughter can your worst affright.
Tib. Take him away.

Note the monologue at the end, where Ben Jonson, in the guise of Virgil, gets to pompously lecture Marston and Dekker. My point in copying it here is, first, because it’s actually hilarious if you can imagine it onstage and, two, to show how Jonson, Dekker, Marston, and eventually Shakespeare, after his own fashion, were playing out their argument before all of London. Not only were they making their case before the Elizabethan public, but it’s also liekly that their on-stage dispute was raking in the money; and they weren’t fools (Marston, Dekker, and Jonson would all happily work together again.) It’s not unreasonable to suspect that they kissed and made up well before they ended the feud. But getting back to Shakespeare, what was his fashion? Berdnarz argues that Shakespeare satirized Jonson in the character of Ajax from his play Troilus and Cressida:.

“As Elton observes, the language of A Return from Parnassus is more prcise in its connotations than readers had heretofore recognized. Kemp’s line, “our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit,” uses the word “beray” as a synonym in Elizabethan parlance for “befoul” or “beshit.” Elron concludes that Shakespeare ‘purged’ Jonson by satirizing him as a witless braggart soldier compounded of humours, and berayed his credit — befouled his reputation — by naming him Ajax, signifying a privy’ Shakespeare needed Ajaz for the depiction of Trojan history, but he built into the role a reference to Jonson in order to expose him by proxy to his own comic plotting. Ever since John Harington in The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596) encouraged his readers to pronounce the hero’s name with a stress on the second syllable (“a jakes”), it had had a latent comic association. Harington incited a reply from an anonymous rival who took him to task in Ulysses Upon Ajax, or in other words, “Ulyssess on the privy.” [p. 32-33]

Shakespeare’s satire of Jonson is gist for the entire book, but this at least gives an introduction. What did Jonson say that irked Shakespeare? As it turns out, one of Jonson’s surviving criticisms of Shakespeare pertains to his play Julius Caesar:

“Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, “Caesar, thou dost me wrong,” he replied “Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause,” and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.”

Now, strangely enough, this line can’t be found in the play as it as come down to us. Instead, we find the following:

“Know Caesar doth no wrong, nor without cause
Will he be satisfied.”

Somebody changed the line. Not only that, when but when they changed it they left a half-line, as if, in Berdnarz’s words, they indicated a revision. What this tells us is that the play was altered subsequent to Jonson’s barb; and this is important because it adds just a little plausibility to my own contention that the “Poet” was also, possibly, a subsequent revision. In other words, Shakespeare may have corrected the much maligned line, but also added a little barb in the guise of the “poet”.

But before I copy out the lines with Shakespeare’s “Poet” included, a couple more observations. There was another criticism that Jonson made of Shakespeare’s dramaturgy, and that was lambasting Shakespeare for ignoring the classical unities. Jonson especially singled out the Shakespeare’s Henry V, contemptuous of the play’s personified “Prologue” who wafted the audience hither and anon in complete disregard of the “classical unities“. In the 1616 Folio Edition of Jonson’s plays, the following prologue appeared in Every Man In His Humour.

SCENE,—LONDON
PROLOGUE.

Though need make many poets, and some such
As art and nature have not better’d much;
Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,
As he dare serve the ill customs of the age,
Or purchase your delight at such a rate,
As, for it, he himself must justly hate:
To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster’s king jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleas’d to see
One such to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o’er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen; nor roll’d bullet heard
To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they’re ill.
I mean such errors as you’ll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:
Which when you heartily do, there’s hope left then,
You, that have so grac’d monsters, may like men.

The whole of it is a scathing criticism from beginning to end. From what I can gather, the assumption seems to be that because the prologue first appeared in print in the 1616 Folio Edition, it must have been written then. I don’t see a compelling reason to make that assumption. Why would Jonson write such a scathing prologue almost 20 years after Henry V’s first appearance (1599)? My own supposition, and based on Shakespeare’s “Poet”, is that it appeared much earlier, and was probably appended to the play during the Poetomachia. Every Man In His Humour was first staged in 1598, before Henry V, but continued to be staged, and probably contemporaneously with Henry V. In fact, Jonson’s play was entered into the Register of the Stationers’ Company on 4 August 1600, along with Shakespeare’s  As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Henry V. It’s much more likely, in my opinion, that the prologue, or an early form of it, appeared shortly after Henry V as the Poetomachia heated up. If I’m right, then Jonson only formally added it to the play, for the sake of the folio, in 1616.

And one last bit of information before we read the passage with the poet. Here’s a brief explanation of Jonson’s Humours from here:

As Jonson has been much misrepresented in this matter, let us quote his
own words as to “humour.” A humour, according to Jonson, was a bias of
disposition, a warp, so to speak, in character by which

“Some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way.”

But continuing, Jonson is careful to add:

“But that a rook by wearing a pied feather,
The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff,
A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot
On his French garters, should affect a humour!
O, it is more than most ridiculous.”

Jonson’s comedy of humours, in a word, conceived of stage personages
on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification
of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified
traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the
spark of comedy.

Now, what would you do if you were Shakespeare? Not only does Jonson lay into your play Julius Caesar, shooting off his mouth about a phrase that he finds utterly nonsensical,

“I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. . .” ~ Ben Jonson

But he’s he added a rhyming Prologue to his play Every Man in his Humour, accusing you of provincial incompetence, of ignoring the classical unities (messing with the normal progress of time and place), and does it all while lording his own classical education over you. Why, if you were Shakespeare, you might go back and insert a few lines, changing Plutarch’s Favonius into a character who looked and acted suspiciously like Ben Jonson, and probably much to the uproarious delight of the playgoers.

Cassius: Hath Cassius lived
To be but mirth and laughter  to his Brutus
When grief and blood ill-tempered vexeth him?
Brutus: When you spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.
Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Brutus: And my heart too.
[They embrace]
Cassius: O Brutus!
Brutus: What’s the matter?
Cassius: Have you not love enough to bear with me
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?
Brutus: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth,
When you are over earnest with your Brutus,
He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.
Enter [Lucillius and] a POET
POET: Let me go in to see the generals.
There is some grudge between ’em; ’tis not meet
They be alone.
Lucillius: You shall not come to them.
POET: Nothing but death shall stay me.
Cassius: How now! What’s the matter?
POET: For shame, you generals, what do you mean?
Love and be friends, as two such men should be.
For I have seen more years, I’m sure, than ye.
Cassius: Ha, ha! How vilely doth this cynic rhyme!
Brutus [to the Poet] Get you hence, sirrah, saucy fellow, hence!
Cassius: Bear with him, Brutus, ’tis his fashion.
Brutus: I’ll know his humour when he knows his time.
What should the wars do with these jigging fools?
[To the Poet] Companion, hence!
Cassius: Away, away, be gone!
Exit POET
Brutus: Lucillius and Titinius, bid the commanders
Prepare to lodge their companies tonight. etc.

That Poet, I propose, is Ben Jonson. He can’t keep from barging in and giving his pompous, bloated opinion in the midst of the play. I suspect the audience immediately recognized him. In he goes! Nothing but death shall stay him! (And that might be a barbed reference to Jonson’s boasting that he had taken Marston’s pistol from him. ) What does Jonson do? He claims legitimacy “for I have seen more years” in a way that echoes his claim to a superior knowledge of classical literature — (the classical unities & dramaturgy). “How vilely doth this cynic rhyme!” cries Brutus. Favonius was a cynic, a “member of a philosophical school that refused to respect differences in social class.” [The Norton Shakespeare p. 1575] Jonson, among other jests, ceaselessly made fun of Shakespeare’s desire to be a gentleman and obtain a coat of arms. Consider this from Wikipedia:

Every Man Out of His Humour includes several references to Shakespeare and his contemporaneous works: a mention of Justice Silence from Henry IV, Part 2—”this is a kinsman to Justice Silence” (V,ii) and two allusions to Julius Casear, which help to date that play to 1599. “Et tu, Brute” occurs in V,iv of Every Man Out; in III,i appears “reason long since is fled to animals,” a paraphrase of Shakespeare’s line “O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts” in Julius Caesar, III,ii,104. Some critics have seen a dig at Shakespeare in the coat of arms that Jonson gives his character Sogliardo in III,1, whose crest features a ” boar without a head, rampant – A boar without a head, that’s very rare!” and the motto “Not without mustard.” The motto of Shakespeare’s family coat of arms granted three years earlier was Non Sans Droit, “not without right.”

Shakespeare’s humorous jab is both true to Plutarch (Favonius was a cynic) and also true of Jonson (who disrespects Shakespeare’s social climbing). The “rhyme”, in my opinion, refers to the rhyming of the prologue to Every Man In His Humour. Shakespeare, in the character of Brutus, then brusquely dismisses Jonson:  “Get you hence, sirrah, saucy fellow, hence!”

Cassius, perhaps representing the common opinion on Jonson, says: “Bear with him, Brutus, ’tis his fashion.”

This is the praise that damns. Jonson’s posturing is merely fashion, rather than anything principled. And then Brutus executes the coup de grâce:

I’ll know his humour when he knows his time.
What should the wars do with these jigging fools?

In my view, Shakespeare all but spells it out. “I’ll know his humour” — a sly reference to Jonson’s plays Every Man In and Every Man Out of His Humour, if not his philosophical dramaturgy in general “when he knows his time.” I suspect time is a coy jab at Jonson’s harping on the classical unities. In other words, Shakespeare will give a damn what Jonson thinks when Jonson knows his time — that he’s a playwright in Elizabethan England and not ancient Rome. Basta. And then he adds (with possibly a reference to Henry V) — “What should the wars (Henry V) do with these jigging (rhyming) fools (Ben Jonson).”

“Away, away, be gone!” says Cassius, as though speaking the general censure.

All the while, Brutus and Cassius are laughing; and this too is true to Plutarch, who wrote that Favonius’s foolery disarmed both Brutus’s and Cassius’s anger. Shakespeare substitutes the so-called “Poet”, Ben Jonson, for the fool, Favonius; and probably to the delight of the Elizabethan audience, who laughed along with Brutus and Cassius.

A stroke of genius, if you ask me (and if I’m right). Let me know what you think.

mountainish inhumanity

I continue to be deeply offended by the ignorance and stupidity on display by a certain class of Americans. I can’t keep my mouth shut. More than 57,000 children have come to our borders, for whatever reason (some horrific), dodging violence, abduction, rape, torture, extortion, only to be frightened out of their wits by a rabid mob clothed in the ruff of their opinions — politicians among them. I’d call them hyenas but hyenas possess compassion and overall intelligence.

Along with many other Americans, I can say that they don’t represent what’s good, generous or compassionate in this or any country.

But as anyone in every country knows, there’s no state that doesn’t suffer its own fools. On a scrap of paper long thought to contain the only remaining trace of Shakespeare’s hand, Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Sir Thomas More a scathing rebuke of such lynch mobs. The very thing — an anti-immigration crowd hell-bent on ridding their country of the wretched stranger. Here’s how the Oxford Shakespeare sums up the passage (Shakespeare’s contribution to Sir Thomas More):

“Sir Thomas More is based on Holinshed’s Chronicles and Nicholas Harpsfield’s biography of More. Sheriff More peacefully quells the riots of Londoners against resident foreigners  on the ‘Ill May Day‘* of 1517, and is appointed Lord Chancellor as a reward. In the Shakespearean Sc. 6, More persuades the rebels to surrender to the King, arguing for obedience to authority and challenging the rebels to consider their own plight if, like the strangers, they were to live in exile.” [Underlining is my own.]

* “…a fortnight before the riot an inflammatory xenophobic speech was made on Easter Tuesday by a Dr. Bell at St. Paul’s Cross at the instigation of John Lincoln, a broker. Bell called on all ‘Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal’. Over the following two weeks there were sporadic attacks on foreigners and rumours abounded that “on May Day next the city would rebel and slay all aliens”. ~ Wikipedia as of July 28th 2014

As concerns the mob mentality untroubled by selfishness or  cruelty, Shakespeare’s More has little patience:

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to th’ ports and costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

And more to the point, says More:

You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line,
To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)
Should so much come to short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,–
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.

And what will happen if  these people, these Americans and their children, who call themselves Christian, someday and suddenly find themselves the foreigner or the immigrant?  Who won’t, by their example, spurn them like dogs? Why shouldn’t they suffer the same barbarous temper and hideous violence? — The same refusal of a safe and generous abode on earth? Why should any American, outside the mote of their entitlement, expect to be treated better than dirt?

Shakespeare’s More still asks the same questions and I wonder if another 400 years will pass before history stops repeating itself.

The play, Sir Thomas More, a collaboration between Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare (and possibly others) was censored by the Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney, and never produced. Apparently, Tilney wanted substantial changes made to the play’s insurrection scenes. The ruling class then was just as timid as the ruling class today.

§

SCENE IV. St. Martin’s Gate.

[Enter Lincoln, Doll, Clown, George Betts, Williamson, others;
and a Sergeant at Arms.]

LINCOLN.
Peace, hear me: he that will not see a red herring at a Harry groat,
butter at elevenpence a pound, meal at nine shillings a bushel, and
beef at four nobles a stone, list to me.

GEORGE.
It will come to that pass, if strangers be suffered. Mark him.

LINCOLN.
Our country is a great eating country; ergo, they eat more in our
country than they do in their own.

CLOWN.
By a halfpenny loaf, a day, troy weight.

LINCOLN.
They bring in strange roots, which is merely to the undoing of poor
prentices; for what’s a sorry parsnip to a good heart?

WILLIAMSON.
Trash, trash; they breed sore eyes, and tis enough to infect the city
with the palsey.

LINCOLN.
Nay, it has infected it with the palsey; for these bastards of dung,
as you know they grow in dung, have infected us, and it is our
infection will make the city shake, which partly comes through the
eating of parsnips.

CLOWN.
True; and pumpkins together.

SERGEANT.
What say ye to the mercy of the king?
Do ye refuse it?

LINCOLN.
You would have us upon this, would you? no, marry, do we not;
we accept of the king’s mercy, but we will show no mercy upon the
strangers.

SERGEANT.
You are the simplest things that ever stood
In such a question.

LINCOLN.
How say ye now, prentices? prentices simple! down with him!

ALL.
Prentices simple! prentices simple!

[Enter the Lord Mayor, Surrey, Shrewsbury, More.]

LORD MAYOR.
Hold! in the king’s name, hold!

SURREY.
Friends, masters, countrymen–

LORD MAYOR.
Peace, how, peace! I charge you, keep the peace!

SHREWSBURY.
My masters, countrymen–

WILLIAMSON.
The noble earl of Shrewsbury, let’s hear him.

GEORGE.
We’ll hear the earl of Surrey.

LINCOLN.
The earl of Shrewsbury.

GEORGE.
We’ll hear both.

ALL.
Both, both, both, both!

LINCOLN.
Peace, I say, peace! are you men of wisdom, or what are you?

SURREY.
What you will have them; but not men of wisdom.

ALL.
We’ll not hear my lord of Surrey; no, no, no, no, no! Shrewsbury,
Shrewsbury!

MORE.
Whiles they are o’er the bank of their obedience,
Thus will they bear down all things.

LINCOLN.
Sheriff More speaks; shall we hear Sheriff More speak?

DOLL.
Let’s hear him: a keeps a plentyful shrievaltry, and a made my
brother Arthur Watchins Seriant Safes yeoman: let’s hear Shrieve
More.

ALL.
Shrieve More, More, More, Shrieve More!

MORE.
Even by the rule you have among yourselves,
Command still audience.

ALL.
Surrey, Surrey! More, More!

LINCOLN:
Peace, peace, silence, peace.

GEORGE.
Peace, peace, silence, peace.

MORE.
You that have voice and credit with the number
Command them to a stillness.

LINCOLN.
A plague on them, they will not hold their peace; the dual cannot
rule them.

MORE.
Then what a rough and riotous charge have you,
To lead those that the dual cannot rule?–
Good masters, hear me speak.

DOLL.
Aye, by th’ mass, will we, More: th’ art a good housekeeper, and I
thank thy good worship for my brother Arthur Watchins.

ALL.
Peace, peace.

MORE.
Look, what you do offend you cry upon,
That is, the peace: not one of you here present,
Had there such fellows lived when you were babes,
That could have topped the peace, as now you would,
The peace wherein you have till now grown up
Had been ta’en from you, and the bloody times
Could not have brought you to the state of men.
Alas, poor things, what is it you have got,
Although we grant you get the thing you seek?

GEORGE.
Marry, the removing of the strangers, which cannot choose but
much advantage the poor handicrafts of the city.

MORE.
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to th’ ports and costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

DOLL.
Before God, that’s as true as the Gospel.

LINCOLN.
Nay, this is a sound fellow, I tell you: let’s mark him.

MORE.
Let me set up before your thoughts, good friends,
On supposition; which if you will mark,
You shall perceive how horrible a shape
Your innovation bears: first, tis a sin
Which oft the apostle did forewarn us of,
Urging obedience to authority;
And twere no error, if I told you all,
You were in arms against your God himself.

ALL.
Marry, God forbid that!

MORE.
Nay, certainly you are;
For to the king God hath his office lent
Of dread, of justice, power and command,
Hath bid him rule, and willed you to obey;
And, to add ampler majesty to this,
He hath not only lent the king his figure,
His throne and sword, but given him his own name,
Calls him a god on earth. What do you, then,
Rising gainst him that God himself installs,
But rise against God? what do you to your souls
In doing this? O, desperate as you are,
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,
That you like rebels lift against the peace,
Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,
Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!
Tell me but this: what rebel captain,
As mutinies are incident, by his name
Can still the rout? who will obey a traitor?
Or how can well that proclamation sound,
When there is no addition but a rebel
To qualify a rebel? You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line,
To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)
Should so much come to short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,–
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.

ALL.
Faith, a says true: let’s do as we may be done to.

LINCOLN.
We’ll be ruled by you, Master More, if you’ll stand our friend to
procure our pardon.

MORE.
Submit you to these noble gentlemen,
Entreat their mediation to the king,
Give up yourself to form, obey the magistrate,
And there’s no doubt but mercy may be found,
If you so seek.
To persist in it is present death: but, if you
Yield yourselves, no doubt what punishment
You in simplicity have incurred, his highness
In mercy will most graciously pardon.

The Writing and Art of Iambic Pentameter – II

• If you’re coming to this post after having gotten a notification — what a mess. WordPress initially insisted on dating it to 2012. Don’t know why. I copied the contents of the original into this new one, but parts of the post were missing (I soon discovered). I think it’s all in one piece now. If something looks like it’s missing, let me know. May 7 2013

In my last post on this subject, I wrote that at some point I would get around to poetizing the rest of North’s passage. This pot has been simmering on the back burner for over a year. I don’t know if my effort is helpful to others, but I enjoy the process. This post isn’t quite so detailed or methodical as the other, since there’s no point in altogether repeating what was said before. Nevertheless, I’ve followed much the same process. Here again, are the two relevant paragraphs from North’s Plutarch:

Therefore when she was sent unto by diverse letters, both Antonius himself and also from his friends, she made light of it and mocked Antonius so much that she disdained to set forward otherwise but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, howboys, citherns, viols, and such other instruments as they played upon in the barge. And now for the person of herself: she was laid under a pavilion of cloth of gold of tissue, appareled and attired like the goddess Venus commonly drawn in picture; and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretty fair boys appareled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with which they fanned wind upon her.

Her ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest of them were apparelled like the nymphs Nereides (which are the mermaids of the waters) and like the Graces, some steering the helm, others tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of the which there came a wonderful passing sweet savor of perfumes, that perfumed the wharf’s side, pestered with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge all alongst the river’s side; others also ran out of the city to see her coming in; so that in the end there ran such multitudes of people one after another to see her that Antonius was left post-alone in the market-place in his imperial seat to give audience.

As I wrote before, this choice piece of purple prose was written by Thomas North – a translation of a French work by Jacques Amyot which was itself a translation from Plutarch – a Greek historian who wrote while Nero was emperor of Rome. Plutarch was describing Cleopatra’s shrewd and calculating courtship of Antony. So, as before, I took the paragraph and lineated it. Voila! We now have free verse. See? The easiest verse form in the history of literature.

Her ladies and gentlewomen also,
the fairest of them were apparelled like
the nymphs Nereides (which are the mermaids
of the waters) and like the Graces, some
steering the helm, others tending the tackle
and ropes of the barge, out of the which there came
a wonderful passing sweet savor of
perfumes, that perfumed the wharf’s side, pestered
with innumerable multitudes of people.
Some of them followed the barge all alongst
the river’s side; others also ran out
of the city to see her coming in;
so that in the end there ran such multitudes
of people one after another to see
her that Antonius was left post-alone
in the market-place in his imperial seat
to give audience.

I essentially limited each line to between 9 and 11 syllables. For some who are learning to write Iambic Pentameter, this can help make the transition manageable. Write out your poem as a paragraph, then break down the paragraph into lines having 9 to eleven syllables each. Don’t worry about meter. (Interestingly, a strong Iambic rhythm was more typical of prose writers during the Elizabethan period. Some passages can be broken down into blank verse with very few changes.) Once this is done, you can think about each line rather than the paragraph as a whole. If you’re trying to write a sonnet, then something like this is more difficult. Not only do you have to think about rearranging the letters metrically, but you also have to rhyme without being obvious. Easier, if you’re first learning, to limit yourself to blank verse (unrhymed Iambic Pentameter).

For the next step, I rearranged the words in the lines so that they would fall into an Iambic pattern. Unlike last time, I didn’t try to write as strict an Iambic Pentameter line. For the most part, the trick is in weeding out the anapests. Anapests are a permitted and common variant foot in blank verse, but too many spoil the broth. I also wanted to limit them so that a reader can see how I re-arranged phrases to avoid them. I forcefully broke down the feet as though I were trying to read the lines as Iambic Pentameter (Tetrameter in some cases) — a little arbitrary. That shows me not only anapests but many trochaic feet. I ‘m going to have iron that all out.

Her lad|ies and gent|lewom|en also,
the fair|est of them|were appar|elled like
the nymphs |Nerei|des (which are| the mermaids
of the wat|ers) and like|the Grac|es, some
[5]steering |the helm, |others |tending |the tackle
and ropes |of the barge|, out of| the which| there came
a wond|erful |passing |sweet sa|vor of
perfumes, |that per|fumed the| wharf’s side, |pestered
with innum|erable mul|titudes| of people.
[10]Some of |them fol|lowed the barge| all alongst
the riv|er’s side; |others| also| ran out
of the cit|y to see |her com|ing in;
so that |in the end |there ran |such mul|titudes
of peop|le one af|ter ano|ther to see
[15]her that |Anton|ius |was left |post-alone
in the mark|et-place |in his |imper|ial seat
to give aud|ience.:

So it’s a mess. This is the way I see it after I’ve lineated it. Obviously, I’ve got my work cut out for me. So did Shakespeare. He saw the same prose that you do and went through a similar process. There’s going to be cutting, moving around, and rephrasing. Here’s how Shakespeare did it (though probably without having to think too much about it):

Enobarbus: Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i’ the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.

And here’s my first go. I made some interpretative changes for the fun of it but also left some of the lines relatively intact. I’ve also used a number of feminine endings (lines that end in an extra weak/unstressed syllable). So, I’ve given myself a little more freedom than last time.

Her ladies and her gentlewomen also,
The fairest were appareled like the nymphs —
The Nereides (which sailors call the mermaids) —
While others, like the Graces, steered the helm
Or moved like apparitions tending tackle
And rope. Out of the barge there came a savor
Of perfume, scenting the wharf, its byways pestered
With multitudes of people. Some of them
Followed the barge along the river’s side
While every street and alley multiplied
Their number such that in the end there ran
So great a crowd some claimed the dam was broken
And all the city’s tributaries emptied
To never be put back. Antonius
Was left to keep the marketplace alone
His vain imperial seat of no more use
Than were a galley in a sun-burnt desert
The tide that brought it there a whistling dust
And nothing more.

Her lad|ies and| her gent|lewom|en also,
The fair|est were |appar|elled like| the nymphs —
The Ner|eides |(which sail|ors call |the mermaids) —
While o|thers, like| the Grac|es, steered |the helm
Or moved |like ap|pari|tions tend|ing tackle
And rope. |Out of| the barge| there came| a savor
Of per|fume, scen|ting the wharf, |its by|ways pestered
With mul|titudes |of peo|ple. Some| of them
Followed |the barge| along |the ri|ver’s side
While e|very street |and al|ley mul|tiplied
Their num|ber such |that in| the end| there ran
So great |a crowd |some claimed| a dam |was broken
And all | the ci|ty’s tri|butar|ies emp|tied
To ne|ver be| put back. |Anton|ius
Was left |to keep| the mar|ketplace| alone
His vain |imper|ial seat| of no| more use
Than were |a gal|ley in |a sun-|burnt desert,
The tide |that brought| it there| a whist|ling dust
And no|thing more.

That’s okay, but I think I can do better. I’m going to change, re-arrange and add to what I’ve already written. This time, I deliberately avoided looking at Shakespeare’s version (though it’s hard not to remember and I have given him a nod or two). Also, I’ve touched up the previous passage just a little. Modern purists might be outraged by the touch of elision in the final line. Call it my sense of humor. It makes (and made) blank verse so much easier to write. If you’re writing modern blank verse, don’t do it. You need an advanced poetic license for this kind of devilry.

Enobarbus: Anotonius, together with his friends,
Sent for her.
Agrippa: How did she answer?
Enobarbus: ····················She mocked them.
Agrippa: Mocked them?
Enobarbus: ············Made light of them. Disdained them.
Agrippa: ········································································How?
Enobarbus: She answered under purple sails – her barge
Put on the river. Flute, viol and cithern
Played, and the oars struck water to their rhythm.
The poop was gold; gold glittered in its wake
As though the sun strew petals after her.
As for the Queen herself, she lay bedecked
Like Aphrodite under cloth of gold
Of tissue; poor in clothing, profligate
Without, her artifice surfeiting most
Where she most starved. On either side stood boys,
Like love-struck Cupidons, fanning her
With multi-colored wings — or so it seemed
To the gathered at the water’s edge — their eager
And unschooled apprehension peopling the thin air
With giddy excess.
Agrippa: ··············Wonderful!
Enobarbus: ····························She mocked him.
Agrippa:·How so? She praised him.
Enobarbus:·····································No, Agrippa. Mocked him—
As if a dish were set before the King
And to a man all cried: Long live the cook!
Agrippa: Poor Antony.
Enobarbus: But Cleopatra! Girls —
She chose the loveliest girls who by
Their jade and turquoise anklets, and the seashells
Cupping their dainty breasts, were like the Nereidies —
Or mermaids. I, myself, could almost swear
A school of mermaids piloted the helm,
Who by the flourish of their watery fingers
Bewitched the Nile. Out of the barge there came
A savor — perfume — scenting all who crowded
The wharfs and harborage. The city spilled
Its multitudes. As many as there were
Still more came bursting from the streets and byways
Until the city’s tributaries emptied;
And there, there in the marketplace, there where
A city’s ticklish populace had thronged
There — ci-devant — sat Antony. His high
Imperial seat had shoaled her water —
A galleon in a sun-burnt desert, call her;
The tide that brought her there a whistling dust —
He baked i’th’ sun.

The Senses & the Art of Imagery

What is Imagery?

I’ve been editing a textbook for an educator who includes a section on the five senses and imagery, and this got me thinking. I questioned whether some of the examples were really evocative of the five senses and questioned whether some of the examples were even imagery (if they weren’t pictorial or visual). In the course of writing this post, I’ve hung myself out to dry. I’ve changed how I think about imagery and if my definition doesn’t suit you, feel free to ignore it.

If you go to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the entry under image begins like this:

“Image” and “imagery” are among the most widely used and poorly understood terms in poetic theory, occurring in so many different contexts that it may well be impossible to provide any rational, systematic account of their usage. A poetic image is, variously, a metaphor, simile, or figure of speech; a concrete verbal reference; a recurrent motif, a psychological event in the reader’s mind; the vehicle or second term of a metaphor; a symbol or symbolic pattern; or the global impression of a poem as a unified structure.

And this is why Encyclopedia’s aren’t always the best place to go for definitions: they have to represent all the various constituencies. Along the way we get a gem like the following: “The concept of “poetic imagery” is thus a kind of oxymoron, installing an alien medium (painting, sculpture, visual art) at the heart of verbal expression”. Any newcomer to poetry, having read Princeton’s overview, will probably depart in greater confusion than they arrived. Next in line is the word Imagery. Princeton discusses Imagery for 7 single-spaced, double columned pages. Fascinating stuff, but not very concise. The third section of the article is called “Recent Developments” and begins like this:

More recently the literary study of imagery has become at once more advanced and more problematic. There are a plethora of studies in speculative and experimental psychology, involving phenomenology, epistemology, and cognitive psychology, looking very closely at the question of what exactly mental imagery is.

Whenever the epistemologists show up, if there isn’t a corpse already, there will be. Ultimately though, imagery is like pornography, everyone knows it when they see it. The morally righteous have no trouble identifying erotica (which doesn’t have a shred of actual pornography) as, well, pornography. They know that erotica, like the best poetry, is rich with imagery; and that the thought of what goes on in a reader’s imagination is immeasurably worse than anything on the page.

My two favorite (and most practical) definitions of imagery are from the The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms and The Poetry Dictionary. They are elegantly simple.

Image, Imagery A mental picture, a concrete representation of something; a likeness the senses can perceive. (…) Many images, such as a “bracelet in a wheel barrow,” appeal primarily to the sense of sight. But an image can invoke the other senses too, as in a “sniff of perfume,” a “jangling of banjoes,” a “scratchy blanket,” or a “tart cherry.” [from the The Poetry Dictionary]

Now isn’t that a breath of fresh air? And from the Longman Dictionary:

image a pictorial likeness, literal or figurative, that illustrates an idea, object, or action by appeal to the senses. (…) Generally, images are of two types: fixed image, in which the picture conveys a concrete and specific meaning throughout its various levels of interpretation, and free image, in which the image creates a general meaning to be subjectively interpreted in various ways by readers.

imagery the use of pictures, figures of speech, or description to evoke action, ideas, objects, or characters. The term ranges in meaning from the use of a single IMAGE or detail to the accumulative effect of a poem’s figurative devices that imply THEMATIC STRUCTURE.

Both entries define imagery as, in part, a “mental picture” or “pictorial likeness”. On the other hand, they also each state that an image is something that “the senses can perceive” or something that “appeals to the senses”. (Interestingly, all the examples given by The Poetry Dictionary are pictorial or visual “images” that evoke one of the senses.)  But if we limit imagery to the pictorial, what do we make of the following:

And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape,
In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye…

(John Keats: Hyperion, I, 209-10)

The phrase, “fragrance soft” isn’t pictorial. It describes  the rose’s fragrance through the  tactile soft. Does this mean it’s not an image? We can’t picture a fragrance, but if it’s not an image, then what do we call it? My own habit is to apply Occam’s Razor to all things literary: keep it simple. The simplest thing is to recognize that Imagery is used figuratively when applied to poetry. We could  divide Imagery into Imagery/Visual, and Sense Imagery/Non-Visual, but this seems needless. I think it’s best to interpret Imagery, when applied to poetry, as any passage that evokes any of our senses: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, organic, or kinesthetic.

Why was my first instinct to insist on imagery as strictly pictorial? It allowed me to talk about some beautiful and very rare imagery that poets are all too unaware of:  what I would have called an  “olfactory image“,  “auditory image“, “tactile image” or “gustatory image“.  I’m not referring to the “image” that only evokes the sense of touch (for example), but images that are pictorial/visual evocations of touch. Since I’m not going to divide imagery into imagery and sense imagery, it’s probably easiest to refer to this imagery as Synaesthetic Imagery.

What is and isn’t…

Interestingly, many poets who think they’re invoking one of the seven senses, actually aren’t. I remember reviewing Calendar by Annie Finch. She was genuinely surprised when I called nearly all of her imagery visual. But she’s not alone. The majority of poets, including me (though I try to be aware of it) hew almost exclusively to the sense of sight. Here’s what I mean. Take the example given by The Poetic Dictionary, “sniff of perfume”.

If the poet writes, “the dog sniffed behind her ear”, then the reader sees a visual image but the sense of smell is not invoked. This is strictly a visual image.

However, if the poet writes, “the dog found a sniff of perfume behind her ear”, then that is a visual image the also invokes our sense of smell. Why? Because a sniff of perfume describes what the dog is smelling (or found), whereas the first example does not describe the smell. Make sense? In order to invoke a sensation, you need to describe the sensation. It’s not enough to simply refer to someone smelling, touching, tasting or hearing. The imagery that invokes a sensation tells us something about the sensation.

• As an interesting aside: The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics posits seven senses:

Psychologists have identified seven kinds of mental images: visual (sight, then brightness, clarity, color, and motion), auditory (hearing), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) tactile (touch, then temperature, texture), organic (awareness of heartbeat, pulse, breathing, digestion), and kinesthetic (awareness of muscle tension and movement).

Is there such a thing as a visual or pictorial auditory, olfactory or tactile image? Yes. And this imagery is some of the loveliest (and perhaps rarest) in all poetry. The only book, to my knowledge, that discusses this kind of imagery was one published in 1949 by Richard Harter Fogle called The Imagery of Keats and Shelley. If gaining real insight into the nature of imagery interests you, then this book is indispensable. It’s from Fogle’s book that I take the term: Synaesthetic Imagery. The first chapter, wherein he defines imagery somewhat differently than I do, is interesting (to me) but some will find it academic and abstruse. If you skip it, the rest of the book won’t suffer.  Interestingly, he too rejects the notion of the image as solely pictorial. At the outset, he writes:

Another source of possible misconception is the common identification of imagery with pictorial representation, which has misled many who have accepted the sensory view of imagery into overemphasizing the element and excluding other sensory factors. ¶ While giving due heed to those objections to the word, I nevertheless employ it here in default of a better. In this study “imagery” will be used broadly to signify the principle of “figurativeness”.

The Visual Auditory Image | Sound

So, how does one write a visual auditory image? Like this:

Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky,
Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident,
Thou dost thy dying so triumphally:
I see the crimson blaring of they shawms!

(The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, p. 103)

The extract is from Ode to the Setting Sun by Francis Thompson. And did you catch it? — the “crimson blaring”? This isn’t exactly what Fogle calls synaesthetic imagery, but it’s a nice term and I’m going to use it. The poet has used the sense of sight to describe a sound. This kind of thing is exceedingly rare and beautiful. The reason Fogle chose Keats and Shelley is that Shelley, to a certain degree, acts as a contrast and foil to Keats’ imagery. Shelley’s imagery is generally more abstract and “intellectual” whereas Keats’ imagery is more concrete and sensual. Naturally enough, some of the most beautiful Synaesthetic Imagery or Sense Imagery, is by Keats — well-known for the sensuality of his poetry.

Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,
Came slope upon the threshold of the west;
Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope
In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes,
Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet
And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies;
And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape,
In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye,
That inlet to severe magnificence
Stood full blown, for the God to enter in.

(Ibid., p. 113: Hyperion, I, 209-10)

Here again, Keats blends sensations in the most beautiful way. When he describes how Hyperion’s palace doors open, a visual image, he creates a synaesthetic image of their sound — smoothest silence — a tactile description of an auditory “silence”. When the Zephyrs blow Keats first describes their noise as “wandering sounds” — a visual and arguably kinesthetic image — and then as slow-breathed melodies (an organic and visual description of the auditory “melody”).  Keats describes the palace door with the imagery of a vermeil rose “in fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye”.  Notice how fragrance is described synaesthetically by the tactile soft and how the vermiel color is described as having coolness to the eye. While these last examples aren’t really visual, I couldn’t resist pointing them out. They are equally rare and beautiful synaesthetic images.

You heard — the song the moth sings, the babble
Of falling snowflakes (in a language
No school has taught you), the scream
Of the reddening bud of the oak tree

As the bud bursts into the world’s brightness. (The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren, p. 565)

In  Muted Music, Robert Penn Warren uses the synaesthetic image of reddenning oak buds screaming into the world’s brightness to powerfully close the poem. The synaesthesia creates a kind of crescendo only emphasized by the word scream.

Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against
The deep damnation of his taking-off,
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself
And falls on th’other.

Perhaps the most famous and powerful moment of synaesthetic imagery occurs in this passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Pity is compared to a wind which shall blow “the horrid deed” in everyone’s eye. It’s when Shakespeare combines this image with the visual imagery of the new-born babe striding the “trumpet-tongued” blast (both kinesthetic and auditory), that the imagery becomes brilliantly synaesthetic. The sound of the wind becomes the brilliant visual image of the new-born babe “horsed/Upon the sightless couriers of the air”. Herein lies the power of Shakespeare’s poetry – his sheer and unrivaled imagistic genius. To say that he was a Michelangelo of imagery might be apt.

The Visual Kinesthetic Image | Motion

At this, through all his bulk an agony
Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown,
Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular
Making slow way, with head and neck convulsed
From over-strained might…

(The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, p. 97: Hyperion, I, 259-63)

Remember that Princeton defines the kinesthetic sense as awareness of muscle tension and movement. Notice how beautifully Keats describes the kinesthetic feeling of exhaustion and muscular agony like a “lithe serpent… with head and neck convulsed from over-strained might”.  Clear cut examples from other poets are hard to find, but here’s a famous passage from Shakespeare that, while the imagery may not be strictly synaesthetic, deserves mentioning.

Aye, but to die, and go we know not where
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world…

(William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure, III, i. Claudio)

Shakespeare combines the tactile cold with the kinesthetic obstruction. Because Elizabethan English was constructed nominally rather than verbally, the reader or listener isn’t sure which is modifying which. Is it the obstruction that is cold, or the cold that is obstructing? Shakespeare, who always liked to think in opposites, proceeds to “sensible warm motion“. The image combines the tactile warm with the kinesthetic motion. So far, we don’t really have anything visual, but Shakespeare goes one “opposite” further (as if such a thing were possible) and combines life and death in kneaded clod.  Kneaded is both tactile and kinesthetic. It implies the ability to feel and awareness. Clod is lifeless, immobile and visual. At last, we are given a pictorial image of the lifeless clod combined with the paradoxically tactile and kinesthetic kneaded. Shakespeare’s imagistic genius pictures death as both a lifeless inability to escape and as a paradoxical awareness of that lifeless inability to escape. While these opposites may not necessarily be synaesethetic in a Keatsian sense, I think they’re worth including.

The Visual Olfactory Image | Smell

How does one make scent visual? Here are two examples by Shelley once again drawn from Fogle:

And suddenly my brain became as sand
“Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador,
Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
“Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
Until the second bursts –so on my sight
Burst a new Vision never seen before. —
“And the fair shape waned in the coming light
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
“Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops —
And as the presence of that fairest planet
Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
“That his day’s path may end as he began it
In that star’s smile, whose light is like the scent
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
“Or the soft note in which his dear lament
The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
That turned his weary slumber to content. —

(Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Trumph of Life, II. 405-423)

Where else have you heard light described as the scent of an evening jonquil? If you ever wonder how to characterize a scent, don’t let your imagination be limited by what you smell. Think of smell by what you see, or taste, or touch. At least twice in all his poetry, Keats is reminded of touch, of softness, when he thinks of fragrances.

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense…

(Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Sensitive Plant,I, 25-28)

I included this latter quote because, although it’s not a visual olfactory image, it nevertheless evokes an equally synaesthetic experience of smell — the flower’s odor as a sound, a sweet peal of music. The example that Fogle finds most compelling, however, comes, once again, from Keats’s Hyperion. He writes:

Taste-images occur with relative infrequency in Keats’s synaesthetic imagery, but such as appear are powerful and vivid. On one occasion he combines taste with smell to produce one of the strongest of all his sensory images:

Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths
Of incense, breath’d aloft from sacred hills,
Instead of sweets, his ample palate took
Savour of poisonous brass and metal sick…

(Hyperion, I, 186-89)

(The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, p. 117)

We not only taste the poisonous brass but we see it too, evoking warfare and bloodshed. We visually see the odor.

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

In T.S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday, the tactile imagery of the sandy earth is transformed into a salt savor. This isn’t as strictly synaesthetic as Shelley’s imagery, but more like Keats’. Eliot was a keen reader of Shakespeare and Keats. It may be no coincidence that he used the same word, savour, as Keats. Eliot might well have been directly inspired by the passage for Keats’ Hyperion. Remember, it was T.S. Eliot who said that “good poets borrow, great poets steal”. If you’re looking for inspiration, don’t hesitate  to steal.

In your light, the head is speaking, It reads the book.
It becomes the scholar again, seeking celestial
Rendezvous.

Picking thin music on the rustiest string,
Squeezing the reddest fragrance from the stump
Of summer.

(Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry & Prose, Good is Good. It is a Beautiful Night, p. 255)

Stevens always like to stretch imagery creatively and powerfully. After he wrote “rustiest string”, the color of the rust must have led him to the next synaesthetic image: the reddest fragrance. Like Robert Penn Warren, Stevens saves the powerful synaesthetic image for the penultimate lines of the poem. It’s hard not to think that both poets were proud of these images and wanted them to crown the closing lines of their poems.

The Visual Tactile Image | Touch

This is much more difficult to example. The tactile and the visual generally go hand in hand — if anything, it’s the difference between writing she moved her fingers over the rough of his palms or her fingers tripped over his gravelled palms. Sometimes the tactile can be applied in the most unexpected ways. In Endymion, Keats writes:

Where had he been, from whose warm head out-flew
That sweetest of all songs, that ever new,
That aye refreshing, pure deliciousness,
Coming ever to bless
The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing
Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing
From out the middle air, from flowery nests,
And from the pillowy silkiness that rests
Full in the speculation of the stars.

(John Keats, I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, 181-189)

Perhaps Keats was remembering nights with a silk pillow under his head as he gazed up at the stars. Whatever inspired him, the imagery creates a visual and tactile experience of viewing the stars.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening…

(T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

T.S. Eliot’s famous opening to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock beautifully combines the tactile and visual when describing the motion of the fog. Some readers may argue that this is kinesthetic, but I’ve always associate rubbing with the tactile.

Returning to Fogle, he picks out another image from Keats and takes particular relish in it beauty. He writes:

Of a like complexity is this startling synaesthetic image from Endymion:

….lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks,
Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand. (Endymion, IV, 418-19)

The interplay of sight and touch is very swift. There is a trade of “wit,” of conscious ingenuity, which lends to the image a certain flavour of modernity. The lips of Endymion are “dazzled,” of course, because the hand which they touch is “starlight.” But there is more to the image than its sensory content. Endymion is dazzled because he is dreaming that he is among the Gods on Olympus, kneeling before Hebe: a situation in which some bedazzlement seems excusable. (The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, p. 112)

The Visual Gustatory Image | Taste

Perhaps the beset known passage typifying the synaesthetic fusion of taste and visual imagery comes, again, from Keats. Rather than steal Fogle’s thunder, we’ll let him introduce it:

The synaesthetic imagery of Keats reaches its highest level, however, in the complex fusion of sense, emotion, and concept in the second stanza of the Nightingale:

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth…

Keats has attained to the utmost degree of synthesizing compression in this passage, packing into a few lines what prose could not have expressed in many times the number of words he has emplyed. (Ibid., p. 120-121)

Only the very best wine-tasting critics could dream of aspiring to this kind synesthesia. For Keats, the taste of the vintage draught doesn’t evoke memories of other tastes, but of a whole world of sensation: the visual Flora and country green, the kinesthetic dance, the aural Provencal song, and the organic and tactile sunburnt mirth. Top that. Right? But Keats isn’t content to stop there, the beaker is full of the warm south. Woe to the recovering alcoholic who reads this poem. I”ve never had a vintage draught and I could take or leave most wines, but this makes my mouth water.

Other examples are hard to find, I’ve looked (though not exhaustively) through Eliot, Marriane Moore, Frost, Pen Warren, Mary Oliver, Stevens. Strongly imagistic poets like E.E. Cummings, Amy Clampitt and a sensualist like Pablo Neruda might be good places to look, but I only have so many hours in a day. I did find this from Galway Kinnell, perhaps the most organically aware poet (in the sense of bodily awareness) that I know of. In the  following passage, Galway turns the taste of blackberries into a melange of sounds, word-sounds, color — black — and the tactile cold. The italics are Kinnell’s.

…as  I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched or broughamed,
many-lettered, one syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry eating in late September.

(Blackberry Eating, from Three Books: Body Rags; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words; The Past p. 96)

The Visual Organic Image | Heart, Breath and Pulse

These images are more than exceedingly rare, Fogle offers the following from Endymion:

And down some swart abysm he had gone,
Had not a heavenly guide benignant led
To where thick myrtle branches, ’gainst his head
Brushing, awakened: then the sounds again
Went noiseless as a passing noontide rain
Over a bower, where little space he stood;
For as the sunset peeps into a wood
So saw he panting light…

(Endymion, II. 376-383)

In the poem There Are Things I Tell to No One, Galway Kinnell describes God’s “music of grace” as “notes”:

It speaks in notes struck
or caressed or blown or plucked
off our own bodies…

The image skirts the line. I’m not sure its really synaesthetic since Galway is comparing the body to a blown or plucked stringed instrument. He’s not really ascribing these qualities to the notes, per se; he’s telling where they come from. In the poem Voyages, Amy Clampitt creates a synaesthetic, visual image of breath:

Beside the Neva, Osip Mandelstam wrote of the cold,
the December fog-blurs of Leningrad. O to throw

open (he wrote) a window on the Adriatic! — a window
for the deprived of audience,  for the unfree
to breathe, to breathe even the bad air of Moscow.
Yet on the freezing pane of perpetuity,

that coruscating cold-frame fernery of breath,
harsh flowerbed of the unheated rooms of childhood,
even from the obscurity that sealed it off, his breath,
his warmth, he dared declare, had already setttled.

(The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt. p. 160)

This isn’t as immediately synaesthetic as “panting light”, but Clampitt describes theOrganic sensation of Mandelstam’s breath visually, coldly and chillingly.

If you can find other examples, feel free to add them.

All in all, the thing to remember is that this kind of synaesthetic imagery is the province of poetry. No other art form, be it music, painting, dance or any other similar art, can so unite the multifaceted synaesthetic experience of the world. If you’re going to write poetry, don’t let this kind of beautiful imagery slip through your fingers. If you’re only writing about what you see, omitting what you hear, smell, touch and taste, then you’re crippling yourself and poetry. If you’re not thinking about imagery, about the senses and communicating your experience of life and the world, then you aren’t writing poetry.

 

Double Falsehood Revisited

Mea Culpa

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while.

Ideally, I try not to be hide bound about the rightness of my opinion, preferring to find out whose opinion is right. Whenever I make a mistake, better to correct it or have it corrected (whether I like it or not). If evidence conflicts with my beliefs, then beliefs must change. So, in the spirit of keeping this blog honest, I’m revisiting my last two posts on Double Falsehood: Double Falsehood • It’s not Shakespeare and the second Double Falsehood • Tho. Dekker & Tho. Middleton?. My efforts in both these posts were rewarding (in terms of what I learned by writing them) but I made some mistakes and new information (to me) deserves to be aired.

Tho. Middleton or John Fletcher?

I thought I made a good argument for Middleton, as far as it went. I still do. Some evidence does indeed suggest Middleton, but the stronger evidence suggests Fletcher. Keeping Middleton in the running might be reasonable at the outset (when considering possible authors) but the probable author is Fletcher. The evidence supporting Fletcher comes from an article by Stephan Kukowski entitled The Hand of John Fletcher in Double Falsehood.

Among the reasons for crediting Fletcher, the most compelling is a habit of Fletcher’s composition called elocutionary afterthought. At gutenburg.org, you can find an E-Book of Charles Mills’ publication, Francis Beaumont: Dramatist. Beaumont and Fletcher were the Simon and Garfunkel of the Elizabethan era. Once they met and began to collaborate, they changed the history of British theater. So much so that during the decades immediately following their deaths, their plays were considered superior to Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s. Naturally, a book on Beaumont is going to say something about Fletcher—first and foremost, how does one differentiate their collaboration? What parts of a play are Fletcher’s, what parts Beaumont?

Interestingly, Mills offers us the following passage. I include most of it because that seems simplest. I’ve bolded the passages which most plainly parallel passages in DF.

Here we have blank verse, distinctively Fletcherian with its feminine endings and its end-stopped lines. But, widely as this differs from the earlier rhythm of The Faithfull Shepheardesse and its more lyric precipitancy, the qualities of tone and diction are in the later play as in the earlier. The alliterations may not be so numerous, and are in general more cunningly concealed and interwoven, as in lines 2 to 4; but the cruder kind still appears as a mannerism, the “fire and fierceness,” “hopes,” “hang,” and “head.” The iterations of word, phrase, and rhetorical question, and of the resonant “all,” the redundant nouns in apposition, the tautological enumeration of categories, proclaim the unaltered Fletcher. The adjectives are in this spot pruned, but they are luxuriant elsewhere in the play. The triplets,–“this man, my son, this nature,”–“admit,” “admit,” “admit,” find compeers on nearly every page:

Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,–[163]

Here’s a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow,
If we may say so of a pocky fellow.–[164]

And now, ‘t is ev’n too true, I feel a pricking,
A pricking, a strange pricking.–[165]

With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow,
Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates.
Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus’d it![166]

In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, a few examples of the elocutionary afterthought:

You come with thunders in your mouth _and earthquakes_,–

As arrows from a Tartar’s bow, _and speeding_.–

To this device, and to the intensive use of the pronominal “one” Fletcher is as closely wedded as to the repetition of “all,”–

They have a hand upon us,
A heavy and a hard one.[167]

To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried one
And one that … will yet stand by thee.[168]

Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher alone, and written in his distinctive blank verse, display the same characteristics of style: _The Chances_ of about 1615, _The Loyall Subject_ of 1618 (like _The Humorous Lieutenant_ of the middle period), and _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_ of the last period, 1624. I quote at random for him who would apply the tests,–first from _The Chances_,[169] the following of the repeating revolver style:

Art thou not an Ass?
And modest as her blushes! what a blockhead
Would e’re have popt out such a dry Apologie
For this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman,
A woman of her youth and delicacy?
They are arguments to draw them to abhor us.
An honest moral man? ‘t is for a Constable:
A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man,
A liberal man, a likely man, a man
Made up by Hercules, unslaked with service:
The same to night, to morrow night, the next night,
And so to perpetuity of pleasures.

(….)

Finally, from _Rule a Wife_, a few instances of the iterations, three-fold or multiple, and redundant expositions. In the first scene[171] Juan describes Leon:

Ask him a question,
He blushes like a Girl, and answers little,
To the point less; he wears a Sword, a good one,
And good cloaths too; he is whole-skin’d, has no hurt yet,
Good promising hopes;

and Perez describes the rest of the regiment,

That swear as valiantly as heart can wish,
Their mouths charg’d with six oaths at once, and whole ones,
That make the drunken Dutch creep into Mole-hills; …

and he proceeds to Donna Margarita:

She is fair, and young, and wealthy,
Infinite wealthy, _etc._

Now compare these example to the two found in the Fletcherian portions of DF:

……………….This is a fine Hand,
A delicate fine Hnd, – Never change Colour;
You understand me, – and a Woman’s Hand (DF 4.I.168-70)

And dare you lose these to becomer Advocate
For such a Brother, such a sinful Brother,
Such an unfaithful, treacherous, brutal Brother? (DF 5.I.16-18)

To my knowledge (and reading), there are no comparable examples in Middleton. Of all the reasons for believing that Theobald might have had a manuscript (of some kind), this is, for me, the most compelling. This mannerism is obviously typical of Fletcher. Given that Theobald initially tried to pass off DF as entirely Shakespeare’s (and if he fabricated the entirety of the play) why on earth would he so cleverly and cunningly imitate Fletcher? It makes no sense. I find it easier to believe that Theobald did, indeed, have a manuscript on which he based DF.

But why is Fletcher’s probable hand so evident and Shakespeare’s so lacking?

Why Fletcher Survived

Kukowski, the writer of The Hand of John Fletcher in Double Falsehood, is sympathetic with the possibility that Theobald might have had a manuscript, but speculates that it was already a later revision of an Elizabethan original. Kukowski writes (in reference to a Davanant revision of the Shakespeare/Fletcher collaboration, The Two Noble Kinsmen):

It is interesting that Davenant’s revision of this play left not a line of  the passages most confidently ascribed to Shakespeare intact, although several of Fletcher’s passages survive with only minor alteration. Thus, even if Theobald is being scrupulously honest, he may well have had his possession no more than an already much adulterated version of Cardenio.

This, in  a nutshell, encapsulates the reasoning of those Shakespearean scholars willing to concede that Double Falsehood might have been a revised Cardenio. An unidentified author, like the Restoration dramatist Davenant, might have already “improved” the Shakespearean portions. Why would Restoration revisionists single out Shakespeare rather than Fletcher? Shakespeare’s style was considered too turgid for the stage – too figurative and opaque. In a book called Shakespeare Improved , by Hazelton Spencer, Spencer sums up Davenant’s editorial intervention this way:

…by far the largest number of D’Avenent’s explicable alterations are due, apparently, to his zeal in elucidation . Shakespeare’s text seemed full of obscurities in language and thought, and for the sake of making it transparent to the audience at Lincoln’s Inn Fields the Laureate was willing to sacrifice metre, imagination, or anything else. [p. 169]

And in an earlier passage Hazelton writes:

The Restoration adapter was not trying to restore his text, the professed aim of the long line of later tamperers, but to improve it. From changing a phrase  in order to make its meaning clearer, to changing it because one things of a better phrase, is an easy step/ D’Avenent took it with complete aplomb.

He regarded Shakespeare, I imagine, almost with affection; but he was the victim of his age. The cocksureness of the Restoration intelligentsia is almost incredible. The England of Elizabeth seemed barbarous to the England of Charles II, though less than sixty years had elapsed between the great queen’s death and the accession of that graceless king. In the presence of the masterpieces of old drama, the Restoration critics (all but Rymer) experienced a certain awe; they recognized vaguely a grandeur that was not characteristic of their own art. Dryden wrote:

Out age was cultivated thus at length,
But what we gain’d in skill we lost in strength.
Our builders were with want of genius curst;
The second temple was not like the first.

The Restoration temples were constructed, supposedly, according to the French rules for classical architecture; squared by these, the Elizabethan monuments were seen to be abounding in errors. Thus the critic and adapter of Shakespeare in the later seventeenth century, though he might sincerely enough protest his admiration for the whole, found, when he actually came to consider details, so many faults crying for correction, that while he eulogized in general he had little but condemnation in particular. He was to concede greatness of soul to Shakespeare, but neither a civilized taste nor a competent craftsmanship.

That this D’Avenent’s view is shown by the character of his alterations. [pp. 145-146]

Fletcher’s verse, being much easier, more mellifluous, less figurative and rhetorical than Shakespeare’s, was far more likely to survive, in part and in whole, the restoration scalpel. For this reason, and due to prior example, it makes sense that Double Falsehood could have been a restoration revision of  Cardenio; and that Shakespeare’s poetry would have been heavily edited while Fletcher’s verse remained relatively intact.  Most interestingly, Theobald claimed that Davenant’s prompter, John Downes, was likely to have transcribed Double Falsehood. This doesn’t mean Davenant ever saw the play, but as with so much else surrounding DF, the information gives ground for speculation. [Double Falsehood, p. 85]

Anyway, that’s the theory.

It gives little reason to include Double Falsehood (DF) in Shakespeare’s canon (any more than any other Restoration revision Shakespeare). The passages, if they ever were Shakespeare’s, are no longer.

Why, then, do scholars care?

For the same reason that a few fossil fragments pique the curiosity of paleontologists. If DF is indeed the lost Cardenio, then at least we know what Cardenio might have been like. If the Fletcherian parts can be shown to be, in all likelihood, by Fletcher, than that circumstantially (if only slightly) strengthens the case for Shakespeare (who was known to have collaborated with Shakespeare around this time). If the remaining text were by Middleton (as I suggested) then the case for Shakespeare is mildly weakened.

• Shakespeare collaborated with Middleton in the writing of Timon of Athens. In the now (what I consider) unlikely event that Middleton were shown to be the author of DF, Acts III-V, Shakespeare still wouldn’t be out of the question. A Fletcher ascription, however, does make Dekker (more on that next) less likely.

Fletcher Matters

Since the non-Fletcherian parts of DF are so hopelessly mangled, the best evidence for Shakespeare is to identify DF as Cardenio by, in part, showing that Acts III-V are by Fletcher. And that is exactly what Brean Hammond, in his introduction to Double Falsehood, emphasizes. Hammond writes:

With Theobald’s own further alterations engrafted upon DF, what we now have is a palimpsest or pentimento — at all events, nothing that is straightforwardly Shakespeare-Fletcher. Nonetheless, sophisticated recent analysis of authorship based on linquistic and stylistic analysis lends support to the view that Shakespeare’s hand, and even more plainly Fletcher’s, can be detected in the eighteenth-century redaction. [p. 6]

Hammond doesn’t tell us what sophisticated recent analysis he is referring to. Fletcher? Yes. Shakespeare? I remain very skeptical and I think Brean overstates the case for Shakespeare when he compares the stylometric

Elizabethan Dramatist John Fletcher

evidence to that supporting Fletcher. To my knowledge, none of the Shakespearean scholars (with an established reputation in stylometrics) have demonstrated reasons for favoring Shakespeare. Brian Vickers, author of ‘Counterfeiting’ Shakespeare, writes:

“There is the doubtful tradition that Lewis Theobald acquired the manuscript, adapting it for his own Double Falsehood (1727), but the arguments claiming that Theobald’s text preserves something of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s original seem to me unconvincing.”

Ward Elliot and Robert Vaenza peg Double Falsehood with 11 Discrete Rejections. This puts DF far outside the realm of Shakespearean authorship (on another planet they would say). (To be fair, it appears that they didn’t examine the “Shakespearean” portion separately.)

Only MacDonald Jackson believes that ‘the case for supposing The Double Falsehood to preserve something of the Shakespeare-Fletcher Cardenio is quite strong’. Whether Jackson is basing this statement on stylometrics or Hammond’s claims is unknown. That said, Jackson’s endorsement is qualified. On the last page of the introduction to the Arden edition of Double Falsehood, Brean adds the following:

Yet the concentration of diverse Shakespearean characteristics in, for example, 1.3.53-6 brings Jackson out on the side of [Shakespeare’s] presence in the play. Jackson reserves the right, however, to test a hypothesis that what Theobald owned was a collaboration between Beaumont and Fletcher  rather than Shakespeare and Fletcher. [DF, p. 160]

By the close of the introduction, Hammond himself seems to qualify his earlier confidence. He writes:

“The evidence for Shakespeare’s hand is, as we know, much scantier — in truth very scanty.”

The best evidence for Shakespeare appears to be Fletcher.

William Shakespeare or Tho. Dekker?

One of the theories I advanced in my previous posts was that the playwright Thomas Dekker was as good a candidate for the “Shakespearean” parts of DF (if not better) than Shakespeare. After writing the posts, I received the following correspondence from Matthew Partridge, one who was involved in a production of Double Falsehood. He wrote:

I have recently been involved in a production of “Double Falsehood”, which has got me interested in the whole debate around Shakespeare’s authorship of the play. I was intrigued by the two posts on Double Falsehood in your blog Poem Shape. While I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusions, since it is possible to find examples of Shakespearean imagery that corresponds with each of your categories, and examples where he clumsily repeated a word in a speech, they were still thought provoking.

I asked him for examples and he provided them. So, let’s go over them. (This probably won’t interest most of my readers unless, like me, you peculiarly enjoy forensic poetry.) I present Mr. Partridge’s responses, not to argue with them, but so that a reader can more easily weigh the validity of my previous posts.

eyes & their beams

Here’s what I wrote:

Hope’s methodology contributes to identifying authorship, but can’t be the final word (as he himself would assert). There are other reasons for my thinking that Dekker is behind the first two acts. Consider beams. It was as commonplace during Elizabethan times, that the eyes saw by projecting beams. Poets were quick to make use of this conceit, except for Shakespeare. Only once, in his Sonnet 114, does Shakespeare play on this conceit. There are 25 usages of beams in his plays but not one of them is in the context of the eyes’ beams. The beams are always in reference to the sun, the moon, or candles – always in reference to an object that gives off light. By contrast, consider the following from Double Falsehood (Act I Scene i:

Eyes, that are nothing but continual Births
Of new Desires in Those that view their Beams.
You cannot have a Cause to doubt.

This flies against Shakespeare’s practice. (My theory is that Theobald probably would have kept the imagery of the original author, who I believe to be Dekker, while dolling it up with figurative language.) However, Dekker did make use of this conceit in his imagery (from The Shoemaker’s Holiday):

Why, tell me, Oateley : shines not Lacy’s name
As bright in the world’s eye as the gay beams
Of any citizen ?

The Honest Whore Part I:

If ever, whilst frail blood through my veins run,
On woman’s beams I throw affection…

Partridge was able find one other example of the use of “beams” in Shakespeare’s plays. I too, however, found another example of beams in Dekker’s play Old Furtunatus (see below). More importantly, he found further examples wherein Shakespeare played on the conceit. Here are his examples (all comments are his):

Love’s Labour’s Lost has a direct reference to “eye-beams”.

“So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not / To those fresh morning drops upon the rose / As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote / The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows:” (LLL.4.3)

Additionally, a lot of the imagery involving women and light centres around the brightness/lustre of their eyes.

Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light (Rape of Lucere)

For she hath blessed and attractive eyes. / How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears (MND.2.2)

‘if you can bring Tincture or lustre in her lip, her eye‘ (WT.3.2)

How and which way I may bestow myself / To be regarded in her sun-bright eye. (TGV.3.1)

The ape is dead, and I must conjure him / I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes (RJ.2.1)

Although it involves a slightly different context, the following extract from Henry V also refers to eyes, lustre and breeding in a way that closely parallels Double Falsehood.

That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not / For there is none of you so mean and base / That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.(H5.3.1)

So, I was flatly wrong in my assertion that Shakespeare never played on this conceit. I was right, however, to the extent that Shakespeare’s use of the word beams in reference to eyes is exceedingly rare: once in his sonnets and once in the entirety of his plays. Does any of this diminish my argument for Dekker? No, but it ups the chances for some small vestige of Shakespeare. On the other hand, the reference to beams could just have easily been an interpolation by a Restoration poet or Theobald’s own meddling. We’ll never know until Cardenio is found.

the image cluster of heat, cold, the eye, frost, burning, kindling, thawing, sun/Hyperion

Double Falsehood

Jul. I do not see that Fervour in the Maid,
Which Youth and Love should kindle.  She consents,
As ’twere to feed without an Appetite;
Tells me, She is content; and plays the Coy one,
Like Those that subtly make their Words their Ward,
Keeping Address at Distance.  This Affection
Is such a feign’d One, as will break untouch’d;
Dye frosty, e’er it can be thaw’d; while mine,
Like to a Clime beneath Hyperion’s Eye,
Burns with one constant Heat.  I’ll strait go to her;
Pray her to regard my Honour:  but She greets me.–

Now here is Dekker from Shoemaker’s Holiday:

And for she thinks me wanton, she denies
To cheer my cold heart with her sunny eyes.
How prettily she works, oh pretty hand!
Oh happy work! It doth me good to stand
Unseen to see her. Thus I oft have stood
In frosty evenings, a light burning by her,
Enduring biting cold, only to eye her.
One only look hath seem’d as rich to me
As a kings crown; such is loves lunacy.
Muffled He pass along, and by that try
Whether she know me.

In response to these parallels, Partridge offered his own. He wrote:

There are plenty of extended Shakespearean image clusters related to heat, cold, burning etc. Three examples are:

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, / And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame / When the compulsive ardour gives the charge / Since frost itself as actively doth burn (Hamlet.3.4)

His falchion on a flint he softly smiteth, / That from the cold stone sparks of fire do fly; / Whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth, / Which must be lode-star to his lustful eye; / And to the flame thus speaks advisedly, / ‘As from this cold flint I enforced this fire, / So Lucrece must I force to my desire. (Rape of Lucere)

‘Such devils steal effects from lightless hell; / For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold, / And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell; / These contraries such unity do hold, / Only to flatter fools and make them bold: / So Priam’s trust false Sinon’s tears doth flatter, / That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.’ (Rape of Lucere)

Some shorter instances:

Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow / As seek to quench the fire of love with words. (Verona.2.7)

Gods, gods! ’tis strange that from their cold’st neglect / My love should kindle to inflamed respect.(Lear.1.1)

A largess universal like the sun / His liberal eye doth give to every one, / Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all, (H5.4.Pro)

Against love’s fire fear’s frost hath dissolution. / The eye of heaven is out (Rape of Lucere)

The following extract from Henry V is also notable since it (1) involves an image cluster of heat, sun & frost (2) is an instance of Shakespeare using the word “frosty” (3) is an example of Shakespeare clumsily repeating a word – (in this case “frosty”).

Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull, / On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale, / Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water, / A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley-broth, / Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? / And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? / O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles / Upon our houses’ thatch, whiles a more frosty people / Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! (H5.3.5)

Similarly, as well as involving heat, burning, sun and eye, the lines below also associate dew with coldness.

From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels: / Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, / The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry (RJ.2.3)

My illustration of the image cluster wasn’t so much meant to exclude Shakespeare, but to demonstrate that this sort of image cluster was also typical of Dekker. (I have a soft-spot for Dekker – the most poetic dramatist after Shakespeare.) Whereas some patterns of thought can be atypical, I meant to show that the imagery of DF could also be found in Dekker’s work. So, while the imagery doesn’t exclude Shakespeare, it also doesn’t exclude Dekker. To balance the many examples from Shakespeare, here are some more by Dekker (notice the combination of eyes, burning, and night):

Come therefore, good father, let’s go faster, lest we come too late: for see, the tapers of the night are already lighted, and stand brightly burning in their starry candle-sticks: see how gloriously the moon shines upon us.

[Both kneel.]

1st O. Man.
Peace, fool: tremble, and kneel: the moon say’st thou?
Our eyes are dazzled by Eliza’s beams,
See (if at least thou dare see) where she sits:
This is the great Pantheon of our goddess,
And all those faces which thine eyes thought stars,
Are nymphs attending on her deity.

Here’s another example from Dekker:

The same sun calls you up in the morning, and the same man in the moon lights you to bed at night; our fields are as green as theirs in summer, and their frosts will nip us more in winter: our birds sing as sweetly and our women are as fair…

Dekker’s extent plays are far fewer than Shakespeare’s, and so finding a commensurate number of examples from Dekker isn’t possible.

of dew & flowers

Here’s what I wrote:

When Shakespeare associates dew with flowers, it is refreshing and always life affirming. When searching through Fletcher’s plays, I notice that his imagery also revolves around dew’s restorative powers. Not so, Dekker. Dekker’s associations with Dew are cold and frequently associated with death and illness…

Partridge countered with the following examples:

There are a few Shakespearean juxtapositions of dew, plants and coldness/sadness/death.

And that same dew, which sometime on the buds /Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls / Stood now within the pretty flowerets‘ eyes / Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

The herbs that have on them cold dew o’ the night / Are strewings fitt’st for graves. Upon their faces. (Cym.4.2)

Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew / O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones / Which with sweet water nightly I will dew / Or, wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans / The obsequies that I for thee will keep / Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep. (RJ.5.3)

Compare these examples with DF:

O Kiss, sweet as the Odours of the Spring,
But cold as Dews that dwell on Morning Flow’rs!

And Dekker:

a sensible cold dew
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept
To see such beauty alter. [The Honest Whore Part 1]

The frosty hand of age now nips your blood,
And strews her snowy flowers upon your head,
And gives you warning that within few years,
Death needs must marry you… [Old Fortunatus]

I was wrong to write that Shakespeare’s associations with dew and flowers are always life affirming. I might more accurately have written that the preponderance of these associations are life affirming.

women & light

Here’s what I wrote:

Double Falsehood

Th’Obscureness of her Birth
Cannot eclipse the Lustre of her Eyes,
Which make her all One Light.

The Honest Whore Part 1

Those roses withered, that set out her cheeks:
That pair of stars that gave her body light…

Notice the appearance of eyes in both passages. In fact, the habit of thought is almost identical. In both cases, the eyes/that pair of stars give light/Light to her body.

Furthermore, if I search through a Shakespeare concordance, nowhere does Shakespeare equate a woman’s beauty (or body) with light. In fact, Shakespeare usually associates femininity and lightness with… well… being a light-brained wench. The imagery is much more typical of Dekker.

Mr. Partridge countered with the following examples:

Associations of female beauty with light are relatively common in Shakespeare.

‘Tis but her picture I have yet beheld / And that hath dazzled my reason’s light / But when I look on her perfections, (TGV.4.2)

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. (R&J.2.2)

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light. (R&J.5.3)

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. /O, if in black my lady’s brows be deck’d, (LLL.4.3)

‘Fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not / To darken her whose light excelleth thine: (Rape of Lucrece)

My statement that “nowhere does Shakespeare equate a woman’s beauty (or body) with light” is wrong. In fact, I just rechecked my concordance and can’t fathom what I was thinking. I apparently wasn’t? I’d like to blame it on something. What remains though, is the strong parallel between the habit of thought in DF and Dekker’s passage. The parallel by no means diminishes Shakespeare as a possible source, but it also stands in agreement with Dekker.

the fox & her den

Here’s what I wrote:

Spurgeon also points out that Dekker comes nearest to Shakespeare in his imagery of sport and game. Consider the following from Double Falsehood:

Cam. I profess, a Fox might earth in the Hollowness of your
Heart, Neighbour, and there’s an End.

(Notice the anthimeria of earth, probably an addition by Theobald.) None of Shakespeare’s fox imagery seems drawn from actual experience and none refer to the fox’s den or desire to hide. Shakespeare’s references to the fox are more symbolic. Dekker’s fox imagery, on the other hand, seems drawn from real experience:

The Honest Whore Part 1

Faugh, not I, makes your breath stink like the
piss of a fox.

The Honest Whore Part 2

But the old fox is so crafty, we shall hardly hunt
him out of his den.

The Noble Spanish Soldier

Young cub’s flayed, but the she-fox shifting her hole is fled. The
little jackanapes, the boy’s brained.

Partridge responded with the following examples:

There are 37 references to foxes in Shakespeare’s works. Most of them either relate to (1) a predator (2) someone untrustworthy (3) a bad smell. Given the context it seems that Camillo is clearly comparing Don Bernard’s (un)trustworthiness to that of a fox.

There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune; nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox (H4-1.3.3)

Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox, (H4-1.5.2)

O’ the t’other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not proved worthy a blackberry: they set me up (Cressida.5.4)

false of heart, light of ear / bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth (Lear.3.4)

Or at the fox which lives by subtlety (Venus)

In this case, I think my observations hold up. Shakespeare’s references to fox strike me as largely symbolic while Dekker’s seem more drawn from experience. Also, Shakespeare more readily associates the “den” with lions. I couldn’t find an example of Shakespeare meantiong the fox with his “den”. In DF, the den is implied in the phrase “Hallowness of your heart”.

swiftest wing

Here’s what I wrote:

Consider this passage from Caroline Spurgeon’s Shakespeare’s Imagery:

We have seen that Dekker, alone of these five other dramatists, shows in his images something of Shakespeare’s sympathy with the poor and oppressed, especially with prisoners. There is one characteristic seen in another group of images altogether -that of birds- which I may just mention, as it emphasizes this point. This is the quite remarkably large number of images he has from ‘wings’: soaring and riding on wings, being transported on the wind’s swift wings, escaping by putting on ‘winged feet’, clapping on swift wings and the like… ¶ Next to those of Shakespeare, Dekker’s images… seem more alive and human, more charged with his personality and direct experience that those of any other of the dramatists here analysed… [p. 40]

Double Falsehood

Jul. Fear not, but I with swiftest Wing of Time
Will labor my Return…

Mr. Partridge offered a number of examples from Shakespare:

The three word phrase “swiftest wing of” appears in Macbeth

thou art so far before / That swiftest wing of recompense is slow / To overtake thee.

Shakespeare also associated “wing” with swiftness/time in Henry V

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies / In motion of no less celerity / Than that of thought.(H5.3.Pro)

He also associated love with wing in Hamlet

I would fain prove so. But what might you think, / When I had seen this hot love on the wing—(Ham.2.2)

Shakespeare also associates “swift” with time

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, (Son.19)

Experience is by industry achieved / And perfected by the swift course of time.(TGV.1.3)

And why not the swift foot of Time? had not that / been as proper? (ASYL.3.2)

Let him have time to mark how slow time goes / In time of sorrow, and how swift and short / His time of folly and his time of sport; (Rape of Lucrece)

‘Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night / Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care, (Rape of Lucrece)

As in previous examples (those which have held up), I wasn’t so much claiming that this imagery didn’t appear in Shakespeare, but that another Shakespeare critic, Caroline Spurgeon, had especially noted and appreciated its presence in Dekker.

oaths & exclamations

I picked up a copy of MacDonald P. Jackson’s Studies in Attribution: Middleton and Shakespeare. It was from his work that I concluded that some of the language in the latter three acts of DF were more typical of Middleton than Fletcher. That evidence remains unchanged despite the stronger evidence, in isolated cases, for Fletcher. (The appearance of Middletonian contractions, such as on’t, to’t or h’as/sh’as are not typical of Fletcher. However, their appearance may be due to revision by a Restoration author or may simply be a statistical anomaly. It may also, just to add to the speculation, be because Middleton touched up the original Cardenio? — certainly within the realm of the possible.) Lastly, Dekker, like Shakespeare,  shows a preference for hath and doth. We find the language in the first two acts of DF.

Jackson devotes a chapter to differentiating between Middleton and Dekker. One of the ways he does so is by Dekker’s favored use of oaths and exclamations. For example: in God’s name, alack, sblood, O God, God so, God’s my life, sheart, Godamercy, zounds, by God, God’s my pittikins, tush, snails, marry gup, plague found you, God bless him.

None of these oaths and exclamations appear in the first two acts or anywhere else in the play. That argues against Dekker (or they could have been removed by revision). Is there anything else? Jackson writes:

Dekker does not use by this light, berlady, or with a vengeance in the six plays of his undoubted sole authorship, but I notice that both by this light occur in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, a play which has been attributed to Dekker on a fair accumulation of internal evidence.

In DF, by our light appears in the second act:

D. Bern. Mad; Mad. Stark mad, by this Light.

Is this evidence for Dekker? Maybe. It could also be evidence for Shakespeare, since Shakespeare also preferred this oath. Interestingly, The Merry Devil of Edmonton was thought, by some, to be by Shakespeare and has long been included in Shakespeare “apocrypha”. Dekker’s poetic imagination is similar, in some ways, to Shakespeare’s.

the verdict

The argument for Dekker is diminished once Fletcher is assigned the latter three acts of DF. There are, to my knowledge, no other collaborations between Fletcher and Dekker. While there may be hints of Dekker in the first two acts, those same hints could also be construed as evidence for Shakespeare. If the choice were between Dekker and Shakespeare, and if one accepts Fletcher’s presence in the last three acts, then the evidence more strongly suggests Shakespeare than Dekker. I go where the evidence goes (if reluctantly). So, hat’s off to Mr. Hammond. As he himself states, any attempt to identify the progenitors of Double Falsehood must end with caution.

My thanks to the blog Shaksyear, his post Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans, Spam, Egg, Sausage, and Double Falsehood: Hasn’t Got Much Shakespeare in It (Part 1 of 3), for prompting me to finally write my own re-visitation.

Also, I am especially grateful to Matthew Partridge for his corrections and response.

Let’s all hope Cardenio shows up.

We Think in Metaphors

People often assume that metaphors are merely optional figures of speech whose purpose is to enliven expression and make it more poetic and appealing. The common assumption is that we could speak literally, but its more colloquial and comfortable to use imagery–unless we’re trying to be precise, in which case metaphors muddy up the idea being expressed. But according to research in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and linguistics, metaphors are not just words or images that help describe a concept that already exists in the mind. Instead, metaphorical connection is the way the human brain understands anything abstract. The deepest metaphors are not optional or decorative: they’re a kind of sense, like seeing or hearing, and much of what we consider to be reality can be perceived and experienced only through them. We understand almost everything that is not concrete (even “concrete” is a metaphor) in terms of something else. In short, the expansiveness of our metaphors determines the expansiveness of our reality.

Joel R. Primack & Nancy Ellen Abrams
The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos p. 243

Something which all great poetry has in common, the poetry favored and enjoyed by readers over thousands of years, is metaphor. Shakespeare was the great master. His genius burst with with one metaphor after, each idea arising out with an almost fractal stream of associations.

His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear’d arm
Crested the world: his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in’t; an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like; they show’d his back above
The element they lived in: in his livery
Walk’d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp’d from his pocket. [Antony & Cleopatra Act V Sc. ii]

Shakespeare is thinking big, so when Cleopatra is describing Antony, he has her say that his legs “bestrid [straddled] the ocean“. Once the word ocean has entered his mind, he imagines the waves. That leads to his next image and metaphor: his rear’d arm Crested the world. The word crest can be used to describe the crest of a wave. If you read Shakespeare carefully, you can actually see him thinking as he wrote. He was said to have been a very quick writer and exceedingly nimble in thought and jest. His writing displays that nimbleness of thought.

Now, with the crest of a wave in mind, Shakespeare was probably reminded of storms at sea. From the previous metpahor, a new one bursts forth. He writes:

As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder.

The opposite of a storm would be the tunèd sphere. The earth’s orb was as much earth as water, and so Shakespeare, having been reminded of a storm at sea by the crest of a wave, finishes with rattling thunder.  The sound of thunder is preceded by the oppositional idea of tunèd or musical spheres. Shakespeare’s imagination, by this point, is deeply immersed in the metaphor of sea and ocean. From the peacefulness of the tunèd spheres (and by association a calm ocean) he makes the imaginative leap to the metaphor of Antony’s delights being dolphin-like.

But Shakespeare’s imagination isn’t entirely swept into the ocean’s currents. Antony’s richness of character is like a bounty. There’s no metaphorical winter in Antony’s bounty and that leads Shakespeare to compare his bounty to an Autumn that grows the more by reaping.

Once this association and metaphor has been lodged in Shakespeare’s mind, the poetic thought process reappears in the final lines. Not only that, but Shakespeare was a master of wordplay. When Shakespeare uses the word crest in the earlier portion of the speech, crest can also refer to the emblems used to decorate a helmet or armor. This double meaning stays with Shakespeare so that, a few lines later, he writes that crowns and crownets walk’d in his livery. Livery can refer to a uniform, a sign or a mark related to a crest. This metaphor combines with the idea of a bounty, and a bounty, naturally enough, reminds Shakespeare of food and feasting. On what do we eat but plates. Once that image is lodged in Shakespeare;s imagination, another metaphor springs to mind, he writes:

…realms and islands were
As plates dropp’d from his pocket.

The comparison of realms and islands to plates combines with the imagery of livery and leads to pockets, probably because Shakespeare has imagined the pockets sown into the livery of servants.

Shakespeare’s use of metaphor allows to see how the great poet thought, how his mind moved from one metaphor and image to another. Clusters of images appear like bubbles, each bursting from the previous image. It’s a manner of thought that characterizes all of Shakespeare’s poetry and is the property that makes his poetry great; and is the reason his associative genius places him heads and shoulders above his peers. Compare Shakespeare’s poetry to his sometimes collaborator, John Fletcher, and Fletcher’s poetry proceeds line by line, linearly rather than organically. Fletcher’s metaphors are built brick by brick or appear in isolation.

Night do not steal away: I woo thee yet
To hold a hard hand o’re the rusty bit
That guides the lazy Team: go back again,
Bootes, thou that driv’st thy frozen Wain
Round as a Ring, and bring a second Night
To hide my sorrows from the coming light;
Let not the eyes of men stare on my face,
And read my falling, give me some black place
Where never Sun-beam shot his wholesome light,
That I may sit and pour out my sad spright
Like running water, never to be known
After the forced fall and sound is gone. [John Fletcher: The Faithful Shepherdess]

Fletcher’s pathos inhabits a different imaginative world than Shakespeare’s. Fletcher’s passage is largely immersed in a single metaphor. Night is personified as Boötes, the constellation known as the herdsman. Boötes, or Night, is envisioned as having his hand on the reins of the Lazy Team. By Lazy Team (lazy referring to the slow movement of the stars) Fletcher may be referring to the constellations Equuleus, the little horse, and Pegasus.

The Wain, (known as the Big Dipper in North America) was, in some parts of Britain, commonly known as Charles’ Wain (a wain being a wagon). The wagon rides round the North Star in a “ring”.   Knowing all this, Fletcher’s imagery begins to come together, but it altogether lacks the associative brilliance of Shakespeare. He slowly builds his metaphor line by line. Shakespeare barely lets one metaphor sink in before he hatches the next. (Interestingly, Mozart’s musical facility flowed with equal freedom and he was criticized for it by fellow composer Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf. Dittersdorf said that Mozart’s melodic ideas moved too quickly. There was no time to savor a melody before Mozart’s pen eagerly inked the next.)

One final metaphor springs from Fletcher’s quill when he writes that his character will pour out his sad spright “like running water”. The metaphor is disconnected and feels almost

Elizabethan Dramatist John Fletcher

arbitrary. Fletcher had to work at poetry, being more of a natural born dramatist. Nowadays, when we read or perform Fletcher, it’s less for his poetry than for his drama.

The dramatist Phillip Massinger represents the tail end of the Elizabethan generation. He’s among the last  and also demonstrates the least poetry. His  imagery is stock. His use of metaphor rarely rises above the commonplace. Though he wrote blank verse, like Shakespeare and Fletcher, his language has the feel of elegantly and beautifully versified prose. Few modern scholars would consider him a poet.

The point of all this is that when we appraise the work of dramatists 400 years ago, it’s not enough that they wrote verse. The dramatists who were also poets were the ones who still transport us with their figurative use of language. Metaphor is the life-blood of poetry. Metaphor is what makes the sum exceed the parts. As Primack and Abrams wrote, “the expansiveness of our metaphors determines the expansiveness of our reality.” The expansiveness of our metaphors also determine the expansiveness of our poems. Modern poets who have abjured the use of metaphor for one reason or another seem to think they will be appraised differently by the generations following. They tell themselves that they live in a different era. But what we value in poetry hasn’t changed in the thousands of years since poems were first written.

Fall in love with metaphor.

Imbue your language with metaphor and your poetry will be inestimably larger than the page it’s written on.

• Shakespeare’s Wordplay by M.M. Mahood

• Shakespeare’s Imagination by Edward A. Armstrong