Sleeping Under Trees

I always think of Old Man Willow as Tolkien's invention, and it may well be, but Gerald Durrell relates some intriguing tree sleep-danger folklore from Corfu in the mid-1930s: 

"I will tell you something, little lord," he said; "it is dangerous for you to lie here, beneath these trees."  

 

I glanced up at the cypresses, but they seemed safe enough to me, and so I asked why he thought they were dangerous.  

 

"Ah, you may well sit under them, yes. They cast a good shadow, cold as well-water; but that's the trouble, they tempt you to sleep. And you must never, for any reason, sleep beneath a cypress." 

 

He paused, stroked his moustache, waited for me to ask why, and then went on:

 

"Why? Why? Because if you did you would be changed when you woke. Yes, the black cypresses, they are dangerous. While you sleep, their roots grow into your brains and steal them, and when you wake up you are mad, head as empty as a whistle."

 

I asked whether it was only the cypress that could do this, or did it apply to other trees. 

 

"No, only the cypress," said the old man, peering up fiercely at the trees above me as though to see whether they were listening[...].

My Family and Other Animals at 31.

(Edition: Durrell, Gerald. My Family and Other Animals. Penguin Books, 2004.) 

 

Henry V: "though we seemed dead, we did but sleep"

A connection between 2 Henry IV 4.3 and Henry V 3.6, which I don't recall noticing before.

Starting at 3.6.115:

MONTJOY: You know me by my habit.
KING HARRY: Well then, I know thee. What shall I know of thee?
MONTJOY: My master's mind.
KING HARRY: Unfold it.
MONTJOY: Thus says my King: 'Say thou to Harry of England, though we seemed dead, we did but sleep. Advantage is a better soldier than rashness. [...]'

I'm thinking this might hit Henry rather hard, since he mistook his own sleeping father for dead in 2 Henry IV 4.3. When his father awakens to find himself alone, sans crown, he demands to know why Harry walked off with it.  Harry's initial response, "I never thought to hear you speak again," is not well-received; Henry IV replies "Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. / I stay too long by thee, I weary thee." and continues in this vein for another 40+ lines.  Harry kneels and moves his father to reassess the situation with a humble and apparently heart-felt speech.

The Road Not Taken

For present purposes, let's say I left The Firm at a phase when associates are expected to start working harder and longer to take a shot at becoming a partner.  But what I knew for sure was that I wanted to be working shorter hours – and that I had no interest in owning a law firm. 

I've never regretted this decision.  

In today's Carolyn Hax column, I get a glimpse of what my life could have been like had I forged ahead on the traditional path: 

I recently resigned from my position as a partner at a law firm where I have worked for many years. I killed myself to make partner but once I made it, I began to realize that it just wasn’t worth it. I’m so burnt out that I’m not even looking for another position at this point in time; I want to take the next six months or so to recover. My husband is ecstatic about my decision since he’s seen what this job has been doing to me but everyone else in my life is questioning my decision[.]

The main difference is that I would have burned out completely alone.   

OED Visualizer Tool

Just learned about this cool new tool, and a nifty idea for using it, from Idiosophy:

"A research team at the Oxford English Dictionary has released a visualization engine for text analysis. This is fun: give it a text (up to 500 words, for the moment) and it will make a graph showing how common the word is in English (vertical axis), the year the word entered the English language (horizontal axis), the frequency of each word in the sample (size of the circle), and the language group from which we got the word (color).

 

This can be used for lots of things. We can test (for example) J.R.R. Tolkien’s success at excluding any word from later than 1600 from his prose."

Here's what I got from running some descriptions of Orthanc (taken from http://www.henneth-annun.net/places_view.cfm?plid=87 with citations omitted):

The purple dots are "tower" (circa 1000) and "ent" (circa 1900) - I think we can discount the visualizer's categorization of the latter.

The yellow dots are "pier", "cut" (verb), "wrap" (verb), and "tall."

Misquoted Prophecies in Macbeth

I've become very aware of characters in The Lord of the Rings misremembering others' words, so I was interested to see that Macbeth likewise misquotes two of the prophecies he receives.

When you look at it, the Second Apparition's prophecy is a two-parter; it consists of some really bad advice (here in italics) followed by a "true" but highly misleading statement of the future (here in bold):

Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn

The power of man, for none of woman born

Shall harm Macbeth.

(4.1.79-81)

 

In essence, the bad advice is based on the intended misunderstanding of the true statement.

Here's what Macbeth remembers:

The spirits that know

All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:

"Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman

Shall e'er have power upon thee."

(5.3.4-7)

He's got the gist, I suppose, but he's shortened it and he doesn't remember the rhyme (scorn/born).  The apparition speaks of "harm" (coming from any source, since "none" is gender-neutral); he remembers "power" (and apparently worries specifically about a "man" having power upon him).  So his remembered protection is both broader (a prediction that others will not have even the power to hurt him) and narrower (as it's restricted to men, rather than everyone).  Though perhaps he's saving the rhyme for his encounter with Young Siward: "Thou wast born of woman. / But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, / Brandished by man that's of a woman born." (5.7.11-13)

Likewise, the Third Apparition says:

Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care

Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are:

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him.

(4.1.90-94)

And Macbeth again shortens it and loses the rhymes; he quotes it as 

"Fear not, till Birnam wood 

Do come to Dunsinane" 

(5.5.44-45).

I would note that he's also substantially shortened each line this time; he's turned the Third Apparition's iambic pentameter into iambic trimeter.

Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

The scene where Macduff learns of the slaughter of his wife and children is absolutely heartbreaking.  But to me, there's always a question about how to read Ross's lines when he first responds to Macduff's inquiry.  The words are true enough, from a certain point of view, but they are surely intended to deceive – at least to put off the revelation.  So: Is Ross breezily cheerful, almost cavalier, as if nothing is wrong?  Does he speak heavily, solemnly?  Is there something about his manner that belies his words, something that alerts us and makes Macduff a little uneasy?  Here's the dialogue:

MALCOLM: What's the newest grief?

ROSS: That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker:

Each minute teems a new one. 

MACDUFF:  How does my wife?

ROSS: Why, well.

MACDUFF: And all my children?

ROSS: Well too.

MACDUFF: The tyrant has not battered at their peace?

ROSS: No, they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.  

MACDUFF: Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes 't? 

(Macbeth 4.3.174-180)

Ross then goes on to describe how things are going generally (no longer focusing on Macduff's family).  So one reading is that the Macduff is satisfied about his family and has changed the subject. 

One thing I noticed on this re-reading that Ross's words here actually hearken back to something Macbeth said seven scenes earlier: 

MACBETH: ... Duncan is in his grave; 

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well; 

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 

Can touch him further. 

(3.2.22-26)

This is clearly the same sense in which Ross is speaking.  Of course it's not an unusual sentiment, then or now, to say that someone who died is "at peace" – but it is not, I believe, customary to say this to someone who isn't aware that the person in question has died. 

Now I suppose the lines in 4.3 can be played for dramatic irony, to heighten the horror of the subsequent revelation by delaying it and giving false hope; but it's a bit thorny if we are trying for some naturalism in the scene and not making Ross a complete monster.  

After watching Ben Crystal's syllable-conscious pacing in 2.2, it occurred to me that these short lines might not necessarily follow each other immediately; we could have pauses – even quite long ones – to fill out one or more 10-syllable lines.  And that opens some interesting possibilities for the actors' faces and body language to do a lot of important work.

MALCOLM: What's the newest grief?  [5 syllables, following on immediately for a complete line]

ROSS: That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker: [10 syllables, with "hour" as monosyllable]

Each minute teems a new one.  [6 syllables]

MACDUFF:  How does my wife? [4 syllables, following on immediately for a complete line]

ROSS: Why, well. [2 syllables]

MACDUFF: And all my children? [5 syllables]

ROSS: Well too. [2 syllables]

MACDUFF: The tyrant has not battered at their peace? [10 syllables]

ROSS: No, they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.  [10 syllables, if we ]

MACDUFF: Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes 't? [10 syllables]

So, looking at the syllable count, we can see that even if we concatenate the three bold lines, we only get 9 syllables – an incomplete line.  But we don't have to concatenate them, do we?  Again, we could string them out and fill out the 10-syllable lines with pauses.

Here is one possibility:

Each minute teems a new one. / How does my wife? 

[beat] [beat] [beat] Why, well. / And all my children?

[beat] [beat] [beat] [beat] [beat] [beat] [beat] [beat] Well too.

The tyrant has not battered at their peace?

No, they were well at peace when I did leave 'em. 

Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes 't? 

In this reading, Ross takes a 3-beat pause to figure out what to say about Macduff's wife, realizing the enormity of he doesn't know.  Ross may look very pained, knowing what is to come.  Macduff notices, and immediately asks about his kids. This is even harder to answer, as it is cruel to withhold or disclose the truth.  Perhaps Ross's eyes well up during an 8-beat pause; perhaps he is visibly working to control his voice and expression.  Now, in these conditions, Macduff knows something's up, so he immediately asks two follow-up questions, both focused on his family – though Ross deliberately misinterprets the second question as a general one about the situation in Scotland to stall for time.  This works, because Ross then has a short back-and-forth with Malcolm about the general cause (4.3.181-91) before revealing there is an unspeakable grief in store to be disclosed.  Again, if the actor playing Ross has allowed these long pauses to occur, and has given cues in body language and expression, it makes sense that Macduff immediately pounces on this, and his own exchange with Ross suggests his increasing certainty that it will go straight to the heart, culminating in "Hum! I guess at it" (4.3.203).  And now, only now, does Ross disclose it.

There are lots of other possibilities, of course, if we're inserting pauses.  For example, we can give Macduff some time to process the strangeness of the two answers he's just received and frame his next question:

Each minute teems a new one. / How does my wife? 

[beat] [beat] [beat] Why, well. / And all my children?

[beat] [beat] [beat] [beat] [beat] Well too. [beat] [beat] [beat] 

The tyrant has not battered at their peace?

No, they were well at peace when I did leave 'em. 

Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes 't? 

So this is all speculative, of course, but I like the way it opens up the text.

The Wages of Sin?

Curiously, in the opening and closing scenes of King Lear, there is mention of the begetting of Edmund.  It is passed off as a joke, initially, but becomes quite bitter by the end.

In 1.1, Gloucester says to Kent (re Edmund, who is present):

Though this knave came something
saucily to the world before he was sent for, yet was
his mother fair, there was good sport at his making,
and the whoreson must be acknowledged.

I would note this is structured as prose (not iambic pentameter) and is uttered in Edmund's presence, without any regard for the young man's feelings.

Then in 5.3, Edgar says to Edmund (re Gloucester, who is absent/dead):

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
The dark and vicious place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes.

Here, we have iambic pentameter interspersed with significantly shorter lines.  I find it natural to read both of the short lines with just two stresses, though the first one could – and perhaps should – be read as iambic trimeter, to make the final line all the more jarring: Cost him his eyes.

* * *

Side Note: I don't think Edmund ever claims that he'd have been what he is had he been begotten (or at least born) in wedlock, but he does disclaim any astral influence, noting "I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing" (1.2).

As the Stung Are of the Adder

Every now and then, as I'm pushing through these texts for the Shakespeare-in-a-year project, I slow down and savor the rhythm, counting the beats of each line.  That sometimes brings out some interesting qualities, particularly when you think about how it needs to be spoken.

So in King Lear 5.1, I noticed this speech of Edmund:

To both these sisters have I sworn my love,
Each jealous of the other as the stung
Are of the adder.

The syllables in bold are the stresses of iambic pentameter; but for the meaning to shine through clearly, I think there's also a slight emphasis on the underlined words. 

And what that does is highlight a certain resonance between the word "other" and "adder" (in my American English, using the IPA, I might render them as  äðɘr / ædɘr).  

These lines initially work on an intuitive level, because the natural impression of the image is that Edmund is the adder who has stung both sisters (true enough), and they are both "jealous" of each other in OED's sense 4: Troubled by the belief, suspicion, or fear that the good which one desires to gain or keep for oneself has been or may be diverted to another; resentful towards another on account of known or suspected rivalry.  

But when we look more closely at the simile, it's a bit perplexing.  Are the stung "jealous" of the adder?  In what sense might that be true?  It must mean mistrustful.  (And indeed that is meaning 5b in the OED: †b. Doubtful, mistrustful. Obsolete.)

So the word "jealous" is working in at least two senses here (within and without the simile).

While the literal and figurative meanings of "adder" seem more obvious, here are the most plausible relevant senses the OED gives us in the relevant time-frame:

 1. b. figurative. A treacherous, deceitful, malicious, or pernicious person or thing (also as a term of abuse); the type of envy or treachery. (OE—2006)
 
 2. a. The common or northern viper, Vipera berus, a small, venomous Eurasian snake found widely in northern and central Europe, having a characteristic dark zigzag line down the back. More fully European adder.  Adder is the historical and popular name, originally carrying connotations (as the ideas of darting and stinging) not associated with the name viper.  (OE—1995)

So I'd say the potential "adders" are three-fold: 

• Within the simile: Each sister is mistrustful of the other, just as those who have been stung/bitten (by an adder) are mistrustful of the adder (literal sense 2a).  For purposes of the simile, the adder does not map onto any of the characters; it has to be a generic, literal adder for the simile to function.
• Each sister sees the other as an adder (figurative sense 1b; poisonous/malicious and potentially fatal to the hoped-for union with Edmund);
• Edmund is the adder (figurative sense 1b) who has "stung" (cold-bloodedly poisoned/betrayed) each sister with false promises of love.

Pericles: Marina's Extreme Virtue

In Act IV, Marina's extraordinary goodness and innocence allows her to convert johns to to the paths of virtue when she's put to work in a brothel.  Bearing that in mind, I think there may possibly be a playful riff on Chaucer when Marina's artistic skills are first described.   

Let's start with Gower's description of Marina's upbringing in Tharsus.  Turns out she's really, really good at weaving and sewing, and music:

to th'lute
She sung, and made the night-bird mute
That still records with moan

(Pericles 4.25-27).  So the night-birds were singing away until the beauty of her own voice silenced them.  My Arden Shakespeare glosses "still records with moan" as "always sings dolefully" – but surely there are other possible reasons for moaning at night-time, aren't there?

Why, yes, there are.  So let's turn now to the Canterbury Tales.  The General Prologue opens with a description of the gentle, fecund period of spring.  Chaucer passes from the quickening of flowers and crops to close observation of the animal kingdom, noting spring is a time when

smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages)

(9-11).  That is, the effect of spring on little birds is they're singing and mating like mad all night.  Of course in Chaucer this is all a build-up to the punchline, that spring is when humans likewise experience an irresistible urge: the urge to go on pilgrimages! 

So where Marina's grace allows her to silence the night-birds and their moan, we can see that working on two levels, the literal (she's musically gifted) and the bawdy (foreshadowing her effect on her would-be customers at the brothel).  And her purity is such that all the stirrings of spring would doubtless only spur her to greater holiness.

Trumpkin's Alliterative Exclamations: A Collection

From Prince Caspian:

1. Beards and bedsteads! (332) - trochaic 
2. Horns and halibuts! (345) - mixed (troche + dactyl) 
3. Bulbs and bolsters! (346) - trochaic 
4. Whistles and whirligigs! (347) - dactylic 
5. Soup and celery! (357) - mixed 
6. Thimbles and thunderstorms! (360) - dactylic 
7. Lobsters and lollipops! (361) - dactylic 
8. Giants and junipers! (365) - dactylic 
9. Tubs and tortoiseshells! (372) - mixed 
10. Bottles and battledores... (377) - dactylic 
11. ...bilge and beanstalks... (383) - trochaic 
12. Cobbles and kettledrums! (384) (in thought) - dactylic 
13. Wraiths and wreckage! (385) - trochaic 
14. Weights and water-bottles! (395) - trochaic 
15. Crows and crockery! (403) - mixed 

And, in loving mockery by an owl in The Silver Chair: Crabs and crumpets! (574)

I didn't notice much connection between the exclamation and the surrounding passage, with one rather significant exception.  When Aslan confronts Trumpkin, we get: 'Wraiths and wreckage!' gasped Trumpkin in the ghost of a voice.  So here we have alliteration both on the R sound and also on the hard G, and then the two alliterative pairs are connected semantically, if you will, with wraith and ghost.  I think this emphasizes the devastation Trumpkin experiences in encountering the very Lion in which he disbelieved.  One might say this is the last gasp of his former Aslan-free life; his disbelief has been wrecked on the body of Aslan, and if the smug skepticism at the center of his being has been killed, there may be nothing left of it but a ghost or wraith.

Edition:

C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia. 1st American ed, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001.

The Rule of Three

Just noticed something cool in C.S. Lewis's use of triads to bring readers around to a viewpoint they might otherwise resist.

Here's one from Prince Caspian (p. 355), where the approach is essentially point, counterpoint, and deeper truth:

'Pah!' said Nikabrik. 'A renegade Dwarf. A half-and-halfer! Shall I pass my sword through its throat?' 

'Be quiet, Nikabrik,' said Trumpkin. 'The creature can't help its ancestry.' 

'This is my greatest friend and the saviour of my life,' said Caspian. 'And anyone who doesn't like his company may leave my army at once.'

And another from The Silver Chair (p. 608), when Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum realize they've been eating a Talking Stag and we're led further up and further in (so to speak) to a fully Narnian perspective:

This discovery didn't have exactly the same effect on all of them.  Jill, who was new to that world, was sorry for the poor stag and thought it rotten of the giants to have killed him.  Scrubb, who had been in that world before and had at least one Talking Beast as his dear friend, felt horrified; as you might feel about a murder.  But Puddleglum, who was Narnian born, was sick and faint, and felt as you would feel if you found you had eaten a baby.  

Only Puddleglum's comment is provided verbatim.  It's followed by: "And gradually even Jill came to see it from his point of view."


Edition:
C.S. Lewis.  The Chronicles of Narnia. 1st American ed, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001.

The Right Books

Remember in The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' how unprepared Eustace Clarence Scrubb is for his dragon adventure because he has "read none of the right books" (p. 463)?  Indeed, he has "read only the wrong books" (p. 464).

Well, already in the first chapter of Prince Caspian we can see that Edmund Pevensie has (thank goodness!) read exactly the right books.  He and his siblings have been magically jerked out of a semi-deserted English railway station (with "hardly anyone on the platform except themselves") onto a deserted island.  They are taken by surprise and certainly ill-equipped, as they have only two sandwiches among them and all the wrong clothes -- and they quickly grow thirsty under the hot sun.  But fortunately:

'It's like being shipwrecked,' remarked Edmund.  'In the books they always find springs of clear, fresh water on the island.  We'd better go and look for them.'  (p. 319)

After their thirst is assuaged, they start worrying about food and "[o]ne or two tempers very nearly got lost at this stage" (p. 321).  But again Edmund draws on his book-learning:

'Look here.  There's only one thing to be done.  We must explore the wood.  Hermits and knights-errant and people like that always manage to live somehow if they're in a forest.  They find roots and berries and things.'  (p. 321) 

So, to summarize.  The right books involve dragons (p. 463), hermits and knights-errant (p. 321), and shipwrecks (p. 319).  The wrong books are "books of information" with "pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools" (p. 425) and "a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains" (p. 464).

I can see how this might rub some people the wrong way, much like Lewis's quite useful distinction between the "literary reader" and the "unliterary reader" (despite the seeming whiff of snobbery in the phrase, the key is not what someone reads, but why and how they read; the tell-tale is re-reading).

Here, I think the crux is that the right books prepare you for an encounter with Narnia and the Deeper Magic, even helping you, perhaps, build resilience by developing imaginative and/or spiritual resources for the curveballs life may throw your way.  The wrong books can only prepare you for things foreseen.

---

Postlude:
This is perhaps further underscored by the narrator's comment (p. 408): "The sort of History that was taught in Narnia under Miraz's rule was duller than the truest history you ever read and less true than the most exciting adventure story."

---

Edition Referenced:

Lewis, C. S. The Chronicles of Narnia. 1st American ed, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001.

Book-Larnin'

'I believe you once said you were taught Greek when you were a little boy,' said Stephen as he paddled gently back to the frigate.  

'To be sure I was taught it,' said Jack, laughing. 'Or rather I was attempted to be taught it, and with many a thump; but I cannot say I ever learnt it. Not beyond zeta, at all events.'

O'Brian, The Thirteen Gun Salute at 273

"Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters - meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm will come of it." 

Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

King John: The Bastard's Completed Rhymes

In King John, I noticed the Bastard completing others' rhymes, by which I mean he plays off another character's final line to form a rhyming couplet.  That is, his first line rhymes with another character's unrhymed closing line.

Here's where it happens.

Act I - KING JOHN'S palace.

Two instances, both involving Queen Elinor.

The Bastard first finishes off Queen Elinor's line, expressly accepting her invitation to spurn his right of  inheritance, following with a couplet of his own, and then a second acceptance (essentially to follow her in to battle).

QUEEN ELINOR: I like thee well: wilt thou forsake thy fortune,
Bequeath thy land to him and follow me?
I am a soldier and now bound to France.  (1.1.154) 

BASTARD: Brother, take you my land, I'll take my chance. (1.1.155)
Your face hath got five hundred pound a year,
Yet sell your face for five pence and 'tis dear.
Madam, I'll follow you unto the death.

(1.1.152-58)

And again once he's been knighted Sir Richard Plantagenet, though his rhyme scheme thereafter launches as ababcc, a more complicated pattern.

QUEEN ELINOR: The very spirit of Plantagenet!
I am thy grandam, Richard; call me so. (1.1.173) 

BASTARD: Madam, by chance but not by truth; what though? (1.1.174)Something about, a little from the right,
In at the window, or else o'er the hatch:
Who dares not stir by day must walk by night,
And have is have, however men do catch:
Near or far off, well won is still well shot,
And I am I, howe'er I was begot.

(1.1.172-80)

Act II - France. Before Angiers.

He finishes off Austria's line. 

The Bastard's needling on the lion theme gets to Austria, and the Bastard makes it into a couplet to mock him.

BASTARD [To AUSTRIA]: Sirrah, were I at home,
At your den, sirrah, with your lioness
I would set an ox-head to your lion's hide,
And make a monster of you. 

AUSTRIA:                              Peace! no more. (2.1.305) 

BASTARD: O tremble, for you hear the lion roar. (2.1.306)

(2.1.301-06).  This is a much less formal setting than Act I, and from here on out, the Bastard's quips do not lead into rhymed couplets of his own.  He's just jumping in with little zingers here and there.

Act III, scene 1 - The French King's pavilion.

He finishes off Austria's line. 

Just typical of their relationship, really.

AUSTRIA: Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt. (3.1.229) 

BASTARD: Hang nothing but a calf's-skin, most sweet lout. (3.1.230)

Act V, scene 3 - The field of battle.

He finishes off the Dauphin's line.

Now that he no longer has the Dauphin to kick around, the Bastard needs to find a new butt for his mockery.

LEWIS (DAUPHIN): Strike up our drums, to find this danger out. (5.2.182) 

BASTARD: And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not doubt. (5.2.183)

Is Turn-About Fair Play? 

I found only one instance where another character seizes the initiative to turn the Bastard's closing line into a rhyming couplet.  This takes place in Act II.

At this point, the new plan is for France and England to join forces against the city as a common enemy (rather than letting the citizens sit back and eat popcorn while they battle it out amongst themselves).  The Bastard is utterly delighted in the plan to attack the city from three directions, as France and Austria are to attack the city from opposite sides and thus may potentially injure each other.  First Citizen hijacks his final line by completing the rhyme, introducing an idea for a deeper alliance (marrying the Dauphin to King John's niece) to spare the city.

BASTARD: O prudent discipline! From north to south:
Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth:
I'll stir them to it. Come, away, away! (2.1.432) 

FIRST CITIZEN: Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay, (2.1.433)
And I shall show you peace and fair-faced league;
Win you this city without stroke or wound;
Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds,
That here come sacrifices for the field:
Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings.

(2.1.430-38)

Lion Heart and Calf Skin

Act I establishes Philip Faulconbridge as the bastard son of Coeur de Lion (1.1.87, 139, 261).  King John tells him he can still inherit as the first-born son of his mother's marriage, i.e., as Faulconbridge's "calf, bred from his cow" (1.1.127).  But Philip renounces his inheritance and embraces his status as a royal bastard, complete with leonine imagery.  Indeed, he tells his mother she is not to blame for allowing Richard Coeur de Lion to seduce her, as "He that perforce robs lions of their hearts / May easily win a woman’s" (1.1.276-77).


Act II opens with the following stage direction:  "Enter, before Angiers, at one side, with Forces, Philip King of France, Louis the Dauphin, Constance, Arthur, and Attendants; at the other side, with Forces, Austria, wearing a lion’s skin."  This is perhaps a bit strange.  For example, although these two forces enter from opposite sides of the stage, they are in league; the Dauphin explains to Arthur that the Duke is on his (Arthur's) side to make amends to Richard Coeur de Lion's posterity (i.e., Arthur) by "rebuk[ing] the usurpation / Of thy unnatural uncle, English John" (2.1.9-10).  But for present purposes, let's be sure to zoom in on one very special aspect of the stage direction: It specifies Austria's costume.  He is "wearing a lion's skin."  This seems odd, but perhaps he is trying to channel Heracles/Hercules?  (Gallic shrug.)

Once King John and his forces enter, the Bastard immediately takes issue with Austria, razzing him after his first line for no apparent reason.  Faced with Austria's understandable bafflement, the Bastard reveals that he takes umbrage at his having the temerity to wear a lion's skin.

AUSTRIA: What the devil art thou? 

BASTARD: One that will play the devil, sir, with you,
An he may catch your hide and you alone.
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valor plucks dead lions by the beard.
I’ll smoke your skin-coat an I catch you right.
Sirrah, look to ’t. I’ faith, I will, i’ faith! 

BLANCHE: O, well did he become that lion’s robe
That did disrobe the lion of that robe. 

BASTARD: It lies as sightly on the back of him
As great Alcides’ shoes upon an ass.—
But, ass, I’ll take that burden from your back
Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.  (2.1.137-49)

So in these few lines, he calls Austria a coward and an ass, and threatens to take the lion's skin from him and/or beat him up.  He refers to the skin several times (as Austria's hide, skin-coat, and burden), suggesting both the lion skin and a threat upon Austria's person.

Still later in the same scene, when King Philip issues his call to arms, the Bastard briefly responds to Philip ... and then gratuitously pivots to poke at Austria again, now telling him he'd cuckold him (give him ox horns and make him a monster) if he were at Austria's home.  Once again, he is ringing changes on the lion skin theme (with the lion's hide standing ever more clearly for Austria's own skin, and referring to Austria's lady as his "lioness"):

BASTARD: Sirrah, were I at home
At your den, sirrah, with your lioness,
I would set an ox head to your lion’s hide
And make a monster of you. 

AUSTRIA:                            Peace! No more. 

BASTARD: O, tremble, for you hear the lion roar.  (2.1.300-06).

We see here that the Bastard also turns Austria's half-line into the first half of a rhyming couplet, a little poetic trick in Shakespeare which often seems to show dominance on the part of the one completing the couplet.


Finally, in Act III, an alliance is brokered between the warring kings; Austria supports it.  Constance, enraged by Austria's betrayal (he is no longer supporting her son Arthur against King John), exhorts him to "Doff [the lion's hide] for shame, / And hang a calfskin on those recreant limbs."  Austria is beside himself at the insult and responds like a boastful fool, suggesting it's only Constance's status as a woman that protects her from his righteous vengeance; so the Bastard immediately calls his bluff.

AUSTRIA: O, that a man should speak those words to me! 

BASTARD: "And hang a calfskin on those recreant limbs." 

AUSTRIA: Thou durst not say so, villain, for thy life! 

BASTARD: "And hang a calfskin on those recreant limbs." (3.1.137-39).

But Austria does nothing about it.  From that point on, Austria never speaks again without the Bastard shooting him down, even though his remarks are addressed to King Philip.

AUSTRIA: King Philip, listen to the Cardinal. 

BASTARD: And hang a calfskin on his recreant limbs. 

AUSTRIA: Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs,
Because — 

BASTARD: Your breeches best may carry them. (3.1.205-09)

The Bastard again interjects to cut him off with a rhymed couplet here:

AUSTRIA: Do so, King Philip. Hang no more in doubt. 

BASTARD: Hang nothing but a calfskin, most sweet lout. (3.1.229-30)

And a third time, when Austria criticizes King Philip's adherence to the alliance he's made rather than disavowing it as instructed by the Pope's legate:

AUSTRIA: Rebellion, flat rebellion! 

BASTARD:                                          Will ’t not be?
Will not a calfskin stop that mouth of thine? (3.1.309-11)

Off-stage, immediately after Act III, Scene 1, the Bastard finishes the job; he re-enters in Scene 2 with Austria's head.

Luck as a Quasi-Divine Gift or Favor

A passage from O'Brian's The Ionian Mission concerning Jack Aubrey's luck (pp. 267-68) reminds me a bit of Bilbo Baggins's luck in The Hobbit:

'The skipper's luck is in,' murmured Bonden[.] [...] 'I only hope it's not come in too hearty, that's all[.]' [...]

Joe nodded. Although he was a heavy man, he perfectly grasped the meaning of Bonden's 'luck.' It was not chance, commonplace good fortune, far from it, but a different concept altogether, one of an almost religious nature, like the favour of some god or even in extreme cases like possession; and if it came in too hearty it might prove fatal – too fiery an embrace entirely. In any event it had to be treated with great respect, rarely named, referred to by allusion or alias, never explained. There was no clear necessary connection with moral worth nor with beauty but its possessors were generally well-liked men and tolerably good-looking: and it was often seen to go with a particular kind of happiness. It was this quality, much more than his prizes, the perceived cause rather than the effect, that had made the lower deck speak of Lucky Jack Aubrey early in his career; and it was a piety at the same old heathen level that now made Bonden deprecate any excess.

And again in O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal, p. 71:

It was a question of the man's luck, a quality or rather an influence that sometimes set all one way, for good or bad, and sometimes shifted like a tide, but a tide whose ebb and flow obeyed laws that no ordinary men could see. [...] [B]roadly speaking luck and unluck were held to have little or nothing to do with virtue or vice, amiability or its reverse. Luck was not a matter of deserts. It was a free gift, like beauty in a very young woman, independent of the person it adorned; though just as beauty could be spoilt by frizzed hair and the like so ill-luck could certainly be provoked by given forms of conduct such as wanton pride, boasting of success, or an impious disregard for custom.

In The Hobbit, luck is treated as a personal possession -- one that may be conferred at birth -- and naming it does not necessarily undermine or destroy it.  Here are some references to Bilbo's luck (from the HarperCollinsPublishers 2016 facsimile edition of the original 1937 Hobbit):

• ch. V, p. 89: [Bilbo's] tongue seemed to stick in his mouth; he wanted to shout out; 'Give me more time! Give me time!' But all that came out with a sudden squeal was; 'Time! Time!'  Bilbo was saved by pure luck. For that of course was the answer. 
• ch. VIII, p. 162: In the end he made as good a guess as he could at the direction from which the cries for help had come in the night -- and by luck (he was born with a good share of it) he guessed more or less right, as you will see.
• ch. VIII, p. 172: Knowing the truth about the vanishing did not lessen [the dwarves'] opinion of Bilbo at all; for they saw that he had some wits, as well as luck and a magic ring -- and all three are very useful possessions.
• ch. IX, p. 191: The luck turned all right before long: the eddying current carried several barrels close ashore at one point and there for a while they stuck against some hidden root.
• ch. X, p. 195: Dreary as had been his imprisonment and unpleasant as was his position (to say nothing of the poor dwarves underneath him) still, he had been more lucky than he had guessed.
• ch. XII, p. 218: 'Now is the time for our esteemed Mr Baggins, who has proved himself a good companion on our long road, and a hobbit full of courage and resource far exceeding his size, and if I may say so possessed of good luck far exceeding the usual allowance -- now is the time for him to perform the service for which he was included in our Company; now is the time for him to earn his Reward.'
• ch. XVIII, p. 293: When Gandalf saw Bilbo, he was delighted. 'Baggins!' he exclaimed. 'Well I never! Alive after all -- I am glad! I began to wonder if even your luck would see you through! [...]'

I think it's interesting they all come to appreciate Bilbo's luck, but Tolkien still lets us know Bilbo was even luckier than any of them suspected.  

But I would also note that Bilbo's reference to his own luck in conversation with Smaug proves somewhat unwise (ch. XII, p. 229):

'I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.'
'Lovely titles!' sneered the dragon. 'But lucky numbers don't always come off.'
[...]
'I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider,' went on Bilbo beginning to be pleased with his riddling.

Smaug "thought he understood enough" of Bilbo's riddling talk, and reveals some of that understanding, to Bilbo's increasing unease (ch. XII, p. 230):

'Let me tell you I ate six ponies last night and I shall catch and eat the eight others before long. [...] Ha! Ha! You admit the 'us'[.]  Why not say 'us fourteen' and be done with it, Mr Lucky Number?'

Constancy: The Star to Every Wand'ring Bark

Julius Caesar, 3.1.64-71:

CAESAR (after CASSIUS joins his plea to that of METELLUS and BRUTUS):

I could be well moved, if I were as you:
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,
They are all fire and every one doth shine,
But there's but one in all doth hold his place:

Sonnet 116, ll. 2-8:

... Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 

Naming: Romeo and Juliet vs Julius Caesar

Romeo and Juliet 2.2:

Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Julius Caesar 1.2:

Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.

And of course, Mercutio tries to conjure Romeo with his beloved's name in Act II, Scene 1.  Of course, he's using the wrong name since he doesn't know Juliet has supplanted Rosaline in Romeo's affections.

P.S. The problem with posting these things as I encounter them in the text...  Another naming passage has cropped up in Julius Caesar 3.3.27-36:

THIRD PLEBEIAN: Your name, sir, truly.
CINNA: Truly, my name is Cinna.
FIRST PLEBEIAN: Tear him to pieces! He’s a conspirator.
CINNA: I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet!
FOURTH PLEBEIAN: Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses!
CINNA: I am not Cinna the conspirator.
FOURTH PLEBEIAN: It is no matter. His name’s Cinna. Pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.

(Text in first two quotes from MIT digital Shakespeare.  Text and line numbers in the third from Folger Digital Texts.)

Variations on a Theme: Bid me ... Farewell

There's a sort of symmetry in these scenes.

From Richard III 1.2.213-219:

GLOUCESTER: Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it. 

LADY ANNE: I have already. 

GLOUCESTER: Tush, that was in thy rage:
Speak it again, and, even with the word,
That hand, which, for thy love, did kill thy love,
Shall, for thy love, kill a far truer love;
To both their deaths thou shalt be accessary.

From Richard III 1.2.251-253:

GLOUCESTER: Bid me farewell.  

LADY ANNE:  'Tis more than you deserve;
 But since you teach me how to flatter you,
 Imagine I have said farewell already. 

From Much Ado About Nothing 2.3:

BEATRICE:  Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.   

BENEDICK:  Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.  

BEATRICE:  I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.  

BENEDICK: You take pleasure then in the message? 

BEATRICE:  Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. 

From Much Ado About Nothing 4.2:

BENEDICK:   Come, bid me do any thing for thee.  

BEATRICE:   Kill Claudio.  

BENEDICK:   Ha! not for the wide world.   

BEATRICE:   You kill me to deny it. Farewell.

Hamlet: Lost in Translation and Citation

I recently re-read Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1980).  On page 29, she explains why she provides no more than the author (if known) for her quotations:

most of the writers I want to quote in this book are writers whose words I've copied down in [...] a commonplace book.  I copy down words and thoughts on which I want to meditate, and footnoting is not my purpose; this is a devotional, not a scholarly notebook. [...] I am only now beginning to see the usefulness of noting book title and page, rather than simply jotting down [the author's name].

On page 41, L'Engle refers to "a French translation of Hamlet, in which the famous words Hamlet utters when he first sees the ghost of his father, 'Angels and ministers of grace defend us,' are rendered, 'Tiens, qu'est[-ce] que c'est que ça?'" 

I found this intriguing, but she did not name the translator or her source.

In my initial google searches for French translations of Hamlet, I came up with:

• "Anges du ciel, à moi! le voilà! le voilà!" (1847 verse adaptation by Alexandre Dumas père and Paul Meurice) 
• "Anges, ministres de grâce, défendez-nous!" (1862 translation by Guizot and François-Victor Hugo) 
• "Anges du ciel, à moi dans cet instant suprême!" (1876 verse translation by Alcide Cayrou)

All perfectly defensible, but of course I was really looking for a far less satisfactory translation.  

So I re-instated the grammatical fault and searched for "Tiens, qu'est que c'est que ça" -- and hit pay dirt.  It appears in an unsigned review/article called "Mme. Sarah Bernhardt's Lady Macbeth," published in 1884:*

Here we come to a dead end, as the author does not further identify "the gentleman who undertook to transfer 'Hamlet' into French vernacular prose." (My google searches on Partridge did not suggest any noted Shakespearean scholar or translator by that name; instead, they led me to Tom Jones, in which Benjamin Partridge goes to see Hamlet and has all the wrong reactions.)  

Now, we might ask, why is L'Engle quoting and criticizing a non-standard translation of Hamlet into 19th century French vernacular prose, which (even assuming it exists) she probably never read for herself but only encountered in this article (given that she faithfully reproduced the article's ungrammatical French)?

Well, she's talking about what has been lost in updating or modernizing the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.  She acknowledges that the older book "needed changing," but fears "[w]hat has been gained in strength of structure has been lost in poverty of language" -- and also, in theological imprecisions that can encourage certain heresies.  

So I'm inclined to agree that even an apocryphal vernacular translation of Hamlet can be used as an illustration in this context.  But I'd actually still love to read the whole thing, as it sounds hilarious -- whether or not so intended.

FN* I found it on p 8  of The Critic: A Literary Weekly, Critical and Eclectic, Vol. II (New Series), July to December 1884, edited by Jeannette Leonard Gilder and Joseph Benson Gilder (New York: The Critic Company, 1884).  Volume II appears to be devoted to "The Critic and Good Literature." The review/article appears in the first section of the volume, denominated No. 27 (July 5, 1884).  It seems to have been published originally in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Vol. 57 (June 14, 1884) at 777.

An Echo of Lewis Carroll in Prince Caspian?

Just re-read this passage in Prince Caspian (ch 7):

The gloomiest of all was Giant Wimbleweather. He knew it was all his fault. He sat in silence shedding big tears which collected on the end of his nose and then fell off with a huge splash on the whole bivouac of the Mice, who had just been beginning to get warm and drowsy. They all jumped up, shaking the water out of their ears and wringing their little blankets, and asked the Giant in shrill but forcible voices whether he thought they weren’t wet enough without this sort of thing. And then other people woke up and told the Mice they had been enrolled as scouts and not as a concert party, and asked why they couldn’t keep quiet. And Wimbleweather tiptoed away to find some place where he could be miserable in peace and stepped on somebody’s tail and somebody (they said afterward it was a fox) bit him. And so everyone was out of temper.

In Alice's Adventures of Wonderland, a giant Alice weeps a pool of tears, which dampens a hapless mouse:

Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again. 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, 'a great girl like you,' (she might well say this), 'to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!' But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.

She then shrinks down again (by means of a fan with which she has absent-mindedly been fanning herself) and suddenly slips and then --

splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. He first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, 'and in that case I can go back by railway,' she said to herself. [...] However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high. 

'I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. 'I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.' 

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.

Alice's efforts to befriend the Mouse are not well-received.  She addresses it in French with "the first sentence in her French lesson-book" (Ou est ma chatte?) and quickly apologizes for her faux pas (I quite forgot you didn't like cats).  The Mouse expresses his indignation in "a shrill, passionate voice."

Eventually a motley assortment of bedraggled animals exit the pool, "all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable."

3 Henry VI: Opening Boasts

So it starts out with boasting by six named characters in the York faction:
(1) the Duke of YORK, aka Richard Plantagenet;
         (a) his eldest* son EDWARD, Earl of March;
         (b) his fourth* son RICHARD;
(2) his wife's brother's two elder sons:
         (a) the Earl of WARWICK, aka Richard Neville;
         (b) the Marquess of MONTAGUE, aka John Neville;
(3) the Duke of NORFOLK, aka John Mowbray (seemingly a Lancastrian by birth).

Edward and Montague show York their bloody swords; Richard one-ups them by showing him the Duke of Somerset's head.  Rough jests and boasting ensue.

But I thought this one was pretty fun – Warwick starts with a hawking/falconry metaphor and then goes straight to ... gardening?

WARWICK:
Neither the King, nor he that loves him best,
The proudest he that holds up Lancaster,
Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells.
I'll plant Plantagenet, root him up who dares.
Resolve thee, Richard; claim the English crown.
(1.1.45-49)

Oh, great – now the Lancasters have come in.  Time for a rematch?  Yes, but not on the crass physical plane, since Henry VI doesn't want to make a shambles of the Parliament House!

KING HENRY:
[...] frowns, words, and threats
Shall be the war that Henry means to use.–
Thou factious Duke of York, descend my throne
And kneel for grace and mercy at my feet!
I am thy sovereign.

YORK:
                                  I am thine.
[...]

KING HENRY:
And shall I stand, and thou sit in my throne?

YORK:
It must and shall be so.  Content thyself.
(1.1.72-76, 84-85)

Hmm.  How's that whole war of words thing workin' out for you, Henry?


* Of his 7 "surviving" children (i.e., those who did not "die young").  Apparently Richard Plantagenet and Cecily Neville produced 13 children, but nearly half died in infancy.  Of the surviving children, the birth order was: Anne, Edward, Edmund, Elizabeth, Margaret, George, and Richard.  Both Edward and Richard became kings (Edward IV and Richard III), George became a duke, while poor Edmund – who died at age 17½  – only ever got to be an earl.

Note for future reference: Duke > Marquess > Earl

Vying for Control by Creating/Completing Rhyming Couplets

This is something I've noticed before, in Richard II.   Here, in 1 Henry VI 4.5, it is a contest of wills between Talbot and his son.

Talbot's first speech (ll. 1-11) is entirely unrhymed.  It ends as follows:

Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse,
And I'll direct thee how thou shalt escape
By sudden flight.  Come, dally not, begone. 

John's six-line response (ll. 12-17) plays off this with a rhyming line, and ends with a completed rhyming couplet (giving his father no opening to complete a rhyme):

Is my name Talbot, and I am your son,
And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother,
Dishonor not her honorable name
To make a bastard and a slave of me!
The world will say he is not Talbot's blood
That basely fled when noble Talbot stood.

The next four lines (ll. 18-21) are a back-and-forth where each of Talbot's lines is countered in rhyme by his son:

TALBOT: Fly to revenge my death if I be slain.
JOHN: He that flies so will ne'er return again.
TALBOT: If we both stay, we both are sure to die.
JOHN: Then let me stay, and, Father, do you fly.  

And indeed John's rejoinder in l. 21 is the start of a 13-line speech with six rhyming couplets ll. 22-33.  Thus, John again ends with a rhyming couplet that gives his father no purchase to complete a rhyme ("Here on my knee I beg mortality, / Rather than life preserved with infamy.").

The next ten lines (ll. 34-43) are once again a back-and-forth where John counters each of his father's lines in rhyme:

TALBOT: Shall all thy mother's hopes lie in one tomb?
JOHN: Ay, rather than I'll shame my mother's womb.
TALBOT: Upon my blessing I command thee go.
JOHN: To fight I will, but not to fly the foe.
TALBOT: Part of thy father may be saved in thee.
JOHN: No part of him but will be shame in me.
TALBOT: Thou never hadst renown, nor canst not lose it.
JOHN: Yes, your renownèd name. Shall flight abuse it?
TALBOT: Thy father's charge shall clear thee from that stain.
JOHN: You cannot witness for me, being slain. 

But at this point John's own unrhymed couplet (ll. 43-44) finally gives an opening for his father to complete the rhyme (ll. 45-46) -- the one and only instance in this scene.  Indeed, Talbot immediately wastes his chance for verbal one-upmanship, yet again leaving an opening for his willful son to complete the rhyme (l. 47):

JOHN:
You cannot witness for me, being slain.
If death be so apparent, then both fly.
TALBOT:
And leave my followers here to fight and die?
My age was never tainted with such shame.
JOHN:
And shall my youth be guilty of such blame?

John's last speech in this scene (ll. 47-51) is rhymed, ending with a rhyming couplet (foreclosing any further verbal jiujitsu).  His father's last speech -- likewise in rhyming couplets -- thus bows to the inevitable as he realizes he cannot persuade or overmaster his son (ll. 52-55):

There here I take my leave of thee, fair son,
Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.
Come, side by side together live and die,
And soul with soul from France to heaven fly.

Exeunt.

Shakespeare 2020 Reading Schedule

My first direct encounter with Shakespeare was probably when I was about 9 or 10 years old.*  I went through Hamlet easily enough since I didn't really sweat comprehension.  My mom was impressed, until she asked me to tell her what the story was about.  My brilliant answer: "Something about a prince?"  But I liked our old pocket-sized Folger General Reader editions of Hamlet and King Lear, and I like to think I came back to them more than once.

When I was in 6th grade, my class did a few scenes from Macbeth.  All the girls had to audition with the sleepwalking scene; I think the boys had the dagger scene.  While everyone else was talking about how mystified they were by Lady Macbeth's speech, I wandered off by myself to solve the puzzle.  And then I got it.  Clearly she was remembering different things, experiencing different moods, from moment to moment! That insight informed my reading of the lines, and I became one of our three Lady Macbeths.  (I got the sleepwalking scene and Banquo's ghost scene, both of which I love to this day.)**

In college, I probably took three courses featuring Shakespeare on the syllabus -- one was an entire semester on Hamlet and its manifestations or influence in later works of literature.  I'm fairly sure my first viewing of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V was at the campus movie theatre.  I also remember schlepping out to the Folger Theatre in D.C. one time to see a dazzling production of Othello.***  There was a lot of serendipity in that evening, which only heightened the effect.

Since moving to NYC, I've rather wantonly indulged my Shakespeare cravings.  I particularly remember a revelatory performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Delacorte in 2007 (with Lauren Ambrose and Oscar Isaac), a really fun production of Henry V in which Governor's Island played the part of France (NY Classical Theatre 2011), and many more.  In 2017, I took a class on Shakespeare and the Middle Ages with Signum/Mythgard and read another 10 plays along with some of the medieval works that informed or underlay them.

So I've read and seen many of the plays over time - but not all.  And I certainly haven't read through all or even most of the poems (just a handful of sonnets, including the one I memorized for a friend's wedding in 1999, and "The Rape of Lucrece" in 2018).

It's time to remedy that, so I'm going to use Ian Doescher's Shakespeare 2020 Project reading schedule as a rough guide, though I'm starting late and will skip the four I've read or re-read since September 2019.

Twelfth Night 📚: January 2-8 ✔ (2/12/20)
Henry VI Part 1: January 10-16 ✔ (2/16/20)
Henry VI Part 2: January 18-25 ✔ (2/23/20)
Henry VI Part 3: January 27-February 2 ✔ (2/26/20)
Comedy of Errors 📚: February 4-8 ✔ (10/19/19)
Taming of the Shrew: February 10-15 ✔ (3/1/20)
Titus Andronicus: February 17-22 ✔ (3/8/20 - first encounter)
Romeo and Juliet 📚: February 24-March 2 ✔ (3/22/20)
Richard III 📚: March 4-12 ✔ (3/28/20)
Julius Caesar 📚: March 14-19 ✔ (3/29/20)
Two Gentlemen of Verona: March 21-25 ✔ (4/1/20 - first encounter)
King John 📚: March 27-April 1 ✔ (4/5/20 - possibly first encounter)
Richard II 📚: April 3-9 ✔ (4/12/20)
Venus and Adonis 📚: April 13-17 ✔ (4/12/20)
Hamlet 📚: April 19-28 ✔ 📚 (4/19/20)
The Rape of Lucrece 📚: April 30-May 4 ✔ (4/22/20)
Sonnets 1-80 📚: May 6-8 ✔ (5/7/20 - first encounter)
Othello 📚: May 11-18  ✔ (5/16/20)
Sonnets 81-154 📚: May 20-22 ✔ (5/24/20)
Love’s Labour’s Lost 📚: May 26-June 2 ✔ (5/31/20)
Pericles 📚: June 4-9 ✔ (6/14/20 - first encounter)
Cymbeline: June 11-18 ✔ (7/3/20)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 📚: June 19-21 ✔ (7/1/20)
King Lear 📚: June 22-30 ✔ (7/4/20)
A Lover’s Complaint: July 2  ✔ (7/2/20 - first encounter)
The Passionate Pilgrim: July 3 ✔ (7/2/20 - first encounter)
The Merchant of Venice: July 12-16 ✔ (7/21/20)
Much Ado About Nothing 📚: July 20-26 ✔ (7/12/20)
As You Like It: July 28-August 3 ✔ (7/30/20)
Macbeth 📚: August 5-10 ✔ (8/6/20)
Troilus and Cressida 📚: August 12-20 ✔ (8/10/20 - possibly first encounter)
Antony and Cleopatra 📚: August 22-29 ✔ (11/10/19 - first encounter)
Coriolanus: August 31-September 10 ✔ (8/16/20 - first encounter)
All’s Well That Ends Well 📚: September 12-19 ✔ (10/8/19)
Measure for Measure 📚: September 21-27 ✔ (8/30/20)
Henry IV Part 1 📚: September 29-October 5 ✔ (9/23/19)
The Merry Wives of Windsor: October 7-13 ✔ (9/6/20)
Henry IV Part 2 📚: October 15-22 ✔ (9/7/20)
Henry V 📚: October 24-31 ✔ (9/7/20)
Henry VIII 📚: November 2-9 ✔ (9/9/20 - first encounter)
Edward III: November 11-17 ✔ (9/10/20 - first encounter)
Timon of Athens: November 19-24 ✔ (9/15/20 - first encounter)
The Winter’s Tale 📚: December 1-7 ✔ (9/20/20)
The Tempest 📚: December 9-14 ✔ (9/21/20)
The Two Noble Kinsmen 📚: December 16-23 ✔ (9/29/20)
The Phoenix and Turtle 📚: December 27 ✔ (9/6/20 - first encounter)
A Funeral Elegy: December 29-30 ✔ (9/9/20 - first encounter)

UPDATE: As of September 29, 2020, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Essentially a 13-month program, because I gave myself credit for works read in September - November 2019.

FN * At some point, my maternal grandmother gave me a children's book called Tales From Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb.  I'm not sure the timing of this gift, and I don't remember connecting it to the individual Shakespeare plays in my parents' bookcase when I was a child.  By the time I made the connection, as a teenager, I was dismissive of the mere children's version.

FN **  I think everyone got the parts they most desired; we probably weren't as subtle as we may have imagined.  Tina wanted to be a witch, and deliberately read the sleepwalking scene badly; Emily wanted to be the doctor (appropriately enough, as she's the only one of us with a PhD); Annie more modestly wanted to be the nurse (although in real life she did, in fact, accomplish her ambition of becoming a physician).

FN *** It was probably January 1991, perhaps even the very last night of the production.  The curtains opened on a large, empty bed.  Othello and Desdemona silently entered, cast off their robes in a single moment, and passionately embraced.  Blackout.  Their sudden and complete nudity was shocking and dramatic in such a small theatre; it established in a matter of heartbeats both the connection between those two and the contrast in their skin color.  The rest of the play proceeded as usual, except that both Iago and Emilia were played by Black actors.

Annals of Anthropology

It's always fascinating to learn about exotic, alien cultures.  From "Tolkien's Study" in Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth (Catherin McIlwaine) at 282:

Tolkien always had a study at home.  This was essential when he lived at Northmoor Road and had no rooms in college but even after he moved to Merton College and was given a spacious room, he still needed a study at home to accommodate all his books and papers. [...] His study was not a purely private space but one where he received students, researchers and visitors.  There were numerous desks and writing tables in the Tolkien family home.  Some were in the study and others were in his bedroom, which was really a private extension of his study, with bookcases, a writing desk and tables.

On Reading Aloud

I've always loved reading aloud to others, and being read to aloud.

So it was wonderful when my nieces were small and had an endless appetite for this form of social interaction.  Of course, sometimes they insisted on hearing their favorite stories over and over.  While some books hold up better than others to such repetition, any near-memorized book presents opportunities for the grown-up to feel like a comic genius:  Playing it completely straight, as if you were merely reading the words on the page, you slip in one clearly incorrect word.  I remember doing this with the marvelous Sendak counting book, One Was Johnny, and the irksome Magic Tree House series.

I also remember a longish car ride with Suzie, perhaps while we were flatmates in 1999.  She was driving, so I offered to read aloud from her Barbara Kingsolver book (possibly Pigs in Heaven or The Poisonwood Bible).  The possibility had apparently never occurred to her before, but she was utterly delighted.  True fact: That was actually the only time I've ever read anything by Kingsolver.

And these days, from time to time, my beloved reads to me from his work in progress.

Botticelli Triptych: Matinee at Lincoln Center

After picking out four concerts this season, I'm now deemed a subscriber to the NY Philharmonic.  This has, unexpectedly, resulted in some genuinely useful loot: a well-designed roomy packable shopping bag and a metrocard holder which helps guard against the twin dangers of folding and demagnetization.

I took some gambles on music that sounded cool. The Bluebeard's Castle program was certainly very interesting, especially after taking Signum's Folkloric Transformations class.

But my absolute favorite so far was the matinee on January 4, featuring:

• Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 (1862-64)
• Respighi: Trittico botticelliano (1927)
• Haydn: Symphony No. 96 in D major, Miracle (1791)

The quintet consisted of pianist Jeffrey Kahane and "four Principal musicians from the Orchestra: Concertmaster Frank Huang; Principal Associate Concertmaster Sheryl Staples; Principal Viola Cynthia Phelps; and Principal Cello Carter Brey." Each of them holds a named Chair position, which I've omitted from the quote.  Both women wore eye-catching outfits, much as female vocal soloists do – elegant, brightly colored gowns.  

So I was interested to see, when the four were re-absorbed into the orchestra for the remainder of the program, that the women changed back into their regular orchestra outfits to blend in.  

I really loved the Respighi piece, reflecting three paintings by my favorite artist.  It was absolutely beautiful.  La Primavera is in allegro vivace; L'adorazione dei Magi is andante lento; and La nascita di Venere is in allegro moderato.  

Unfortunately, my few scribbles on the music are mostly indecipherable, and I waited too long to remember the details that particularly struck me at the time.  But apparently the 3rd movement of the Brahms quintet (scherzo allegro) reminded me a bit of the Pink Panther theme for some reason, and some other point in the concert inspired the notation "almost galloping."

It was followed by a Q&A session which was pretty good, though they didn't call on me.  My question would have been: If you could choose any work to test the acoustics of the renovated concert hall, what would it be?  (I'd still like to know the answer!)  It would have been more interesting, I think, than the last question they took from the audience, which was basically an extended version of "Don't you know that Boston Symphony Hall is the best concert hall that has ever existed in the history of the universe, and why aren't you just copying them?"

Now that I think of it, there was one other non-musical thing that struck me quite forcibly during the first piece; but I'm not sure I want to memorialize it here.  Without a writing, it will probably slip away into the ether, but so be it.  

When No One Steps Up

It's easy to distinguish the hero from the rest of the crowd when he's the only one brave enough to step forward to accept a high-stakes one-on-one challenge.

But how to characterize the crowd's silence, when no one accepts OR declines outright?  Here are some tentative initial thoughts on examples in a few versions of the story of Guy of Warwick and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

(The earliest Anglo-Norman lay, Gui de Warewic, apparently was written shortly before 1204.  I haven't found the actual text yet, so I'm not sure what if anything it says about the incident.)

In Guy of Warwick (stanzas) in the Auchinleck Manuscript (est. between c. 1331 - 1340), we get a simile -- the nobles are as silent as men who shaved their crowns (i.e. as silent as monks):

[S]til seten erls & barouns          9801
As men hadde schauen her crounes;Nouȝt on answere nold.

Likewise, in the "first or 14th-century version" of the Romance of Guy of Warwick, on a summer's day, when the king asks for a champion to fight the Danes' giant in single combat:

They stode all styll, and lokyd down,
As a man had shavyn ther crown.      10395

Here, although the king recognizes this silence as cowardice, I'm not sure the narrator says so in his own voice.

From Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (probably mid-to-late 14th C and perhaps as early as 1348), during Arthur's Christmas revels:

Þerfore to answare watz arȝe mony aþel freke,
And al stouned at his steuen and stonstil seten
In a swoghe sylence þurȝ þe sale riche;
As al were slypped vpon slepe so slaked hor lotez
in hyȝe--
I deme hit not al for doute,
Bot sum for cortaysye--
Bot let hym þat al schulde loute
Cast vnto þat wyȝe.

So the Gawain poet uses a different simile - they are as silent as if they were asleep!  And the narrator pretty much calls them out on being too afraid to speak up, though it's slyly couched as if he were speaking in their defense.  But the narrator deems 'not al' of them were afraid; some may have been being courteously deferential.

In the "second or 15th-century version" of the Romance of Guy of Warwick:

All they sate stone stylle:
A worde þey spake nodur gode nor ylle.      10028
Nodur erle nor knyȝt, þat was þere,
Durste speke a worde for pewre fere.

Here, they were still as stones (the simile is apparently already fossilized into a conventional phrase, it would seem).  If I understand correctly, the narrator doesn't mince words: it's pure fear that keeps them silent.

Mixed Feelings

"It had always been a notion of [Sam's] that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. Of course, he also firmly held the incompatible belief that Mr. Frodo was the wisest person in the world (with the possible exception of Old Mr. Bilbo and of Gandalf)."

-- Tolkien,  LotR at IV.3.

The sailors "regarded [Dr Maturin] as a very valuable creature, but as one unaccountable for his actions outside the sickbay or the cockpit, being brutally ignorant of everything to do with the sea -- could scarely tell the difference between port and starboard, right and wrong -- almost an innocent, as one might say.  A gentleman to be boasted of, being a genuine physician as well as the boldest hand with a saw in the fleet, but to be concealed from view as much as possible, when in company with other ships."
-- O'Brian, Desolation Island p. 101.

Hamlet and the Loss of Fathers

Claudius on filial grief (I.ii):

'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow...

But of course, when he says "your father lost a father," he is also speaking quite literally of his own father.  He thus could have made this personal -- e.g., "your father and I lost a father" -- acknowledging his own past share in such grief.  Instead, he seeks refuge in the cold, impersonal, generic pattern of death, its inevitability, as if to distance himself from his own personal involvement in this particular and not-so-inevitable death.

* * *

And this focus on the inexorable workings of time (death comes to us all) suddenly reminds me of Macbeth, on receiving the news of his wife's death (V.v):

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time...

Her death, too, has been hastened by human hand -- albeit her own.