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.

Inspector Morse: Death Is Now My Neighbour

I really liked this episode -- great ending for Morse personally and professionally, complete with a satisfying comeuppance to the reckless and ruthless and utterly creepy Clixby Bream.

But Clixby was right about one thing; Shelly Cornford certainly was naive.

I can somewhat see how he tricks her into not telling her husband the first time he propositions her.  She's in an alien environment, after all, and might quite innocently believe Clixby's representations about how things would go awry if she told Denis.

When we come to the second episode, however, Clixby's winning argument is that Denis would never forgive her if he lost the Mastership because she was unwilling to whore herself out for him.  If that were true, surely she would lose nothing by running it by Denis first.  (After all, the argument is premised on Denis eventually finding out that she didn't have sex with Clixby and being permanently angry and resentful about it.)  So when she sends Clixby to the other room, surely all she has to do is call Denis and say, "Hey, sweetie, Bream is telling me he'll make sure you get the Mastership if I have sex with him.  And he told me you'd never forgive me if I didn't -- is that true?"