Two-Hour Tours of Shakespeare
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Monday, October 12, 2020
'And gentlemen in England now a-bed...will hold their manhoods cheap': Shakespeare and the 2020 campaign rallies
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us."
"This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'"
"Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd."
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:"
"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
Sunday, October 11, 2020
The quality of mercy is not strained: Justice and Supreme Court justices
A changing of the guard at the U.S. Supreme Court is approaching, now that conservative jurist Amy Comey Barrett has been nominated to fill the seat held for 27 years by liberal jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Passions are running high across the political spectrum, and, as always, Two-Hour Tours will look to cool those passions by offering the bard's perspective, today on the subject of judges and justice.
Why not take a break from the fever swamp and take a look?
We'll start with what is probably Shakespeare's most famous courtroom speech, given by Portia, while she is dressed as Balthasar, a fictional lawyer introduced to the court through forged paperwork. She and the Duke of Venice are trying to persuade Shylock to show mercy to Antonio, the play's Merchant of Venice, who has failed to repay a loan to Shylock. The loan terms permitted Shylock to cut a pound of flesh out of Antonio should he fail to repay. Here's Portia's speech:
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.”
Saturday, October 10, 2020
A plague on both your houses! Shakespeare and the COVID pandemic
The Elizabethans were rather more stalwart than we are when it comes to fatal communicable diseases. London was stricken with - wait for it - the bubonic plague repeatedly during Shakespeare's time, specifically in 1563, 1578, 1582, 1592, and 1603. The first and the last of these each killed roughly one-fourth of London's population.
And when not scurrying away from the plague, smallpox stalked the land, claiming no less a victim than Elizabeth herself when she was 29, leaving her with deep scars requiring that famous white makeup, and taking away with it her hair. Oh, and they didn't have a cure for syphilis, which when uncured is a fatal disease.
Shakespeare naturally refers to these maladies in his plays, most famously in Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio, mortally wounded because a love-besotted Romeo stepped between him and Tybalt during their duel, cries out:
"A plague on both your houses!"
But let's get back to the pandemics. The bard gives us bleak but comic take on plagues in Measure for Measure, when Mistress Overdone, a madam in a house of ill repute, or in today's parlance the business manager of number of sex workers, complains to the audience about many the headwinds her industry is experiencing (custom means revenue):
While the scene takes place in Vienna, the references are to life in Elizabethan era, and scholars have used this comment to try to date the play, or at least its first performance, reasoning that it would have had to have been staged when London was experiencing war, an epidemic involving fever, a crackdown involving hanging, and, of course, poverty. Many different years would qualify.
It's a curious fact that in the face of this relentless series of highly fatal pandemics, London was able to fight off the Spanish Armada, elevate itself into a major maritime power, and still find time to create and celebrate some of the finest poetry and drama of the English language, extending beyond Shakespeare to encompass Spencer, Marlowe, Sidney, and Ben Jonson, and Walter Raleigh, to name but a few.
It's worth taking a moment to look at ourselves from a Bard's eye view. We are facing a pandemic that we thought could take the lives of two million Americans, and we're successfully reducing the death toll to around a tenth of that number. But even two million would be well below one percent of our nation, while the Elizabethans saw the equivalent of 80 million Americans die (1/4 of the U.S. population), twice, in the span of 40 years. And that's just the record of one of their many maladies.
Time to count our blessings.
And as always, if you'd like to take a deeper but still quick and painless tour through one of Shakespeare's plays, please leaf through the Two-Hour Tour titles to the right...
Friday, October 9, 2020
Had I plantation of this isle, my lord: The Tempest and the 2020 Riots
The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All The Lawyers: Edward VI, Part 2 and the 2020 Riots
It's riot season in the United States, and with a large portion of our young adults spending their nights in a deadly duet with the police across many of our cities, we thought we'd look at how Shakespeare viewed anarchy, which he sees as linked to the eternal youthful ideal of a perfectly constructed society.
Shakespeare visits this idea in quite a few plays, and today we'll look at one of the Edward VI plays (the second one), where he has an avowed anarchist, Jack Cade, dream of overthrowing the existing order. It's actually Cade's henchman, Dick, who says the famous line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." The conversation Shakespeare puts that line into gives us Cade's vision of the world he would build once his revolution is complete:
JACK CADE. "Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common;...and when I am king,– as king I will be,–"
ALL. "God save your majesty!"
JACK CADE. "I thank you, good people:– there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord."
DICK. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
JACK CADE. "Nay, that I mean to do..."
It's fun to dream, and Shakespeare seems to be having fun as well. Is bread too expensive? We'll order the price be lowered. Seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny. Cade's dream was the 20th century's reality: the Soviet Union of course forced prices to remain at a standstill for decades. And despite the disastrous results, The U.S. imposed "wage and price controls" in the 1970s. It didn't work here either.
How about: "the three-hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops"? Shakespeare loves the idea of just ordering something you don't like to be something else. When Petruchio is taming Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, he tells her the sun is the moon, and won't rest until she agrees. The Soviet Union took the hint, and would routinely change the days of the week it was. Next week's Saturday would be turned into a Wednesday by order of the Politburo, for example.\
But back in Edward VI, part 2, Cade and Shakespeare aren't done. "There shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score." Cade doesn't explain how everyone can eat on his score, or tab, likely because he can't, but the idea of going through life like Queen Elizabeth, never carrying money, and yet having all of your needs met, is enduringly attractive. Guaranteed basic income, anyone?
Even though all shall be equal, as symbolized by their wearing identical clothes (I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers), Cade somehow feels it proper to anoint himself as monarch, just to ensure the equality continues, we can assume. And that's when Dick chimes in with the suggestion that we kill all the lawyers. Can't have that pesky rule of law interfering with a nice millennial dream...
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Shakespeare and the Coronavirus
This one is easy, because the plague was an ever-present threat to Shakespeare's London, and it shows up periodically in his plays. Now that the deadly coronavirus has emerged from Wuhan province in China, we can travel to fair Verona, where Romeo and Juliet's Friar Laurence found his entire plan to unite the Montagues and Capulets undone by the major infectious disease of his time.
First, let's have Frian Laurence explain his plot in his own words, and then we'll see how it was undone by the plague:
Friar Laurence: "...in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back."
That was the plan, but Romeo and Juliet shifted from a comedy to a tragedy as a result of a postal service failure. Why exactly was that Friar John "staye'd by accident"? Here's the scene:
Friar Laurence: "This same should be the voice of Friar John.
Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?
Or if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
Friar John: "Going to find a barefoot brother out,
One of our order, to associate me,
Here in this city visiting the sick,
And finding him, the searchers of the town,
Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
Sealed up the doors and would not let us forth,
So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed."
Friar Laurence: "Who bare my letter then to Romeo?"
Friar John: "I could not send it, — here it is again, —
Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearful were they of infection."
The rest, as they say, is history, or rather tragedy. Romeo, never learning that Juliet was in fact alive and only appeared dead as a result of a potion given to her by Friar Laurence, kills himself in her tomb.
It was a grim ending to a love that began with a sonnet that both lovers contributed to:
Romeo {taking Juliet’s hand}:
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”
Juliet: “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”
Romeo: “Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”
Juliet: “Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”
Romeo: “O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.
They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”
Juliet: “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”
Romeo: “Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.”
{He kisses her.}
Calling her hand a holy shrine, Romeo says that if he profanes that shrine with his own “unworthy” hand, he stands ready to make amends with his lips, which he likens to two blushing pilgrims. He doesn’t explain why his lips (blushing pilgrims) have a higher status than his hands (unworthy).
Juliet responds with encouragement – saints, by which she means the images of saints venerated by pilgrims, have hands that pilgrims’ hands may touch. And because the actual pilgrims of that time who went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land would return with a palm leaf, Juliet puns on the word “palm” to say that the holding of hands, the touching of palms, is the kiss of holy palmers (another word for pilgrims).
Seeing that Juliet has accepted his offer to take her hand, Romeo makes a further offer. Don’t saints have lips, too? Juliet slaps him down; saints may use their lips only in prayer. Romeo naturally then casts Juliet as a saint, and asks if lips may do what hands do (that is, pray).
Juliet answers that saints do not “move,” and that’s true, since she’s referring to the venerated images of saints, who have long since shed their human form. What she really means is that they don’t take the initiative, although they will grant prayers. Romeo takes the hint, and kisses her. Here what they say after kissing:
Romeo: “Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.”
Juliet: “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”
Romeo: “Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.”{He kisses her again.}
Juliet: “You kiss by th’ book.”
Shakespeare completes his fusion of romance and religion by having Romeo say that his sins have been purged by kissing his Saint Juliet. Juliet answers logically, and with theological soundness, that in that case his sins have now fallen on her. Romeo accuses her of urging him on, sweetly of course, to a second trespass, required in order to reclaim his sin and re-purify her in her sainthood.
While “You kiss by th’ book” sounds to modern ears like a gentle or even ungentle criticism, as if to say, “you kiss in too formal a manner,” it was most likely a straightforward compliment. Scholars seem to agree that at the time, by the book simply meant “expertly.”