'Drown themselves in riot!' Anarchy, Street Violence, and Timon of Athens

'And gentlemen in England now a-bed...will hold their manhoods cheap': Shakespeare and the 2020 campaign rallies

The campaign season is upon us, and President Trump and former Vice President Biden are on the campaign trail giving speeches designed to rally the faithful and draw the undecided to the cause. Shakespeare as usual has already been there. His most famous offering is from Henry V, when the king addresses his troops to rally them prior to a battle with the French. Let's get straight to it. 

Henry starts by assuring the troops that their service is entirely voluntary.

Henry V: "That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
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."

No modern military goes this far. While enlistment in the U.S. is currently voluntary, soldiers cannot seek to be discharged just prior to battle, but Henry has a Henry goes on:

"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:'"

Well, Henry does offer his soldiers one reward if they stay with him and fight, but it isn't a reward that he himself will bestow; it will be bestowed by their neighbors in the form of admiration and praise. A modern parallel is obvious here as well; future generations will either praise or condemn today's generation of soldier - OK, voters - depending on the wisdom of their choice. 

Henry has more to say:

"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."

It's a stirring speech, and it goes on: 

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:"

Be he never so vile. A fair number of the soldiers would have been reformed, or unreformed, criminals, and Henry is telling them that their actions on the day of the election, or rather the day of battle, can provide them with a form of redemption. This day shall gentle your condition. 

Then Henry compares his fellow soldiers, his band of brothers, to non-voters; I mean non-soldiers:

"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."

Enjoy the campaign - and vote!

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:

Portia: “The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 
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.”

The main point is clear enough; mercy is an attribute of the divine that elevates and ennobles those who extend it. Probably only once sentence needs some explanation: "...in the course of justice, none of us/Should see salvation." Regular, everyday justice merely reapportions value in accordance with the law; only mercy can offer salvation. 

There's really no ironic subtext that undercuts this message, but that doesn't mean Shakespeare is endorsing the messenger. Much as he does with in Hamlet, when he allows the flawed and feckless Polonius a lovely speech of paternal advice to his son Laertes, here he allows Portia to offer wisdom without actually embodying it. 

Portia says that if Shylock declines to show mercy, the court must enforce his contract. In fact, however, she is in fact laying a trap for Shylock that will result in his destruction. And she will manipulate the law to the point of strangling it in order to ambush Shylock in a way that costs him all his wealth, and that results in his forced conversion to Christianity. 

And why does Portia do all this? She has recently married Bassanio, the man who came to Antonio for the loan. But she has figured out that Antonio also loves Bassanio and, in his financial and emotional distress, Antonio is willing to be killed by Shylock to demonstrate his love. 

Portia can't have this. Shakespeare as always is interested in the human heart, and so is Portia, if only in Bassanio's. If Antonio dies for Bassanio, that will be a sacrifice for love beyond any she could ever offer. And that is her motivation for destroying Shylock. As Michael Corleone would say in The Godfather, "It's just business."

Bringing this all back to the U.S. Supreme Court, we can ask if those of us who are disappointed in the likely elevation of Justice Barrett will be able to accept her appointment with at least the same grudging level of acceptance that the other side of the political divide showed to the late Justice Ginsburg during her tenure on the Court. 

"...we do pray for mercy; 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 

The deeds of mercy."

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!"

Though Mercutio is a friend of Romeo's (well, not so much on that day), Shakespeare carefully describes him as connected by blood to neither of the two feuding houses. He is, unfortunately, connected to the Prince of Verona, which spurs the Prince to banish Romeo. 

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):

Mistress Overdone: "What with the war, what with the sweat, 

what with the gallows, and what with poverty, 

I am custom-shrunk."

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...

Had I plantation of this isle, my lord: The Tempest and the 2020 Riots

 

Yesterday, even as our televisions were overheating with images of Portland, Oregon and other cities aflame, we took a look at Shakespeare's treatment of anarchy and disorder, shown in the history play Edward VI, Part 2. 

With the riots showing no sign of winding down, we'll stick with the subject. Today we'll look at another anarchistic utopian vision, presented by Gonzalo in The Tempest.

Societal collapse was very much on Shakespeare's mind as well, after all. While we think of Elizabeth's reign as spanning England's steady rise and a cultural golden age, that was hardly how England saw herself. There was a reason that those three Edward VI plays were among the earliest Shakespeare wrote. The civil strife they describe (across 15 excruciating acts!) was still fresh in people's minds, and are today filed under the heading of the War of the Roses. 

Moreover, Elizabeth inherited the schism with the Catholic Church that her father had initiated, with the result that her nation found itself with a mere 50 years of Anglican faith sitting atop a thousand years of Catholic ritual. One false move, such as beheading her Catholic sister Mary Queen of Scots, could form the pretext for Phillip  II of Spain to launch his armada, which of course happened in 1588.

To retain control, Elizabeth executed Catholics at a faster rate than Spain itself was doing during its famous Inquisition, although the Inquisition went on far longer. Elizabeth executed around 800 people across 40 years, or 20 a year, while Spain average 15 a year during its era of religious oppression.

A Catholic theocracy based in feudalism and extending across Europe remained a vision of utopia for many. 

Gonzalo's utopian vision is more modest. Shipwrecked on an island in the Mediterranean, he is the councilor to Naples’ King Alonso. For a brief moment in the play, he forgets his courtly obligations and fantasizes about what he would do if he were the ruler of the island:

Gonzalo: “Had I plantation of this isle, my lord, -”…

And were the king not on't, what would I do?”

Sebastian: “'Scape being drunk for want of wine.”

Gonzalo: “….. I would by contraries

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation; all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure;

No sovereignty;--

Sebastian: “Yet he would be king on't.”

Antonio: “The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.”

Gonzalo: “All things in common nature should produce

Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,

Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,

Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,

Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,

To feed my innocent people.”

Sebastian: “No marrying 'mong his subjects?”

Antonio: “None, man; all idle: whores and knaves.”

Gonzalo: “I would with such perfection govern, sir,

To excel the golden age.”

Sebastian: “God save his majesty!”

Antonio: “Long live Gonzalo!”…

This is Shakespeare’s comic take on the idea of utopia. Gonzalo’s vision of a perfect and harmonious commonwealth involves the total prohibition of law, technology, and labor. Pol Pot tried something like that in Cambodia in the late 1970s. Shakespeare next conjures a scene that, though it employs some fantasy, shows how politics plays out in the real world. 

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...