Many a commentator has noted the ruthless iciness of Lady Macbeth's indirect pun when she proposes to rearrange the crime scene after Duncan's murder by wiping blood on the faces of the sotted, sleeping grooms in Duncan's chamber:
LADY MACBETH:
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt. [II. ii. 55-56]
The "gilt/guilt" aspects of the line (used to much lesser effect years earlier in King Henry IV, Part 2, [IV. v. 128] and Kind Henry V, [II. Chorus. 26]) lend an ingenious immediacy to the brazen arrogance and amorality of Lady Macbeth's character. Her gambit here was hinted at earlier when she lobbied her husband with perverse rhetorical inquiries:
LADY MACBETH:
What cannot you and I perform upon
Th' unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell? [I. vii. 70-73]
And while these lines represent the only two instances in the play where the word "guilt" is used, the concept of guilt permeates the work. The structure of the play is a kind of diptych, representing the commission and then the aftermath of dark, unspeakable crimes, (hinged, of course, by the incomparable "Porter scene"). The aftermath is not more esoterically described than by Macbeth himself:
Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th' olden time,
Ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform'd
Too terrible for the ear: the time has been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now, they rise again,
With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns,
And push us from our stools. This is more strange
Than such a murther is. [III. iv. 74-82]
"...i' th' olden time"? Is this a reference to some primordial era when men could murder with impunity and without remorse? The lines seem to describe a cusp between a time of conscience-less ("Ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal") and conscience (where the consequence of violence rebounds to haunt the perpetrator). The "olden time" invokes some half-forgotten wasteland of time where the survival of the misfit-est reigned. By repetition of both the word "ere" (meaning "before") and homophones thereof, Shakespeare emphasizes, ever so subtly, in the first five-and-a-half lines, that the reference is to an ineluctably by-gone era --terminating decidedly in "an end":
Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th' olden time,
Ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform'd
Too terrible for the ear: the time has been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end;
This, hard followed by "but now...," relegates Macbeth's thinking to a savage nostalgia of some dusty, half-remembered past. Macbeth earlier shows an impulse to somehow parlay the concept of Time, to "jump the life to come" [I. vii. 7], that imbues his on-going unsuccessful attempt to obviate the onset of conscience, culminating in his lament that "Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits" [IV. i. 144]. He vows that "The very firstlings of my heart shall be/The firstlings of my hand." [IV. i. 147-148], so as to try to excise the interim between intent and deed, but to no avail. While Shakespeare allows Macbeth to progressively compress the space between the intent and the deed of each new crime, the interim of each -- in the form of guilt -- seeps back and looms as an ever-present haunting in his consciousness. Shakespeare ingeniously gives word-play to the present tense of "do" and the past tense of "done" to underscore the two-sided aspects of sin. In the first half of the play we find this passage:
DUNCAN:
...More is thy due than more than all can pay.
MACBETH:
The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness' part,
Is to receive our duties: and our duties
Are to your throne and state children and servants,
Which do but what they should, by doing everything
Safe toward your love and honour. [I. iv. 21-27]
In the second half, Lady Macbeth says to devastating and irreversible effect: "what's done is done." [III. ii. 12]
But it's never "done, when 'tis done" even if "[i]t were done quickly." [I. vii. 1, 2] Horrific manifestations of his deeds bubble up to the surface of his consciousness. He tells his wife that his mind is "full of scorpions." [III. ii. 36] He earlier wondered "if the assassination/Could trammel up the consequences" and he discovers the answer is a resounding -- literally, a re-sounding -- No! Anticipation of echoed sounds gives birth to auditory hallucinations. Prior to murdering Duncan, Macbeth prays:
...Thou sure and firm set earth,
Hear not my steps , which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my where-about... [II. i. 56-58]
In whispered stichomythic panic, he and his wife begin to doubt their hearing immediately after the murder of Duncan:
MACBETH:
I have done the deed. -- Didst thou not hear a noise?
LADY MACBETH:
I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry.
Did not you speak?
MACBETH:
When?
LADY MACBETH:
Now.
MACBETH:
As I descended?
LADY MACBETH:
Ay. [II. ii. 14-18]
Then equivocal silence gives way to a bodiless voice with an unequivocal message:
MACBETH:
Methought, I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murther Sleep'... [II. ii. 34-35]...
Still it cried, 'Sleep no more!' to all the house:
'Glamis hath murther'd Sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more!' [II. ii. 40-42]
But Macbeth's conscience is not limited to merely auditory phantoms. His eyes -- which no doubt "are made the fools o' th' other senses" [II. i. 44] by the parturition of guilt -- see a floating dagger when, of course, "There's no such thing." [II. i. 47] Banquo's ghost, too, taunts him -- in Lady Macbeth's apt words -- as "the very painting of [his] fear" [III. iv. 60]. A bloody representative of MacDuff's murdered children emerges as the Second Apparition in the first Scene of Act Four to torture him with the puzzling equivocation of his fate: "none of woman born/Shall harm Macbeth." [IV. i. 80-81]
Macbeth is condemned to replay the sounds and images of his crimes. Conscience has reified his fear -- like the stigma on his wife's homicidal hands -- as an indelible stamp on his wracked soul. It is an experience that is new -- not of the "olden time" -- and is "stranger than such a murther is" because Macbeth seems to lack the will -- or the understanding -- to shun it. Like the Ophite Gnostic who canonizes Judas for bearing the proleptic burden of betraying the Nazarene in order to consummate the New Covenant, we sympathize with Macbeth, despite his murderous path, because his fate is not one of choice but of compulsion. The Sisters of fate have taken him on a ride when it is clear that he would have preferred to stay at home. It is this quality that lends Macbeth its pathos; it is why we care. It is the essence of tragedy.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Who knew that it's news to us that "It's new to thee"?
Before Huxley appropriated and politicized it, the phrase "brave new world" was merely a portion of a more extended exclamation by Miranda in The Tempest. The phrase is uttered by her during the denouement of the play when, after occupying a deserted island since infancy with only her father, the wizard Prospero, and the deformed and sexually dangerous Caliban, she first sets eyes on more humans than she has seen (or can ever remember) in her past twelve formative years. Earlier in the day Prospero matched her with the King of Naples' son, Ferdinand, (who is one of the seemingly solitary human flotsam washed up on shore from the shipwreck Prospero has precipitated). Enraptured and instantly in love at the sight of Ferdinand -- despite the fact that Prospero tells her that "To th' most of men this is a Caliban,/And they to him are angels" [I. ii. 482-483] --Miranda declares that "I have no ambition/To see a goodlier man" [I. ii. 483-484] in response to her father's attempt to dampen (but not completely quench) the sexual spark suddenly ignited.
This same tempering by Prospero follows Miranda's "brave new world" exclamation, too. The exchange is as follows:
MIRANDA: O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't!
PROSPERO: It's new to thee. [V. i. 182-186]
"Miranda," from the Latin mirari, is a name that signifies "wonderment." When fifteen-year old Miranda encounters more human beings than she ever dreamed she would see, including a human being like Ferdinand, she experiences a sense of wonderment that mimics the sexual awakening of a young pubescent. Such wonderment requires a vulnerable suspension of the sense of Time and of an ordinary sense of reality. As it was left to Prospero -- a symbol of the paternal and of the old -- to graphically moderate the ardors of affection between Ferdinand and Miranda -- warning Ferdinand not to "break her virgin-knot" before the rites of marriage [IV. i. 15] -- so it is left to Prospero -- again as a symbol of paternity and of the old -- to again remind Miranda that when she experiences wonder, it is because "It's new to thee." But there is a great deal to be discerned in that phrase, both within the context of the play and within the context of our perspectives of Shakespeare's art.
In another part of the island (and of the play), Old Gonzalo, sensing the miraculous aspects of his environment, says "All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement/Inhabits here: some heavenly power guide us/Out of this fearful country!" [V. 1.104-106] Like Miranda's exclamations, the line -- out of the immediate context -- echoes the tingling terror of sexual awakening -- a terra incognita of sexual experience representing (with apologies to Hamlet) those unexplored regions of a discover'd country to whose bourne every man and woman is compelled to return. Prospero, behind a facade of complete control and in contrast to his ostensible power over the wonderment, shows himself to be more catalyst than creator. As we contemplate his role, we see that his "It's new to thee" is perhaps more wistful than warning, since -- after all -- he acknowledges that soon "Every third thought shall be my grave." [V. i. 313] It's as if Shakespeare was reminding us that it is not the old who are bereft of wonderment, but what is old in us that is. Wonderment is a product of discovering something new, or rediscovering anew something that was lost. And what is new is news. At the end of the play, Gonzalo asks the Boatswain "What is the news?" [V. i. 221] The Boatswain replies that "The best news is" what is found (i.e., the ship, the King, his retinue). This echoes Gonzalo's revelatory wonderment that despite the travails of the voyage and the shipwreck, the son and daughter of the King have found their respective mates, Prospero has again found his dukedom, and "all of us ourselves/When no man was his own." [V. i. 212-213]
Prospero is a great liberator, but not the great liberator -- that title (and the task it impels) is reserved to us, to our imaginations. It is true that Prospero freed the airy spirit Ariel from the cloven pine into which the foul witch, Sycorax, had condemned him. He likewise frees Ferdinand from indentured labor on the island so as to permit the young man to commit his love for Miranda "as willing/As bondage e'er of freedom." [III. i. 88-89] With respect to the spell that he has placed on his traitorous brother and on those who betrayed him -- a spell that left them "Confin'd together" [V. i. 7] -- he commands Ariel to "Go release them, Ariel:/My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,/And they shall be themselves." [V. i. 30-32] And he finally commands: "Set Caliban and his companions free;/Untie the spell." [V. 1. 252-253] All are liberated from their respective confines -- "confines," from the Latin com = with + finis = limits or boundaries -- a place or state with impenetrable limits or boundaries. When Prospero lifts the spell on the King and his brother, he remarks that:
Their understanding
Begins to swell; and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy. [V. i. 79-82]
And so it is Prospero who -- in a remarkable Epilogue -- breaks from the play and directly addresses us, the audience. He tells us that it is our imagination, not his "charms" (that, after all, "are all o'erthrown") that truly holds the power over the future. He acknowledges that "'tis true/I must be here confin'd by you/Or sent to Naples" depending upon how our imagination plays out the resolution of the play. But he begs, "As you from crimes would pardon'd be,/Let your indulgence set me free." Prospero's prayer -- alluding as it does to "Do unto others..." and "Forgive us our trespasses..." -- goes well beyond the mores or morals of such allusions, and asks us simply to muse with wonderment so as to set him -- and us all -- free from the confines of Time and the ordinary sense of reality. It is hard -- if not impossible -- to resist the request, particularly when we realize that Shakespeare has not the actor playing Prospero, but Prospero himself, in character, deliver the Epilogue. As we receive Prospero's request, we unwittingly suspend Time and an ordinary sense of reality. Earlier, Prospero tells Ariel that "I will discase me" in anticipation of revealing his identity to the King and his brother, (where "discase" means "unmask"). But he doesn't "discase" himself to us in the Epilogue, and we are left simply in wonderment to find ourselves in a place where everything can be -- if we permit it to be so -- "new to thee."
This same tempering by Prospero follows Miranda's "brave new world" exclamation, too. The exchange is as follows:
MIRANDA: O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't!
PROSPERO: It's new to thee. [V. i. 182-186]
"Miranda," from the Latin mirari, is a name that signifies "wonderment." When fifteen-year old Miranda encounters more human beings than she ever dreamed she would see, including a human being like Ferdinand, she experiences a sense of wonderment that mimics the sexual awakening of a young pubescent. Such wonderment requires a vulnerable suspension of the sense of Time and of an ordinary sense of reality. As it was left to Prospero -- a symbol of the paternal and of the old -- to graphically moderate the ardors of affection between Ferdinand and Miranda -- warning Ferdinand not to "break her virgin-knot" before the rites of marriage [IV. i. 15] -- so it is left to Prospero -- again as a symbol of paternity and of the old -- to again remind Miranda that when she experiences wonder, it is because "It's new to thee." But there is a great deal to be discerned in that phrase, both within the context of the play and within the context of our perspectives of Shakespeare's art.
In another part of the island (and of the play), Old Gonzalo, sensing the miraculous aspects of his environment, says "All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement/Inhabits here: some heavenly power guide us/Out of this fearful country!" [V. 1.104-106] Like Miranda's exclamations, the line -- out of the immediate context -- echoes the tingling terror of sexual awakening -- a terra incognita of sexual experience representing (with apologies to Hamlet) those unexplored regions of a discover'd country to whose bourne every man and woman is compelled to return. Prospero, behind a facade of complete control and in contrast to his ostensible power over the wonderment, shows himself to be more catalyst than creator. As we contemplate his role, we see that his "It's new to thee" is perhaps more wistful than warning, since -- after all -- he acknowledges that soon "Every third thought shall be my grave." [V. i. 313] It's as if Shakespeare was reminding us that it is not the old who are bereft of wonderment, but what is old in us that is. Wonderment is a product of discovering something new, or rediscovering anew something that was lost. And what is new is news. At the end of the play, Gonzalo asks the Boatswain "What is the news?" [V. i. 221] The Boatswain replies that "The best news is" what is found (i.e., the ship, the King, his retinue). This echoes Gonzalo's revelatory wonderment that despite the travails of the voyage and the shipwreck, the son and daughter of the King have found their respective mates, Prospero has again found his dukedom, and "all of us ourselves/When no man was his own." [V. i. 212-213]
Prospero is a great liberator, but not the great liberator -- that title (and the task it impels) is reserved to us, to our imaginations. It is true that Prospero freed the airy spirit Ariel from the cloven pine into which the foul witch, Sycorax, had condemned him. He likewise frees Ferdinand from indentured labor on the island so as to permit the young man to commit his love for Miranda "as willing/As bondage e'er of freedom." [III. i. 88-89] With respect to the spell that he has placed on his traitorous brother and on those who betrayed him -- a spell that left them "Confin'd together" [V. i. 7] -- he commands Ariel to "Go release them, Ariel:/My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,/And they shall be themselves." [V. i. 30-32] And he finally commands: "Set Caliban and his companions free;/Untie the spell." [V. 1. 252-253] All are liberated from their respective confines -- "confines," from the Latin com = with + finis = limits or boundaries -- a place or state with impenetrable limits or boundaries. When Prospero lifts the spell on the King and his brother, he remarks that:
Their understanding
Begins to swell; and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy. [V. i. 79-82]
And so it is Prospero who -- in a remarkable Epilogue -- breaks from the play and directly addresses us, the audience. He tells us that it is our imagination, not his "charms" (that, after all, "are all o'erthrown") that truly holds the power over the future. He acknowledges that "'tis true/I must be here confin'd by you/Or sent to Naples" depending upon how our imagination plays out the resolution of the play. But he begs, "As you from crimes would pardon'd be,/Let your indulgence set me free." Prospero's prayer -- alluding as it does to "Do unto others..." and "Forgive us our trespasses..." -- goes well beyond the mores or morals of such allusions, and asks us simply to muse with wonderment so as to set him -- and us all -- free from the confines of Time and the ordinary sense of reality. It is hard -- if not impossible -- to resist the request, particularly when we realize that Shakespeare has not the actor playing Prospero, but Prospero himself, in character, deliver the Epilogue. As we receive Prospero's request, we unwittingly suspend Time and an ordinary sense of reality. Earlier, Prospero tells Ariel that "I will discase me" in anticipation of revealing his identity to the King and his brother, (where "discase" means "unmask"). But he doesn't "discase" himself to us in the Epilogue, and we are left simply in wonderment to find ourselves in a place where everything can be -- if we permit it to be so -- "new to thee."
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
All kidding aside, I've got that cloven feelin': A new perspective on Shakespeare's chev'ril glove
Shakespeare precisely used words to create an imprecise (but not unsubstantial) experience. The relationships among words in his sentences (within and without the immediate context of his works) lead to ever-expanding swirls of significance. Assimilating Shakespeare is a deeply personal experience. Heminges and Condell, in their preface to the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare's plays -- (addressed aptly "To the Great Variety of Readers") -- declaimed that "It is yours that reade him."
Indeed.
The interpretations of Shakespeare -- analytically, philosophically, aesthetically, dramatically, sociologically, artistically, politically -- vary as widely as the persons who read him. But, ironically, the more we share our diverse perspectives of his works, the more deeply personal and uniquely satisfying becomes our Shakespearean experience.
Shakespeare was able to anchor us all to his art by recognizing and exploiting the protean quality of language. In riposte, the clown in Twelfth Night teaches Viola (and us all) that "A sentence is but a chev'ril glove to a good wit -- how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!" [II. v. 11-13] Shakespeare, whose father had been at one time a glover, clearly knew something about chev'ril gloves -- gloves made from kid leather, and known for their stretching capacity. Thus, the metaphor: chev'ril gloves -- like words and sentences -- can be turned inside out, and words and sentences in the control of a wit (i.e., someone of intelligence) can signify something wholly different than the "right," (or the ostensible), import that we first give them. In furtherance of the point (and keeping with the goat theme), Shakespeare has Touchstone in As You Like It woo the dull-witted rustic, Audrey, by declaring to her that "I am here with thee and thy goats as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths." [III. iii. 6-8] It's a throw-away line, until we sensitize ourselves to all the ways that it can be stretched to make its multiple points. The richness of the sentence grows with attention. Not only do we discern here the lascivious court fool, Touchstone, attempting to impose his salacious will upon the natural fool, Audrey, but we hear the pun on "goats" and "Goths"; we assimilate consciously or unconsciously that "capricious" etymologically derives from the Latin for "goat" (which symbolizes a "horny" disposition); we instinctively wince at the contrast between the disingenuous Touchstone and his self-comparison to "honest" Ovid; we compare the reference to Ovid among the barbarian "Goths" with the court-educated Touchstone among the rustic likes of simple Audrey; we witness the rocky mating dance (and anticipate the eventual mismatched coupling) between Touchstone and Audrey as well as between the court-conceived pastoral and the natural primitivism that will ensue as a consequence of the incursion of royalty into the forest of Arden.
Similarly, the cloven hoof of the goat (or of Satan or of the Christian Lamb) lends itself as a symbol of the duality of words. Using only whispered innuendos, "honest" Iago perniciously slices his victim with the keen two-sided edge of words. Tellingly, the defeated Othello invokes the fable [mere words!] that should have shown Iago to have the devil's feet. [V. ii. 285]
Shakespeare's sentences sentence us to hard labor in the effort to discern their ever-expanding signficance, but -- again, ironically, -- the experience liberates us into a realm of greater consciousness of life, love, and art.
Indeed.
The interpretations of Shakespeare -- analytically, philosophically, aesthetically, dramatically, sociologically, artistically, politically -- vary as widely as the persons who read him. But, ironically, the more we share our diverse perspectives of his works, the more deeply personal and uniquely satisfying becomes our Shakespearean experience.
Shakespeare was able to anchor us all to his art by recognizing and exploiting the protean quality of language. In riposte, the clown in Twelfth Night teaches Viola (and us all) that "A sentence is but a chev'ril glove to a good wit -- how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!" [II. v. 11-13] Shakespeare, whose father had been at one time a glover, clearly knew something about chev'ril gloves -- gloves made from kid leather, and known for their stretching capacity. Thus, the metaphor: chev'ril gloves -- like words and sentences -- can be turned inside out, and words and sentences in the control of a wit (i.e., someone of intelligence) can signify something wholly different than the "right," (or the ostensible), import that we first give them. In furtherance of the point (and keeping with the goat theme), Shakespeare has Touchstone in As You Like It woo the dull-witted rustic, Audrey, by declaring to her that "I am here with thee and thy goats as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths." [III. iii. 6-8] It's a throw-away line, until we sensitize ourselves to all the ways that it can be stretched to make its multiple points. The richness of the sentence grows with attention. Not only do we discern here the lascivious court fool, Touchstone, attempting to impose his salacious will upon the natural fool, Audrey, but we hear the pun on "goats" and "Goths"; we assimilate consciously or unconsciously that "capricious" etymologically derives from the Latin for "goat" (which symbolizes a "horny" disposition); we instinctively wince at the contrast between the disingenuous Touchstone and his self-comparison to "honest" Ovid; we compare the reference to Ovid among the barbarian "Goths" with the court-educated Touchstone among the rustic likes of simple Audrey; we witness the rocky mating dance (and anticipate the eventual mismatched coupling) between Touchstone and Audrey as well as between the court-conceived pastoral and the natural primitivism that will ensue as a consequence of the incursion of royalty into the forest of Arden.
Similarly, the cloven hoof of the goat (or of Satan or of the Christian Lamb) lends itself as a symbol of the duality of words. Using only whispered innuendos, "honest" Iago perniciously slices his victim with the keen two-sided edge of words. Tellingly, the defeated Othello invokes the fable [mere words!] that should have shown Iago to have the devil's feet. [V. ii. 285]
Shakespeare's sentences sentence us to hard labor in the effort to discern their ever-expanding signficance, but -- again, ironically, -- the experience liberates us into a realm of greater consciousness of life, love, and art.
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