King Lear, Part 3: Our Present Business is General Woe

I sat on the edge of my seat, leaning towards the stage, eyes wet, and watched the final scene of King Lear.  Here are some thoughts arising from the lines in Act V, Scene iii:

Edmond:  

Edmond is a villain - and we need villains to advance the plot, but Edmond is an interesting and almost sympathetic villain.

At the beginning of King Lear, Edmond's father, Gloucester, admits that Edmond is his out-of-wedlock son that he has always "blushed" to acknowledge.  Gloucester blames the boy's mother for having a son "ere she had a husband for her bed."  Like Lear, Gloucester is another character who takes no responsibility for his actions and pays the price.

After Lear splits the country between Goneril and Regan, the state is weakened and the sisters compete with each other for Edmond. When there is division in a state or a relationship, a malefactor, like Edmond, can wedge himself in creating a wider division.  I am reminded of modern-day Syria which, due to the civil war, became a breeding ground for ISIS.

Edmond has sent orders to have Lear and Cordelia killed while in prison.  When he is captured, he tries to undo his order - his only redemptive act: 

Some good I mean to do,
Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send
(Be brief in't) to the castle; for my writ
Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.
Nay, send in time.

Edmond is very full of his own importance and influence, but when his death is announced, the response is "That's but a trifle here."  Nobody cares.

General Woe:  

The soldiers running to rescue Lear and Cordelia are too late.

Lear enters carrying Cordelia.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stone.
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so
That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives.
She's dead as earth.

Soon Lear dies as well.  The Duke of Albany is still standing. By Act IV, Albany could see that Goneril, his wife, was a piece of work.  She calls him "a milk-liver'd man" and he calls her "a fiend" shielded by a woman's shape" and a lot worse.  The play ends with his instructions:

Our present business is general woe.

These are sad times and must be so recognized.  Our very business is grieving.  Let's do nothing else.  There is a formalness and authority in this declaration that I find helpful and comforting.

The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest have borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

We are told to speak what we feel.  Our feelings are so often mediated, censored, or blocked by our roles and beliefs in what "we ought to say."  The direct line from our heart to our voice is interrupted by beliefs in how we should present ourselves.  To speak what we feel would be too raw, too vulnerable.  Yet here, Albany calls all present to only speak their feelings.

Love:  

I began these meditations on King Lear by asking, "What's love got to do with it?" There's not a lot of love in King Lear.  There is a great deal of anger, shouting, cursing, and howling.  

One person who did not shout was Cordelia whose voice was ever "soft, gentle and low."  That is not only "an excellent thing in a woman," it is a thing possible for anyone who is self-reflective, honest both to self and others, and responsible for their contribution, great or slight, to their own fate.

King Lear Part 2

King Lear, Part 2: Does Anyone Here Know Me?

Last summer, in a binge of live theatre, I saw Man of La Mancha and then King Lear immediately after.  I began a piece called "King Lear of La Mancha" noting the similarities between the two works. 

Man of La Mancha is based on a novel by Cervantes, first published in 1605.  The first performance of King Lear was in 1606.  Both stories deal with family issues and difficulties seeing women (life, the universe, everything) clearly.  Lear saw his lying, selfish daughters as loving and devoted.  He saw his honest, true daughter as uncaring. Don Quixote saw the bitter, angry Aldonza as the saintly Dulcinea.

One doesn't have to be a foolish, old man to have a distorted view.  We all do it.  We tend to see what we choose to see and interpret behaviours in ways that fit our needs and self-perception.  Art experiences can sometimes help us see more clearly.

The Lear that I saw recently struggles with his identity and his threatened sense of self. After he rashly banishes Cordelia, even the evil sister Regan notes, "He has ever but slenderly known himself."

Upon giving his two dissembling daughters each half his kingdom, he still sees himself as a functioning unit.  He will lead 100 knights and, together, they will reside with his daughters:  one month with Regan, one month with Goneril.

The daughters see him as worthless.  Rather than recognize that he made a mistake, he rages at his daughters.  The more he denies his error, the more he loses his identity.  He asks, "Who is it that can tell me who I am?" (I, iv).  The Fool replies, "Lear's shadow."  His fall into madness continues until he begins to take responsibility for his own contribution to his problems.

That might be the take-home message of the play.

At the end of Act IV, Cordelia, her soldiers, and her doctor rescue Lear.  He wakes up and gradually recognizes Cordelia -- and recalls the wrong he did her:

Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause, they have not.

And with these words and the recognition that he has wronged Cordelia, he knows who he is. Lear and Cordelia are then taken prisoner by Goneril and Regan's men:

                Come, let’s away to prison.

We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down

And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—

Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—

And take upon ’s the mystery of things

As if we were God’s spies.

Lear says that they will take on "the mystery of things."  Instead of arrogance and pomposity, Lear is vulnerable and humble.  He asks forgiveness.  He's aware that he knows nothing.

And we’ll wear out

In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones

That ebb and flow by the moon. 

- by being weak and open, they will wear out the great ones.  Greatness, he says, ebbs and flows.  He now knows this well.

He is no longer struggling with his identity.  Clinging to an identity of greatness only made him crazy.

Note:  Please read the King Lear Part 1 and King Lear Part 3

There will be one further blog on the ending of King Lear.  Coming soon.

Whither Shakespeare? Part XI: King Lear or What's Love Got to Do with It?

King Lear is about a self-absorbed senior citizen who wants to retire.  He wants others, particularly his daughters, to love him as much as he loves himself.  He is willing to pay an army of men to carouse with him and this props up his belief in his own importance.  He no longer wants the responsibility of running a kingdom.

Perhaps he devoted his whole life to his kingdom.  Perhaps he was a good king, as he has some loyal followers, Kent for one.  But King Lear is somewhat addled and mistaking his older daughters' fawning praise for love, he divides the kingdom between them.

His youngest daughter, Cordelia, really does love him, but will not buy into the division of the kingdom based on the one-off expression of love that he demands.  She is banished, but has a husband who will love her for herself, not for her share of the kingdom.

In the opening scenes of King Lear, the noise of love is mistaken for the deeds and behaviours over time that prove love to be real.  Intensity is mistaken for intimacy.

Lear, who is not aware of his failings and believes 100% in his impulses, banishes Kent and Cordelia and the play is off and running.

I am about to see a live performance of King Lear in a park in Vancouver.  I will report back soon with an update - looking particularly at how love, both false and real, recognized and unrecognized, lead to the tragic outcomes of this play.

King Lear, Part 2 here.      King Lear, Part 3 here.                                                           

Wither Shakespeare? Part X: What's the Difference Between Tragedy and Comedy in Shakespeare?

When I was studying literature in university, we told this joke:  What's the difference between tragedy and comedy in Shakespeare?

1.  Tragedies are longer;
2.  At the end of a tragedy, there are more bodies lying dead on the stage than standing; and
3.  Comedies end with a wedding.  Tragedies start with one.

The joke was obviously a warning, but I began to wonder:

Are these statements true?

Yes, tragedies are generally longer:

1. Hamlet          The longest of all of Shakespeare's plays at 4024 lines.  TRAGEDY
2. Coriolanus     The second longest at 3824 lines.  TRAGEDY
3. Cymbeline     The third longest:  "Tragedy looms but never strikes."
4. Richard III     The fourth longest  HISTORICAL TRAGEDY
5. Antony and Cleopatra    The fifth longest  TRAGEDY
6. Othello          The sixth longest  TRAGEDY
7. King Lear      The seventh longest  TRAGEDY
8. Romeo and Juliet  is still in the top 50% of longest.
9. However, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, and Titus Andronicus are among the shortest.

A tragedy ends with more bodies dead on stage than standing? 

This probably refers to Hamlet, more than any of the other plays.

Of the characters in Hamlet who had spoken lines, the only one left alive at the end is Horatio.  Fortinbras arrives to see the bodies of Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes, and Gertrude.  Every other important character in the play, including Polonius and Ophelia are already dead.

I'd rephrase difference #2 like this:  Tragedies end with much death and often have death and murder throughout.  I would add 

Cordelia dead

• the more sympathy you have for a character, the more likely that character dies at the end
• both the good guys and the bad guys die violent deaths (Macbeth, Othello, Richard III)
• and if your name is the title of a Shakespearean tragedy, you will be dead by the end; if your name shares the title one or both of you will be dead.

A comedy ends with a wedding?

A lot of comedies start with longing.

  

Lucentio upon first seeing Bianca:

I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio, 
If I achieve not this young modest girl
  - The Taming of the Shrew Act 1, Scene 1

Hermia, upon hearing that her father is forcing her to marry Demetrius:

I would my father look'd but with my eyes.
  - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1

Orsino in love

The Duke, Orsino:

. . . when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence!  
That instant was I turn'd into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.
  - Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1

A wedding at the end relieves this longing at least for some of the characters:

Come, Kate, we'll to bed 

We three are married, but you two are sped.  
  - Petruccio, The Taming of the Shrew Act 5, Scene 2  

And yes, many of the comedies, and even the problem plays and romances, end with a wedding or at least permission for the lovers to marry.  These include As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Love's Labours Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Tempest and others. 

Some of these marriage scenes show an awareness of a dark side to marriage.  The Merchant of Venice suggests some tension between Lorenzo and Jessica

 and two of the three newly married couples at the end ofThe Taming of the Shrew already have issues.

 A tragedy starts with a wedding?

Hamlet begins with the wedding of Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, and his father's murderer, Uncle Claudius.

Othello begins with Brabantio, a Venetian senator, discovering that his daughter has eloped with Othello.  Iago puts it somewhat more graphically:

I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

Macbeth does not start with a wedding.  It starts with a gaggle of witches, news of a battle, then more witches.  However, not long into Act I, we meet Lady Macbeth and soon after we see Macbeth and his wife together.  We see a married couple in a conversation about their future.

By the end of Scene 2, Richard III, our title character, has won Lady Anne's agreement to marry him. She is mourning her husband and husband's father, both killed by Richard, who says triumphantly:

Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?
Was ever woman in this humour won?   

King Lear divides his kingdom between two of his daughters.  The third, Cordelia, who would not play the game of lying to their father, is quickly married off to the King of France.

By Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, we meet Paris who is seeking Capulet's permission to marry his daughter.  From then on, it's all talk of marriage.  By Act 2, Scene 4, Friar Lawrence leads Romeo and Juliet off to officially marry them. 

I conclude that the joke is mostly true.

When you're hooked on Shakespeare, you love both tragedy and comedy.  Both have wit and wisdom, joy and sadness, heroes, heroines, and villains, and characters with many dimensions to inform our lives.

What's the difference between tragedy and comedy in life?
Perhaps only time.

As author Charles Yu says, "Time is a machine that turns pain into experience," and if you wait long enough, tragedy into comedy.

Whither Shakespeare? Part VIII - Shakespeare By Heart?

If you know these lines:   
     "To be or not to be, that is the question." 
      "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
     "Beware the ides of March."

then you have memorized Shakespeare.  You probably know all kinds of Shakespeare:

"Is that a dagger I see before me?"

"Now is the winter of our discontent."

Aside from being handy in Jeopardy, there are many benefits to memorizing Shakespeare - or memorizing anything.  You probably know the words to dozens and dozens of songs.  I've been to concerts where the whole audience sings every word along with the performer.  In this day of individualized playlists, singing together gives you a profound shared experience of unity and, yes, love.

In my elementary school in Montreal, the piano was in an alcove above the auditorium.  In the December days before the Christmas break, the junior classes would squeeze into the space around the piano and sing carols over and over again until we knew every word.  Even a Jewish girl like me has found it useful to know the Christmas songbook by heart.

Whatever we memorize when we are young, we tend to remember:  piano sonatas, Christmas carols, and Shakespeare soliloquies.  In grade 7, I memorized Romeo's speech to Juliet on her balcony.  ("But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.")  Even today, I remember all 24 lines. 

When people feel doomed, I pull Macbeth's speech from the memory vault:
     "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
     Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
     To the last syllable of recorded time;
     . . . It is a tale
     Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
     Signifying nothing."

Petrucchio's speech from The Taming of the Shrew comes in handy when a couple is arguing:

     "And where two raging fires meet together,
     They do consume the thing that feeds their fury."

As a child growing up, I noticed that when my Uncle George (ז״ל) visited my family, he might suddenly begin a Hamlet soliloquy:
     "Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I"  or
     "To be or not to be," or 
     "Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt,
      Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!" 

and recite it through to the end.  During one visit, he confessed that he had memorized all seven of Hamlet's soliloquies.  I was a university student at the time, and this achievement impressed me.  "What made you do that," I asked.

"One summer," he said, "after the war - when I was in medical school, I was invited to a cottage north of Toronto to play chess."

"You memorized these walking by the lake?" I asked.

"No," said Uncle George.  "I memorized these while playing chess."

"While playing chess?"

"My host was a very, very slow player."

Whither Shakespeare? Part VII - Were Young People Really So Rebellious in Shakespeare’s Time?

In Shakespeare, when parents choose their child’s marital partner, the child rebels – sometimes successfully, sometimes tragically.

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the powerful Duke of Milan wishes his daughter, Silvia, to marry the wealthy Thurio.  Silvia heads for the forest.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia is commanded by her father and by Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to marry Demetrius.  She loves Lysander.  Hermia and Lysander flee to the forest.

In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Ann Page’s mother and father have each picked an inappropropriate husband for Ann.  Ann prefers her own choice, Fenton.  While everyone is gathered in forested Windsor Park to torment Falstaff, Fenton and Ann sneak away to secretly marry.

In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, steals his money and runs away with the lover of her choice, leading Shylock to cry, "My daughter, my ducats."

In Cymbeline, Imogen, the daughter of the king, secretly marries her beloved, the unfortunately named, Posthumus.  The king wanted her to marry his stepson, Cloten.

In The Taming of the Shrew, Bianca and Lucentio marry secretly while her father arranges a marriage to another suitor. 

In All’s Well that Ends Well, the King of France commands his son Bertram to marry Helena.  He marries her, but vows never to consummate the marriage until she can “show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to.”  He then joins the army and head to war.

And, as everyone knows, in Romeo and Juliet, while Juliet’s parents plan her marriage to Paris, Romeo and Juliet marry secretly in Friar Lawrence’s cell.  Everything goes badly for them, but generally in Shakespeare, the disobedient children end up with their own choice of spouse.

Is the rebellious child only a device for creating dramatic conflict or was Shakespeare reflecting a trend of his time?

Lawrence Stone in his book, The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800 (1977) argues that, in Shakespeare’s day, when parents chose an unacceptable spouse, children would rebel.

Traditionally marriages were made by parents wanting to secure or expand their property and position in society.  Since these were not love matches, mistresses were common, mistresses were frequently included in wills, and the kings of England openly fathered numerous children outside of their official marriages.  However, the Puritan movement was gaining strength in England throughout the 16th century.  Puritans preached that marriage was a sacred bond and keeping a mistress was an offence against God.

Increasingly those of marriageable age thought, if I cannot have an extramarital lover, then I had better marry someone I love.  This challenge to parental authority was an unintended consequence of Puritanism -- and also a wonderful source of plot material for Shakespeare.

Whither Shakespeare? Part VI - To Get Hooked on Shakespeare, Where Should I Start?

After checking these blogs, a reader asked me “What play would you personally recommend to get someone hooked on Shakespeare?"

An argument broke out between my two houseguests.  One said Twelfth Night.  The other insisted The Tempest.

If you asked me how to get hooked on, say, Paul Auster novels, I would immediately say, "Start with The Brooklyn Follies or Oracle Night.  If you're intrigued, but not convinced, pick up Leviathan.  By then, if it's your thing, you're likely to be hooked and want to read them all.  Do not start with any book that begins with a man sitting alone in a room.

But Shakespeare?  How does one get hooked on Shakespeare?  It must depend on who you are.


If you’ve been ousted from your job and you’re seeking revenge, start with The Tempest.
If you’re contemplating retirement, start with The Tempest.
If you’re madly in love with someone who won’t see you or doesn’t know you exist or flees from you, start with Twelfth Night, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, or All’s Well That Ends Well.
If you hate hypocrisy, start with Measure for Measure.
If you feel controlled by your family’s beliefs and old grudges, start with Romeo and Juliet.
If you’re irrationally jealous, start with Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, or A Winter’s Tale.
Start with A Winter’s Tale anyway.
If you are worried about succession and your children’s loyalty, or ageing, or madness, start with King Lear.
If you’re wondering why victims of prejudice can’t just get over it, start with The Merchant of Venice.
If you want to see victims of prejudice further humiliated, start with The Merchant of Venice.
If your mother remarried and you have problems with your step-father, start with Hamlet.
If you want your boss’s job, start with Macbeth.
If you feel emotionally or spiritually shipwrecked, start with The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or The Tempest.
If your mother is overbearing, start with King John or Coriolanus.
If you’re not in direct line to inherit the family business, but would like to be, start with Richard III.
If you’re a gender bender and want to see a scene with what was in Shakespeare's day a man playing a woman disguised as a boy who agrees to pretend to be a girl to help another man practice wooing, start with As You Like It.
If you just like cross-dressing, start with As You Like It, Two Gentlemen of Verona, or Twelfth Night.
If you'd like to take a vow of chastity and immerse yourself in study, start with Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Most of all, one gets hooked on Shakespeare's language and wisdom.  Do yourself a favour.  Get hooked on Shakespeare.


What did I leave out?  What performance or teacher or experience got you hooked on Shakespeare?

Wither Shakespeare? Part V - What Is Friendship in Julius Caesar?

1983
A grade 12 classroom in the east end of Hamilton Ontario.

I was a substitute English teacher for the day.  I expected the usual rioting, but for some reason these older high school students seemed ready to continue with the lesson their regular teacher had prepared.

They were studying Julius Caesar and the instructions were to continue reading aloud.

Act V, Scene iii:  The war between Caesarists and conspirators has gone back and forth.  Wrongly believing his army was taken, Cassius has his servant stab him.  Discovering Cassius's body, his lieutenant, Titinius, "points the sword at his heart and falls forward upon it."

Act V, Scene v:  But now it appears that the rebel forces have been defeated by Antony's army and those loyal to Caesar.  Brutus does not want to be taken alive.  We find Brutus at his camp surrounded by his most loyal friends. 

Brutus sits down with his friend Clitus and whispers in his ear.  Clitus responds:

CLITUS:  What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world.

BRUTUS:  Peace then! no words.

CLITUS:  I'll rather kill myself.

Brutus then calls to his friend Dardanius.

BRUTUS:  Hark thee, Dardanius.

Whispers

DARDANIUS:  Shall I do such a deed?

CLITUS:  O Dardanius!

DARDANIUS:  O Clitus!

CLITUS:  What ill request did Brutus make to thee?

DARDANIUS:  To kill him, Clitus. Look, he meditates.

Brutus then says openly to his dear friend Volumnius

BRUTUS:  Come hither, good Volumnius; list a word.

VOLUMNIUS:  What says my lord?

BRUTUS:  Why, this, Volumnius:

The ghost of Caesar hath appear'd to me

Two several times by night; at Sardis once,

And, this last night, here in Philippi fields:

I know my hour is come.

VOLUMNIUS:  Not so, my lord.

BRUTUS:  Nay, I am sure it is, Volumnius.

Thou seest the world, Volumnius, how it goes;

Our enemies have beat us to the pit:

It is more worthy to leap in ourselves,

Than tarry till they push us. Good Volumnius,

Thou know'st that we two went to school together:

Even for that our love of old, I prithee,

Hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst I run on it.

VOLUMNIUS:  That's not an office for a friend, my lord.

I interrupted the reader and said, "Brutus asks Clitus, Dardanius, and Volumnius to simply hold his sword while he ran against it, but they all refuse.  What's going on here?"

"Brutus wants to die," one student replied, "and his friends won't kill him."

"Cassius's servant, Pindarus, was willing to kill him, but Brutus's friends won't?"

"They're his friends.  You don't kill your friends."

"But Caesar was Brutus's best friend.  Caesar didn't want to die, and his best friend killed him.  Brutus wants to die, but his friends won't kill him.  What's Shakespeare saying about friendship?"

The students looked up from their books.

I said, "Consider these lines from Oscar Wilde's poem 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol.'"  I recited from memory:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
  By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!
 
Some kill their love when they are young,
  And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
  Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
  The dead so soon grow cold.
 
Some love too little, some too long,
  Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
  And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
  Yet each man does not die.

At the word "die," the bell rang.  The class was still, silent, thinking. Then like a horde of Roman soldiers entering the battlefield, they grabbed their notebooks and hustled to their next class.

At lunch I ran into one of the students outside the library.  "Hi Miss.  I found it!" she said, eyes dancing.  She was carrying a volume of Oscar Wilde's poetry.

Whither Shakespeare? Part IV - I Pull a Book from the Family Library

1952-2012

By the time I was 10, my family had moved from Toronto to Montreal and finally to Hamilton, Ontario. Wherever we lived, overstuffed bookshelves covered every available wall.  One book from the family library is a leather-bound volume entitled The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.  It is in my hands now. The front cover detached from the binding years ago.  The book is held together with elastic bands.

As a child, several things thrilled me about this volume.  Opposite the title page is the "Jansen" portrait of Shakespeare.  Under the portrait is a reproduction of Shakespeare’s signature.

At the back of the book is a handy index to all of the characters in Shakespeare’s dramatic work.  Most of all, though, I loved the inscription.

“To our dear cousin, Sid,
His life is gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that nature might stand up
And say to all the world “This is a man!”
George + Abe  25/1/46

My uncles, George and Abe, adapted these lines from the final passages of Julius Casesar.  After hearing that Brutus was dead, Antony says, “His life was gentle." and "This was a man.”

Sid was my father.  By January 1946, Sid was living in New York City recovering from serious war injuries.  He travelled to Ottawa for my aunt’s wedding, January 20, 1946.  My mother, Mary, and her brothers met their cousin, Sid, for the first time.  It was love at first sight for my mother, although no one in the family knew this for several years.  Mary thought cousins were not allowed to marry, so she kept her feelings secret, even from Sid, who was also head over heels for her.  George and Abe seem to have been impressed with Sid as well and presented him with this book before he returned to the US.

Shakespeare was a young 52 when he died in 1616; my father, an even younger 43, when he died in 1969. Uncles George and Abe died within the last few years, both in their late 80s.  For me though, my father, my uncles, and Shakespeare will always be together within the covers of this book.

Whither Shakespeare? Part III - Whither Laertes?

June, 1960

At the end of the school year, my mother gave my brother, sister, and me autograph books.  Our friends and teachers wrote us messages and signed their names.  My mother wrote: 

“This above all- to thine own self be true, 

And it must follow, as the night the day, 

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

  - William Shakespeare. Hamlet Act I, Scene iii.

These words were part of Polonius’s farewell lecture to his son, Laertes, who was eager to leave Denmark and get back to France.

My family members were gathered at a holiday dinner recently.  I mentioned this quote.  My brother declared that our mother wrote the same words in his book.  We asked her why she chose that quotation.  She said,

“I wanted you to be true to yourselves.”

I suspect, though, that these words were commonly used by adults in young people's autograph books. At this point, my 20-year-old nephew said, "What's an autograph book?"

"It's kind of a Facebook wall that we could carry with us."

Now many years after these words were written in my autograph book, I wonder at their meaning.  Being true to one's self seems much easier to say than to do.  An academic friend wrote me with this dilemma:  He said:  "I am expected to go to the book launch cocktail of a colleague whose ideology I don't admire and whose book content I'm not interested in."

Going to the event might be advantageous in some respects, although if he is seen as endorsing an ideology he does not agree with, it could soon be a disadvantage as political power moves from one academic group to another.  In this case, being true to himself seems the only safe recourse.

Being true to ourselves gets easier as our values become clearer.  With experience, we become more aware of what we can and cannot tolerate.  We become attuned to the discomfort that accompanies being untrue to ourselves.  Eventually, we can anticipate those situations and avoid them.

Here is Polonius's advice to Laertes:

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Whither Shakespeare? Part II - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Spring, 1960

Shakespeare first entered my life when my elementary school in Montreal planned to stage a version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Teachers were told to send their best and loudest readers to audition in the gym.  From my grade 2 class, I was the chosen one and was thrilled to walk right out of arithmetic class to the audition.

I read my best and loudest, but I did not make the cut.  I was heartbroken. 

My older sister won the part of a fairy.  She wore a skirt and top that looked like cobwebs spun by small spiders.  Shimmery material dangled from her arms and fluttered when she danced across the stage.

She remembers her lines to this day:

ACT II. SCENE I.

A wood near Athens

Enter a FAIRY at one door, and PUCK at another.

PUCK How now, spirit! whither wander you?



FAIRY        Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through brier,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire,
I do wander every where,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.



Only now, I see the fairy spoke in sonnets.  I am intrigued by the meaning of "to dew her orbs."  I suppose it means to place dewdrops into her flowers. Shakespeare is the grand master of the double entendre, but the erotic elements of a midsummer forest were not the subject of the school play.

My brother also went to this school.  He was a year older and a grade higher than me.  When I was in grade 1, he was in grade 2.  His teacher’s name was Miss Shakespeare. Whenever I saw her in the halls, she would gather me in her arms as if she, herself, were some kind of fairy.

At the end of his year with Miss Shakespeare, she skipped him up to grade 4. and from then on, he was two grades ahead of me.  It was so unfair.