Shakespeare's Small Time & Lesse Speake (Brutus and Macbeth)

Cassius and Lady Macbeth are similar roles, and so it is no wonder that Brutus and Macbeth respond similarly to their respective deaths.  Time once again rears its ever present head in the small eulogies that Brutus and Macbeth pay to their loved ones.  They speak of it not being the right time for death or not having the right amount of time to pay full tribute, and yet in the little bit of time that they have they speak the perfect amount of perfect words.  First, Brutus:  

                     Are yet two Romans living such as these?
                     The last of all the Romans, fare thee well!
                     It is impossible that ever Rome
                     Should breed thy fellow. Friends, I owe more tears
                     To this dead man than you shall see me pay.
                     I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.

And Macbeth:

                    She should have died hereafter;
                    There would have been a time for such a word.
                    To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
                    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
                    To the last syllable of recorded time,
                    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
                    The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
                    Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
                    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
                    And then is heard no more: it is a tale
                    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
                    Signifying nothing.

And then, for both men, it's once more unto the breach.... and then, no more.

But these two speeches often get taken for granted.  I think a lot of Shakespeare's words do.  They get read and heard and quoted and played with so often that many people forget or don't even realize just how piercing they are.  This was a particularly difficult post for me to write, because every time I read or hear "The last of all the Romans," I lose it.  That's "Renown and grace is dead" to me.  Great men are dead.  A great society is dead.  An era is dead.  Something is lost that can never be retrieved or repeated. 

What a tribute.  The last of all the Romans.  There'll never be another one like Cassius.  Perhaps, that's a good thing.  In the beginning of the play, Caesar was wary of men like Cassius.  Here, in Brutus' words, there is a touch of that, too, but moreover, would there were more men like Cassius.  Both men are right. 

Side note: Who would call Iago, "The last of all the Venetians?"  After all, he is not even worthy of death; 'tis happiness to die.  Perhaps this is something that Iago realizes, though, which is maybe why he doesn't even take the officer's way out.  His battle was not even a battle worth losing and taking his own life for.  He will go on as a Spartan dog with no journey shortly to go....       

Which I'd Fain Call Master (Measure for Measure, 2.2)

More people in the law enactment and law enforcement industries ought to read Measure for Measure.  Today's clip comes from Isabella, who is pleading for her brother Claudio's life to Angelo, the newly installed duke:

                                            ....but man, proud man,
               Drest in a little brief authority,
               Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
               His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
               Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
               As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
               Would all themselves laugh mortal.

An excellent little lesson how man wastes his gifts, talents, and powers.  There used to be the idea of ruling by divine right.  Here, Isabella says that there isn't anything divine about it.  If only man could see how angels would react to how man functions down here.  

Like time, authority is a man made thing, often and usually misappropriated in the name of God or some other divine being.  Drest in a little brief authority.  Just like the candle.  Signifying nothing.  All very self-serving.... 

And Claudio must march to his execution.  His offense, copulation.  Would Lear were here to back Isabella up.  Let copulation thrive!

Brawling Love (Hamlet, 4.5)

Today is Valentine’s Day, and yesterday, the fair Ophelia might have spoken these words:

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

No one has expressed or will express love better than Shakespeare.  The reality of love, which is so often wonderfully depicted in the works of Shakespeare, is that it will drive you mad.  Here, Ophelia, with the wildflowers of the field in her hair (in a state resembling Lear in 4.6), has snapped as a result of the death of her father.  It is not evident that she knows that her father has been slain by the man to whom she’s been romantically inclined, Hamlet, but in her dirge here, the memory of Hamlet in his doublet all unbraced (her own balcony scene) seems to be crossing her mind.  There is a connection, here.

The intensity of the love that she has for the three men in her life—a trinity, so to speak, of father (Polonius), son (Laertes), and son of a holy ghost (Hamlet)—drives her to this.  She is either crazy or in the heat of a spiritually ecstatic experience.  A transition to her own death, with Gis (Jesus) and Saint Charity also in her sights.  Tripping the light fantastic on her way to the netherworld.   

In His Perfect Mind (As You Like It, 2.1)

A week late, but say there were a Shakespeare Bowl and the two teams were Pure Evil and Pure Good.  No doubt Team Pure Evil would be co-captained by Aaron and Saturninus from Titus Andronicus.  I can just imagine Iago jumping up and down, saying “Pick me, pick me!” but I don’t see him a captain.

It’s been a while since I’ve read and taught As You Like It, but one thing I remember always pointing out is just how great Duke Senior is.  The man is a champ.  And so, if voting for the Shakespeare Bowl MVP were being held today, then I think that the trophy and new Camaro would go to the captain of Team Pure Good: Duke Senior.

Duke Senior makes his first appearance in Act 2.1 when he is entering the Forest of Arden after being driven out of his dukedom by his brother Frederick.  Like Lear, Senior is not alone when he goes out into exile.  The energy that Lear creates on the heath is magnificent, but Duke Senior truly handles his circumstances with aplomb.  He is accompanied by Amiens and two or three other lords and his wondering about the location of Jaques, perhaps his most important attendant.  Here is how Senior reacts to entering the forest:

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
'This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in everything.
I would not change it.

Here, Senior uses the word “pomp” that Lear uses in his prayer to the poor naked wretches in 3.4.  Here, Senior already knows what it takes Lear a little while to discover: that, out here, pomp is of no circumstance.  And that is a good thing.  Out here, life can truly be lived.  Duke Senior is feeling heartache, no doubt, for three reasons: his brother has betrayed him; he’s been separated from his daughter Rosalind (and, if he does know that she is residing with her uncle Frederick and cousin Celia, then he may not be too comfortable with that); and, of course, he’s lost dukedom.  This speaks to the tug-of-war between Nature and Fortune (Shakespeare Bowl II?) that runs throughout the course of this play.  Fortune breeds too many cares that get in the way of pure living.  Despite the heartache, this is something that Senior is man and leader enough to recognize when out of doors.  The elements are on his side, too, and he can see the beauty that Nature has to offer.  The true ornaments of life.

Renown may be dead, but his grace is not.  Duke Senior cares about the morale of his attendants and puts it before his own cares.  He is still their leader and it is his job to keep their spirits up.  It is incumbent upon him to express the beauty that they are now able to enjoy away from the court.  Senior continues to come out a champion in his reaction to how Jaques has been ranting (“moralizing”) about deer hunting and even later still when he invites a crazed Orlando to retrieve the elder Adam and join him in breaking bread. 

“Here feel we but the penalty of Adam.”  In doing so, Duke Senior feeds Adam.  Something also needs to be said to that….     

Storm and Tempest

My thought for 2/12 is a sonnet that I wrote a couple of years ago for Lear in the spirit of Sonnet XII:

When I do drown the cocks that tell the clime

And spit fire, spout rain, to his odious plight,

When I see the divested king past his prime

And singe his wiry black tresses to white,

When oak trees I cleave, uproot, anatomize,

Which used to cote sheep and stock from the heat,

And those champains riched, now blighted by lies –

His brains in his heels; chilblains on his feet –

Then of his demesne will they then demean,

He among the tests of clime – Lear’s shadow,

Since scarcely kept warm by these children of spleen

And the sugar coated words he did trow.

    Then I’ll take physic and give him that patience –

    The true need – to stave their brief alliance.

It's Witchcraft (King Lear 1.1)

2/10/11

When Lear responds to Cordelia’s refusal to join in any reindeer games, he concocts an interesting and insightful correlation between truth, the sacred, witchcraft, the nature of the cosmos, and fatherhood.  In banishing his daughter, the King says:

Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!

For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,

The mysteries of Hecate and the night,

By all the operation of the orbs

From whom we exist and cease to be,

Here I disclaim all my paternal care,

Propinquity and property of blood,

And as a stranger to my heart and me

Hold thee from this forever.

In this speech, truth (Cordelia’s brand) and Lear’s fatherhood are connected by the sacred radiance of the sun, the mysteries (or miseries, in F—either way), and the operation of the orbs.  This means that the sacred radiance of the sun, the mysteries of Hecate, and the operation of the orbs are all working in tandem.  They may be opposing forces, but they are working together and producing together.   They are opposite sexes.  Together, they produce Cordelia’s truth, at one end, and Lear’s fatherhood, at the other.  These opposing forces produce opposing forces.  Lear, in his rage, recognizes incongruity between Cordelia’s truth and his fatherhood—perhaps everything that he tried to instill in his daughter.  Everything that he tried to instill in his daughter, it seems, has gone out the window.  Cordelia is now the opposite of Lear.  Must be.  In Lear’s eyes, which, as we can see, are failing him at the moment—the moment that he forces to its crisis, the moment that he disturbs the universe.

It’s not so strange that Lear is invoking Hecate in this situation.  Shakespeare is most likely writing Macbeth and King Lear around the same time--two plays about two kings; one younger and one much older.  Despite age, they are somewhat similar.  Some words from Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, may help shed a certain slant of light on this.  A recent article quotes him as saying, “They whom the gods would destroy, they make all powerful.”  Obviously, a play on, “….they make mad,” (though I think the article says that this was an inadvertent mistake).  Still, talk about ruling by divine right!  Lear’s already powerful, so his madness, more or less, comes with age.  It’s the end of the line for Lear.  Macbeth’s madness comes while he is assuming the throne, or taking actions in order to assume the throne.  His wife does say that he is too full of the milk of human kindness.  Perhaps he is aware of this about himself, too.  His madness comes, then, perhaps, as a result of realizing that he may not be ready or able to rule Scotland, even though the vaulting ambition is there.

But, again, here we have two kings.  Two kings who go mad.  Two kings who receive truths, dark as they may be, from three sisters, whether they be weird or just plain cruel.  Two kings who receive truths on the heaths of Britannia.  Macbeth and Lear have some significant things in common.  Both their lives are or seem to be governed by the mysteries of Hecate and the night.  The mysteries are made palpable to Macbeth by the Weird Sisters.  For Lear, by his daughters, except, of course, he makes the wrong daughter guilty by the wrong association.  Lear goes mad, but Lear also comes to his senses and when he does, he gets his day in court (3.6).  

Enter Through the Narrow World

In Act 1.2, the juxtaposition of Cassius’ commentary about Caesar’s behavior during two nearly fatal experiences and the roar of the crowd is really quite extraordinary.  Cassius says:

            ….Ye gods, it doth amaze me,

A man of such feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world,

And bear the palm alone.

Palm is a symbol of triumph, but like Flavius and Marullus before him, Cassius wonders what conquests Caesar brings home that warrant him being able to bear the palm alone.  Brutus then replies to another general shout and once this occurs, we can’t help but associate these words and actions with Christ’s triumphant ride through Jerusalem (“through the narrow gate”--??), on a colt, with crowds cheering and strewing the ground with palm just days before he would be betrayed and killed himself.

Cassius does not respond directly to Brutus’ comment about the crowd, but rather continues with his rant:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.  

These are words that no doubt Brutus remembers and has in mind during his great “tide in the affairs of men” speech in 4.3.  The word “man,” here, takes on important implications, too.  It’s more than a casual reference, say, like the word “friend.”  Cassius is not just calling Brutus friend, but man—as in Brutus represents man and what man is supposed to be.  Caesar may be a Colossus, but he is no man, according to Cassius.  According to Cassius, there are men (who are petty), and there is man (which is Brutus).  This gets reinforced later when Antony says over the corpse of Brutus, “This was a man!”  Over the corpse of Caesar, he says, “This was a Caesar,” but over the body of Brutus he says, “This was a man.”  Of the three—Caesar-Colossus, men, and man—Brutus is the greatest.

But what does “the narrow world” mean?  First, it is “the majestic world,” but then it is “the narrow world.”  Do these words this diminish the size of the world?  Do these words flatten the world?  When Christ spoke of “the narrow gate,” he spoke of it as the hard road, the path of most resistance, to spiritual excellence.  By bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus, is Cassius suggesting that Caesar is crushing the road by which men may grow or improve, materially and spiritually?  By placing the fault in ourselves that we are underlings, Cassius is expressing a concern for the soul.  In order for the narrow world to inherit its majesty once again, and in order for the petty to inherit the majestic world, Brutus must act as redeemer and take down the giant.