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Category: William Shakespeare
June 13, 2021
“The Story of Narcissus” (ll) – Ovid
“Narcissus” (1896 – 1897)
Magnus Enckell
__________
Still o’er the fountain’s wat’ry gleam he stood,
Mindless of sleep, and negligent of food;
Still view’d his face, and languish’d as he view’d.
Narcissus has been smitten by this
reflection of himself in the fountain’s
wat’ry gleam, can’t sleep, won’t eat
note, incidentally, the two meanings
of Still here, the first, without moving,
the second, not having stopped, not
discontinued
At length he rais’d his head, and thus began
To vent his griefs, and tell the woods his pain.
“You trees,” says he, “and thou surrounding grove,
Who oft have been the kindly scenes of love,
Tell me, if e’er within your shades did lye
A youth so tortur’d, so perplex’d as I?
I, who before me see the charming fair,
the charming fair, his reflection
in the fountain’s wat’ry gleam
Whilst there he stands, and yet he stands not there:
In such a maze of love my thoughts are lost:
Narcissus reflects, bewildered
by the ephemerality of his
vision
And yet no bulwark’d town, nor distant coast
Preserves the beauteous youth from being seen,
No mountains rise, nor oceans flow between.
there is no material object, he reasons,
to obstruct a clear view of the beauteous
youth before him, no intervening
obstacles between him and his vision
bulwark’d, defended with fortifications,
as in Medieval towns
the beauteous youth, his own reflection
A shallow water hinders my embrace;
A shallow water, only a sheen is
required to cast a reflection, a
film merely, the water need not
be at all that deep
And yet the lovely mimick wears a face
the lovely mimick, the image in
the water
That kindly smiles, and when I bend to join
My lips to his, he fondly bends to mine.
what of homosexuality here, an
unobjectionable predilection at
the time, apparently, there isn’t
a whiff of iniquity in this attraction,
according to the text, no hint of
guilt or embarrassment
Hear, gentle youth, and pity my complaint,
a direct exhortation here, note,
no longer, in this instance, a
literary narration, a tale being
told
Come from thy well, thou fair inhabitant.
My charms an easy conquest have obtain’d
O’er other hearts, by thee alone disdain’d.
you, Narcissus says, alone, replication,
disdain[ ], repulse, my advances, my
elsewhere, otherwise, easy conquest[s]
But why should I despair? I’m sure he burns
With equal flames, and languishes by turns.
When-e’er I stoop, he offers at a kiss,
offers, responds with
And when my arms I stretch, he stretches his.
His eye with pleasure on my face he keeps,
He smiles my smiles, and when I weep he weeps.
When e’er I speak, his moving lips appear
To utter something, which I cannot hear.
all his senses are alive, but for
his hearing, which registers only
silence, when all of the other
aspects of the experience are
precise and vivid as though
real, utterly, however
incompatibly, convincing
“Ah wretched me! I now begin too late
To find out all the long-perplex’d deceit;
It is my self I love, my self I see;
The gay delusion is a part of me.
I kindle up the fires by which I burn,
And my own beauties from the well return.
Whom should I court? how utter my complaint?
court, sue to, argue, put to the
test a dilemma, a complaint, as
though before an arbiter
Enjoyment but produces my restraint,
And too much plenty makes me die for want.
How gladly would I from my self remove!
And at a distance set the thing I love.
My breast is warm’d with such unusual fire,
I wish him absent whom I most desire.
And now I faint with grief; my fate draws nigh;
In all the pride of blooming youth I die.
the contradictions inherent in passion
are evidenced, in this case those of
love
Death will the sorrows of my heart relieve.
Oh might the visionary youth survive,
visionary, relating to vision, observed,
caught sight of, viewed, in the water
relieve, render solace to, there is no
solution to this anguished misery
but dying
I should with joy my latest breath resign!
But oh! I see his fate involv’d in mine.”
you might have noted, or not, that
the tale has become psychological
in the instance of Narcissus, where
earlier an action transpired and
events were recounted in
chronological order, in this myth,
the subject explores his inner
world while sitting quietly
throughout by the still water,
nothing moves, but the
palpitations of his heart, and its
distempers
there’s a shift here in not only
the mythological template, more
personal, individual stuff, but also
in the very evolution of literature,
which takes on a more interior
tone rather than fatalistic,
episodic, given entirely to
unfathomed circumstance
this will lead to To be, or not to be
eventually, the anthem that took
over the subsequent centuries
since, Shakespeare‘s homage to
introspection, setting the stage
for the ensuing ages of
individualism, human rights
but that’s another story
stay tuned
R ! chard
September 13, 2019
on our magnificence
“Allegory of Magnificence“ (1654)
Eustache Le Sueur
____________
we have only our magnificence to
counteract the indignity of our
incarnation
a flower is itself its only existential
defence, its effervescence of
attributes – colour, grace,
intoxicating aroma – its
validating glory
we are such things as dreams
are made of, its a question of
choosing one’s dreams
R ! chard
December 22, 2018
from act 4, scene 3 – Othello
when Desdemona learns that Othello
suspects her of adultery, she asks
her maidservant
Dost thou in conscience think,–tell me, Emilia,–
That there be women do abuse their husbands
In such gross kind?
Emilia, older, wiser, replies
There be some such, no question.
But I do think it is their husbands’ faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
“fall” in the second verse, for this is
indeed a poem, in iambic pentameter,
could easily be replaced by “fail“,
nearly even calls out for it,
homophones but for the timbre of
their vowels
say that their husbands slack, she says,
then lists the several manners in which
husbands might betray their marital
duties, by “foreign“, she means “other“,
foreign to the family circle
“laps“, incidentally, is a wonderful
metaphor to accompany “treasures“,
suggesting intimate physical contact,
much more so, say, than “hands“
would’ve, for instance, been
“restraint” means conditions, stress,
impositions
“scant our former having“, to diminish
that which formerly had been given,
of either material or psychological
goods – “having” is a noun here, not
a participle
“in despite“, which is to say, “out of
spite“
“galls“, a synecdoche for internal
organs, a synecdoche, the word
that means a part which signifies
the whole
“affection” is “lust“
we’re equal partners, Shakespeare
says, men and women, in a shared
humanity, indeed Shakespeare is
one of the first Humanists after
centuries of religious subjugation,
centuries of the suppression of
independent thought, a defining
notion, not incidentally, of the
Renaissance
R ! chard
October 2, 2018
Piano Concerto no 2, opus 83 – Brahms
_____________
if Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto is, to my
mind, the last one of the Romantic Period,
Beethoven’s First is, accordingly, the first
I thought it, therefore, instructive to pair
them
Beethoven, impelled by ideological
speculations, built not only a variation
on what had come before, music as
entertainment, a reason to dance, but
gave it a greater, which is to say,
philosophical, dimension
by extending the reach of the cadence
beyond the usual metered rhythm,
sending the melodic statement
beyond an otherwise constricting bar
line, Beethoven turned a lilt into a
sentence, a ditty into a paragraph
Shakespeare does the same thing to
poetry, for instance, with iambic
pentameter devoid of rhyme
“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she”
and with this newfound oratory,
peremptory, insistent, imbued,
however, with utterly convincing
honesty, unfettered emotion,
which is to say, humanity,
Beethoven establishes the
sensibility of a very era, listen
that era, up to, eventually, Brahms,
elaborates on that ethos, adding
texture and enhanced authority
to the original concept, setting
the moral agenda for that, and
other generations, to follow
Brahms is more ponderous, mighty,
a cathedral instead of a church, a
commandment instead of an
aspirational, merely, thrust, he
adds even a fourth movement to
an already magnificent structure,
an extra steeple to a towering
edifice, a subliminally received
reference to Beethoven‘s already
inspired, but tripartite only,
architecture
see Chartres for a comparable
ecclesiastical counterpart
R ! chard
September 4, 2018
“The Kingdom of Scotland vs the Weird Sisters”
“‘Macbeth’, Act I, Scene 3, the Weird Sisters“ (1783)
_______
if you thought “The Kingdom of Denmark
vs Hamlet“ was fun, you’ll love “The
Kingdom of Scotland vs the Weird
Sisters“, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg presides, with
the assistance of four other eminent
American judges, over the case in
which the defendants, the witches
who encounter Macbeth, are accused
of concocting the murder of Duncan,
King of Scotland, by that unsuspecting
Thane of Glamis, soon to be Thane of
Cawdor, not only predicting it, but
verily perpetrating it
double, double, toil, indeed, and
trouble, topical allusions fly, pithy,
witty, pungent, delightful late night
comedy fare, but of a more esoteric,
effete order
R ! chard
August 22, 2018
Shakespeare = Beethoven, or the reverse
“John Philip Kemble as Hamlet“ (1801)
___________
if I’m to compare Beethoven’s 32nd
Piano Sonata, his opus 111, with
anything else you might be familiar
with, it would be Shakespeare’s
epochal contemplation, “To be, or
not to be“, both are, first, and
briefly, soliloquies, one performer
alone is on stage, both are
implicitly meditations, that will
augur, inspire, note, a new age
let me propound, for a moment, on
the Shakespeare, an introspective
piece set on resolving an existential
dilemma, To be, or not to be, that is
the question, it is pungent, forceful,
arresting, if only even rhythmically,
so much so that many still
pronounce the first line of that
trenchant aria with verily stentorian
conviction, without realizing that the
several concluding movements are
abysmally dire, indeed they
investigate, with improbably literate
fervour, a life and death situation
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them
should one, after contemplation,
bear the onslaught of life’s most
unacceptable tribulations, or,
most efficiently, cut all of it off
… To die – he says – to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished
I’ve often been there
... To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub:
the rub, which is to say, the problem,
what’s up once you’ve done yourself
in
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause
indeed, there’s the respect, the angle,
the conundrum one must consider
that makes calamity of so long life
one ‘s stuck between the devil and the
deep blue sea
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely
the demeaning disrespect a proud man ‘s
made to suffer
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes
which is to say, life’s multifarious, and
beleaguering struggles
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
quietus, silence, extermination
bodkin, a knife
… Who would fardels bear,
fardels, hardships
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of?
we keep on grunting, in fear that
what comes after could be worse
a man considering his own demise,
his quietus, at the time of Shakespeare
would’ve been, only a generation earlier,
an heretic, one deserving of unforgiving,
and gruesome, censure, Hamlet was,
not incidentally, however, a prince, a
role model, though evidently controversial
but the Reformation had occurred,
a loosening of categorical strictures
in France, Descartes had, in his quest
for the true God, concluded, Cogito,
ergo sum, I think, therefore I am,
eclipsing the Catholic God as the
final arbiter, personal metaphysical
options were up for grabs, out in
the open, though yet not entirely
secular
which would happen, out loud, in
the Age of Reason, when God, as
we knew Him, lost His, by now
scattered, authority, among
Lutherans, for instance, Calvinists,
Anglicans, and a proliferation of
sprouting others, not to mention,
still, the stalwart, ever, Roman
Catholics
the Romantic Period needed a new
ethic, a personal evaluation of one’s
metaphysical position, Beethoven,
in a word, or in his 32nd Piano
Sonata rather, delivers, a piece no
less intense than Shakespeare’s
profound interrogation
briefly, there are two movements
here, merely, which demand your
attention, it isn’t music that one
listens to with just one ear, this
is Jesus on the Mount of Olives,
Gethsemane, not much different
from Shakespeare’s existential
soliloquy
war, peace, rebellion, resignation,
black, white, fast, slow, explosive,
extended, man, woman, yin,
indeed, yang, short, long,
irascible, submissive, all
paradoxical dichotomies, all
eventually, manifestly,
transcendent, all a subjugation,
a private prayer, eventually,
however fraught, however
nevertheless archetypal,
two movements that still
haven’t exhausted their
philosophical potential for
being assuaging, inspirational
R ! chard
February 10, 2018
Partita no 2, BWV 1004 – J.S. Bach
__________
if I haven’t spoken much about Bach
until now it’s that, although he is at
the very start of our modern music,
having in fact set up its very alphabet,
the scale we’ve been using since, he
is nevertheless as different from our
own era in music as Shakespeare is
to us in literature, both are stalwarts,
but we no longer say, for instance,
thee or thou, nor write in iambic
pentameter, nor do we dance
gavottes at court, nor congregate
at church to hear cantatas
the turning point is the Enlightenment,
also called the Age of Reason, when
the concept of God was being
questioned, if not even debunked, and
the mysteries of nature were being
rationally resolved, handing authority
to knowledgeable individuals instead
of to popes
by the time of Mozart and Haydn, a
secular tone was gradually pervading
all of the arts, devoid of any religious
intentions, sponsors were private
rather than clerical
Bach had indeed been hired by a prince,
Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, but was
appointed court musician at his ducal
chapel, Nikolaus l, Prince Esterházy
wanted Haydn’s music, rather, for his
court entertainment, and for himself
as well, incidentally, as a fellow baryton
player
Mozart was also employed by a prince,
but left when he wasn’t being payed
well
times haven’t changed much, see
Trump, for instance
after the French Revolution, there was
not much call for religious music,
human rights took the place of God,
liberté, égalité, fraternité, and all that,
not to mention the American Bill of
Rights, and that’s the route we’ve
been following ever since, for better
or for worse
but hey, we’re still reading Shakespeare,
and still listening to Bach, and loving
both of them, some of us
here’s some more Bach for old times’
sake, his Partita no 2 for solo violin
a partita is just a series of dance suites
– an allemande, a courante, a sarabande,
a gigue, and a chaconne, in this case – I
don’t think anyone other than Bach ever
wrote some, but his are sublime
it’s kind of like my calling my own
stuff prosetry, for whatever infinity
that word might ever deliver, though
no one else might ever use that term
again
listen also to a transposition of its
celebrated last movement, the
Chaconne, for left-hand piano, in
this instance, as transposed by
Brahms, a precursor to Ravel’s
Concerto in G major for the Left
Hand, written for Paul
Wittgenstein, an already
accomplished pianist – the much
more famous philosopher,
Ludwig‘s, brother – who’d lost his
right hand during the First World
War, and who’d hopefully be
inspired, by such positive
reinforcement
art, music, poetry thrives on such
heartfelt expressions of sympathy,
compassion, communion
art is the faith that we rely on now
that God/dess is gone
R ! chard
October 4, 2015
“King John” – Shakespeare
“The King“ ( 1934 – 1937)
_________
King John, 1166 to 1216, was the brother
of Richard the First, “the Lionheart”, and
of Geoffrey, both sons, as well as John,
of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry the
Second
you might remember them all from the
classic “The Lion in Winter“ from the
Sixties
in Shakespeare’s story, John has become
king, both Geoffrey and Richard have
already perished, but Geoffrey has left an
heir, Arthur, Constance’s son, and since
Geoffrey had been the eldest, his own son,
it is contested, should be the rightful heir
to the English throne
John is not in agreement, nor is Eleanor,
his mom, but Constance is backed by the
Duke of Austria and the King of France,
who will go to war to unseat John
meanwhile Arthur is too young to be
anything but ineffectual, innocent
they all meet before Angiers, a town
now in France, but ruled then by
England, where a delightful
confrontation occurs at its gates,
the town representative will let in
the King of England but only when
he knows who, of either, He is
war is however averted when a
marriage is suggested between the
two courts, a niece of John, Blanche
of Castille, will marry the Dauphin,
Louis, son of Philip of France,
joining, however improbably, the
two sparring factions
but thereby Arthur’s claim is lost,
and Constance is fully aware of
the inevitable, and treacherous,
consequences
a legate from the Pope, Cardinal
Pandolf, also steps into the fray,
to stir the political pot, pompously,
predictably, punctiliously and
perniciously, not to mention,
perfidiously, in the end, of course
the language is Shakespeare’s, to
be sure, therefore unavoidably
wrought, but with garlands of
irrepressible poetry that is ever
utterly, and irresistibly, enchanting
“I am not mad:”, says Constance to
Pandolf, who’s accused her of being
in such a state
“Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.”
Constance replies
“I am not mad: this hair I pull is mine
My name is Constance; I was Geoffrey’s wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!
For then, ’tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal;
For being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver’d of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he:
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.”
has there ever been such a telling
evocation of agony
Stratford’s version is superb, extraordinary,
unforgettable, don’t miss it, just click
Richard
September 20, 2015
“King Lear” – William Shakespeare
“Study for King Lear“ (1760)
________
though it has its weaknesses, I have
never seen a better version of “King
Lear” than this one, also, to my mind,
Shakespeare’s best play
Lear has always been a difficult
character to portray, a King becomes a
vagrant, a Jesus figure, “a man / more
sinned against than sinning”, and the
most difficult part an actor must render,
I’ve found, is that of social status
and here we have both extremes, a not
easy transition, nor have I seen but once
a Lear I could believe in
James Earl Jones in New York’s Central
Park is Lear from the word go, but the
rest of the cast betrays him, they all
mostly merely phone in their roles
in this alternate production, the reverse
is true, Lear, though in many moments
mighty, is never really a King, nor truly,
I think, a Jesus, though his final breaths
are nothing short of holy
Cordelia speaks her lines well, but
doesn’t breathe them
every other performer is magnificent,
with a special mention for the truly
human Fool, not merely a caricature
here, but a wise man
also Kent, the vitriolic sisters, Edgar
and his ignominious brother Edmund,
even the several messengers, all of
whom intently and forcefully to a one
live out their roles
the direction is thrillingly manifest in
the solid and detailed work of the cast,
note, for instance, Regan’s laugh, an
inspired directorial touch, when Lear
declares his intention to bequeath
his land according to which of the
daughter’s “doth love Us most”,
relaying in an instant, and at the very
start, her fundamental, and thereafter,
of course, unswerving, unfilial scorn
I’ve never seen that note played
elsewhere so incisively
mostly, however, it’s the poetry of
Shakespeare, which bristles throughout,
like buds in spring in a garden, which ‘ll
especially delight, and have you marvel
Richard
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