Virgil
Happy Birthday William Shakespeare
by , 04-23-2010 at 10:44 PM (4530 Views)
Happy Birthday William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare might be the coolest guy who ever lived. I have said that when and if I get to heaven, I would love to hang out with Willy It would be a blast, having a beer at whatever pub exists within the pearly gates, having watched one of his plays dramatized, and recounting many funny moments. There are many images of William. There is Shakespeare the avant-garde, Shakespeare the liberal free lover, Shakespeare the bi-sexual, Shakespeare the conservative, Shakespeare the patriot, Shakespeare the bigot, Shakespeare the compassionate, Shakespeare the rebel, Shakespeare the pagan, Shakespeare the protestant, Shakespeare the Catholic, Shakespeare the skeptic, Shakespeare the melancholy, Shakespeare the jester, Shakespeare the lover of life. I think that last one is how I see the real Shakespeare, the lover of life.
In thirty-eight plays, of which I have currently read twenty-five at least once, Shakespeare produced an opus of incredible range, spanning human experience beyond any single individual’s ken, presenting comic foibles to heroic achievement to melancholy failures to eager and earnest love. It is all there in the plays: amour, indignation, pride, stubbornness, envy, deceit, suffering. Yes, suffering. The great plays all contain suffering. But the great plays also contain vitality, a spring in the step toward whatever destiny each character was making his way toward, drinking down life, getting into a sword fight on a plaza, falling in love with an exotic Queen of Egypt and tossing away an empire for that love.
Harold Bloom, the eminent literary critic, in his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, says that of the great writers Shakespeare was the first to really capture human personality in all forms and idiosyncrasies, at least not in a fully developed way. Sure Homer and Dante and Chaucer suggest complex human characters, but it’s not until Shakespeare that characters become individuals.
There is something to that. Richard III is not just a villain, but he is a villain with physical deformities, insecurities, a devious mind, and no inhibitions. He is the mafia warlord of today. Falstaff is not just a good drinking buddy, but an inherent coward, a seducer of women, a reprobate, and one who is completely untrustworthy. Lady Macbeth is not just ambitious but she is devious, dominating, guilt ridden, and simultaneously masculine and feminine. Juliet is not just a young innocent girl, but one who puts faith in the person she loves, dares to defy her parents, and risks all for love. These are not just characters on a page, or personifications on a stage, these are distinct people. Bloom ponders this further.The idea of the Western character, of the self as a moral agent, has many sources: Homer and Plato, Aristotle and Sophocles, the Bible and St. Augustine, Dante and Kant, and all you might care to add. Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare’s greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness. Insofar as we value, and deplore, our own personalities, we are the heirs of Falstaff and Hamlet, and of all the other persons who throng Shakespeare’s theater of what might be called the colors of the spirit. (p.4, Riverhead Books, 1998)
Perhaps that is a bit simple, but I would agree that Shakespeare’s characters have at their heart a tension between their personal ideal, society’s ideal for their station, and a human reality. The discrepancy between these ideals and human shortcomings and fragilities make Macbeth not just a usurper, but a heroic Thane who has deceived himself into believing a certain destiny, a storyline that is fancy and egocentric. Take also Mark Antony of “Antony and Cleopatra,” perhaps the Shakespearean character I in middle age now probably most understand these days. He is a man of accomplishment, a conquering General, filled with prestige, the head of half the world, and yet he knows he has his weaknesses. He has been a soldier too long and in his middle age he wants to enjoy life. He indulges in wine, and has fallen in love with Cleopatra, and is enthralled with the sensuality of rich and exotic Egypt as opposed to the discipline and hardness of Rome. And there is this young upstart, Octavius, who is ascetic, quicker of wit, and looking to surpass him. Antony knows what must be done to maintain his status, he knows what society expects of him, and yet he makes choices through his vulnerabilities and flaws. His character is rounded by the contrast between the ideal and his humanity.Shakespeare’s uncanny power in the rendering of personality is perhaps beyond explanation. Why do his personages seem so real to us, and how could he contrive that illusion so persuasively? Historical (and historicized) considerations have not aided much in the answering of such questions. Ideals, both societal and individual, were perhaps more prevalent in Shakespeare’s world than they appear to be in ours. Leeds Barroll notes that Renaissance ideals, whether Christian or philosophic or occult, tended to emphasize our need to join something personal that yet was larger than ourselves, God or spirit. A certain strain of anxiety ensued, and Shakespeare became the greatest master at exploiting between persons and the personal ideal. Did his invention of what we recognize as “personality” result for that exploitation? (p. 6-7)
And so in honor of William Shakespeare’s 446th birthday, April 23rd, and coincidentally the date of his passing as well, I offer this blog entry, the opening scene from “Antony and Cleopatra,” from the audio of the Arkangel production of that scene and the script so you can read along. What you hear are Antony’s soldiers shocked at Antony’s transformation and the passion between Antony and Cleopatra. I hope you enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd4A0wj519U
Act I, SCENE I. Alexandria. A room in CLEOPATRA's palace.
Enter DEMETRIUS and PHILO
PHILO
Nay, but this dotage of our general's
O'erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes,
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front: his captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy's lust.
Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her Ladies, the Train, with Eunuchs fanning her
Look, where they come:
Take but good note, and you shall see in him.
The triple pillar of the world transform'd
Into a strumpet's fool: behold and see.
CLEOPATRA
If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
MARK ANTONY
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
CLEOPATRA
I'll set a bourn how far to be beloved.
MARK ANTONY
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
Enter an Attendant
Attendant
News, my good lord, from Rome.
MARK ANTONY
Grates me: the sum.
CLEOPATRA
Nay, hear them, Antony:
Fulvia perchance is angry; or, who knows
If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent
His powerful mandate to you, 'Do this, or this;
Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that;
Perform 't, or else we damn thee.'
MARK ANTONY
How, my love!
CLEOPATRA
Perchance! nay, and most like:
You must not stay here longer, your dismission
Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony.
Where's Fulvia's process? Caesar's I would say? both?
Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt's queen,
Thou blushest, Antony; and that blood of thine
Is Caesar's homager: else so thy cheek pays shame
When shrill-tongued Fulvia scolds. The messengers!
MARK ANTONY
Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life
Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair
Embracing
And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.
CLEOPATRA
Excellent falsehood!
Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?
I'll seem the fool I am not; Antony
Will be himself.
MARK ANTONY
But stirr'd by Cleopatra.
Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours,
Let's not confound the time with conference harsh:
There's not a minute of our lives should stretch
Without some pleasure now. What sport tonight?
CLEOPATRA
Hear the ambassadors.
MARK ANTONY
Fie, wrangling queen!
Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh,
To weep; whose every passion fully strives
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired!
No messenger, but thine; and all alone
To-night we'll wander through the streets and note
The qualities of people. Come, my queen;
Last night you did desire it: speak not to us.
Exeunt MARK ANTONY and CLEOPATRA with their train
DEMETRIUS
Is Caesar with Antonius prized so slight?
PHILO
Sir, sometimes, when he is not Antony,
He comes too short of that great property
Which still should go with Antony.
DEMETRIUS
I am full sorry
That he approves the common liar, who
Thus speaks of him at Rome: but I will hope
Of better deeds to-morrow. Rest you happy!
Exeunt
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