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Hump Day Shakespearean Quote – Christmas Eve 2014

Cobbe_portrait_of_Shakespeare

Shakespeare and the mention of Christmas don’t much intersect for two main reasons. One, back in Elizabethan times, Christmas wasn’t the big commercial deal it is today. And two, the Bard was very, very careful about religion in his plays and poetry: Elizabethan England was a police state, and one of the supreme crimes–after treason–were crimes of faith. Even with the even-minded Elizabeth, who tried to bring everyone together, the extreme believers on either end would have none of it.   The Papists and Puritans hated one another, and Shakespeare wisely gave Christianity a wide berth. 

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

—Hamlet, Act I Scene i 

That’s it. Shakespeare’s only explicit reference to Christmas, and he doesn’t even say the word. It’s from Hamlet, and here Shakespeare only uses the idea of Christmas to set up the idea that evil is one its way. A holy day, when even ghosts are not allowed to haunt and witches aren’t allowed to spin charms. Ah, but a vengeful ghost is coming, and with him we’ll bring down tragedy and woe upon the entire castle of Elsinore.   

Merry Christmas, one and all, and enjoy this holiday, with the hopes that tonight and tomorrow might, indeed, ward off evil and spirits for just a while.

Postscript: And no, the play Twelfth Night doesn’t refer to Christmas either. It was the last night of the big Christmas season, traditionally reserved for performances, to which the title refers.

The image is from the ‘Cobbe Portrait’ of Shakespeare. There’s strong evidence that is the only portrait ever commissioned of the Bard during his lifetime. Artist unknown, but this Jacobean painting was discovered with a painting of another Elizabethan, Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. Who was he? Why, most Shakespeare’s Young Man of the Sonnets.

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Sunday Sonnet – Winter Solstice 2014

Sonnet 2

With today’s Solstice, I think of this sonnet, where the ravages of age will be counted in the number of winters the battered face of the Poet’s lovely Young Man might endure. 

Sonnet II

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,

Will be a totter’d weed of small worth held:

Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;

To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,

If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’

Proving his beauty by succession thine!

   This were to be new made when thou art old,

   And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

This second poem of Shakespeare’s long sequence of sonnets establish many of themes that would be revisited–and touch upon many truths that we still have trouble facing today: beauty never lasts; your cloak of youth will fade; there is a reason why we have children.  

What’s truly astonishing about all this, is that this sonnet–and most of the early Young Man sonnets–Shakespeare very likely wrote under commission. In other words, he might have been paid to write them on just this topic.  

Lord Burghley was Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Treasurer, and Burghley had a young ward he was in charge of–none other than the Earl of Southampton, very probably Shakespeare’s ‘Young Man’.   Southampton did not want to marry (The reasons for this are numerous and speculative, but one is that Southampton had no interest in women). What’s odd is that the first 17 sonnets all urge the Young Man to procreate. Never before had the Romantic form of the Sonnet been used for such an odd endeavor: that is a male Poet urging another male–a beautiful and lovely male–to procreate. But Shakespeare makes it work. I mean–how else to convince a vain, spoiled and possibly gay Earl to marry up and reproduce? Flatter him. 

Alas, after Sonnet 17, things turn for the Poet (that is, Will Shakespeare), and he finds himself falling in love with this vain, beautiful creature.   But for today, let’s revel in Number 2, and its lovely, varied imagery. And remember: braving these cold winters will only dig deep the trenches in our fields of beauty. 

The image is from the northern woods of Wisconsin, of a dear old place I’ll very likely never be able to visit again.

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Sunday Sonnet – 26 Oct 2015

Medieval-Bath

Sonnet 153

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:
A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,
And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest,
But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire–my mistress’ eyes.

Venereal Disease?

In the traditional parsing out of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the Bard’s last two sonnets, 153 and 154, are not lumped in with the Dark Lady sequence, which includes sonnets 127 – 152. However, if one reads between the lines, it quickly become obvious there are double entendres here. Why doubt it? Shakespeare was the master of weaving multiple meanings into lines.

The ‘lively heat’ of a ‘seething bath’ ‘against strange maladies’ that lead to ‘a sovereign cure’ seem to unmistakably refer to one of the two most common Elizabethan cures for syphilis: severely hot baths. (And the references to venereal disease continue in Sonnet 154, which I’ll save for another day).

A ho-hum love sonnet with fairly tepid classical references? Or a whole lot more? We’re talking about Shakespeare here! If this sonnet is multilayered, the irony becoming inescapable.   At first blush Sonnet 153 poses as a traditional paean to love, with its references to classical Greek mythology. But Shakespeare, in so many of his great works, was rarely only traditional; his calling card was to take the a traditional source, then meld it, mold it, twist it, to his own purposes. I believe this sonnet bemoans the contraction of an STD, with its unpleasant cure, all of which is not quite enough to prevent the Poet to keep yearning for a return to the delicious but diseased arms of his lover:  

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire–my mistress’ eyes.

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Hump Day Shakespearean Insult – 22 Oct 2014

swordplay

Today we enjoy one of the all time great Shakespearean insults–Kent from King Lear lays into Oswald. But more than just one of the all time great take-downs, this doesn’t end with just a diatribe. It escalates into an exchange, until finally Kent beats the living daylights out of Oswald. I recommend using this today in a professional office setting.

Oswald
What dost thou know me for?
Kent
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.
Oswald
Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail
on one that is neither known of thee nor knows thee!
Kent
What a brazen-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou
knowest me! Is it two days ago since I tripped up
thy heels, and beat thee before the king? Draw, you
rogue: for, though it be night, yet the moon
shines; I’ll make a sop o’ the moonshine of you:
draw, you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw.
Drawing his sword
Oswald
Away! I have nothing to do with thee.
Kent
Draw, you rascal: you come with letters against the
king; and take vanity the puppet’s part against the
royalty of her father: draw, you rogue, or I’ll so
carbonado your shanks: draw, you rascal; come your ways.
Oswald
Help, ho! murder! help!
Kent
Strike, you slave; stand, rogue, stand; you neat
slave, strike.
Beating him
–From King Lear, Act II, Scene ii

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Cobbe Portrait of William Shakespeare

william-shakespeare

This gorgeously lush painting of an Elizabethan gentleman is believed by many to be the only authentic painting of William Shakespeare. As with most historical detritus concerning The Bard, it’s subject to controversy, and isn’t 100% authenticated. But there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest that this is a painting of a sitting William Shakespeare as he looked later in life, after having achieved his fame as a playwright and successful business owner.

Cobbe_portrait_of_Shakespeare

A few facts and suppositions:

  • Called ‘The Cobbe Portrait’ because the original (newly rediscovered in 2006) was confirmed by the Cobbe family as being owned by their ancestor, Charles Cobbe, Church of Ireland, Archbishop of Dublin, 1686 to 1765.
  • The portrait descended through the family along with a painting of Shakespeare’s patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southamption (and possibly the ‘Young Man’ of the Sonnets).

Henry_Wriothesley,_3rd_Earl_of_Southampton

  • The Latin inscription ‘Principum Amicitias!’ means ‘Alliances of Princes”, which could certainly describe Shakespeare, whose Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later, the King’s Men) played for both Queen Elizabeth and King James.
  • Scientific testing places the portrait’s creation sometime after 1595, and the collar on the gentleman is the style of the early 1600’s.