Month: July 2009

http://emsworth.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/learning-to-quarrel-well-from-shakespeare-and-oscar-wilde/ From Emsworth comes this I suppose tongue-in-cheek guide to having a really good quarrel, using examples from Cassius/Brutus (Julius Caesar) but also Cecily and Gwendolyn (The Importance of Being Earnest):

Play the guilt card for a winning hand Tired of being called names, Cassius resorts to inflicting guilt. He whines to Brutus that he “hath riv’d my heart” and that “a friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,” and he complains to Brutus: “You love me not.” Brutus has only a weak retort: “I do not like your faults.” Cassius trumps: “A friendly eye could never see such faults.” A minute later, Brutus, who was masterly in the early rounds, gives it up. Cassius claims victory amidst the lovefest:

Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.
Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Brutus: And my heart too.
Cassius: O Brutus!

Very well written, especially since it could easily have gone into some modern psychology journal about how to avoid quarreling, using Cassius as an example of what not to do.  Instead, M turns it around to keep our attention, making Cassius the ultimate winner of the quarrel.

Dr. Carl Atkins is the author of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary as well as a prolific commenter here at ShakespeareGeek, both while holding down a day job as a medical doctor. Instead of a typical author interview with press blurbs and bio questions we decided to do something different – Carl’s going to guest blog a series for us based on *your* questions. Context : Starting with the premise that most people know about only a handful of sonnets – 18, 116, 130, and such – I asked Dr. Atkins if he felt there were any that in particular did not deserve the praise that’s been heaped upon them.  In a later installment we’ll look at the opposite question, which sonnets are the undiscovered gems that people haven’t really noticed, but should? Great question, but difficult to answer. First of all, there is not one of Shakespeare’s sonnets that I can’t stand. There are a couple that are not on my list of highlights (like 105 and 145), but I am still able to find redeeming qualities in them. But of the popular ones, the one that I think is the most overrated is probably 116. I certainly think it does not deserve to be better known than many others. Additionally, I agree with Helen Vendler that the sonnet is probably most often misread. From my book:

She suggests it is a rebuttal to an “anterior utterance” made by the beloved: “You would like the marriage of true minds to have the same permanence as the sacramental marriage of bodies. But this is unreasonable — there are impediments to such constancy.”

The major effect this has on the reading is one of tone, which is brought out at the outset by emphasis on the word “me” in the first line: “Let me not (as you have done) admit impediments to the marriage of true minds, etc.” … Kerrigan also finds an unorthodox reading:

“This sonnet has been misread so often and so mawkishly that it is necessary to say at once, if brutally, that Shakespeare is writing about what cannot be obtained. The convoluted negatives of the last line …show the poet protesting too much…”

Yet those negatives are anything but convoluted. The couplet is a simple statement of fact. As Ramsey says:

“The implied completion is ‘But I have written and men have loved; so this is not error,’ precisely fulfilling the valid logical paradigm: If A, then B; not B, therefore not A. A sufficient proof that he has written and that men have loved is the poem itself, which verifies the claim.”

You should try reading this sonnet with Vendler’s mindset. It changes it from a lovely, romantic piece into an angry, passionate outburst. It is still a great poem, and it fits with many others in the series, but its tenor is entirely different. About the Author This book brings together the scholarship of dozens of the most brilliant commentators who have written about Shakespeare’s Sonnets over the past three hundred years. This edition adds the significant work done by modern editors to the most important commentary culled from the two variorum editions of the last century. Atkins presents a straightforward edition without jargon with the simple goal of finding out how the poems work and how they may be interpreted. He is the first to collate the modern texts so that differences among them can be fully appreciated and compared. His discussion of meter and verse is more substantial than that of any other edition, adding particular dimension to this text. Those coming to "The Sonnets" for the first time and those seeking a fresh look at an old friend will equally find this edition scholastically rigorous and a pleasure to read. Carl D. Atkins is a practicing medical oncologist in New York. Got a question for the author? Send it in and we’ll see if we can get it in the queue!

Time for another round of “Did Shakespeare really say that?” Today’s quote is:  “Empty vessels make the loudest sound.” Turns out, he did!  Henry V, Act 4, scene 4 (thanks Clusty!) Boy : Suivez-vous le grand capitaine. I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true ‘The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.‘ Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring devil i’ the old play, that every one may pare his nails with a wooden dagger; and they are both hanged; and so would this be, if he durst steal any thing adventurously. I must stay with the lackeys, with the luggage of our camp: the French might have a good prey of us, if he knew of it; for there is none to guard it but boys.   What I think is funny about this one is that, in context, it says “as the saying goes”.  So although it’s technically a Shakespeare quote, Shakespeare’s saying “I wasn’t the first one to say this.”

http://news-briefs.ew.com/2009/07/camp-rock-2-jonas-brothers.html 🙂 Relax – the new Camp Rock movie just looks like it’ll have some Romeo and Juliet thrown in, which I’m sure simply means “boy and girl can’t be together because parents are stupid.”  And, like all good comedies, it’ll have a happy ending when everybody learns their lesson early enough so nobody has to die. Of course, now that the High School Musical craze has died down, my daughters are perfectly poised to become Camp Rock nuts.  So I suppose it’s not a bad deal to get a little Shakespeare thrown in.  Although if I know my kids it’ll take them about 2 seconds to spot the similarities and say “Wait, that’s not how it goes in the real story…”

When I saw what looks like a trailer for an Iago movie, I was all over that in a flash as you could well imagine.  Problem is, it’s in Italian:

  Anybody know what they’re saying? Good news is that IMDB tells us this is indeed a real movie.  Bad news is that the reviews are awful.  (Actually looking closer I see that there are only 2 reviews – a 2, and a 10.  Wonder if they were watching the same movie?) Oh well.  The idea’s neat.  Iago could handle his own movie, I think.