Rough, Rug Headed Bunch o’ Forgers

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

I didn’t have time to put together a real piece on Shakespeare for St. Patrick’s Day, so I thought we’d do more of a smorgasbord 🙂

Old Castle, but not Oldcastle.
An Old Castle, But Not An Oldcastle

When I went googling for Shakespeare and the Irish, I found that Shakespeare created the Irish stereotype. I also learned that Shakespeare apparently wrote a play called The History of Sir John Oldcastle, which was a new one on me.  That is the true name, of course, of Sir John Falstaff. But I don’t recall him having his own play.

But, according to the link, this is where Shakespeare refers to the Irish as “rough rug headed kerns,” whatever that means.  That line is actually in Richard II [II.i], so I’m not sure where the Oldcastle / Falstaff connection comes in.

For something completely different we have the William Henry Ireland, who was so set on discovering lost Shakespeare manuscripts that he just sat down and wrote a bunch of them himself.

Lastly, is Macmorris in Henry V really the only Irish character Shakespeare ever wrote?  I’ve never really looked into it.  And if that’s the case, why does he sound so much like Sean Connery, who is Scottish?

What ish my nation? Ish a villain,
and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish
my nation? Who talks of my nation?

Where else does Ireland (or anything having to do with Ireland) show up in the works?  I could swear that there’s more crossover in King Lear but I haven’t gone and dug into it.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody!

 

What is Iago’s motive?

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What is Iago's motive?

I first experienced Othello in high school. I remember the teacher explaining to us that Iago’s motive isn’t what we think it is. He may say, “I want revenge because Othello slept with my wife,” but that’s just his justification for his actions. The real reason is that he’s the embodiment of pure evil, and that’s what makes him such a scary character. He has no reason for doing the things that he does.

It makes sense, and I like that interpretation. It makes Iago more interesting. I’ve never really questioned it.

When did this become the accepted interpretation?  Iago gives us a motive:

I hate the Moor:
And it is thought abroad, that ‘twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if’t be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety.

He does say, “I don’t even care if it’s true,” which I suppose is evidence, but it could just as easily mean that Iago is the jealous type and doesn’t even want the rumor circulating that he’s a cuckold. He’ll later go on to imply that Cassio slept with his wife as well (“I fear Cassio with my night-cap too”) so maybe that’s just his thing.

Then there’s the racism angle.  Iago goes right for the racist epithets when he’s trying to get Desdemona’s father upset:

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is topping your white ewe.

the devil will make a grandsire of you:

you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse;
you’ll have your nephews neigh to you; you’ll have
coursers for cousins and gennets for germans.

(I’ve always attributed the “thick lips” comment to Iago as well, but that’s actually Roderigo.)

So is Iago racist? Is that why he hates Othello, because of the color of his skin? Or, again, is he just saying these things because he knows they’ll drive Brabantio crazy?

I get how we can read between the lines and paint a picture of an Iago who says and does exactly what he needs to get what he wants without ever actually explaining why he wants it. I’m wondering when that became the standard interpretation of Iago’s motive and whether there are other clues in the text to support it.  Why don’t we just say Iago is paranoid and call it a day? How come we watch the play and say, “Whoa, that dude is evil” instead of “Whoa, that dude is nuts”?

Why is Egeus Angry With His Daughter?

~ duane ~ 5 Comments

Question: Why is Egeus angry with his daughter Hermia?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens with Theseus, Duke of Athens, planning his wedding to Hippolyta. Shakespeare actually lifted this part of the story straight out of Greek mythology, if you’re interested. But that doesn’t answer the question.

Enter Egeus, and he does not look happy. I’ve seen productions where he marches Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena in at the point of his shotgun. And he says…

Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child;
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
And interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers
Of strong prevailment in unharden’d youth:
With cunning hast thou filch’d my daughter’s heart,
Turn’d her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,
Be it so she; will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius,
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.

What’s it all mean?  If you want the short answer, he’s saying, “I want my daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius, and if she won’t, then I want her executed.”

Yes, this comedy opens up with a father threatening to kill his daughter.

The longer version goes a little something like this (but ends the same way):  Lysander is the boy that Hermia actually wants to marry, but Egeus doesn’t blame her, he blames Lysander.  Lysander has “bewitched” his child by showering her with gifts, singing love songs at her window, that sort of thing. Otherwise she would know better than to disobey the will of her father.

Egeus isn’t the kind of father who is going to negotiate with his child. In the old days if you were a teenage boy acting up, your parents my threaten to enlist you in the army.  I only had a brother so I’m not sure what parents threatened teenage girls with, putting them in a nunnery?  Egeus knows the law, however, and goes straight to “dispose of her” if she doesn’t do what he wants.

I beg the ancient privilege of AthensThe good news is that Theseus has a calmer head on his shoulders, and after listening to Hermia’s side of the story offers her another alternative — a nunnery.  But luckily this is a comedy and everything works out in the end, everybody marries the right person, nobody ends up dead or locked away.

An interesting question to consider is whether Egeus actually meant to go through with his threat.  Plenty of old school parents drove their kids to the recruitment center and then turned around to come home. What would he have done if Theseus said, “Absolutely! Get the axe, we’ll have her head right now.” If you prefer your comedies without such a dark edge, you can imagine Hermia’s home life with a father that threatens her with the ancient privilege of Athens at the slightest infraction.  “Hermia, is dinner ready yet? I swear, I’ll dispose of you!  I mean it this time!”

 

Having been around for a dozen years at this point, the site attracts a good deal of traffic on the subject of Shakespeare. Much of it comes in the form of questions about the plays. Is this students looking for answers to their homework? Probably. But if they’re going to get the answers anyway I’d rather have them get the answer here, along with an explanation, in the hopes that we can make them interested in the topic.

 

Look out! Ides!

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My co-workers couldn’t wait to tell me to Beware the Ides of March today.  It’s probably the most well-known calendar date associated with Shakespeare. But other than knowing that March 15 = Ides of March, and that’s when Brutus and the gang went all stabby stabby on their boy Julius, do people really know anything else about it?

Beware the Ides of March
Do not go to the Senate today.

I admit that I didn’t know much myself, so I went looking last night in preparation. I consulted my Asimov’s Guide, which is always guaranteed to have enough detail on every possible digression you might make from the play’s main action.  Seriously, I tried to read what Asimov has to say on Merchant of Venice and came away knowing how much the human liver weighs.

Once again, Asimov does not disappoint. Ides is one of three reference dates in the Roman calendar:

  1. The Kalends, or first day of the month, is also obviously where the word calendar comes from :). It is believed that originally it was supposed to coincide with a new moon.
  2. Nones, meaning “ninth” and representing the half moon. Ninth because it was literally nine days(*) before the Ides.
  3. Ides, the day of the full moon. Although we naturally think the fifteenth for Ides, that’s only true for some of the months with thirty-one days. It falls on the thirteenth for the others.

So basically their calendar wasn’t just a matter of counting from one up to thirty-ish and starting over.  You counted relative to the different days, such as “two days before Ides”. I just keep thinking of that old rhyme “Thirty days hath September, April June and November” and wondering what in the world Roman school children must have had to learn instead.

If you’re confused already, definitely don’t visit the Wikipedia page (linked above) that goes on to describe how you would refer to dates for each month.  Just be thankful Shakespeare (and Brutus?) picked an easy one to remember. Speaking of which, remember to Beware the Ides of March!

(*) It’s not just Roman numerals that give computer programmers stress, apparently.  When counting relative to these reference days, you would use the day itself as one rather than zero. So the “ninth” day actually comes eight days before the Ides. Got that?  If today is Wednesday, and I say, “How many days is it until Friday?” and you said, “Three days.  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”

Are Shakespeare’s Plays Encoded In The Digits Of Pi?

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William Shakespeare wrapped up and struggling with the pi

I thought that for Pi Day this year, we could look at this age-old question. In short, it goes something like this:  “Since pi is infinite and non-repeating, does that mean that if you encoded the letters in Shakespeare’s work to numbers, that we could find the complete works of Shakespeare in the digits of pi?”

Short answer?  No.  (Or, to be specific about it, “It’s not proven, no.”)

Here’s a video that explains it better than I can:

Here’s the problem in a nutshell.  People tend to think of “infinite” as “representing all possible combinations,” and that’s an incorrect assumption.  Say, for example, that we had the repeating sequence 1, 0, 11, 0, 111, 0, 1111, 0 … and so on.  That sequence is infinite and non-repeating.  However, you can easily prove that it does not contain all possible number combinations.

The term for what we want to happen is for the digits of pi to be a “normal” infinite number, which means that all combinations are equally likely to occur.  If that proves to be true – which it has not yet – then yes, you would have a case that the works of Shakespeare would appear.

However, you will have a different “multi universe” problem. If you assume that all possible combinations exist within pi, that means that Macbeth does.  As well as Macbeth with a happy ending, Macbeth as a cat, Romeo and Juliet where they’re both transgender and live happily ever after, and, yes, even the complete works of the Earl of Oxford. Literally, every combination is possible, whether they make sense or not. You could probably state that they are in there, but you would not be able to extract them to find the subsequent great works of English literature.  So then, it literally has no value at all.

Personally, I find it much more interesting to determine where your name appears in pi or the longest string of repeating digits in pi.

On a completely different note, my daughter won her school’s Pi memorization contest when it was her turn a couple of years ago, and now her younger brother is up. Hope he successfully defends her title!  I’ll have to let everybody know how it goes since I’m scheduling this in advance 🙂

The Digits of Pi
Shakespeare, are you in there?

Conclusion

I see this question come up periodically, and I don’t think that we’ve covered it recently, so I wanted to make sure we had something to say about the subject.  No, as of right now, we do not have proof that the digits of pi contain Shakespeare’s works. Or any other string of significant length.  But it’s fun to think about, isn’t it?  If this question even occurred to you in the first place, you’ve got some geek in you!  Welcome to the club.

Happy Pi Day, everybody!