Shakespeare
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It's an unlikely pairing — what possible connection could there be between Petruchio, a creature of farce, and Othello, distinguished general and tragic victim of the green monster. Yet there is a surprising point of contact — two similar (but very different) reminiscences. It's not usual for Shakespeare's characters to have a "backstory," but both…
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There are so many overlaps between Richard III (1593) and Macbeth (1606) that it sometimes seems as though Shakespeare pillaged and reformed the earlier play when he composed the later. Both plays feature cynical upward strivers ("hellhounds," the playwright calls them both) who risk damnation to murder their way to the throne, and then lose…
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In Cymbeline (1611?), Shakespeare, still innovating even at the end of his career, deepens the character of Innogen by supplying her with an unusual psychological trait. He presents her to us as an escapist or fantasist who leaps to imagine herself a different person in a different world. Here's Innogen early in the play, when…
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This entry is written at the specific instruction of my daughter, who says, "your grandchildren will want to know about your birth. It's their history too." The following paragraphs are for them and for their descendants. My older sister, Susan, died of pneumonia at the age of nine months on March 15, 1938. If she…
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Let me guess that a modern reader coming upon Shakespeare's euphonious phrase "vaulting variable ramps" would be baffled as to its sense. Just WS being willfully obscure, one might complain. But it's not so; it's just that the language keeps on changing, making things difficult for audiences and readers. The most obvious meaning of "vaulting…
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Shakespeare took a few shots at depicting a hellish afterlife. The most extended, if I remember correctly, belongs to Claudio in Measure for Measure. "To die, and go we know not where;/ To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;/ This sensible warm motion to become/ A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit/ To bathe…
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Setting aside the suspicion that The First Part of Henry the Sixth is a collaborative work or perhaps even a "prequel" to Parts Two and Three, the play can be read as if its first few lines were the earliest example of Shakespeare's playwriting. If so, then, what can be learned, right there at the very beginning, by looking closely…
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"Antres" is among the rarest of rare words. Shakespeare's Othello speaks of "antres vast and deserts idle" in the magnificent oration in which he takes issue with the Venetian bigotry that claimed that he was only able to win white Desdemona by employing drugs and witchcraft. No, it wasn't because he was a sorcerer; it was because he was accomplished, heroic, romantic. "Antres"…
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"Enough is as good as a feast" has become my very favorite proverb. It's a warning against crass consumerism, against materialism, against the excesses of capitalist acquisitiveness. Cold water in a jelly glass, it asserts, is as good as your $500 wine in crystal. As they used to gloss the proverb, no "avaricious scraping…