I pretty much agree with Rebecca Seiferle's comments on the issue of
Shakespeare's politics:  the question may be one which attempts to impose on
Shakespeare categories which simply weren't a part of his mindset.  Part of
the problem may be that today the term "politics" has two quite distinct
meanings:  it means political activity, but it also means a set of views
about how authority is and ought to be distributed in society.  Political
activity is, I think, essentially the same wherever there are human beings,
but when today I speak of "my politics," I may be referring to a type of
thing which is impossibly alien to someone in the Renaissance.  (The OED
doesn't give a cite for the word in this sense before 1769.)

But I disagree with her about Shakespeare's god-like status, though I
wouldn't exactly use that term.   It's that he's in a class by himself.
When I try to explain one of his plays, I soon find myself trying to explain
life.  Homer, and maybe Dante, are the only other poets I can think of who
are like that.

Speaking of Homer and Shakespeare, in regard to the Ulysses speech it should
be remembered that Ulysses is the stock character-type of the unscrupulous
golden-tongued orator who could make any case look good.  So this classic
statement of conservatism is put in the mouth of a man who by reputation
could have argued just as well for the opposite case, which maybe only
proves once again what a jive-ass Shakespeare is.

--------------------------------------------------
I've never thought of The Tempest as a political play.  My own
interpretation of it is that it's basically about Prospero's incestuous
passion for Miranda -- he is, after all, living out the stereotyped male
fantasy of being stranded on a desert island with a beautiful young women,
though in this case it's his own daughter.  Prospero's lust for Miranda is
projected onto the id-like figure of Caliban (who, remember, had tried to
rape her,) while his longed-for fantasy vision of himself as superior to the
hideous demands of the flesh is sublimated into the shining purity of Ariel
(whom, remember, he had freed from the hideous female sorcery of the
"blue-eyed hag" Sycorax.)   For Prospero to heal and for Miranda to be
fulfilled, Prospero has to resolve his Ariel complex by realizing that he is
not wholly Ariel (setting Ariel free from himself) and resolve his Caliban
complex by consciously admitting that he is part Caliban ("This thing of
darkness I acknowledge mine.") This is why at the play's closure the
liberation of Ariel, the redemption of Caliban, and the maturation and
integration of Miranda into human society by the universal acceptance of her
engagement, all happen at the same time, since they are all the same act of
healing.  If this view of the play has any validity, it will generate
outraged denials.

[Footnote: some textual scholars, considering the phrase "blue-eyed hag"
eccentric, have argued that the true reading is "blear-eyed hag."  My own
feeling is that if Shakespeare didn't write "blue-eyed," he damned well
ought to have.]

--------------------------------------------------
I'm no expert on Elizabethan conditions of theatrical performance, but on
several visits to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London (which I most highly
recommend to anyone who can get there) I received some information from
people who are.  Apparently to the original audience the spoken words of the
play were really what the performance was, with gesture, costume, props, and
other elements being much less important that we would consider them today.
I also learned there that many of the plays would have acquired a social and
even political dimension from the topography of the city.   Southwark, where
the theatres were, in those days was a thinly populated wilderness where the
native forest still came almost up to the river and thus would be
practically bordering the theatre; it had been made into a semi-official
zone of tolerance where those in search of disreputable pleasures could
disport themselves in a sort of exile from the respectable official and
commercial society embodied in the buildings which could be seen across the
river.  In this setting, lines such as, in As You Like It, Duke Senior's
"Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?" or
Orlando's "I thought that all things had been savage here" take on a pointed
resonance.

--------------------------------------------------
Incidentally I had the great good fortune to see the superb performance of
The Tempest at the Globe with Vanessa Redgrave as Prospero.  I think no one
who was there will ever again be able to read

                ... the great globe itself,
         Yea, all which it inherit ...

without remembering how miraculous it seemed when those words were spoken
there.

--------------------------------------------------
The question of why the Iliad doesn't end with the reconciliation of Priam
and Achilles has long exercised scholars.  I don't totally understand it
myself, but I've found that studying Homer is a lifetime process of slowly
increasing realization that the poems are perfect, so eventually I'll
probably see why it's that way.  If I could recommend only one book about
the Iliad, it would be E. T. Owen's The Story of the Iliad, which I think
would be especially valuable to people teaching it in translation as part of
a humanities course.

--------------------------------------------------
Anny Ballardini's "glue" is interesting for its quality of surprise
maintained throughout, something I find very appealing in a poem.  Helen
Hagemann's "farmed out" is excellent and also an exemplary political poem,
making a strong point while avoiding the considerable risk of sentimentality
such a poem runs.  From across the ocean, though, I found myself wondering
whether this describes what is happening in Australia now or whether it
evokes past hard times.  She might want to add something to the title to
clarify this for non-Australians, like "farmed out:  Western Australia 2003
[or 1934 or whenever it is.]"

--------------------------------------------------
Thanks to Arni Ibsen for his comments on my "To Elli".  "Elli" is a Greek
woman's name -- I thought of the poem as being set in Greece, though that
isn't important to understanding it.  "Elli" rhymes roughly with English
"belly" or "jelly," though the "E" is flatter, sort of like a French or
Italian E.

--------------------------------------------------
Quote of the week:

     O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults
     Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

                           -- Shakespeare

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Jon Corelis        [log in to unmask]
http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics

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