Liberal Arts Blog — Shakespeare Re-visited: Three Passages That Echo In My Memory
Liberal Arts Blog — Tuesday is the Joy of Literature, Language, Religion, and Culture Day
Today’s Topic: Shakespeare Re-visited: Three Passages that Echo in My Memory
Last time, four Sanskrit phrases — Namaste, (“I honor the light within you”), Aum (the primal sound of the universe that clears the mind), and satyameva jayate (“Truth Alone Triumphs.”)
Two weeks ago, phrases from Finland (Sisu — grit), Japan (Ikigai — life purpose), and Hygge (cozy) as well as four questions from Ben Zoma, three from Hillel, and three more from Tolstoy.
Today, back to Shakespeare. Fan? Were you forced to memorize any of his sonnets or monologues? Did you hate it at the time? Did the hatred turn to gratitude later? What place, if any, should the memorization of passages from classic texts play in a 21st century humanities curriculum K-12?
If you had to pick only one monologue from a Shakespeare play, what would it be? why?
How about the “St. Crispin’s Day Speech” from “Henry V” on the eve of the battle of Agincourt? (see first link below)
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“WHEN IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES” (Sonnet 29) (Below the “Chandos Portrait) circa 1611)
1. “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries and look upon my self and curse my fate.”
2. “Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, featured like him, like him with friends possessed desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, with what I most enjoy contended least.”
3. “Yet in these thoughts, almost despising, happily, I think on thee and then my state like to the lark at break of day arising, from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate.”
NB: “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN — from “As You Like It” spoken by “the melancholy Jacques” (below Michael Horden as Jacques)
1. All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.”
2. “Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances.”
3. And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything
“THIS ABOVE ALL TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE AND THOU CANST NOT THEN BE FALSE TO ANY MAN” (Polonius, father of Ophelia and Laertes, killed by Hamlet while Polonius is hiding behind a curtain eavesdropping. Hamlet has mistaken Polonius for his stepfather Claudius.)
1. ”My blessing with thee! And these few precepts in thy memory. See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue. Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou has and their adoption tried; grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; but. do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.”
2. “Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear’t that the opposed may be beware fo thee. Give every man thy ear, but. few thy voice. Take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as they purse can buy; but not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy. For the apparel oft proclaims the man.”
3. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan loses oft both itself and friend and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night they day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell: my blessing season this in thee”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Crispin%27s_Day_Speech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_world%27s_a_stage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandos_portrait
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY INTO FOURTEEN BOOK-LENGTH PDFS:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to words, language, literature, religion, culture.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to Words, Language, Literature (eg. quotes, poetry, vocabulary) that you have not yet shared.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
