Worthies all,
Back in the summer of 2000, a small film crew shot a documentary about the
Shakespeare at Winedale experience. I was part of that crew (my summers
were '94, '95 and '97), along with Daniel Sacks ('97), Daryl Wyatt ('96),
and our friends Mark Tilley and Talmadge Boyd. We shadowed Doc, James, and
the summer class, capturing some incredible footage and interviews. We
were also on hand when the Reunion class worked on the Merry Wives of
Windsor, which allowed us to interview a number of Winedale luminaries.
Since you are only now hearing back about the documentary, you might guess
that the project was vastly more ambitious than any of us realized.
Post-production stretched into a couple years, then 5 years, then 10 years,
but at long last we are ready to share a Muse of Fire with one and all, and
UT has generously offered to host a world-premiere screening of the film on
August 21st, at 7 PM, at the Black Box at the Student Activity Center.
The film is a powerful tribute to the program, and a potent reminder of the
values and lessons that come from a summer spent rising to the challenges
of Shakespeare's plays. It moves swiftly, covering a lot of ground in a
short space, much as we did during the long days out at Winedale, and I
doubt that any former student will be able to watch it without wanting to
jump up and get cracking on some scene work. For prospective students, or
loved ones who have never been able to grasp what happens out there that
transforms us all, the film will inspire and amaze.
I would love it if we could get every former student to come to the
screening. I would especially love to see the 2000 summer and reunion
classes there, because the film couldn't exist without them. I know that
getting everyone together will be impossible, but if you are near enough to
Austin and interested in coming, it will be a great evening and well worth
your time. It will be a great chance to catch up with each other, to
remember our summer experiences, and to see the film for the first time.
Please RSVP Chelsea Bunn (cbunn(a)austin.utexas.edu) and let her know you'd
like to come, and she will add you to the guest list. You won't regret it!
Thanks,
Andy Bond
Forwarded from Bruce Wharton:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: DB Wharton <dbwharton(a)yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Winedale-l] Winedale Alum named U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe
To: "mnemonic(a)gmail.com" <mnemonic(a)gmail.com>
Thanks, Mike! I owe part of this to Doc and you and the others at Winedale.
Bruce
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 29, 2012, at 16:41, Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Bruce Wharton (Winedale '78, '79) is now the new U.S. ambassador to
> the Republic of Zimbabwe!
>
>
> --Mike
>
> _______________________________________________
> Winedale-l mailing list
> Winedale-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/winedale-l
I came across this essay online, and I thought people here who haven't
yet read it would enjoy it.
--Mike
SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD
By Lytton Strachey
SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD
The whole of the modern criticism of Shakespeare has been
fundamentally affected by one important fact. The chronological order
of the plays, for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of
random guesses, or at best of isolated 'points,' has been now
discovered and reduced to a coherent law. It is no longer possible to
suppose that The Tempest was written before Romeo and 'Juliet; that
Henry VI. was produced in succession to Henry V.; or that Antony and
Cleopatra followed close upon the heels of Julius Caesar. Such
theories were sent to limbo for ever, when a study of those plays of
whose date we have external evidence revealed the fact that, as
Shakespeare's life advanced, a corresponding development took place in
the metrical structure of his verse. The establishment of metrical
tests, by which the approximate position and date of any play can be
readily ascertained, at once followed; chaos gave way to order; and,
for the first time, critics became able to judge, not only of the
individual works, but of the whole succession of the works of
Shakespeare.
Upon this firm foundation modern writers have been only too eager to
build. It was apparent that the Plays, arranged in chronological
order, showed something more than a mere development in the technique
of verse—a development, that is to say, in the general treatment of
characters and subjects, and in the sort of feelings which those
characters and subjects were intended to arouse; and from this it was
easy to draw conclusions as to the development of the mind of
Shakespeare itself. Such conclusions have, in fact, been constantly
drawn. But it must be noted that they all rest upon the tacit
assumption, that the character of any given drama is, in fact, a true
index to the state of mind of the dramatist composing it. The validity
of this assumption has never been proved; it has never been shown, for
instance, why we should suppose a writer of farces to be habitually
merry; or whether we are really justified in concluding, from the fact
that Shakespeare wrote nothing but tragedies for six years, that,
during that period, more than at any other, he was deeply absorbed in
the awful problems of human existence. It is not, however, the purpose
of this essay to consider the question of what are the relations
between the artist and his art; for it will assume the truth of the
generally accepted view, that the character of the one can be inferred
from that of the other. What it will attempt to discuss is whether,
upon this hypothesis, the most important part of the ordinary doctrine
of Shakespeare's mental development is justifiable.
What, then, is the ordinary doctrine? Dr. Furnivall states it as follows:
Shakespeare's course is thus shown to have run from the amorousness
and fun of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, to
the wrestlings with the dark problems that beset the man of middle
age, to the gloom which weighed on Shakespeare (as on so many men) in
later life, when, though outwardly successful, the world seemed all
against him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on scenes of
faithlessness of friends, treachery of relations and subjects,
ingratitude of children, scorn of his kind; till at last, in his
Stratford home again, peace came to him, Miranda and Perdita in their
lovely freshness and charm greeted him, and he was laid by his quiet
Avon side.
And the same writer goes on to quote with approval Professor Dowden's
likening of Shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, but yet
entering harbour with sails full-set, to anchor in peace.
Such, in fact, is the general opinion of modern writers upon
Shakespeare; after a happy youth and a gloomy middle age he reached at
last—it is the universal opinion—a state of quiet serenity in which he
died. Professor Dowden's book on 'Shakespeare's Mind and Art' gives
the most popular expression to this view, a view which is also held by
Mr. Ten Brink, by Sir I. Gollancz, and, to a great extent, by Dr.
Brandes. Professor Dowden, indeed, has gone so far as to label this
final period with the appellation of 'On the Heights,' in opposition
to the preceding one, which, he says, was passed 'In the Depths.' Sir
Sidney Lee, too, seems to find, in the Plays at least, if not in
Shakespeare's mind, the orthodox succession of gaiety, of tragedy, and
of the serenity of meditative romance.
Now it is clear that the most important part of this version of
Shakespeare's mental history is the end of it. That he did eventually
attain to a state of calm content, that he did, in fact, die happy—it
is this that gives colour and interest to the whole theory. For some
reason or another, the end of a man's life seems naturally to afford
the light by which the rest of it should be read; last thoughts do
appear in some strange way to be really best and truest; and this is
particularly the case when they fit in nicely with the rest of the
story, and are, perhaps, just what one likes to think oneself. If it
be true that Shakespeare, to quote Professor Dowden, 'did at last
attain to the serene self-possession which he had sought with such
persistent effort'; that, in the words of Dr. Furnivall, 'forgiven and
forgiving, full of the highest wisdom and peace, at one with family
and friends and foes, in harmony with Avon's flow and Stratford's
level meads, Shakespeare closed his life on earth'—we have obtained a
piece of knowledge which is both interesting and pleasant. But if it
be not true, if, on the contrary, it can be shown that something very
different was actually the case, then will it not follow that we must
not only reverse our judgment as to this particular point, but also
readjust our view of the whole drift and bearing of Shakespeare's
'inner life'?
The group of works which has given rise to this theory of ultimate
serenity was probably entirely composed after Shakespeare's final
retirement from London, and his establishment at New Place. It
consists of three plays—Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The
Tempest—and three fragments—the Shakespearean parts of Pericles, Henry
VIII., and The Two Noble Kinsmen. All these plays and portions of
plays form a distinct group; they resemble each other in a multitude
of ways, and they differ in a multitude of ways from nearly all
Shakespeare's previous work.
One other complete play, however, and one other fragment, do resemble
in some degree these works of the final period; for, immediately
preceding them in date, they show clear traces of the beginnings of
the new method, and they are themselves curiously different from the
plays they immediately succeed—that great series of tragedies which
began with Hamlet in 1601 and ended in 1608 with Antony and Cleopatra.
In the latter year, indeed, Shakespeare's entire method underwent an
astonishing change. For six years he had been persistently occupied
with a kind of writing which he had himself not only invented but
brought to the highest point of excellence—the tragedy of character.
Every one of his masterpieces has for its theme the action of tragic
situation upon character; and, without those stupendous creations in
character, his greatest tragedies would obviously have lost the
precise thing that has made them what they are. Yet, after Antony and
Cleopatra Shakespeare deliberately turned his back upon the dramatic
methods of all his past career. There seems no reason why he should
not have continued, year after year, to produce Othellos, Hamlets, and
Macbeths; instead, he turned over a new leaf, and wrote Coriolanus.
Coriolanus is certainly a remarkable, and perhaps an intolerable play:
remarkable, because it shows the sudden first appearance of the
Shakespeare of the final period; intolerable, because it is impossible
to forget how much better it might have been. The subject is thick
with situations; the conflicts of patriotism and pride, the effects of
sudden disgrace following upon the very height of fortune, the
struggles between family affection on the one hand and every interest
of revenge and egotism on the other—these would have made a tragic and
tremendous setting for some character worthy to rank with
Shakespeare's best. But it pleased him to ignore completely all these
opportunities; and, in the play he has given us, the situations,
mutilated and degraded, serve merely as miserable props for the
gorgeous clothing of his rhetoric. For rhetoric, enormously
magnificent and extraordinarily elaborate, is the beginning and the
middle and the end of Coriolanus. The hero is not a human being at
all; he is the statue of a demi-god cast in bronze, which roars its
perfect periods, to use a phrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's, through a
melodious megaphone. The vigour of the presentment is, it is true,
amazing; but it is a presentment of decoration, not of life. So far
and so quickly had Shakespeare already wandered from the subtleties of
Cleopatra. The transformation is indeed astonishing; one wonders, as
one beholds it, what will happen next.
At about the same time, some of the scenes in Timon of Athens were in
all probability composed: scenes which resemble Coriolanus in their
lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it
in the peculiar grossness of their tone. For sheer virulence of
foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in Timon are probably
unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if
draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. From this whirlwind of
furious ejaculation, this splendid storm of nastiness, Shakespeare, we
are confidently told, passed in a moment to tranquillity and joy, to
blue skies, to young ladies, and to general forgiveness.
>From 1604 to 1610 [says Professor Dowden] a show of tragic figures,
like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of
Shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before
him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more lamentable
ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves of Prince
Florizel and Perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind was
restored, gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave serenity in
The Tempest, and so ended.
This is a pretty picture, but is it true? It may, indeed, be admitted
at once that Prince Florizel and Perdita are charming creatures, that
Prospero is 'grave,' and that Hermione is more or less 'serene'; but
why is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of
our attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters?
Modern critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is
beautiful and good at its proper value, seem to have entirely
forgotten that there is another side to the medal; and they have
omitted to point out that these plays contain a series of portraits of
peculiar infamy, whose wickedness finds expression in language of
extraordinary force. Coming fresh from their pages to the pages of
Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, one is astonished and
perplexed. How is it possible to fit into their scheme of roses and
maidens that 'Italian fiend' the 'yellow Iachimo,' or Cloten, that
'thing too bad for bad report,' or the 'crafty devil,' his mother, or
Leontes, or Caliban, or Trinculo? To omit these figures of discord and
evil from our consideration, to banish them comfortably to the
background of the stage, while Autolycus and Miranda dance before the
footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the presentment of
the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and vigorous as
that of the other. Nowhere, indeed, is Shakespeare's violence of
expression more constantly displayed than in the 'gentle utterances'
of his last period; it is here that one finds Paulina, in a torrent of
indignation as far from 'grave serenity' as it is from 'pastoral
love,' exclaiming to Leontes:
What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?
What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling
In leads or oils? what old or newer torture
Must I receive, whose every word deserves
To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny,
Together working with thy jealousies,
Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle
For girls of nine, O! think what they have done,
And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all
Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.
That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing;
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant
And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much
Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour,
To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,
More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon
The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter
To be or none or little; though a devil
Would have shed water out of fire ere done't.
Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death
Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts,
Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart
That could conceive a gross and foolish sire
Blemished his gracious dam.
Nowhere are the poet's metaphors more nakedly material; nowhere does
he verge more often upon a sort of brutality of phrase, a cruel
coarseness. Iachimo tells us how:
The cloyed will,
That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub
Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb,
Longs after for the garbage.
and talks of:
an eye
Base and unlustrous as the smoky light
That's fed with stinking tallow.
'The south fog rot him!' Cloten bursts out to Imogen, cursing her
husband in an access of hideous rage.
What traces do such passages as these show of 'serene
self-possession,' of 'the highest wisdom and peace,' or of 'meditative
romance'? English critics, overcome by the idea of Shakespeare's
ultimate tranquillity, have generally denied to him the authorship of
the brothel scenes in Pericles but these scenes are entirely of a
piece with the grossnesses of The Winter's Tale and Cymbeline.
Is there no way for men to be, but women
Must be half-workers?
says Posthumus when he hears of Imogen's guilt.
We are all bastards;
And that most venerable man, which I
Did call my father, was I know not where
When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools
Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed
The Dian of that time; so doth my wife
The nonpareil of this—O vengeance, vengeance!
Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained
And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with
A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't
Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her
As chaste as unsunned snow—O, all the devils!—
This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,—was't not?
Or less,—at first: perchance he spoke not; but,
Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,
Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition
But what he looked for should oppose, and she
Should from encounter guard.
And Leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no
less to the point.
There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now,
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence
And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't,
Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there's none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
>From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricade for a belly, know't;
It will let in and out the enemy
With bag and baggage: many thousand on's
Have the disease, and feel't not.
It is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to
agree with Professor Dowden's dictum: 'In these latest plays the
beautiful pathetic light is always present.'
But how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has been
so completely led astray? Charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to
be found in many other plays of Shakespeare. Ophelia is charming,
Brutus is grave, Cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that
Hamlet, and Julius Caesar, and King Lear give expression to the same
mood of high tranquillity which is betrayed by Cymbeline, The Tempest,
and The Winter's Tale? 'Certainly not,' reply the orthodox writers,
'for you must distinguish. The plays of the last period are not
tragedies; they all end happily'—'in scenes,' says Sir I. Gollancz,
'of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.' Virtue, in fact, is not
only virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more?
But to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of
Shakespeare's plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty
triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of
horror and of gloom. For, in Measure for Measure Isabella is no whit
less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is
as complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of
Measure for Measure was more nearly one of despair than of serenity?
What is it, then, that makes the difference? Why should a happy ending
seem in one case futile, and in another satisfactory? Why does it
sometimes matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether
virtue is rewarded or not?
The reason, in this case, is not far to seek. Measure for Measure is,
like nearly every play of Shakespeare's before Coriolanus, essentially
realistic. The characters are real men and women; and what happens to
them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and
women in actual life. Their goodness appears to be real goodness,
their wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are
terrible enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they
triumph, just as we regret the real sufferings of our friends. But, in
the plays of the final period, all this has changed; we are no longer
in the real world, but in a world of enchantment, of mystery, of
wonder, a world of shifting visions, a world of hopeless anachronisms,
a world in which anything may happen next. The pretences of reality
are indeed usually preserved, but only the pretences. Cymbeline is
supposed to be the king of a real Britain, and the real Augustus is
supposed to demand tribute of him; but these are the reasons which his
queen, in solemn audience with the Roman ambassador, urges to induce
her husband to declare for war:
Remember, sir, my liege,
The Kings your ancestors, together with
The natural bravery of your isle, which stands
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters,
With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats,
But suck them up to the topmast. A kind of conquest
Caesar made here; but made not here his brag
Of 'Came, and saw, and overcame'; with shame—
The first that ever touched him—he was carried
>From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping—
Poor ignorant baubles!—on our terrible seas,
Like egg-shells moved upon the surges, crack'd
As easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof
The famed Cassibelan, who was once at point—
O giglot fortune!—to master Caesar's sword,
Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright
And Britons strut with courage.
It comes with something of a shock to remember that this medley of
poetry, bombast, and myth will eventually reach the ears of no other
person than the Octavius of Antony and Cleopatra; and the contrast is
the more remarkable when one recalls the brilliant scene of
negotiation and diplomacy in the latter play, which passes between
Octavius, Maecenas, and Agrippa on the one side, and Antony and
Enobarbus on the other, and results in the reconciliation of the
rivals and the marriage of Antony and Octavia.
Thus strangely remote is the world of Shakespeare's latest period; and
it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally
unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate
princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost
princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of
fairy land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end
well; the prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever
afterwards, or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the
villains and the goblins must naturally repent and be forgiven. But it
is clear that such happy endings, such conventional closes to
fantastic tales, cannot be taken as evidences of serene tranquillity
on the part of their maker; they merely show that he knew, as well as
anyone else, how such stories ought to end.
Yet there can be no doubt that it is this combination of charming
heroines and happy endings which has blinded the eyes of modern
critics to everything else. Iachimo, and Leontes, and even Caliban,
are to be left out of account, as if, because in the end they repent
or are forgiven, words need not be wasted on such reconciled and
harmonious fiends. It is true they are grotesque; it is true that such
personages never could have lived; but who, one would like to know,
has ever met Miranda, or become acquainted with Prince Florizel of
Bohemia? In this land of faery, is it right to neglect the goblins? In
this world of dreams, are we justified in ignoring the nightmares? Is
it fair to say that Shakespeare was in 'a gentle, lofty spirit, a
peaceful, tranquil mood,' when he was creating the Queen in Cymbeline,
or writing the first two acts of The Winter's Tale?
Attention has never been sufficiently drawn to one other
characteristic of these plays, though it is touched upon both by
Professor Dowden and Dr. Brandes—the singular carelessness with which
great parts of them were obviously written. Could anything drag more
wretchedly than the dénouement of Cymbeline? And with what perversity
is the great pastoral scene in The Winter's Tale interspersed with
long-winded intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! For these
blemishes are unlike the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the
beauty of the earlier plays; they are not, like them, interesting or
delightful in themselves; they are usually merely necessary to explain
the action, and they are sometimes purely irrelevant. One is, it
cannot be denied, often bored, and occasionally irritated, by
Polixenes and Camillo and Sebastian and Gonzalo and Belarius; these
personages have not even the life of ghosts; they are hardly more than
speaking names, that give patient utterance to involution upon
involution. What a contrast to the minor characters of Shakespeare's
earlier works!
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was getting bored
himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama,
bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams. He
is no longer interested, one often feels, in what happens, or who says
what, so long as he can find place for a faultless lyric, or a new,
unimagined rhythmical effect, or a grand and mystic speech. In this
mood he must have written his share in The Two Noble Kinsmen, leaving
the plot and characters to Fletcher to deal with as he pleased, and
reserving to himself only the opportunities for pompous verse. In this
mood he must have broken off half-way through the tedious history of
Henry VIII.; and in this mood he must have completed, with all the
resources of his rhetoric, the miserable archaic fragment of Pericles.
Is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him in the last years of
his life? Half enchanted by visions of beauty and loveliness, and half
bored to death; on the one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the
singing of ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general disgust
to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter and violent
speech? If we are to learn anything of his mind from his last works,
it is surely this.
And such is the conclusion which is particularly forced upon us by a
consideration of the play which is in many ways most typical of
Shakespeare's later work, and the one which critics most consistently
point to as containing the very essence of his final benignity—The
Tempest. There can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics which
distinguish Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale from the dramas of
Shakespeare's prime, are present here in a still greater degree. In
The Tempest, unreality has reached its apotheosis. Two of the
principal characters are frankly not human beings at all; and the
whole action passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a
place which can only by courtesy be said to exist. The Enchanted
Island, indeed, peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange
fantastic medley of persons and of things, has been cut adrift for
ever from common sense, and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters,
but of poetry. Never did Shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach
more marvellous heights than in some of the speeches of Prospero, or
his lyric art a purer beauty than in the songs of Ariel; nor is it
only in these ethereal regions that the triumph of his language
asserts itself. It finds as splendid a vent in the curses of Caliban:
All the infection that the sun sucks up
>From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him
By inch-meal a disease!
and in the similes of Trinculo:
Yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks like a foul
bombard that would shed his liquor.
The dénouement itself, brought about by a preposterous piece of
machinery, and lost in a whirl of rhetoric, is hardly more than a peg
for fine writing.
O, it is monstrous, monstrous!
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;
The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.
Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and
I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded,
And with him there lie mudded.
And this gorgeous phantasm of a repentance from the mouth of the pale
phantom Alonzo is a fitting climax to the whole fantastic play.
A comparison naturally suggests itself, between what was perhaps the
last of Shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which
first gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. The
points of resemblance between The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's
Dream, their common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful
absurdities of their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the
grotesque with the delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm
of their lyrics, the verve of their vulgar comedy—these, of course,
are obvious enough; but it is the points of difference which really
make the comparison striking. One thing, at any rate, is certain about
the wood near Athens—it is full of life. The persons that haunt
it—though most of them are hardly more than children, and some of them
are fairies, and all of them are too agreeable to be true—are
nevertheless substantial creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels
receive our thorough sympathy; and the air they breathe—the lords and
the ladies, no less than the mechanics and the elves—is instinct with
an exquisite good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is
long. To turn from Theseus and Titania and Bottom to the Enchanted
Island, is to step out of a country lane into a conservatory. The
roses and the dandelions have vanished before preposterous cactuses,
and fascinating orchids too delicate for the open air; and, in the
artificial atmosphere, the gaiety of youth has been replaced by the
disillusionment of middle age. Prospero is the central figure of The
Tempest; and it has often been wildly asserted that he is a portrait
of the author—an embodiment of that spirit of wise benevolence which
is supposed to have thrown a halo over Shakespeare's later life. But,
on closer inspection, the portrait seems to be as imaginary as the
original. To an irreverent eye, the ex-Duke of Milan would perhaps
appear as an unpleasantly crusty personage, in whom a twelve years'
monopoly of the conversation had developed an inordinate propensity
for talking. These may have been the sentiments of Ariel, safe at the
Bermoothes; but to state them is to risk at least ten years in the
knotty entrails of an oak, and it is sufficient to point out, that if
Prospero is wise, he is also self-opinionated and sour, that his
gravity is often another name for pedantic severity, and that there is
no character in the play to whom, during some part of it, he is not
studiously disagreeable. But his Milanese countrymen are not even
disagreeable; they are simply dull. 'This is the silliest stuff that
e'er I heard,' remarked Hippolyta of Bottom's amateur theatricals; and
one is tempted to wonder what she would have said to the dreary puns
and interminable conspiracies of Alonzo, and Gonzalo, and Sebastian,
and Antonio, and Adrian, and Francisco, and other shipwrecked
noblemen. At all events, there can be little doubt that they would not
have had the entrée at Athens.
The depth of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best measured
by a comparison of Caliban and his masters with Bottom and his
companions. The guileless group of English mechanics, whose sports are
interrupted by the mischief of Puck, offers a strange contrast to the
hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage
and deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel.
Bottom was the first of Shakespeare's masterpieces in
characterisation, Caliban was the last: and what a world of bitterness
and horror lies between them! The charming coxcomb it is easy to know
and love; but the 'freckled whelp hag-born' moves us mysteriously to
pity and to terror, eluding us for ever in fearful allegories, and
strange coils of disgusted laughter and phantasmagorical tears. The
physical vigour of the presentment is often so remorseless as to shock
us. 'I left them,' says Ariel, speaking of Caliban and his crew:
I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,
There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake
O'erstunk their feet.
But at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell like the
'Pan' of Victor Hugo, into something unimaginably vast.
You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse.
Is this Caliban addressing Prospero, or Job addressing God? It may be
either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor 'On the
Heights.'
1906.
Here's the skinny on the reading/signing, guys. Hope you can make it.
Jan
--------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: HELP!
From: Janotzon(a)aol.com
Date: Fri, September 7, 2012 7:22 pm
To: mandy(a)bookpeople.com
louisacker(a)yahoo.com
pd2060(a)sbcglobal.net
tlgalloway(a)aol.com
ritagier(a)yahoo.com
dosverdes(a)comporium.net
sylklein(a)aol.com
danamardaga(a)austin.rr.com
martin.notzon(a)sbcglobal.net
Auzas97(a)aol.com
jan(a)jannotzon.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mandy: Thank you SO MUCH! I'll definitely bring refreshments. I'd just like
to read a couple of passages from the part of my book that takes place in
Austin at UT. I'm really looking forward to this. It should be hoot for my
friends and family who still live in Austin. I miss the place.
Jan
In a message dated 9/6/2012 4:27:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
mandy(a)bookpeople.com writes:
Jan,
Hello, yes, I'm sorry that I didn't get back to you sooner -- I was out of
the office all day yesterday on an offsite. You are NOT dropped from the
October 7th date. I'm sorry I misunderstood your message. This is what the
evening involves:
The course of the evening:
- Arrival sometime between 6:15 and 6:30
- The event will take place on our 2nd floor event space. You will have
event hosts who will be responsible fore the following: introducing you both
at the podium, monitoring the Q&A, help set out refreshments, and to help
with the booksigning.
- refreshments: many authors like bringing wine, beer, bottled water,
cookies, snacks, etc. to their events. It makes the whole evening feel
more like
a party -- you are more than welcome to do this or
not but if you do wish to bring something,
let us know so we know how many tables to set out and coordinate with the
other authors to maybe bring complimentary refreshments.
- Each author will be introduced to the crowd by the events host.
- The first author will present to the audience (either reading,
explaining their inspiration, etc.) for about 5 - 10 minutes. When the
first author
is finished presenting, the second author will be introduced and do their
presentation. You all can decide amongst yourselves who wishes to speak
first and second.
- After each author has presented, the Q&A begins. All authors will
participate in the same Q&A. This lasts for about 15 - 20 minutes.
- When the Q&A finishes, the booksigning will begin! Everyone must
purchase their copy of the book before having it signed.
Please let me know if you have anymore questions.
as ever,
Mandy
Mandy Brooks
BookPeople Marketing Director
_mandy(a)bookpeople.com_ (mailto:mandy@bookpeople.com)
512-472-4288 ext. 411
-------------
BookPeople
603 North Lamar
Austin, Texas 78703
512-472-5050
_www.bookpeople.com_ (http://www.bookpeople.com/)
now reading: The Diviners by Libba Bray
_Janotzon(a)aol.com_ (mailto:Janotzon@aol.com) wrote:
Mandy: Please confirm that you have NOT dropped me from the October 7
Author's Night. I WILL BE THERE, ready for whatever it involves. (I'd
sure like
to know what it does involve).
Thanks,
Jan
Our group was more Shiners than winos, but yeah...
Allen Riedel
Author- Best Hikes Near LA
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0762746416/ref=redir_mdp_mobile
Author - 100 Classic Hikes in Southern California
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1594850666/ref=mp_s_a_3?qid=1334509202&sr=8-3
Best Hikes with Dogs in Southern California
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/089886691X/ref=mp_s_a_2?qid=1334509202&sr=8-2
Jan Notzon <jan(a)jannotzon.com> wrote:
>Whoever came up with calling us all "Winos", my deepest appreciation (and
>I don't mean to plagarize, I just can't remember who it was), so:
>
>Fellow Winos:
>
>PLEASE COME! I'll be participating in an "Authors' Night" at Book People
>on Lamar Blvd. on Oct. 7th at 7:00pm.
>
>Don't know all the details yet. Trying to milk them out of Mandy at the
>store (she's really busy!).
>
>As soon as I know, I will be sending it out all the gory minutiae.
>
>THANKS!
>
>Jan
>
>_______________________________________________
>Winedale-l mailing list
>Winedale-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/winedale-l
Whoever came up with calling us all "Winos", my deepest appreciation (and
I don't mean to plagarize, I just can't remember who it was), so:
Fellow Winos:
PLEASE COME! I'll be participating in an "Authors' Night" at Book People
on Lamar Blvd. on Oct. 7th at 7:00pm.
Don't know all the details yet. Trying to milk them out of Mandy at the
store (she's really busy!).
As soon as I know, I will be sending it out all the gory minutiae.
THANKS!
Jan