Bardisms (40 page)

In other words:

Here’s how a person’s life runs. Today he cautiously indulges his hopes, those fragile things that are like the newest buds on a branch. Tomorrow he flourishes, and collects all sorts of splendid successes and tributes that he displays proudly. On the third day it suddenly gets cold, deadly cold, and at the very moment when this trusting person is convinced that glory is upon him, that’s when he’s cut down and crashes to the ground.

How to say it:

Wolsey is a cardinal, and his years of Sunday mornings in the pulpit have taught him a thing or two about crafting a good speech. This one deploys a marvelously artful three-part build: (1)
today
this happens, (2)
tomorrow
that happens, and (3)
the third day
something else takes over. Try to let the speech intensify as it moves forward, and let this three-step process carry you through.

As you do, take care to emphasize the verbs in the passage:
puts forth
;
blossoms
;
bears
;
comes
;
killing
;
thinks
;
is a-ripening
;
nips
;
falls
. Note how they chart the speech’s sobering message of promise turning to decay. In particular, observe how the verbs associated with the frost that descends in the deadly third step of the speech are stark, sharp, and haunting.
Nips
is especially powerful. It’s such a small word, the action of a gardener’s pruning shears, and yet it carries with it enough force to take down
greatness
. And can there be a verb more devastating in context than
falls
? It knots my stomach every time I read it.

Certainly applicable on any occasion calling for some insight into death and its ways, this Bardism is also perfect whenever arrogance meets comeuppance. That showboating baseball player who at the crucial moment chokes like Mighty Casey knows what Cardinal Wolsey’s talking about, as does that politician who believes his own polls and veers too close to the boundaries of ethical conduct, as does that yahoo in your office whose last month’s sales results make him certain that he can coast to this month’s gold star status.

Change the gender-specific words as necessary:
woman
,
she
, and
her
allow this Bardism to speak to the Gertrudes who need to hear it.

Some details:

Repeating
frost
in line 4, Cardinal Wolsey employs one of Shakespeare’s favorite playwright’s tricks. When a word appears twice, or even more times, in close proximity or in a row, Shakespeare is instructing his actors to intensify. That’s the theater equivalent of the musician’s
crescendo
: an increase in volume, force, and size. Leontes has a great repeat in
The Winter’s Tale
when he sees what he’s sure is open flirtation between his wife and his best friend: “Too hot, too hot,” he says. Every actor who’s ever played the role has taken Shakespeare’s advice about repeats and increased in intensity between the first and second iteration of the phrase. The heat between Leontes’ wife and his best friend is not just hot, it’s “too hot…
too HOT!
” In
Richard II
, the über-patriot John of Gaunt calls his beloved England “this dear, dear land.” Again, every actor I’ve ever seen give the line has said, “This dear,
dear
land.” Most good Macbeths say “Tomorrow, and
tomorrow
, and
tomorrow
,” and I can’t remember a Lear who didn’t say “Never,
never
,
never
,
never
,
NEVER
!” Repeats mean build in intensity. After all, Cardinal Wolsey’s not describing a crisp December morning in Vermont, nor the inside of his Sub-Zero freezer. He’s talking about an icy blast that wipes out the crop: “The third day comes a
frost
, a
killing
frost
.”

LIFE IS A SLOW MARCH TOWARD DEATH

Shakespeare’s greatest formulation of death’s pervasiveness and life’s status as merely a preamble to its inevitable end is this entry in the Shakespeare Top Ten, familiar to most of us from when Miss Baxter forced us to memorize it in eighth-grade English class.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. 5

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. 10

—M
ACBETH
,
Macbeth
, 5.5.18–27

In other words:

One after another after another, our days crawl slowly along, until the very last moment of human history. And all the events of our pasts are merely signposts that guide us—silly us—toward our deaths. End already, you short, shining life. You’re nothing but a phantom, a zombie, a bad actor that shouts and hams it up while he’s onstage and, when he exits, disappears forever. Life’s a story told by a moron. It’s noisy and eventful, but it doesn’t mean a thing.

How to say it:

I could teach a semester-long verse-speaking class using only these ten lines. There’s a three-part build (line 1) and a pair of two-part repeats (lines 2 and 5). There are great verbs (
creeps
,
lighted
,
out
,
struts
,
frets
,
is heard
,
told
,
full
). The thoughts emerge beautifully one line at a time (cover the page with a paper, read each line one by one, and see for yourself how clearly the speech unfolds). There are complex puns and locutions (
tomorrow
and
yesterday
are named outright, while
today
is glanced at in another form at the end of line 2). The language leaps to and fro from pedestrian to heightened and back again. It’s really got everything that makes Shakespeare Shakespeare. The best way to speak this speech and allow all its poetic detail to resonate is to take it slowly, deliberately, and as simply as possible.
    Do take note, though, of how the language here has an aspect that moves it beyond its simple function of conveying meaning: the words operate in an almost physical manner. Their sounds, their shapes, their existence in three dimensions lifts them beyond the level of mere semantic or lexical communication and into a realm of material presence. The very vowels and consonants in the passage knit together to communicate as much information as the meanings of the words they constitute.
    Okay, okay. This is getting a little ethereal, a bit touchy-feely, and awfully hard to quantify. But the phenomenon I’m discussing—the way a word’s sound seems to embody its sense—is widely recognized in literature and even has its own very impressive name:
onomatopoeia
. Most of us think of that term as applying to words such as
buzz
or
clang
that sound exactly like what they are. Grammarians, and for that matter poets, use it in a wider sense. For them, onomatopoeia refers to those aspects of a word that give it a life of its own, an aural presence that transcends meaning. This is Shakespeare’s understanding of the term, and since he’s interested in the ways a word’s physical dimension generates a sense beyond sense, so must his interpreters be.
    Say only the vowel sounds in the speech, and then say only the consonant sounds (both are common rehearsal exercises). The long vowels in
creeps
,
day
,
time
,
player
,
stage
,
tale
,
told
; the pained
oo
in
fools
and
poor
; the injured
ow
in
out
,
hour
, and
sound
—these form a kind of tone poem of grief and loss. The mass of alliteration (what grammarians term repeated consonant sounds), including the initial letters
p
in
poor
and
player
and the
t
’s in
tale told,
are also worth noting. But the three occurrences of the consonant pattern
s-f,
in
struts and frets
,
sound and fury
, and
signifying
truly blow my mind. In those three paired
s
’s and
f
’s can be found everything anyone might need to know about what Macbeth is going through at this, his lowest moment.
Sss. Fff. Sss. Fff. Sss. Fff.
It’s a symphony of suffering, a susurrus of futile finality. And it happens on a level totally apart from the meaning of what Macbeth is saying. When you try the speech again, this time re-integrating the consonants and vowels, the taste of
sss fff
will remain in your mouth, adding richness to the metaphors, deepening your empathy with Macbeth, and amping up the power of this language to move an audience.