Bardisms (6 page)

Some details:

The fairy world of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
has inspired more creativity in directors and stage designers than perhaps anything else in Shakespeare. Be the fairies portrayed as gossamer-winged, Pre-Raphaelite cherubs with flowing white gowns and shoulder-length curls; pale-skinned, black-eyed Victorian urchins in sailor suits and velvet dresses; or some abstract collection of imps informed by cultural influences as diverse as the Brothers Grimm, Japanese Kabuki, or post-punk 1990s London—all of which I’ve seen, and many others besides—their appearance does much to define the tone of the play and its world. It also determines whether the emphasis of this lullaby is on the universe of scary, poisonous creatures who threaten nightly to attack Titania in her sleep (in one production I saw, a fairy in mid-verse found a spider crawling along the ground and, in an Elizabethan version of
Fear Factor
, ate it), or whether the point of the song is that Titania will rest safe and sound despite whatever potential dangers lurk around her (this is the more usual approach, all featherbedding, diaphanous linens, and harp glissandos).

SHAKESPEARE ON DAUGHTERS

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter.

—P
ROSPERO
,
The Tempest
, 1.2.16–17

In Shakespeare’s period as today, readers were tempted to parse works of fiction for traces of their authors’ biographies and personal beliefs. And just as today our own Philip Roth has filled novel after novel with screeds against readers who assume a priori that his characters speak his own personal views and that his life and his art necessarily coincide, so the authors of the English Renaissance vociferously denied that their works contained details from their own lives, or that their characters bore any resemblance to real-world figures a clever reader could identify. Still, none other than Shakespeare’s friend and rival Ben Jonson, the Philip Roth of his day, tacitly acknowledged that no matter how vigorously he may deny it, an author’s personal life simply must suffuse his works. In a moving poem written in memory of his son Benjamin junior, who died in childhood, Jonson calls the boy his “best piece of poetry.” Life and art may not be the same thing, Jonson seems to say, but at times the line between them shrinks very, very thin.

We cannot know if Shakespeare read Jonson’s poem, although we can suppose he shared the sentiment, because his own son Hamnet died a few years before Jonson’s. Hamnet Shakespeare. Swap out the
n
in his name for an
l
, and it’s hard not to see English drama’s most famous character, who dies prematurely while trying to live up to his father’s expectations of him, as in some way a manifestation, if not an outright reincarnation, of the playwright’s only son. It’s almost impossible to read all of Shakespeare and not come away with a sense that the deepest of the man’s private obsessions, emotional wounds, pet peeves, and secret dreams are on display in his pages. He hated crowds, he preferred the country to the city, he found France beautiful even though the French drove him crazy, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t like drunks. He grieved his son’s memory. He adored his mother but found his father frustratingly aloof.

Nowhere do Shakespeare’s personal manias creep into his works more clearly than in his depictions of fathers and their daughters. If Hamlet is a projection of his son, then Juliet, and Goneril, and Regan, and Cordelia, and Perdita, and Marina, and Miranda, and Rosalind, and Portia, and on and on, might be projections of his daughters, Susanna, born only six months after Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway, and Judith, Hamnet’s twin. The joys and frustrations of fathering a girl are so vividly particularized in Shakespeare that it’s tempting to imagine him writing these father-daughter relationships as a kind of therapy.

Tempting, however, is different from advisable. As a reader who would yearn for the
Complete Works of Roth
as well as a
Complete Shakespeare
if ever I were abandoned on a desert island, I hastily admit that biographical speculation of the sort I’ve indulged in here is extremely hazardous, and as an imaginative artist myself, I recognize that one needn’t have lived every possible experience in order to depict some of them believably in fiction. But as you browse this selection of Shakespeare for Daughters, as well as Shakespeare for Sons, for Fathers, and for that matter, for Mothers, ask yourself this: no matter how supreme his imagination may have been, could Shakespeare have captured these relationships so truthfully without reflecting at least a little on his own experience of them?

A BLESSING FOR A DAUGHTER

This brief Bardism dedicates this book to my precious daughter. That says about all I need to about how lovely I find it, and the occasion for which I find it apt. (I had planned for it to be the first words my daughter heard when she was born, but the experience of being in the delivery room and watching her entrance into this world crashed my mental hard drive so completely that all I could manage were a few gurgles, yelps, and sighs.)

You gods, look down,

And from your sacred vials pour your graces

Upon my daughter’s head.

—H
ERMIONE
,
The Winter’s Tale
, 5.3.122–24

Some details:

Shakespeare knew his Bible. This passage reverses one in the Book of Revelation, where heaven is asked to pour down not graces but anger: “And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels, / Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.” The Bard was apparently moved by this scripture, because elsewhere in his plays contemporaneous with
The Winter’s Tale
he also imagines the gods who hover above now and then dropping something wonderful down to us mortals who live below. These lines from
The Tempest
are one example: “Look down, ye gods, / And on this couple drop a blessèd crown.”

But poetry wasn’t the only way Shakespeare made godliness float down onto humanity. Sometimes he’d just have one of the gods drop in for a visit. Theater historians tell us that a small roof hung over the outdoor stage of the Globe Theatre, making a kind of ceiling above the actors’ heads. On it was painted a representation of the heavens, complete with stars, planets, and other astrological symbols (Hamlet calls it “this majestical roof fretted with golden fire”). This ceiling featured a hidden hatch through which actors, singers, or pieces of scenery could descend, suspended on a rig of pulleys and ropes. Hymen, god of marriage, appears from this hatch at the end of
As You Like It
, and in the late plays this equipment gets a real workout: Jupiter appears in
Cymbeline
, Juno and Ceres in
The Tempest
, and Diana in
Pericles
. Critics call these sequences
theophanies
, which means, literally, “appearances of God.”

All of this is to say that at
The Winter’s Tale
’s Globe premiere back in 1610, when Hermione looked up and asked the gods to pour their holy water on her daughter, audiences could have been excused for expecting a literal deluge. And whenever I quote Hermione’s words over my little angel’s head, I too await the opening of the sky and the descent of grace.

THIS BABY GIRL WILL GROW UP TO BE AMAZING

In Shakespeare’s play about him, King Henry VIII asks Archbishop Thomas Cranmer to stand as godfather to his daughter Elizabeth. Cranmer agrees, and offer an extraordinary public tribute to the little princess with a long speech about how fabulous she will be when she grows up. It’s the definitive piece of Shakespeare for Daughters.

This royal infant—heaven still move about her—

Though in her cradle, yet now promises

Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings

Which time shall bring to ripeness. She shall be—

But few now living can behold that goodness— 5

A pattern to all princes living with her,

And all that shall succeed. Saba was never

More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue

Than this pure soul shall be. All princely graces

That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, 10

With all the virtues that attend the good,

Shall still be doubled on her. Truth shall nurse her,

Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her.

She shall be loved and feared. Her own shall bless her;

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, 15

And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her.

In her days every man shall eat in safety

Under his own vine what he plants, and sing

The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors.

God shall be truly known, and those about her 20

From her shall read the perfect ways of honor.

-C
RANMER
,
Henry VIII
, 5.4.17–37

In other words:

This royal baby—may heaven always revolve around her!—although she’s still in her crib, already promises a million blessings, which will in the fullness of time come to fruition. She will one day be—although few people alive today will see it—an inspiration to all the leaders of her generation, and all that will come after. Not even Beersheba desired wisdom and goodness more than this pure soul will, and Beersheba journeyed all the way to visit King Solomon in order to gain wisdom from him. All the graces customarily associated with a princely person (which this baby is) and all the virtues customarily associated with a good person (which this baby is) will always be multiplied in her. Truth will breast-feed her. Holy and heavenly thoughts will advise her. She’ll be adored and respected. Those who know her will bless her. Those opposed to her will tremble like grain in the wind, and hang their heads in sadness. Goodness will prosper as she prospers. During her lifetime, every man will be safe in his own home, will enjoy the fruits of his own labor, and will sing happy songs of peace to all his neighbors. True religion will prevail, and everyone around her will learn from her how to be honorable in all things.

How to say it:

The long speech is one of the best demonstrations of how the Paper Trick, described in “Seven Steps to Shipshape Shakespeare” above, can really unlock a dense passage of Shakespeare. As you’ll recall, in order to use it, you simply take a blank piece of paper and cover all but the first line of the speech. Take a breath, say that line (
This royal infant—heaven still move about her—
), and when you reach its end, slide your paper down to reveal the next line. Take a breath, then say that line (
Though in her cradle, yet now promises
). Then move your paper down, breathe, and say the next line. Continue like this until you reach the end of the speech, and you’ll find that the speech unfolds from your mouth like a flower blossoming in spring. Repeat the Paper Trick a few times, then try the speech once without it, trying to make it flow as naturally as you can. Notice how the line-by-line structure of the verse remains in your mind even when you’re not concentrating on this formal aspect of the speech. That’s how Shakespeare writes. You can never go wrong if you phrase his verse speeches one line at a time.

Because the speech is long, and because some of the thoughts in it are either quite complicated or not entirely the sentiments a friend might want to wish his friend’s child, you should feel free to make cuts wherever you’d like. For example, life expectancy in our time being rather longer than it was in Shakespeare’s, I’d drop line 5. I’d also cut line 15 and the first clause of line 16—do I really want to predict that a baby will have enemies before she’s even left her swaddling clothes? I’d probably also lose the first half of line 20 (
God shall be truly known
), not because I don’t wish a religious life on a lovely baby girl, but because this line is really about the disputed politics of religion in Shakespeare’s day, and it doesn’t speak quite as directly to our own.