JONATHAN GIL HARRIS - PowerPoint Presentation

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JONATHAN GIL HARRISPROFESSOR OF ENGLISHASHOKA UNIVERSITY12 June, 2014

Listening to Shakespeare

and His ForeignersSlide2

Listening to ShakespeareSlide3

SHAKES-SEEING

Ours is a very visually oriented age. We often read visual information better than we read text.

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SHAKES-SEEING Ours is a very visually oriented age. We often read visual information better than we read text.

Perhaps that is why, when confronted with the difficulty of Shakespeare’s language, we want to “see” him to make sense of him.

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SHAKES-SEEING

Our desire to “see” in order to make sense of Shakespeare is apparent in how we imagine his characters’

differences in terms of their

physical appearances.

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SHAKES-SEEING

Our desire to “see” in order to make sense of Shakespeare is apparent in how we imagine his characters’ differences in terms of their physical appearances.

In particular, we tend to imagine characters from different backgrounds – whether ethnic or religious – simply as

looking

different, as if identity were literally skin deepSlide7

SHAKES-SEEING Slide8

SHAKES-SEEING Slide9

SHAKES-HEARING But Shakespeare presents difference at the level not just of the visible, but also of the audible.

After all, the people who came to his plays were not spectators but audiences. Slide10

Prose versus PoetryBRUTUS Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine

honour

, and have respect to mine

honour

, that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his.

MARK ANTONY

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is often interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious.

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answered it.Slide11

Prose versus PoetryBRUTUS Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine

honour

, and have respect to mine

honour

, that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his.

Brutus’s speech is in PROSE

Sounds more like EVERYDAY SPEECH

The sentences don’t have a RHYTHM

So they are less memorable

MARK ANTONY

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is often interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious.

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answered it.Slide12

Prose versus PoetryBRUTUS Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine

honour

, and have respect to mine

honour

, that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his.

Brutus’s speech is in PROSE

Sounds more like EVERYDAY SPEECH

The sentences don’t have a RHYTHM

So they are less memorable

MARK ANTONY

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is often interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious.

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answered it.

Mark Antony’s speech is in POETRY

Each line is shaped to a specific LENGTH, so sounds more SCRIPTED

The lines have a RHYTHM

They are much more memorableSlide13

Iambic PentameterIambic Pentameter: five feet of two syllables each, first unstressed and second stressed

(

dah

DAH

/ dah DAH

/

dah

DAH

/

dah

DAH

/

dah

DAH

)

To BOLD/

ly

GO/ where NO/ one’s GONE/

beFORE

–

Star TrekSlide14

Iambic PentameterTo BE/ or NOT/ to BE/ that IS/ the QUEST/ion –

Hamlet

Shakespeare often uses iambic pentameter when he has characters speaking in poetry – the rhythm most like the normal rhythms of speech.

Here, there is an extra syllable at the end. What is its effect?Slide15

Trochaic Meter

Trochaic Meter

: the opposite of iambic meter; the trochaic foot starts with a stressed syllable and is followed by an unstressed syllable (DAH

dah

/ DAH

dah/ DAH

dah

)

WITCH

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

–

Macbeth

, 4.1.12-21Slide16

Hearing Difference

How does Shakespeare allow us to hear not just differences of character and type, but also differences of ethnicity and religion?Slide17

Fluellen in Henry V

FLUELLEN

Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you the town's name where Alexander the Pig was born!

GOWER

Alexander the Great.

FLUELLEN

Why, I pray you, is not pig great? Slide18

Macmorris in Henry V

MACMORRIS

 It is no time to discourse, so

Chrish

save me: … there is throats to be cut, and works to be done; and there 

ish

nothing done, so

Chrish

sa

' me, la!Slide19

Shylock in Merchant of Venice

SHYLOCK

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

–

The Merchant of Venice

, 3.1.48-62Slide20

Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice

PRINCE OF MOROCCO

Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets

To try my fortune. By this scimitar

That slew the

Sophy

and a Persian prince

That won three fields of Sultan

Solyman

,

I would outstare the sternest eyes that look,

Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth,

Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear,

Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey,

To win thee, lady.

–

The Merchant of Venice

, 2.1.23-31Slide21

Caliban in The Tempest

MIRANDA

Abhorrèd

slave,

Which any print of goodness wilt not take,

Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,

Know

thine

own meaning, but wouldst

gabble like

A thing most brutish

, I endowed thy purposes

With words that made them known.

–

The Tempest

, 3.2.133-41Slide22

Caliban in The Tempest

CALIBAN

Be not

afeared

. The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand

twangling

instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds

methought

would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.

–

The Tempest

, 3.2.133-41Slide23

Listening to Shakespeare’s Foreigners

At the level of sound, Shakespeare’s foreign characters veer between crass caricature and nuanced characterization Slide24

“The Othello Music”

G. Wilson Knight argued in 1930 that Othello’s difference from

Iago

can be heard in his “musical” speechSlide25

“The Othello Music”

When we first hear of Othello, we think he will be a classic stage-Moor

IAGO

Three great ones of the city,

In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,

Off-capped to him: and, by the faith of man,

I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.

But he, as loving his own pride and purposes,

Evades them, with a bombast circumstance

Horribly

stuff'd

with epithets of war.Slide26

“The Othello Music”

But when Othello first takes the stage, he says:

OTHELLO

Tis

yet to know--

Which, when I know that boasting is an

honour

,

I shall promulgate--I fetch my life and being

From men of royal siege. …

Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.

Good

signior

, you shall more command with years

Than with your weapons.Slide27

“The Othello Music” Her father loved me; oft invited me;

Still questioned me the story of my life,

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it …

It was my hint to speak,--such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. Slide28

“The Othello Music”

OTHELLO

O, blood, blood, blood!

IAGO

Patience, I say; your mind perhaps may change.

OTHELLO

Never,

Iago

: Like to the

Pontic

sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the

Propontic

and the Hellespont,

Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,

Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up. Slide29

“The Othello Music” OTHELLO Soft you; a word or two before you go …

Speak of me as I am …

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought

Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;

And say besides, that in Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a

turban’d

Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,

I took by the throat the circumcised dog,

And smote him, thus.Slide30

“I hear a face” (A Midsummer night’s Dream 5.1.191)

Shakespeare’s World of Words