John Donne and the compasses

Donne's poetry is remarkable for the way in which he combines reason with emotion:  even in his most passionate love poems, the reader cannot let her or his brain cells rest. There is always a thread of thought which must be followed if the poem is to be fully appreciated. 

Sometimes he extends his ideas to the extreme, a quality noticed by Dr. Johnson who commented on the Metaphysical poets: "If their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage". By this he meant that there would be a truth at the end of the journey of understanding their unusual thought or fancy. In literary criticism now, the term, "conceit" is used to denote a comparison between two unlikely things, stretching credulity but expecting the reader to admire the ingenuity of the writer. 

The best example of this is Donne's poem, "A Valediction forbidding mourning", in which he argues, somewhat unconvincingly, that physical absence between true lovers is unimportant because they are "Inter-assured of the mind". Listing what will be missing (eyes, lips and hands) only makes the reader realise that he is trying to persuade  his partner not to mourn his departure - whilst being uncertain himself.

This sense is compounded by the ultimate motion in the image of the lovers as "stiffe twin compasses" which are two in one. She is the fixed foot which moves only when he does, leaning further outwards if he moves a greater distance away, growing "erect" when he returns. 

Yet, if you take a pair of compasses and enact the final stanza, it says the opposite. The conceit works against the emotion. The feeling is that the lovers will be reunited but rationality has them apart: her firmness and constancy cause him to draw his circle "just" and end where he began.  That means that he has joined up with his own trajectory and drawn a perfect circle - but is still apart from her. There are two different motions in those three stanzas: the first where the centre foot (her) draws the wandering one back to it; the second where it (she) stays firm, guiding his circle but ending with him still away from her.

My reading is that the persona of the speaker is doubtful of his own argument: the latent eroticism reveals that uncertainty - as does the final stanza of the compasses conceit. He fears that they could stay apart after his absence. 

Othello: The Temptation Scene

A ct 111 scene iii of Othello is often referred to as the Temptation Scene, although this is not a particularly good title. It is the lengthy scene, broken in the middle, in which Iago manipulates Othello into believing that his wife, Desdemona, is unfaithful to him with Cassio. I do not intend to examine Iago's villainous methods but to draw attention to two points in the dialogue. I will then argue against the reading that the eponymous hero's actions are governed primarily by jealousy. 

The first crux is the moment at which Othello is convinced (l. 210):

Iago: ... when she seem'd to shake and fear your looks,

She lov'd them most.

Othello:                    And so she did.

Iago:                                                   Why, go to then.

Well acted, the Moor's voice takes a downward cast on: "And so she did", to indicate that this is his moment of capitulation. If the broken line is taken as one, there is an extra iambic foot to give it resonance. It is the fact that Desdemona has been capable of deception in the past that convinces him. This revelation is his gnawing fear.

The second crux is his statement: "Othello's occupation's gone", preceded by a detailed mourning for the sounds and glories of war. This argues against the interpretation that his main obsession is jealousy. That, in itself, would not entail the abandonment of a thrilling and renowned career. 

Othello connects his wife's honour with his own: her virtue and his wartime laurels are one and the same. If she is unfaithful, he cannot be a true soldier. It is noticeable that Shakespeare has taken as his protagonist a military personage of high rank - not a royal. Also, the man who deceives him is a colleague and cannot be suspected of lying. In fact, Othello believes that Iago is holding back some details of Desdemona's infidelity out of a sense of comradeship in arms.

Although jealousy is a part of his motivation, it is Othello's loss of his identity as a leading soldier that affects him more. Note that it is Iago who puts the notion of "the green-ey'd monster into Othello's mind. That will poison the marriage and that is his aim.  

King Lear: the opening scene

 In a speech of the Chorus in Antigone, by Jean Anouilh, there are these lines:

"The spring is wound up tight. I will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient about tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do it."

One of the best examples of how this works occurs in the first scene of King Lear and the "turn of the wrist" is Cordelia's answer: "Nothing."

It is accepted that this refusal to play the game set up by Lear to award her the best share of his kingdom is what triggers the horrific chaos that follows. What is often overlooked is the exact wording of the question to which that is her answer. 

Lear does not merely ask her to state her love; his precise words are:

"what can you say to draw

A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak."

Although there is a line break, the requirement is for her to make an effusive speech in order to get more wealth. It is a request for more flattery to obtain more land - and that is what Cordelia cannot do. There is something of the tight-lipped schoolgirl about her and she is disgusted at her sisters' florid pronouncements but what she rebels against is the demand that she, too, should be meretricious. She rejects it at the level of the question itself.

Lear continues and underlines his message by stating that, "Nothing will come of nothing." If she does not speak, she will receive no land. Her response, that she loves him according to her bond, is not cold and heartless - since the concept of a bond ran very deep in the idea of a Chain of Being in which everything was held tightly its place in a hierarchy. She obeys him as King, loves him as father and honours him as an elderly man: that is profound and resonant. It is a triple and tenacious bond.

It could be argued that the spring of tragedy is uncoiled because of the wording of the question. Lear asks the one person who could truly express her love in the one way that she could not fulfil. 

Hamlet's delay

 Much has been written about why Hamlet delays in taking his revenge on his uncle for the murder of his father but I want to suggest a different approach - in outline. He is not a typical revenge tragedy hero. 

On one level Hamlet has perfectly rational grounds for not acting immediately after his encounter with the ghost: it might be an emissary of the devil and untrustworthy. Once he has tested its veracity by the play, The Mouse-trap, the king has his Swiss guards around him. The only opportunity is when Claudius is praying and - although it might be rationalisation - Hamlet does not want to send his uncle's soul to heaven. Then he is shipped off to England. 

The problem occurs, not because he procrastinates, but because he constantly draws attention to that fact. In effect, Hamlet keeps saying: "I am delaying. Why?" Without the four soliloquies, the play would be much more straightforward. It would be the drama of an appointed avenger who waits until all is clear but is killed himself when he finally acts. What Shakespeare gives us is much more complicated: a sick psyche and - arguably - the first European tragedy of character. Greek tragedy has the concept of a crime in the body politic, such as a murder, needing to be purged. (Denmark resembles Argos after the killing of Agamemnon). In our play, repeated disease imagery links the ailing mind of the eponymous character to the illness in the state. As a result of his inner malady, Hamlet is extreme in his reactions to his mother, (unable to leave her sinful guilt to heaven, as instructed), and to Ophelia. His view of life, man and woman is poisoned. The outcome is good destroyed along with evil. 

Contemporary audiences would have recognised melancholia, a disordered product of too much black bile, but the presentation of Hamlet's mind, soul and heart is more complex, modern and mysterious than that medical diagnosis. 

Originality and authority

 Nowadays we value originality, the individual's novel thinking or being inspired with a new thought or image.

I make that statement less confidently than I would have done, even 5 years ago, because of the ubiquitous use of AI, which ensures that so much on the internet looks and reads the same. No sooner does a person ask to check a fact than AI offers to write a text or provide an image. I always tell it - quite bluntly - that I will use my own brain, photographs and images but many people accept. The result is a bland similarity that masks any unique personality, voice or idea. Rant over!

If we look at the Preamble to the Wife of Bath's Tale in Chaucer's  The Canterbury Tales, (not her portrait in the General Prologue), we see that she starts by distinguishing between experience and authority. By this she means that she has learned from the school of life rather than from recognised and revered texts. She continues - at length - to defend this position, interpreting classical and biblical references to her own end, the defence of her many marriages. Although she has denied the importance of authorities, she shows her own familiarity with them - but her gloss on them is undeniably humorous.. Had women written the texts, she claims, there would have been emphasis on the evil of men. Comic she may be - but she is right!

It was when her fifth husband, Jankin, (with whom she fell truly in love at her previous husband's funeral because of his shapely legs and feet) read to her from his book of wicked wives that she became incensed. The work was full of classical references to misbehaving women which enraged her. 

What this goes to show is that, until comparatively recently in historical terms, knowledge of the classics and the Bible was held in higher esteem than creative talent. Shakespeare borrowed many of his plots and this was not considered to be plagiarism. 

Perhaps it was Romanticism that altered that sense of priority, with its emphasis on the individual and inspiration, like an Aeolian harp, gifting a writer with ideas. Originality became important - let us not squander it by laziness and copying from AI. 

A vital speech in Shakespeare

 Troilus and Cressida is not Shakespeare's best known play nor is it his most accessible. Yet it contains one speech which reveals much contemporary (and previous) thinking and belief. Ulysses describes in detail the chaos which would result from an essential hierarchy being destroyed, the widely held view of world order that I (following Pope, Lovejoy and Tillyard) have termed the Great Chain of Being in a previous post.

Strictly, the speech should be set in its dramatic and historical context with Ulysses having a political agendum concerning Achilles - and so any decoding should bear that in mind. He delivers the relevant part of this oration in Act I scene iii beginning at line 83: "Degree being vizarded" and continues until l. 134: "pale and bloodless emulation".  

In the main section of the speech, he orates about the consequences of degree being overturned. This would be like the steps of a ladder being disassembled and chaos resulting. The sun, Sol, is properly like a king of the planets, but, if this position of power were lost and concord thereby disrupted, the earth would be subject to sea storms, earthquakes and all manner of horrors. The microcosm of human life is reflected reciprocally by the macrocosm of the heavens, which is why celestial portents were so feared, in case they heralded a disaster. (Note the derivation of that word). The imagery is of the discord caused when a string is untuned. 

Ulysses then declaims about the loss of degree or hierarchy in human society which would cause total disorder and render "peaceful commerce" unworkable, mirrored by the waters overwhelming dry land.  This leads to the crucial section where justice falls apart, sons murder fathers and any moral sense of right and wrong is no more. Man would become akin to an animal, a "universal wolf" because he would be driven by appetite, will and power with no restraints set by reason, the faculty which should separate humanity from beasts. The result would be uncontrollable competition. Overall, it is a terrifying picture - but one with a political aim.

I will leave you to read this speech for yourself and consider how the concept, although special to one situation, can shed light on other texts: King Lear's abdication would be one complex example. 

Using a Thesaurus - for students

I have already posted about banning words like upset and incredibly in a literary essay. If I had my way they'd be made illegal in everyday life! That's because they are so ubiquitous and bland that they remove all the process of thinking how to write or talk sense. AI constantly says something is incredible when it wants you to believe it. Nonsense! We don't use AI to help us to write though, do we?

What else can be used instead of the adjective upset? If I turn to Roget's Thesaurus I find plenty of other expressions, some of which I have formed from the verbs given. (Not alternatives because that means one of two). Here are some of them:

troubled, embarrassed, discomfited, worried, afflicted, distressed, traumatised, harrowed, shocked, appalled, frightened, distraught, horrified, pained, wounded, nettled, embittered, offended, tormented, vexed, depressed.

If you feel confident about their meaning, tone and register (whether formal or slang for example), go ahead and use one of them, storing it in your memory. If you are uncertain, wait until you have encountered the term a few times in your general reading. There are also dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms that can help to widen your working vocabulary range. You want your essays to stand out from the crowd and a more precise use of words will do it.