Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  We are a merry rout, or else a rabble

  Or company, or by a figure Chorus,

  That 'fore thy dignity will dance a morris.

  —Act III, scene v, lines 105-7

  The "morris dance" was part of the May Day celebration. In its origins it was probably some kind of magical rite, involving men in the guise of animals, who are shot at. This may have been a way of ensuring successful hunting, and there may also have been included some general fertility rituals, involving a King and Queen of the May.

  Indeed, the schoolmaster mentions them when he enumerates the company. He himself appears first, he says, and then:

  The next the Lord of May, and Lady bright,

  —Act III, scene v, line 124

  There were other characters as well, including one at least who made the fertility nature of the celebration unmistakable. He was a farcical fool called the "Bavian" who was equipped with a tail which perhaps showed his descent from the tailed satyrlike fertility spirits of the wildwood. The schoolmaster, in preparing his muster earlier, was concerned lest the fool go too far, for he said:

  Where's the Bavian?

  My friend, carry your tail without offense

  Or scandal to the ladies;

  —Act HI, scene v, lines 33-35

  But it is clear that the tail is not the only appendage the Bavian has. He has a phallus too, and a prominent one, which can scarcely avoid giving offense if the ladies are in the least delicate. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster in introducing the company before Theseus and his party officiously points out what needs no pointing out:

  … and next the Fool, The Bavian

  with long tail, and eke long tool,

  —Act III, scene v, lines 130-31

  Perhaps to lessen the pagan character of the May Day celebration and reduce churchly opposition, new and popular characters were introduced in the form of Robin Hood and Maid Marian (as the King and Queen of the May) together with other members of his band. After all, Robin hunted deer and so completely lived in the forest as to be considered almost a spirit of the wildwood. He would fit the celebration, and his popularity would help make the morris dance respectable.

  Why morris dance, by the way? One theory is that the dance was brought in from Spain in the time of King Edward III (when his son, the Black Prince, campaigned for a time in that land; see page II-260). It was, according to that view, a Moorish military dance, and from Moorish dance to morris dance is but a step. Another theory is that the dancers blacked themselves as part of their disguise and were Moorish in that sense.

  The dance, when given, adds another bit of pageantry to the play.

  By Castor. ..

  Arcite and Palamon are now ready for their duel. They help each other into armor with every sign of affection and with mutual praise, but they fight in earnest, for the requirements of courtly love are that a knight must sacrifice all else.

  Theseus and his company, still hunting, come upon the duelers. Theseus is furious, for dueling is against the law. He says, angrily, even before he knows the identity of the fighters:

  By Castor, both shall die.

  —Act III, scene vi, line 137

  It is unusual to swear by Castor alone, for he is one of an inseparable pair, Castor and Polydeuces (or Pollux). They were twin brothers who were the model of fraternal affection. They were born of Leda and were brothers of Helen, whose beauty later caused the Trojan War.

  To swear by Castor is inappropriate for another reason, for Castor and his twin brother were contemporaries of Theseus and were still alive. They had not yet attained the status of gods.

  In any case, Theseus' vow does not stand. Everyone, Pirithous, Hippolyta, and Emilia, pleads with him to let the warriors fight it out. Since Emilia refuses to choose between them but offers to accept the winner- quite in line with the conventions of courtly love-Theseus gives them a month's grace and then each, accompanied by three friends apiece, can join battle formally for the hand of the lady.

  … as Iris

  The Jailer's mad Daughter is back at home now and her faithful Wooer comes anxiously to learn of her. He had seen her roaming the countryside in her madness and had found her as beautiful

  … as Iris

  Newly dropped down from heaven.

  -Act IV, scene i, lines 87-88

  The name "Iris" means "rainbow" and she was the representation of that phenomenon. Since the rainbow seems like a delicate bridge in the sky, it was easy to imagine that it served as a route between heaven and earth. From the route itself, the name was applied to a messenger who plied that route, and Iris was therefore a messenger, carrying divine orders to mortals and serving Juno (Hera) in particular.

  .. wanton Ganymede

  Emilia has her problems. She is distressed that either Palamon or Arcite should die for her. She could prevent it if only she could choose between them, but she can't She has a picture of each, and each she in turns admires. Of Arcite, she says:

  Just such another wanton Ganymede

  Set Jove a-fire with and enforced the god

  Snatch up the goodly boy.. .

  —Act IV, scene ii, lines 15-16

  Ganymede, in the Greek myths, was a beautiful Trojan prince, with whom Jupiter (Zeus) fell in love. Jupiter took on the guise of an eagle and carried Ganymede off, taking him to heaven where he became the wine pourer of the gods. This is another case of homosexuality attributed to the gods, as in the case of Apollo and Hyacinthus (see page I-15)-this time of Jupiter himself.

  The use of Jove for Jupiter, as in this passage, is common. Jove is from a Latin word that means simply "god."

  … Pelops" shoulder

  Of Arcite's brow, Emilia goes on to say that it is

  Arched like the great-eyed Juno's, but far sweeter,

  Smoother than Pelops" shoulder!

  —Act IV, scene ii, lines 20-21

  Pelops was the son whom Tantalus killed and served as food for the gods (see page I-13). The gods recognized what was being served them and, with one exception, did not eat of the food. The exception was Deme-ter, who, sorrowing over Proserpina (see page I-7), had absent-mindedly eaten some of the shoulder. The gods, in bringing Pelops back to life, replaced the missing part with ivory so that Pelops' shoulder served, in literature, as a standard for smoothness.

  —But then Emilia looks at Palamon's picture and thinks he is equally wonderful. She cannot choose.

  … a piece of silver. ..

  While this is going on, the Jailer has brought a doctor to treat his mad daughter. All she can do is talk of Palamon, nothing but Palamon. She thinks Palamon is dead and that in the next world Dido will abandon Aeneas (see page I-20) for Palamon's sake. The reference to Dido is as anachronistic here as it was in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

  She seems to be thinking of death herself, to join Palamon in the after-world. This requires certain rites, of course:

  … you must bring a piece of silver

  on the tip of your tongue, or no ferry.

  —Act IV, scene iii, lines 19-21

  The Greeks felt that Charon, the ferrier of the underworld, would not take a shade over the Styx River into Hades unless he were paid, and for the purpose a small coin was usually placed in the corpse's mouth.

  … pick flowers with Proserpine …

  The Daughter imagines that once in the Elysian Fields (see page I-13), all would be well:

  we shall come there, and do nothing all day long

  but pick flowers with Proserpine.

  Then will I make Palamon a nose gay…

  —Act IV, scene iii, lines 24-26

  Proserpina was picking flowers when she was carried off by Hades (see page I-7) and that action is therefore associated with her.

  The doctor, listening to all this, decides that the only way the Daughter can possibly be cajoled out of her madness is to let her think she has Palamon. He therefore urges the Wooer to play the part of Palamon in all possible ways. The Wooer agrees and the Daughter accepts him in
this role. Mad or not, the play ends happily for these two.

  … methought Alcides…

  The tournament between the knights led by Arcite and by Palamon is ready to begin, and in the fifth act Shakespeare's pen takes over for heavy pageantry. Both warriors must offer prayer to the gods. Arcite chooses to pray to Mars (Ares), the god of war, and receives the approval of his request for victory in the form of a short burst of thunder.

  Palamon chooses to pray not to Mars but to Venus, the goddess of love (a wiser choice by the rules of courtly love), and he receives a positive sign too, in the form of music and doves.

  Emilia prays also, to the virginal Diana (Artemis), asking that the one who best loves her should win her. She receives an answer as the sole rose falls from a rosebush.

  The tournament is nip and tuck, but it is fought offstage. At first the cries seem to make Palamon the winner, but in the end it is Arcite by a narrow margin and Mars's omen is fulfilled.

  Theseus greatly admires both. Palamon, the loser, is highly praised:

  … methought Alcides was To him a sow of lead.

  —Act V, scene iii, lines 119-20

  Greeks generally had a single name. There was considerable chance of duplication, therefore, and it was necessary to identify people by their native cities or by their father's name. One might say "Diomedes, son of Tydeus" (see page I-57), or simply "son of Tydeus," as another way of referring to Diomedes. In Greek fashion, "son of Tydeus" would be "Tydides."

  It was difficult to call Hercules by the name of his father, since he was the son of Jupiter, who had come to his mother Alcmene in the guise of her husband Amphitryon. With Amphitryon notoriously cuckolded, the myth-makers could scarcely call him "Amphitryonides." They evaded the issue by naming him for his grandfather, Alcaeus, Amphitryon's father. He is therefore called Alcides.

  And yet though Arcite has won the battle by Mars's grace, Palamon wins the lady by Venus' grace. Arcite, in triumph, mounts a horse who, through accident, throws him and falls upon him. Arcite is brought onstage, dying, and gives his right to Emilia to Palamon. This is justified by Theseus' statement that Arcite had admitted, after all, that Palamon had seen the lady first.

  With that, all the rules of courtly love are satisfied and the play can come to an end.

  4. The History of Trolius And Cressida

  The most famous event in the early history of Greece was the Trojan War, fought a generation after the time of Theseus-or shortly before 1200 b.c. Concerning that war, we have only the legendary tale told by Homer, a Greek poet who supposedly lived in the ninth century b.c.

  Whether Homer actually lived, or whether the poems ascribed to him were written by one man or many, has exercised the ingenuity of literary critics for over two thousand years, but that is not the sort of problem that concerns us here.

  What does concern us is that the Homeric poems have (along with the Bible and Shakespeare's plays) been the most notable and influential works of literature ever produced in the Western world, and that in 1601 Shakespeare wrote his own version of the Homeric tale.

  Shakespeare was by no means the first, nor was he the last, to do a version of Homer.

  Homer's poem may have first been put together about 850 b.c. and have been sung or recited by bard after bard, the tale being carried or from generation to generation through oral tradition. About 500 B.c it was carefully edited by Athenian scholars and placed into the form we now have.

  Homer tells the tale of but a single episode in the long Trojan War which, according to legend, lasted ten years. The episode takes place in the tenth and last year and deals with a quarrel between two of the Greek leaders, with the near disaster that befalls the Greek cause as a result, and with the dramatic reconciliation that follows after all the participants have suffered tragic losses.

  In the course of the epic, hints are given as to events that took place before the incident of the quarrel and of events that were to take place after the reconciliation. The popularity of Homer's tale led later Greek poets and dramatists to try their hand at telling other portions of the tale based on Homer's references and on other legends then extant but no surviving today.

  Other ancient writers even tried retelling the tale of the quarrel itself in their own way, and the habit of doing so continued through the Middle Ages and into modern times. In 1925, for instance, the American write:

  John Erskine published The Private Life of Helen of Troy, putting the tale of Troy into twentieth-century idiom.

  Shakespeare tried his hand at it too, producing, alas, a play that is not considered one of his better productions and is by no means worthy of the grand original.

  In Troy …

  Shakespeare chooses to tell (more or less) the same incident that concerns Homer, which means that he too must concentrate on the final stages of a long siege. Where Homer was dealing with incidents in a war which (in his time) must have been well known to all Greeks, with its heroes' names being household words, Shakespeare was not quite in the same position.

  Educated Englishmen in Shakespeare's time knew of the Trojan War, but chiefly through writings on the subject in Roman and medieval times. It was only toward the end of the sixteenth century that Homer's poem itself was translated into English by George Chapman (whose work inspired a famous sonnet by John Keats two centuries later). At the time Troilus and Cressida was being written, only a third of that translation had yet appeared, so it is doubtful how much firsthand knowledge of Homer's actual tale Shakespeare himself had and how much he had to depend on later (and distorted) versions of the Troy tale.

  Shakespeare did not apparently feel safe in starting, as Homer did, toward the end of the war, and inserts a somewhat apologetic Prologue to set the stage. The Prologue begins directly:

  In Troy there lies the scene.

  —Prologue, line 1

  The name of the walled city which endured the long siege was, apparently, Ilion (or Ilium, in the Latin spelling). Homer's poem is therefore called the Iliad. The region in which Ilium was located was known as Troas or the Troad, and from this, the city took the alternate name of Troia. It is the English form of this latter name, Troy, that is most familiar to us.

  It is over three thousand years now since Troy was destroyed and yet, thanks to Homer, its name remains forever fresh to us.

  Indeed, it remained fresh and alive through a period in early modern times when skeptical scholars considered the Trojan War to have been purely mythical and were sure that no city of Troy had ever existed. Considering that Homer filled his tale with gods, goddesses, monsters, and wonders, it was easy to feel skepticism.

  However, after all the overlay of the marvellous has been scraped away, a core remains and, as it turns out, that core has value.

  A German businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, who implicitly believed the essential truth of the Iliad (minus its gods), amassed wealth and in the late nineteenth century used it to go to Greece and Turkey, where he hoped to dig up the ruins of Troy and some of the great Greek cities of the time. From the 1860s to his death in 1890, he achieved phenomenal success, locating the site of Troy and other places mentioned in the Iliad.

  Historians now know quite a bit about the early phase of Greek history, which they call the Mycenaean Age. From what they have learned, we find that Homer's tale is a surprisingly faithful rendering (though with a few anachronisms) of Mycenaean society. Historians are now just as certain that there was a siege of Troy, as a century ago they were certain there was not.

  … isles of Greece The Prologue goes on to describe those who were attacking Troy:

  From isles of Greece

  The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,

  Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,

  —Prologue, lines 1-3

  According to the legend, it was a combined expedition of Greek forces drawn from all the petty kingdoms that were then to be found in Greece. In theory, all acknowledged an overlord who ruled in the southern portion of the peninsu
la and it was this overlord who acted as commander in chief of the expedition.

  The overlordship was not tight, however, and the leaders of the various contingents were very aware of their own rights and privileges. There was a strong resemblance between the situation in Mycenaean Greece and that in medieval Europe, where a king was titular overlord but could only with the greatest difficulty induce his various dukes and counts to obey him. Shakespeare was not so far removed from this stage of history to fail to understand it, hence his reference to the princes "orgulous"; that is, "haughty."

  The Greek forces, coming from various regions, had to meet at some gathering place to form a unified fleet. According to legend, that meeting place was at Aulis, a harbor in Boeotia, protected by the long island of Euboea (see page I-59).

  Shakespeare here makes the gathering place Athens, which is incorrect

  … toward Phrygia

  Having gathered, the united fleet now moves on across the Aegean Sea toward Troy. The total number of ships is given:

  … Sixty and nine, that wore

  Their crownets regal, from th'Athenian bay

  Put forth toward Phrygia;

  —Prologue, lines 5-7