Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears, for his love; joy, for his fortune; honor, for his valor; and death, for his ambition. (3.2.22–29)
This is not a properly spoken style.
Brutus’s rhetorical questions make for what we think of as an impersonal speech:
Who is here so base, that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude, that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile, that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply. (3.2.29–34)
Brutus’s oration is essentially a political speech that contrasts what rude barbarians might think with the love of Romans for their country. Like Brutus’s soliloquy in act 2, scene 1—“Then lest he [Caesar] may, prevent” (2.1.28)—the reasoning in the funeral oration is thoroughly specious. We are reminded that every decision Brutus makes in the play—not to kill Antony, to let him deliver a funeral oration, to fight the battle of Phillipi—turns out to be wrong.
Antony’s funeral oration for the dead Caesar is very different from Brutus’s, but it is also conceived in a recognizably Roman style. It imitates spoken discourse, as Antony says: “I am no orator, as Brutus is; / But (as you know me all) a plain blunt man” (3.2.217–18).
Antony’s declaration anticipates what Iago will say in relation to Othello. Of course, Antony is not a “plain blunt man” at all, but he imitates one with great success. Notice how many monosyllabic lines there are in Antony’s oration: nine- and ten-word lines. Antony forswears rhetoric in a style that is in itself highly calculated and rhetorical:
For I have neither writ, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech
To stir men’s blood; I only speak right on.
I tell you that which you yourselves do know. (3.2.221–24)
Antony is cunningly denying the very purpose of his speech: “To stir men’s blood,” or to work up the mob’s frenzied appetite for chaos and revenge. At the end, Antony denies responsibility for his speech’s effect: “Now let it work: Mischief, thou art afoot, / Take thou what course thou wilt” 3.2.261–62). Incidentally, Antony is not above using a brief apostrophe to Mischief as a personified entity.
The upshot of Antony’s oration is felt in the proscription scene, which is an epitome of the simple and direct Roman style, here seen as intensely impersonal, cruel, and political. The scene opens with a discussion of the enemies of the state on the list to die:
Antony. These many then shall die; their names are pricked.
Octavius. Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?
Lepidus, I do consent—
Octavius. Prick him down, Antony.
Lepidus. Upon condition Publius shall not live,
Who is your sister’s son, Mark Antony.
Antony. He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him. (4.1.1–6)
The horror is that it is all so simple. Lives can be traded away with a mere checkmark on a list. It is in this scene, too, that Antony and Octavius agree to eliminate Lepidus, who is a mere “property” (4.1.40). It is all decided quickly and without emotion.
The most moving scene in the play is the quarrel scene (4.3) between Brutus and Cassius. This shows how effective the Roman style can be without any resort to figurative language or lyric outbursts. The previous scene prepares us for the quarrel. Cassius feels wronged by his “noble brother,” that Brutus’s “sober form . . . hides wrongs” (4.2.40), but Brutus is indomitable in his conviction of being morally right. So the quarrel begins with Brutus lording it over Cassius.
Brutus is trying to demonstrate what it means to be a true Roman, who participated in the murder of Caesar for ethical reasons:
Remember March, the ides of March remember.
Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake?
What villain touched his body, that did stab,
And not for justice? What, shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers, shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the might space of our large honors
For so much trash as may be graspèd thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman. (4.3.18–28)
Brutus is supercilious in his moral superiority to Cassius, who never denies any of Brutus’s charges. Brutus freely condemns Cassius’s “rash choler” (4.3.39), his “testy humor” (4.3.46), and his “waspish” (4.3.50) disposition, putting him on the defensive. Brutus can ignore Cassius’s idle threats because he is “armed so strong in honesty / That they pass by me as the idle wind” (4.3.67–68).
There is a sharp break in the tone of the quarrel with the revelation that Brutus’s wife, Portia, is dead:
Cassius. I did not think you could have been so angry.
Brutus. O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.
Cassius. Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.
Brutus. No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.
Cassius. Ha? Portia?
Brutus. She is dead. (4.3.140–46)
Brutus and Cassius are both represented as Stoics, who, it was popularly believed, were immune to the tribulations of fortune. Brutus steels himself, as we would expect from a proper Roman, from expressing his personal grief. The blank verse lines here tend to be monosyllabic. Brutus is a public figure, and there is no room for expressing private emotions, no matter how intense.
In the second announcement of Portia’s death by Messala (which may well be a textual mistake), there is a similar Stoic and Roman impassivity:
Brutus. Now as you are a Roman, tell me true.
Messala. Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell.
For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.
Brutus. Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala.
With meditating that she must die once,
I have the patience to endure it now. (4.3.184–89)
This is very like the first time that Brutus learns of his wife’s death. “Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala” is unlike Shakespeare’s long and eloquent death speeches (as in Hamlet), but it is moving in its simplicity and Stoic spareness.
One other notable aspect of the quarrel scene is the entrance of an unnamed poet, who seeks to reconcile Brutus and Cassius. But they both find the poet equally unwelcome. Cassius says: “Ha, ha! How vilely doth this cynic rhyme!” (4.3.130), although we don’t hear the poet say anything once he has appeared. Brutus is more emphatic in his rejection: “What should the wars do with these jigging fools?” (4.3.134). This is a comment not only on the poet but also on the Roman style, which has nothing to do with “jigging” speech. This is like the treatment of Cinna the Poet in act 3, scene 3, which immediately follows Antony’s funeral oration. It is useless for Cinna to protest that he is Cinna the Poet and not Cinna the Conspirator. The uncontrollable plebeian mob, fresh from Antony’s oration, are out for blood—“Tear him for his bad verses! Tear him for his bad verses!” (3.3.32–33)—and further: “It is no matter, his name’s Cinna; pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going” (3.3.35–37). This is frighteningly political, as is the proscription scene (4.1) that follows. The Roman style is meant to accommodate itself to the harsh realities of the Roman world.
Chapter 17
Jaques as Satiric Observer
in As You Like It
Shakespeare has a number of characters who function as satiric observers and commentators in their plays: Lucio in Measure for Measure, Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, and Apemantus in Timon of Athens. These are not particularly attractive characters, but they serve as
truth-speakers in their respective plays. Jaques is like Touchstone, the clown, in satirizing artificial pastoral conventions and romantic affirmations. They are clearly not like the exiled Duke Senior, who speaks so positively of his pastoral existence in the Forest of Arden:
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything. (2.1.12–17)
Jaques is a malcontent, a figure out of the violent satiric poetry of the 1590s, which the Bishops decided to forbid. Orlando bids him farewell as “good Monsieur Melancholy” (3.2.294–95), and act 4, scene 1 opens with an extended dialogue between Jaques and Rosalind in which he acknowledges that “’tis good to be sad and say nothing” (4.1). He seems proud of his own unique melancholy, which is unlike that of the scholar, the musician, the courtier, the soldier, the lady, or the lover: “it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness” (4.1.15–19). His “sadness” is “humorous” in the sense that it is composed primarily of an effusion of black bile. At the end of the play, Jaques decides to remain in the Forest of Arden because “There is much matter to be heard and learned” from these “convertites” (5.4.185). Presumably he is referring to Duke Frederick, who “hath put on a religious life / And thrown into neglect the pompous court” (5.4.181–82).
The name Jaques is pronounced “Jakes,” the word for a toilet, although it may also be pronounced with a light second syllable (“Jak-is”). “Qu” is always pronounced like a “k” in Elizabethan English. Sir John Harington, the translator of Ariosto, wrote an amusing little book called The Metamorphosis of Ajax in 1596, which is a mock-heroic account, with illustrations, of the early invention of the toilet (Ajax = a jakes). That is apparently why Touchstone doesn’t call Jaques by his proper name but addresses him as “good Master What-ye-call’t” (3.3.72–73). All of these indications establish Jaques as a comic character, a kind of entertainer of the exiled court. Duke Senior seeks him out, as he might seek out the fool, and asserts: “I love to cope him in these sullen fits, / For then he’s full of matter” (2.1.67–68).
There is a certain absurdity when we first encounter Jaques and hear about his “weeping and commenting / Upon the sobbing deer” (2.1.65–66). He “moralizes” upon the deer in a manner that parodies sentimental effusions. For example, when the “careless herd” of deer pass by the wounded deer without pausing to greet him, Jaques the moralist interprets this in human terms:
“Ay,” quoth Jaques,
“Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens,
’Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?” (2.1.54–57)
The sentimentality of Jaques’s anthropomorphic views is what Duke Senior and his court find so entertaining. As the First Lord observes with amusement:
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse,
To fright the animals and to kill them up
In their assigned and native dwelling place. (2.1.58–63)
Jaques is enamored with Touchstone, the fool, and he insists that he have the fool’s allowed privilege of playing the role of the satirist:
I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please, for so fools have.
And they that are most gallèd with my folly,
They most must laugh. (2.7.47–51)
Touchstone says nothing in the play about the fool’s therapeutic social role, but Jaques is voluble about what it means to be a fool:
Invest me in my motley, give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of th’ infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine. (2.7.58–61)
But why should the world be so receptive to Jaques?
Duke Senior doesn’t take Jaques seriously as a moral satirist, and he usefully reminds us of Jaques’s history:
Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin.
For thou thyself hast been a libertine,
As sensual as the brutish sting itself;
And all th’ embossèd sores and headed evils
That thou with license of free foot hast caught,
Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world. (2.7.64–69)
This is a valuable undercutting of Jaques shortly before he delivers his famous speech on the seven ages of man.
Granted that “All the world’s a stage” (2.7.138), but Jaques is cynical and sour about man’s life. Every stage is represented satirically, beginning with the infant “Mewling [bawling] and puking in the nurse’s arms” (2.7.143). In a play devoted to the seriousness of love, Jaques disparages the lover: “Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress’ eyebrow” (2.7.147–48). The last age, “That ends this strange eventful history, / Is second childishness and mere [utter] oblivion, / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” (2.7.163–65). Despite the fact that this speech is usually quoted as an example of Shakespeare’s cynical profundity, in Jaques’s mouth it is a shallow and laughable set piece.
The last line of the speech is a good example of Jaques’s affected speech. We know from Love’s Labor’s Lost that “sans” is a precious sounding gallicism. In pleading for his sincerity in wanting to be married, Berowne says: “My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw,” but Rosaline will have none of his posturing: “Sans ‘sans,’ I pray you” (5.2.416–17). Another notable example is in Jaques’s parody song in act 2, scene 5:
If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame.
Here shall he see gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me. (2.5.46–51)
Amiens doesn’t understand: “What’s that ‘ducdame’”?, but Jaques says only “’Tis a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle” (2.5.55–56). Is “ducdame” nonsensical doubletalk, as Feste speaks in Twelfth Night? The whole poem is, in fact, doggerel nonsense.
In the same scene, Jaques asks Amiens to continue singing: “Come, more, another stanzo! Call you ’em stanzos?” (2.5.17–18). “Stanzo” is an affected Italianism for the plain English word “stanza.” So it goes. Jaques, a follower of the exiled Duke Senior, makes himself indispensable in As You Like It. We feel as if the role of Touchstone as fool is doubled, since Jaques is devoted to Touchstone and wants to be invested in his motley cloak. If Jaques cannot be the fool proper, he is nevertheless a highly original, satirical commentator on the action.
Chapter 18
Feste as Corrupter of Words
in Twelfth Night
When Viola asks Feste the clown if he is Lady Olivia’s fool, he vigorously denies the name:
No, indeed, sir. The Lady Olivia has no folly. She will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands as pilchers [small herrings] are to herrings—the husband’s the bigger. I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words. (3.1.33–37)
Feste’s verbal dexterity is astounding, and he ranges from double-talk and learned nonsense to outright parody, to puns and wordplay, and to acting many roles, including Sir Topas the curate, who comes to cure the “mad” Malvolio. Feste is conscious of words in and for themselves and their fashionable usage. For example, his answer to Viola in 3.1 makes fun not only of the archaic term “welkin” for sky but also of the newfangled word “element”: �
�Who you are and what you would are out of my welkin; I might say ‘element,’ but the word is overworn” (3.1.58–60). We remember that Malvolio uses the pretentious word “element” a bit further on in act 3: “You are idle shallow things; I am not of your element” (3.4.127–28). The foolish Sir Andrew is busy writing down Feste’s remarkable lexicon in his notebook. He is Feste’s inordinate admirer (as is Jaques with Touchstone in As You Like It). Sir Andrew remembers exactly what Feste said the evening before: “In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spok’st of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus” (2.3.21–24).
Commentators have puzzled over what Feste could possibly mean, but it is all probably his own mock-learning, expressed in parodic double-talk. His reply to Sir Andrew continues the satirical language coining of his last night’s performance: “I did impeticos thy gratillity, for Malvolio’s nose is no whipstock. My lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses” (2.3.26–28). This is more or less comprehensible—“gratillity” is Feste’s coinage for “gratuity”—but the naïve Sir Andrew is duly impressed by these language games.
There is another good example of Feste’s verbal facility when he is talking with Olivia in act 1, scene 5: “Wit, and’t be thy will, put me into good fooling. Those wits that think they have thee do very often prove fools, and I that am sure I lack thee may pass for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus? ‘Better a witty fool than a foolish wit’” (1.5.33–37). Quinapalus is an invented Latin authority, probably related to Quintilian, the writer on rhetoric. The clown delights in quoting from nonexistent texts, and he is, at best, a tricky speaker, pursuing his own themes at the expense of his listeners.
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