Preoccupations

Shakespeare and Southampton

Back in April, 2002, Anthony Holden, writing in The Observer, introduced the wider world to an Elizabethan portrait, owned by the Cobbe family, believed to be of Lady Norton, daughter of the Bishop of Winton.

Then came the day, only a few years ago, when Alastair Laing, the National Trust's adviser on art and sculpture, told Cobbe he believed the portrait was not of a woman, but of a young man apparently dressed as a woman. Cobbe was intrigued. As he researched his family history for a recent exhibition of its treasures at Kenwood House in London, under the auspices of English Heritage, he wondered who this effeminate young man might be. In the process, he discovered previously unknown connections between his own family and the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton, dating back to Elizabethan times and beyond. But it was not until earlier this year, he says, after the Kenwood exhibition had closed, that 'the penny finally dropped. Suddenly I realised that the face reminded me of pictures I had seen during my research into my family's history. "My God," I thought, "could this be the third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron and, perhaps, his lover?"'

Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton (1573–1624), was painted on a number of occasions. Here is a detail of a particularly well-known portrait:

Jonathan Bate has some reflections on these portraits and the Sonnets.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets received great praise when it appeared in 1997:

From time to time, a work of criticism appears that promises to inaugurate a new phase of the art. ... now Helen Vendler... makes a bold attempt to change criticism again. Her ambitious chef d'oeuvre, the fruit of decades of memorizing and meditating on Shakespeare's Sonnets, significantly takes the form of a critical commentary. ... She has chosen her topic strategically. The Sonnets is the supreme lyric masterpiece in English, yet, although often edited, it has been neglected critically, as if too challenging and demanding, too dangerous for direct response. Yet Vendler's originality goes further. For she has decided to return criticism to the study of art; to the sort of response that leads to appreciative evaluation rather than manipulation. ... The rapid adumbration of Shakespeare's variety is as brilliant as anything Vendler has written. But in commenting on each individual sonnet in turn, she surpasses herself, again and again making fresh observations on poems we thought familiar. In almost any other critic this would be a tour de force. But in her it is simply honest empiricism, free from any agenda but that of being receptive. (Alastair Fowler, Times Literary Supplement)

This book is a great achievement, the work of an author with an almost devout passion for good poems, a passion that the academy has not succeeded in killing. (Frank Kermode, New Republic)

Read Vendler on Sonnet 1 and Sonnet 30.

Metre in English Poetry

Lesson for a Boy

Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long; —
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng;
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride; —
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.
If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise,
And delight in the things of earth, water, and skies;
Tender warmth at his heart, with these metres to show it,
With sound sense in his brains, may make Derwent a poet,
May crown him with fame, and must win him the love
Of his father on earth and his Father above.
My dear, dear child!
Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole ridge
See a man who so loves you as your fond S. T. Coleridge.

1806

Feet: monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter.

Enobarbus

Some notes on and views of this enigmatic figure of such importance to Antony and Cleopatra. (Also available here as a PDF file. Requires Acrobat Reader; can then be saved to your computer.)

Furthermore, he dealt very friendly and courteously with Domitius, and against Cleopatra’s mind. For, he being sick of an ague when he went and took a little boat to go unto Caesar’s camp, Antonius was very sorry for it, but yet he sent after him all his carriage, train and men; and the same Domitius, as though he gave him to understand that he repented his open treason, he died immediately after.

Shakespeare’s Plutarch, ed. T. J. .B. Spencer (Penguin), Thomas North’s translation (1579)

Scenes in which Enobarbus appears: 1.2, 2.2, 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.5, 3.7, 3.10, 3.13, 4.2, (4.5), 4.6, 4.9

Emrys Jones, Scenic Form in Shakespeare (Oxford, 1971):

• The play’s strongest supporting character and a structural device of great importance to the play’s dramatic effect, like the traditional figure of the Vice. (The Vice: a character in a morality play representing one or other vice; hence, a stage jester or buffoon. OED.)
• In the Vice tradition in other ways, too. For example: consider 2.2 — his rude interjections cause Antony to silence him. 3.7, silences Cleopatra via a characteristic Vice trick — ll 4-10: the Vice often made an improper remark which, when challenged, he covered up with an innocent gloss.
• Antony’s bluff soldier counsellor: exalts military life over love; therefore represents a structural principle of opposition to the dominant values of Egypt.
• Enjoys a sense of rapport with audience: off-hand informality which frequently arouses laughter — controlled indecorum. Imagine first two Acts without him: he contributes to play’s sense of inner perspective. Contributes and generates dramatic energy; arouses spirit of irreverence, mockery and humour. Sardonic.
• Loyal, but changes in second part of play, becoming tragically entangled in fall of Antony. Exercises key role here in guiding audience’s response. So, Shakespeare dramatises the complete process by which Enobarbus comes to leave Antony. In so doing, explores the conflict between a loyalty which may become, or seem to become, ‘mere folly’, and a disloyalty which may seem approved by reason. Dies acutely conscious (like other main characters) of the way posterity will remember him: as a deserter. The sad irony is that that is how he was remembered by the one historian who noticed his existence. The place Enobarbus ‘earns i’ th’ story’ is not, in the play, the one he expects.

Graham Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism (Harvester Press, 1987):

Shakespeare has invented Enobarbus ... in order to project our own judgmental dilemma onto a character whose very life depends on a comparable choice. Enobarbus’ great speech on Cleopatra shows how he responds — like Antony and his great predecessors — to Cleopatra’s power to provoke desire and compel the imagination; and he provides the most sensitive register of the way in which Antony’s own prodigal generosity of feeling inspires loyalty and devotion, unlike Octavius’ ‘temper’ and ‘measure’. But when Enobarbus is brought to acknowledge that following Antony is self-destructive or suicidal, he goes over to the other side — and dies, apparently from the force of his own despairing conviction that life on these terms is not worth living, let alone saving. We see Enobarbus being pressed ... to arrive at an answer to the question, ‘In what, ultimately, does the significance of life reside?’ And this returns us to what is most challenging in Antony’s ‘Let Rome in Tyber melt’ speech, or Cleopatra’s ‘Think you there was, or might be ... ?’ Because the characters’ answers have consequences, and because we see how Enobarbus lives, and dies from, his answers, we are reminded that taking a ‘Roman’ view of the lovers also has consequences. Our own judgmental dilemma is being framed within the play by those dual or multiple perspectives which the play itself provides in furnishing opposed views of its characters and of issues like love and honour. ... We are (very daringly) not told how Enobarbus dies; he appears to die, like some North American Indians, from the intensity of his wish not to go on living. This is a paradoxical affirmation because he comes to regard that prudential decision which could have prolonged his life as a denial of those values which, for him, sustain life.

G. Wilson Knight, ‘The Diadem of Love’, in The Imperial Theme (London, 1931):

Through the early Acts he is very loveable, faithful to Antony, his caustic and illuminating commentary never quite hiding his warmth of heart. Often he is a chorus to the action: from time to time he voices that common-sense wisdom which is usually forgotten in the visionary brilliance. He both favours and criticises Antony’s reckless love. He, too, wavers, like the others. (See 1.2.11-12, 146-8, 156-8, 164, 185.) Notice the contrasts — between ‘women’ and a ‘great cause’; or the ‘business’ of state (1.2.183) and the ‘business’ referred to by Enobarbus, the business of love. War and Love ... In 2.2 he speaks his fine descriptions of Cleopatra’s magic fascination; but later he sternly opposes Antony’s rashness. He is the spokesman of enlightened common sense, both appreciative and critical. Often he sees the truth whilst his superiors blunder at cross-purposes. (For example: 2.2, 3.7.) ... Enobarbus recognises that loyalty may be called to rule by common sense (3.11.41). ... when he sees Cleopatra herself descend to treacherous betrayal (Enobarbus decides to leave Antony, 3.11). ... Cleopatra is treacherous, Antony a fool. He (Enobarbus) has all reason on his side. ... Antony’s rash conduct, kissing away all chances of success, for the sake of an unprincipled and disloyal woman, will ruin not only himself but his followers. ... He (Enobarbus ) is rationally excused. But events, as always in this play, press Enobarbus on to realisation of his true self. He deserts. He finds deserters coldly received by Caesar. Alexas was hanged (4.6.16). Canidius and others have ‘no honourable trust’ (4.6.18). Now he knows his fault (4.6.18). A soldier brings news that Antony has sent his treasure after him with ‘his bounty overplus’ (4.6.22). Now knowledge of his baseness inrushes, and he shivers in naked shame (4.6.30V). ... Enobarbus has throughout been a common-sense commentary on the action: this is the action’s commentary on common sense ... all expediency is dust and ashes beside the living flame of his love. ... In Enobarbus, in Antony, in Cleopatra, the same thing rings out: a wavering, a failing of trust in love’s unreason, a swift and beauteous recovery in death.

Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, (London, 1930): see pp 101-103.

John Wilders, editor, Antony and Cleopatra (The Arden Shakespeare, 1995): see p 59.

6.1 (MKTH) holiday work (Xmas, 2003)

Antony & Cleopatra

Re-read the play very carefully a number of times. Those of you caught out in the exam by lack of detailed textual knowledge – now’s the time to address these weaknesses and put things right. All footnotes should have been noted and marked up by the end of the holiday, and everyone should have read all of the editor’s introduction. If you are in need of filling gaps in your own notes, then do so: sheets headed up ‘Enobarbus’ or ‘Images of Empire’ are what every well-prepared candidate should have a stock of as a result of the normal processes of studying this text.

Prepare for two essays early next term: one will be on the love of Antony and Cleopatra – whether you believe in it, value it, what it is, how it’s seen, etc. The other will be on the scale of the play, the sense we get of a vast empire’s fate being fought over and how Shakespeare suggests this. The first essay needs you to have a very good set of notes on Antony and another set on Cleopatra.

Reading

1. Robinson Crusoe
2. At least one title from the book list I have given you.

6.1 (MJM) holiday work (Xmas 2003)

1) Re-read The Tempest a few times and think in careful detail about its major themes/aspects (revenge and forgiveness; power; Prospero's plan; the sub-plot; colonialism) and all issues to do with characterisation. If your notes on any of these are incomplete, make good that gap now. You must have detailed notes (points + quotations, references) for each major character and theme.

2) Read and note all of the editor's introduction to The Tempest.

3) At the start of next term I will be asking you to write an essay on whether the play is a comedy: 'comedy' here does not mean 'comedy — ha ha', but 'a story that starts unhappily and ends happily'. Ask yourself whether this is a fair description of The Tempest.

4) Read at least one good novel -- of the quality that we have on display in the English Department.