Judged rightly?

Shylock

Google Images

On Monday, I posted a query as to the correct spelling of the word "judg(e)ment, and I emailed the blogpost address to an old friend who had once corrected my spelling - I had spelled the word with an "e" between the "g" and the "m" - and my friend had taken out what she considered my superfluous "e." But she looked more deeply into my query this time and found the following:

Ok, I looked up the quote and learned it was Shylock praising Portia, thinking she was ruling in his favor in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. In the First Folio, Shakespeare spelled it iudgement, and when I checked The New Testament 1526 translated by William Tyndale that word was also spelled iudgement. My King James Bible spells it judgment. Lastly, the Oxford English Dictionary preferred spelling is judgement and the variant is judgment, and the Merriam Webster reverses the preferred and variant spellings.

Thank you for allowing me to be the judge of how I am going to spell judgement from now on!

"This is more than I expected," I told her, and I added, "Thank you," explaining that "I now have a blogworthy topic for tomorrow." And so I have . . .

Stephen Greenblatt on Teaching Shakespeare Today

Stephen Greenblatt
Wikipedia

Stephen Greenblatt, in "Teaching a Different Shakespeare From the One I Love" (New York Times, September 11, 2015), tells us that college students today approach Shakespeare differently than did his generation:

But as I have discovered in my teaching, it is a different Shakespeare from the one with whom I first fell in love. Many of my students may have less verbal acuity than in years past, but they often possess highly developed visual, musical and performative skills. They intuitively grasp, in a way I came to understand only slowly, the pervasiveness of songs in Shakespeare's plays, the strange ways that his scenes flow one into another or the cunning alternation of close-ups and long views. When I ask them to write a 10-page paper analyzing a particular web of metaphors, exploring a complex theme or amassing evidence to support an argument, the results are often wooden; when I ask them to analyze a film clip, perform a scene or make a video, I stand a better chance of receiving something extraordinary. A student with a beautiful voice performed Brahms's Ophelia songs, with a piano accompaniment by another gifted musician. Students with a knack for creative writing have composed monologues in the voice of the villainous Iago, short stories depicting an awkward reunion of Shylock and his daughter, Jessica, or even additional scenes in Shakespearean verse.

Not a bad trade-off, I'd say . . . except that'd be to betray the Shakespeare I also love.

I wonder if that trade-off can be done with Milton . . .

Shakespeare vs. Milton?

Ms. Erica Wagner
Website

I did something I very seldom do -- and if you have two hours, eleven minutes, and fifty-eight seconds to spare, so can you -- I watched a video. I rarely watch videos due to the time involved, particularly long videos, but this one came recommended by the Milton List and was presented by Intelligence Squared. It featured a 'debate,' Shakespeare vs Milton: The Kings of English Literature, chaired on June 22nd by Erica Wagner (depicted above), between Professor James Shapiro (Columbia University) and Professor Nigel Smith (Princeton University), extolling Shakespeare and Milton, respectively (but shouldn't that be The King of English Literature?).

Two actresses and one actor -- Pippa Nixon, Harriet Walter, and Sam West, each renowned on the stage -- performed scenes from Shakespeare and Milton. To show Shakespeare's superiority, Professor Shapiro had Ms. Walter and Mr. West play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the same scene twice, once with Lady Macbeth portrayed as masculine in her aggressiveness and once with her portrayed as feminine in her seductiveness, the point being that Shakespeare allows for multiple interpretations.

But why should multiple interpretations imply superiority? Milton can be variously interpreted. Indeed, he is so daily among scholars! I expected Professor Smith to have a single scene from Paradise Lost performed more than once, each time differently interpreted. Perhaps Satan's soliloquy occasioned by the radiant beams of sunlight? Once with greater defiance, once with considerable remorse? That could have been a coup!

Professor Shapiro probably 'won' the debate. Shakespeare did get the most votes from the audience. But I think Professor Smith could be the 'winner' in a rematch by showing that Shakespeare's strengths are also found in Milton.

"Bless thee, Bottom! Bless thee! Thou art translated."

Bottom as an Ass
Google Images

The character Nick Bottom in Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream is famous for being transformed into an ass.

That's fitting, of course, since he's something of an ass anyway and is named "Bottom." Actually, only his head is transformed, but he's all 'Bottom' below the neck, so we're not wrong to say he's an entire ass!

The character Peter Quince is famous for the expression of surprise upon seeing the transformed Bottom in Act 3, Scene 1, lines 118-119:

"Bless thee, Bottom! Bless thee! Thou art translated."

He means "transformed," but is "translated" wrong? No, because "translation" can mean "transformation":

II. 3. Transformation, alteration, change . . . (OED, Vol 2, 1971, p. 266c)

This usage dates from 1382. Unfortunately, the British variant "ass" meaning "arse" dates officially only to 1721 (OED, Vol. 1, 1971, p. 498b), so there appears to be no Shakespearean pun on "Bottom" as "ass."

Unless Shakespeare's choice of "Bottom" as name of the character fated to receive the ass's head is itself evidence of an earlier date for "ass" as "arse" . . .

"Bottom, thou art translated!"

Titania adoring the Ass-headed Bottom

Oil on Canvas, c. 1790

Henry Fuseli
Wikipedia

I recall reading somewhere of an erroneous German translation for the English expression "Out of sight, out of mind," the German effort being "Blind und verrückt," i.e., "Blind and crazy." My thoughts turned to this yesterday evening as I was reading former AP correspondent Michael Johnson's op-ed piece, "Reading Pushkin in Brussels" (NYT, May 11, 2012), for he notes various attempts at translating Alexander Pushkin's poetry from Russian into other languages, efforts that have occasioned clashes among literary titans:

No collision, however, quite matches the celebrated duel between Vladimir Nabokov and the critic Edmund Wilson over Nabokov's 1964 translation of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin."

That translation followed one by Walter Arndt, which Nabokov had fiercely denounced. Arndt, he wrote, made "idiotic" errors, confusing a husband with a lover and an arrow for a gun. A famous opening line of Onegin, "My uncle has most honest principles" was rendered by Arndt "My uncle, decorous old prune."

When Wilson sprang to Arndt's defense and assailed Nabokov's translation, Nabokov rounded on Wilson for his inadequate Russian. Nabokov recalled trying to teach Wilson how to read Russian aloud but both collapsed in stitches at Wilson's "endearing little barks."

The moral of this little tale? Don't attempt to translate a genius unless you, too, are a genius. Bonus moral: Don't defend the ridiculous lest you, too, be ridiculed!

"DEATH devours all things"

Fredric March

"Beware the Ides of March"

(Image from Wikipedia)

I found an index with an entry "DEATH devours all things" in Shakespeare's Proverbial Language: An Index (University of California Press, 1981), collated by Robert William Dent, and I've copied the entry below, adding pertinent links, where possible, to original or otherwise relevant texts and persons:

DEATH devours all things (Varied)
1557 Tottel P3V: Set hym free From dark oblivion of devouring Death.
1596 C. Middleton Historie of Heaven C2: Hungrie death that all thinges doth devoure.
1604 T. Middleton Father Hubburds Tale V11 1,65: The old devourer . . . death, had made our landlord dance after his pipe.
c 1605 (1630) Dekker 2 Honest Whore 1.2.102—4: Deaths a good trencherman, he can eat course homely meat, as well as the daintiest.
Shakespeare: Jn. 2.1.352--4, Rom. 2.6.7
Cf. D 139: Death devours lambs as well as sheep [from 1620]; T326: Time devours all things.

The title Shakespeare's Proverbial Language is a bit misleading until one realizes that it refers to proverbs that Shakespeare could have been familiar with because they were common coin.

By now, no one should have any doubt that John Milton's image in Paradise Lost of an all-devouring Death was itself dependent upon a proverbial commonplace, common to the point of cliché, though Milton's treatment of this image proved anything but common.

But why the photo of Fredric March? Oh, just to take a holiday from all those images of death, though the man looks a bit deadly himself . . .

Cappy Cahtah Kohenum: Shakespeare as Poet for the 'Brain Police'

Tally-Ho, Cornelius!

Carter Kaplan

(Image from Highbrow)

You think that you like Shakespeare, but your eyes have yet to be opened by the devilishly clever Cappy Cahtah Kohenum, antihero of Carter Kaplan's novel Tally-Ho, Cornelius!, who tells us -- in the guise of a precocious little boy calling himself "Capricorn" -- precisely why "Shakespeare stinks":

Well, in Shakespeare's universe people are supposed to play their role. And when people don't play their roles the social equilibrium is upset. Then the people who don't play their roles all die -- maybe it's tragedy, but somehow they deserve it -- and then the people who sheepishly play their roles take over and the social equilibrium is restored. End of story. Every one of his stupid plays follows the same formula.

. . .

Look at poor Cordelia. She tells her stupid old dad that he's playing the fool -- and he is -- but in Shakespeare's universe she is in the wrong because telling the silly old goat he's a fool means she's gone outside her role as daughter. So, even though she's right, Shakespeare has to kill her off because that's his code. By the middle of King Lear they're all acting outside their silly roles, and the silly Bard of Avon has the temerity to suggest this is a bad thing -- all those stupid allusions to witchcraft, old wives tales and madness -- then equilibrium is restored and everyone who transcended his or her role has to die -- all so Shakespeare can make his point that everybody must confirm to the status quo. Same thing with Hamlet. He dies and the person who is willing to play his role takes over; and as in the play Henry V, the people who correctly play their roles and who restore the social equilibrium are mass murders who wear crowns. (Kaplan, Tally-Ho, Cornelius!, page 125)

All you Shakespeare fans are thus dupes of lovely language written to lull you into accepting a hierarchical cosmos in which you really ought to know your place and simply stay there . . . or else. Perhaps D. H. Lawrence had it about right when he read Shakespeare:

How boring, how small Shakespeare's people are!
Yet the language so lovely! like the dyes from gas-tar.

I confess that I've never quite suspected Shakespeare in this hermeneutic-of-suspicion fashion, though there's something to it, but does Carter Kaplan truly expect us to trust his alter ego Cappy Cahtah Kohenum, who's possibly a stand-in for Satan, likely stained by transworld depravity, and certainly a trickster?

More another time . . .

Laughter, the best medicine?

Eduard von Grützner, Falstaff

Shakespearean Humor

(Image from Wikipedia)

As an old man now, I must lean on a rickety false staff to support myself with good humor as I continue this pilgrimage of mine through life, still climbing up along my chosen career path despite the many detours that I've taken.

But my humor often gets misread, as my longsuffering Uncle Cran has reported since yesterday's humorous blog entry. For instance, in his anecdote concerning the high school reunion where everyone present was expected to offer a brief biography of life's events since graduation, he originally related:

When I got to the part about meeting Gay and our marriage, I stated, "When we got married, we were both young, shy, inexperienced, and inhibited."

Then I continued, "Our first son was born 10 and 1/2 months later," and I heard someone, (who will not be identified), make the snide remark, "Sounds like Cran got over his inhibitions!"

There were a few (shall we say, sniggers?) as those two near but unconnected comments of mine were somehow mis-applied. This demonstrates that this lady, and perhaps others of my classmates, still had thoughts in their minds not exactly appropriate for such a gathering. But I will forgive and try to forget! As only I should.

That was Uncle Cran's summary of his brief remark, and he now reports in a circular sent out to those who might have misconstrued:

Some of our classmates have written, thanking me for my report on the 52nd class reunion. One (or more?) thought I might have had my feelings hurt about the cute remarks and giggles following my account of my and Gay's marriage and son's birth. That was actually intended to elicit such a response, and is a demonstration of my twisted humor.

Others, apparently, were worried that my gentle ribbing of my dear Uncle Cran throughout yesterday's blog entry might have been intended as harsh sarcasm or as some sort of criticism

Uncle Cran, however, has reassured them:

Nephew Jeffery has again placed my account on his blog. We have a good time doing this, and all comments are meant to be funny, as he is afflicted with the same family trait of wry (some would call 'strange') humor.

I've replied to Uncle Cran:

I can well imagine that some readers might lack the [peculiar] sense of humor . . . to recognize that we are just kidding. People have often thought that my posts on fan death are serious, a severe misreading that I cannot fathom. So . . . I sometimes wonder if we should be less 'humorous'. Except that it entertains the two of us and makes my blog more interesting . . . I think . . . . As for the comment made at the reunion itself -- the one about your loss of inhibitions -- I suspected that you'd been fishing for that. Yes, we share a sense of humor, unfortunately. Both our humors are radioactive, it seems, for when your humor and mine meet on my blog, there's a nuclear reaction. We ought to threaten North Korea.

As an aside, I'd note that humor probably would be felt as a threat by the Beloved Leader, General King Jong-il.

Anyway, speaking of humor, that 'paramour of scholarly virtue', Wikipedia, offers some theories on how humor works. One of these is the "superiority theory," which says that we laugh at the misfortunes of other people because such misfortunes imply our superiority to others in their failings. Superficially, this seems to be my humor at Uncle Cran's expense, and some people might read my humor this way and take offense on Uncle Cran's part. Those people are not in on the joke, so let me explain to any who haven't understood -- my jokes about Uncle Cran do not belong to this category of humor. A different theory better conveys my meaning, the "incongruity theory," which is a bit more complicated to explain, but this theory basically says that humor is conveyed through the incongruity between what is said and what is meant. What makes my humor at Uncle Cran's expense difficult to catch is that I pretend to laugh at his misfortunes (superiority) but depend upon readers to understand that I surely don't mean what I seem to be saying (incongruity). But, as I noted, not everybody is in on the joke. Well . . . I suppose that they now are.

Humor is often complex when it occurs in literature. Take the case of Falstaff. Are we intended to laugh at him? Or with him? Our reason for laughing says something about us. On the Milton List a couple of weeks ago, a question was raised about humor in Paradise Lost. Several scholars gave examples, and I offered a line by Eve in which she responds to the serpent's multiple, excessively over-the-top compliments on her wonderful qualities by doubting that the forbidden fruit truly conveys wisdom:

In my opinion, Eve has the funniest line in Paradise Lost. Immediately after Satan in serpent form has praised Eve with excessive compliments, she retorts:

Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in doubt
The vertue of that Fruit, in thee first prov'd: (PL 9.615-6)

I always have to laugh when I read Eve's remark. But is she aware of the humor . . . or is this solely Milton's joke?

In a recent offlist email, I received a belated response to my question from the scholar David Ainsworth:

Nothing like this time of year for a delayed response.

I think unquestionably that there's a joke here, on several layers. If Eve doesn't mean the contradiction, then she must be using "prov'd" in the sense of being tested or made trial of. Milton would unquestionably appreciate that this other usage of the word aligns itself not just with testing but with *tasting* in particular. The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] doesn't list many usages specific to tasting, but the quibble on test/taste was common enough even outside circumstances like this one.

I suspect there's plenty of bilingual or trilingual plays on words in Milton's poetry which slip past readers.

As for Eve's awareness -- I guess that depends on how close to falling one believes her at this moment. The more she's chiding Satan for praise which she has secretly embraced, the more calculated this response will seem. For me, part of what I appreciate about lines like these is that Eve can mean the joke regardless of how she's taking in the situation, but that the purpose of the humor shifts -- she's either expressing false humility by affirming the serpent's judgment by affirming the fruit's virtue, or she's genuinely chiding the serpent.

Sadly, I suspect in context that Eve's doubt of the fruit must be seen as her humor, deployed precisely in a situation where Satan's overpraising genuinely ought to lead her to genuine doubt.

I take Professor Ainsworth's point to be that Eve only pretends to doubt the fruit's power to bring wisdom, for she secretly enjoys the serpent's attentions and wants to believe the serpent truly wise and therefore correct. As Professor Ainsworth notes, the humor can work on several levels. One possibility is that the reader will react as the superiority theory might predict -- with a sort of judgemental humor, as though one felt superior to Eve and were silently thinking I wouldn't fall for that flattery! Milton, however, thinks that we would fall for it -- if Stanley Fish is right about Milton tempting the reader to fall into sin along with Eve and Adam by encouraging us to identify with Satan. If so, there comes a moment of grim, ironic incongruity as we recognize that Milton is not merely describing Eve but also describing us. If such is the case, then echoing Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet, I can say, "That is a failing indeed, . . . [but] I really cannot laugh at it."

And with those words, I must now exit this stage and begin my day.

Discussory Channel Presents: Canonical Face-Off

Shakespeare

Versus

Milton

Shakespeare was a playwright who wrote some of England's greatest dramas. Milton was a poet who wrote what is disputably the greatest poem in English. But whose words had greater power? On Discussory Channel's Canonical Face-Off today, we'll see Shakespeare and Milton pitted against one another in a wild poetry slam to answer once and for all this overwhelming question.

(Bets to be Placed in Comments)

Inspired by a Milton List Discussion

"You knew I was a snake when you took me in..."

Asp Biting Cleopatra

Steel Engraving, 19th C. Book of Shakespeare

Collection of the Yuko Nii Foundation

Williamsburg Art & Historical Center

In a recent email from either Terrance Lindall or Yuko Nii, I received a notice about an upcoming talk on John Milton by Dr. Robert Wickenheiser at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center on May 10, 2009.

Dr. Wickenheiser is famous among Milton scholars for his Wickenheiser Collection, which he has built up over a thirty-five year period and which has more than 6,000 volumes, including more than 60 early editions of Milton's writings as well as other 17th-century Miltoniana, as the email informs me (else I wouldn't recall the numbers).

These details and more about the Wickenheiser Collection can be found at the University of South Carolina's Rare Books and Special Collections website.

Lindall and Nii's interest in this collection probably derives from the fact that the Wickenheiser Collection focuses especially on illustrated editions. As artists and curators themselves, they also collect illustrated books. Thus, as the email explains, on display will be not only many Miltonian items from Wickenheiser's personal collection but also a number of famous illustrated books from the Yuko Nii Foundation's collection.

One of the books from the collection of the Yuko Nii Foundation is the 19th-century Shakespeare edition shown above, which is opened to a page revealing an asp biting Cleopatra's breast. Not especially clear due to the image's small size is the asp's apparent aim -- the nipple of Cleopatra's right breast.

I call attention to this not for prurient reasons but because it reminds me of the traditional belief that serpents suck on teats for milk . . . though usually the teats of animals. Milton alludes to this belief in a Paradise Lost passage in which Satan, speaking through the serpent, tempts Eve by comparing the fruit that he claims to have eaten with milk directly from teats:

When from the boughes a savorie odour blow'n,
Grateful to appetite, more pleas'd my sense,
Then smell of sweetest Fenel or the Teats
Of Ewe or Goat dropping with Milk at Eevn,
Unsuckt of Lamb or Kid, that tend thir play. (PL 9.579-583)

[Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, January, 2009]

The belief that serpents suck on teats of animals has been traced back to at least the first-century A.D. author Pliny the Elder, who refers to the "boa" of Italy, serpents that "are nourished, in the first instance, with the milk of the cow." The remark can be found in Book 8 of Pliny's Natural History. John Bostock's 1855 edition, from which I have borrowed, can be found online at Perseus.

Whether or not the illustration above is itself alluding to this tradition about serpents and teats, I do not know, but perhaps some kind and knowledgeable reader will have the relevant information.

While we're waiting for that expert kindness, here's an Oscar Brown Jr. morality tale about nursing a serpent in one's bosom, performed by Al Wilson.

"Milton is a great poet, but living with him is hell."

Milton: Testosterone-Driven Poet?

"I'll be back."

(Image by Christian Northeast for Time Magazine)

If we take Gary Lynn Taylor's words in the entry heading above at face value, then we can probably agree that he does not boundlessly love Milton.

I've taken the quote from this Shakespearean scholar's recent Time Magazine 'review' of Nigel Smith's new book, Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?

Taylor is the Shakespearean scholar who argues that the poem "Shall I die? Shall I fly" -- found in a collection of manuscripts donated to the Bodleian Library in 1755 by Bishop Richard Rawlinson -- truly comes from the hand of Shakespeare:

{1}
Shall I die? Shall I fly
Lovers' baits and deceits,
sorrow breeding?
Shall I tend? Shall I send?
Shall I sue, and not rue
my proceeding?
In all duty her beauty
Binds me her servant for ever.
If she scorn, I mourn,
I retire to despair, joining never.

{2}
Yet I must vent my lust
And explain inward pain
by my love conceiving.
If she smiles, she exiles
All my moan; if she frown,
all my hopes deceiving
Suspicious doubt, O keep out,
For thou art my tormentor.
Fie away, pack away;
I will love, for hope bids me venture.

{3}
'Twere abuse to accuse
My fair love, ere I prove
her affection.
Therefore try! Her reply
Gives thee joy or annoy,
or affliction.
Yet howe'er, I will bear
Her pleasure with patience, for beauty
Sure will not seem to blot
Her deserts, wronging him doth her duty.

{4}
In a dream it did seem
But alas, dreams do pass
as do shadows
I did walk, I did talk
With my love, with my dove,
through fair meadows.
Still we passed till at last
We sat to repose us for pleasure.
Being set, lips met,
Arms twined, and did bind my heart's treasure.

{5}
Gentle wind sport did find
Wantonly to make fly
her gold tresses.
As they shook I did look,
But her fair did impair
all my senses.
As amazed, I gazed
On more than a mortal complexion.
You that love can prove
Such force in beauty's inflection.

{6}
Next her hair, forehead fair,
Smooth and high; neat doth lie,
without wrinkle,
Her fair brows; under those,
Star-like eyes win love's prize
when they twinkle.
In her cheeks who seeks
Shall find there displayed beauty's banner;
O admiring desiring
Breeds, as I look still upon her.

{7}
Thin lips red, fancy's fed
With all sweets when he meets,
and is granted
There to trade, and is made
Happy, sure, to endure
still undaunted.
Pretty chin doth win
Of all their culled commendations;
Fairest neck, no speck;
All her parts merit high admirations.

{8}
Pretty bare, past compare,
Parts those plots which besots
still asunder.
It is meet naught but sweet
Should come near that so rare
'tis a wonder.
No mis-shape, no scape
Inferior to nature's perfection;
No blot, no spot:
She's beauty's queen in election.

{9}
Whilst I dreamt, I, exempt
From all care, seemed to share
pleasure's plenty;
But awake, care take
For I find to my mind
pleasures scanty.
Therefore I will try
To compass my heart's chief contenting.
To delay, some say,
In such a case causeth repenting.

Taylor's disputed discovery of this 'new' Shakespeare poem was also the subject of a Time Magazine article of June 21, 2005 (1985?), "Shall I Die? Shall I Fly . . . ," in which Otto Friedrich reports on the debate among Shakespearean scholars over Taylor's attribution of the poem to Shakespeare, the sharpest objection being: "Could Shakespeare really have written a poem that is so, well, mediocre?"

I wouldn't venture to say, except to note that a commonplace of creative writers is the proverb that "Every writer has a bad first novel."

Be that as it may -- and even though "Taylor himself does not claim to have discovered a masterpiece" in the 'Shakespeare' poem -- Taylor takes issue, in "Milton and Shakespeare: Battle of the Bards" (Time Magazine, May 15, 2008), with Nigel Smith's insistence that Milton is better than Shakespeare, apparently because Taylor believes that Shakespeare has better sound bites, Milton not being "a poet for the sound-bite century" because of such passages as one from Paradise Lost 4.268ff describing Adam and Eve in Eden:

The 20-line sentence contains 20 proper names: Enna, Prosperin, Dis, Ceres, Daphne, Orontes, Castalian, Nyseian, Triton, Cham, Ammon, Lybian Jove, Amalthea, Bacchus, Rhea, Abassin, Amara, Ethiop, Nilus, Assyrian.

Definitely no sound bite, but is Taylor being serious, or ironic? Or possibly both? Read his review, and decide for yourself. Meanwhile, he does make a good point about one difficulty that we face in reading Milton:

Milton makes even smart people feel stupid. Not by accident, either. He is probably the most unrelentingly aggressive poet in English. When Samson says, "My heels are fettered, but my fist is free," he displays the best and worst of Milton. The best is Milton's unsurpassed technical command of English: the double contrast of "heels . . . fettered" against "fist . . . free"; the long vowel in "heels" echoed by "free"; the alliteration of "fettered . . . fist . . . free"; the combination of all three effects in the verse-ending stressed monosyllable "free," so ironically spoken by a blind slave in chains, but also so irresistibly open-voweled, defiant and exhilarating. In some ways, "free" is the single word that sums up what's most appealing about Milton's politics -- his resistance to tyranny, his commitment to liberty. But of course the whole sentence is a threat to beat up someone who disagrees with him -- in particular, someone who refuses to acknowledge his God-guaranteed superiority over everyone else. And this religious fanatic will express his freedom by committing suicide in order to kill thousands of his enemies.

I wouldn't say that Milton makes us feel stupid, though we might feel a bit brow-beaten if we disagree with Milton, for he could be harshly, brilliantly polemical, but Taylor has chosen a pertinant issue here. How do we deal with a great poet who has written such a masterpiece as Samson Agonistes, which seems to justify a man who in our time would fit the profile of a suicide bomber?

Or did Milton really mean to justify blind Samson's ways to man?

Milton's Satan quoting Macbeth in Paradise Regained?

Johann Heinrich Füssli
Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches

(Image from Wikipedia)

In an interesting Times Online review of Anna Beer's recent book, Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot, literary expert John Carey writes:

Some poems -- Arcades and At a Solemn Music, for example – go quite unnoticed by Beer. So does his first published poem, the sonnet on Shakespeare. Written when he was 22 and prefaced to the second folio of Shakespeare's works, it is one of the earliest tributes to his genius, and might have been expected to prompt Milton's biographer to trace the influence of Shakespeare on his art from the brilliant pastiche of Comus to Satan's despairing quotation of Macbeth at a key moment in Paradise Regained.

As readily perceived from this short selection, Carey is less than impressed by Beer's biography, but I'm not quoting it for that reason. I have a different motive.

I have not yet found "Satan's despairing quotation of Macbeth at a key moment in Paradise Regained" but wonder if a reader more literate than I might help me out here.

Does anyone know the Macbeth quote alluded to by Carey?

Wave from the Grave?

"Pope John Paul II waving from beyond the grave"

But isn't the Pope supposed to be in Heaven?

(Image from Daily Mail, 10/15/07)

According to a report by Nick Pisa for Britain's Daily Mail, some of the pious are convinced that the fiery image above is the late pope, John Paul II, waving from beyond the grave:

This fiery figure is being hailed as Pope John Paul II making an appearance beyond the grave.

The image, said by believers to show the Holy Father with his right hand raised in blessing, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second anniversary of his death.

Details appeared on the Vatican News Service, a TV station in Rome which specialises in religious news broadcasts.

Service director Jarek Cielecki, a Polish priest and close friend of John Paul II, travelled to Poland after hearing an onlooker had photographed the image.

Father Cielecki said he was convinced the picture showed the former pontiff.

"You can see the image of a person in the flames and I think it is the servant of God, Pope John Paul II," he said.

The pictures were being broadcast continuously on Italian TV and also posted on religious websites, some of which crashed as thousands logged on to see for themselves the eerie figure formed by the flames.

The bonfire was lit during a service at Beskid Zywiecki, close to John Paul's birthplace at Katowice, southern Poland, on April 2 -- the second anniversary of his death.

Hundreds had attended the ceremony. Gregorz Lukasik, the Polish man who took the photographs, said: "It was only afterwards when I got home and looked at the pictures that I realised I had something.

"I showed them to my brother and sister and they, like me, were convinced the flames had formed the image of Pope John Paul II.

"I was so happy with the picture that I showed it to our local bishop who said that Pope John Paul had made many pilgrimages during his life and he was still making them in death." (Nick Pisa, "Is this Pope John Paul II waving from beyond the grave? Vatican TV director says yes," Daily Mail, October 15, 2007, h/t Wonderdog)

The photo is certainly eerie (though I wonder if the image would have looked humanlike from other angles), and the 'apparition' appearing on the second anniversary of the pope's death is certainly an interesting coincidence, but if I were one of the pious believers, I'd be a bit troubled by the iconography of a fiery pope flaring up from beyond the grave in the flames of a bonfire.

After all, isn't Dante said to have put a pope or two in the flames of Hell?

Personally, I don't think that Hell is where Pope John Paul II ended up, and on this point, I assure you that I'm not being ironic, so I'll just take this fiery image as a trick of the flames from a particular perspective.

Far more eerie and difficult to explain is the image below, taken by a local resident of Wem, England, Tony O'Rahilly, on the 19th of November, 1995, as Wem Town Hall burned to the ground:

"Photo of the Wem Ghost?"

Copyright: Tony O'Rahilly / Fortean Picture Library

(Image retrieved from BBC, 10/18/07)

In the BBC article, "Is this a photo of the Wem ghost?", Dr. Vernon Harrison, former president of the Royal Photographic Society, is quoted as stating that "The negative is a straight forward piece of black-&-white work and shows no sign of having been tampered with." He remains skeptical, however, and has "suggested that the image of the girl may just be a convenient trick of the light -- with smoke, flame and shadow creating an optical illusion at the moment the photographer took his picture." A different online article, by Val Hope of The Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, backs up Dr. Harrison's view in stating that when "a photo was obtained of the same spot taken from another angle it was clear that a random collection of burning debris was making up a simulacrum" ("ASSAP History: 'Research'"). The photograph does not appear on their website, unfortunately, so I have to take Hope's word for it, but I wonder how the other photo was proven to have been taken at the same instant.

I recall seeing the original O'Rahilly photo not long after it was taken. I was living in Australia in 1996 and read an article in The Australian that took the same skeptical position as Dr. Vernon Harrison and explained how the optical illusion could have occurred. I was persuaded by the writer, but even he admitted that the image was eerie to see.

And as my elder brother once punningly, if imprecisely, reminded me: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."

Reading Obama...

Barack Obama

"We are such stuff as dreams are made of,

and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

(Image from Wikipedia)

One doesn't read many memoirs by credible presidential candidates that include material like this:

I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man's court, ... by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, ... wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning. In fact, you couldn't even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self -- the humor, the song, the behind-the-back pass -- had been freely chosen by you. At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap. Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger. (Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, page 85)

One can safely remark that this stuff ain't whitewashed. Part of the story's interest lies in keeping the reader wondering how the hell Obama got from that maddening, seemingly inexorable logic to where he stands today.

Reading Obama, one wants the story to be an everyman's story, but it isn't, of course. It's Obama's story, and like that line in a Charley Pride song, it says "all I have to offer you is me."

Well, that and a few position papers...

"William Shakespeare's Discovery"

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man

'Intellectual Voyages of Self-Discovery'

(Image Borrowed from Wikipedia)

I sometimes complain here in Gypsy Scholar about students who don't heed my advice on how to write an expository essay, so I ought to praise those who pay attention and follow through.

In the middle of marking -- and marking all over -- final essays, I came to one with a good introduction:

The Elizabethan Era (1158-1603), the peak of the English Renaissance, is often called the "Age of Discovery." The individuals were encouraged to discover themselves and the world. The perspective had an influence on many Elizabethan intellectuals. William Shakespeare was one of the intellectuals in this period. Then, what did he discover? Considering that literature can reflect a writer's intellect, we might be able to find his discovery reading his poems and plays although his life is obscure. Of his masterpieces, The Sonnets are still arousing various critical attention. Due to this fact, it is hard to assert the theme of The Sonnets in a single phrase. Here, I only focus on the poet's view of eternity. The view of eternity presented in Shakespeare's Sonnets reflects Renaissance Humanism because it emphasizes human ability to keep valuable things eternally in earthly existence in spite of human's mortality.

While this introductory paragraph has its flaws, some due to the student using English as a second language, it flows nicely enough. It begins broadly but not too broadly with the Elizabethan Era and by successively narrowing the focus leads smoothly to the crucial point: Shakespeare's view of eternity. I especially like the move from Burckhardt's thesis that the spirit of the Renaissance encouraged individuals "to discover themselves and the world" to my student's question about Shakespeare: "Then, what did he discover?" That's nicely done.

Some things could have been better. For instance, Burkhardt could have been acknowledged for the insight about Renaissance individuals discovering themselves and the world, but that has perhaps reached a level of common knowledge among the educated by now, so let it pass.

As for the ability that Shakespeare discovered within himself, namely, the power to achieve something for an earthly eternity, we know already that the student is thinking of "Sonnet 18":

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The student may have been spinning ideas from off a blog entry that I posted some weeks back, or from one of my class lectures touching on the same topic, but the student's insights have sufficient originality that there's no need to footnote me.

If every undergraduate student would achieve this level of sophistication, grading would be a whole lot easier ... until time for setting the curve.