There Is No Spoon

After perusing some of the class's recent blogs, I saw Jon's most recent post titled "Something on Nothing". This idea of nothingness in Shakespeare keeps resurfacing and the more I think about it, the more BLOODY BRILLIANT I find it. Shakespeare was a brilliant cynic, immortalizing his notion of nothingness not only in his individual plays but in his works as a whole. In the same way that the Bible is perceived as one literary work, though it is full of countless individual writings, so can the complete works of Shakespeare be viewed as one piece of literature. When viewed through this lens, Shakespeare becomes an almost God-like figure, a creator and destroyer of worlds. How many heroes have been born and killed at the whims of Shakespeare? How many villains?

To quote either James or Nathan, I'm not sure who gets the credit, time isn't linear, but circular. Just as a rock tossed in a pond creates ripples, bouncing from bank to bank, so does the creation of characters such as Hamlet, Othello, Iago, and Lear cause affectations through time. The fact that they have never existed in organic form merely makes their presence more powerful. Their fates are forever sealed on paper and the only key to their liberation lies in the decomposed brain of William Shakespeare... It doesn't matter if one takes value from the eternal suffering of King Lear or from the Disney High School Musical ending of Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare shows us that no matter how much torture, pleasure, sadness we endure, beneath it all will always be a void of nothingness. In that sense, Shakespeare shows us that the mere fact of harboring any emotion is a gift in itself. To feel pain is better than to feel nothing at all, is it not? Depends who you ask.

As I already mentioned in my presentation and previous blog, Samuel Beckett is another playwright who understood this sense of nothingness. Waiting for Godot is one of the most painfully existential plays in existence and captures this idea beautifully. Until reading Jon's blog I had no idea the most brilliant and rewarding production of Waiting for Godot was performed by muppets in a routine Sesame Street show. Here it is again for those who haven't seen Jon's blog already.


http://youtu.be/ksL_7WrhWOc


If only I had the patience and self-discipline to communicate all of the ideas 'Waiting for Elmo' creates. Here are a few.
- Elmo is not only an absent character, he represents an unrealized state of existence for the two muppets waiting for him. Once Elmo arrives to play with them, the two muppets know they'll have achieved this desired state.
- By perpetually waiting in a constant state of anticipation, the blue muppet and red muppet are oblivious to anything around them that could in fact have more worth than a play-date with Elmo.
- The tree's eventual loss of patience and abandonment of the muppets shows how blind they have been waiting for something that will never arrive. There was already so much around them, such as A TALKING TREE. I would much rather play with a talking tree than Elmo.
-With the tree's departure the audience of toddlers now realizes how silly the muppets have been waiting for nothing. They now understand that in essence, waiting for anything at all is, in a way, an existence of 'nothingness' because we have all already been provided with everything we need to be happy.

This realization leads me to another video I've stolen from a classmate. Nick Axeline showed this video for his final paper presentation in Bible as Literature way back in the year 2009 AD. I immediately became eternally attached to it.

http://youtu.be/ERbvKrH-GC4

Ultimately Shakespeare, Beckett, Buddhism and other wisemen are telling us the same message. There is no spoon. (please watch The Matrix in order to understand this reference)

The Extremely Relevant Sonnet

Damn the clouds, always drifting place to place,
As if we crickets have nowhere to be.
Water rushes down as it does from space,
And we poor crickets wonder how to see.

"Fairwell young cricket" the cloud says to me,
"Cloud you are lost and surely are forlorn,
Why else would you weep on my family,
And then disperse for somewhere else to mourn?"

The cloud departs, preparing for a storm,
To weep on other crickets like myself.
"How sad" I think to be a cloud so torn,
Lost among clouds like books on a shelf.

A young cricket has no time for such thoughts,
Just as a tiger has no room for such spots.

Notes and intro to 'Measure for Measure'

This play is a comedy.
Measure for Measure is centered around the fate of Claudio, who is arrested by Vienna’s temporary leader, Lord Angelo, for impregnating Juliet, his prostitute-girlfriend. The Duke of Vienna has taken a supposed leave of absence, when in reality he has disguised himself as a friar and remained in the city to watch over things. The Duke chose Lord Angelo as his temporary replacement because of his strict and moralistic character, which Angelo immediately imposes on the city of Vienna by making brothels and unmarried intercourse illegal. After Claudio’s arrest, his sister Isabella, who is also a nun, begs Lord Angelo to have mercy on her brother. Angelo refuses but suggests an alternative; that if she agrees to sexual intercourse with him, he will let Claudio live. Isabella is faced with the decision of sacrificing her honor for her brother’s life, or allowing Claudio to die so that she can retain her chastity. For comedy’s sake the Duke intervenes and saves the day with the oh-so-sexual and effective bed-trick and then proceeds to ask the noble Isabella to marry him.
Themes to pay attention to in this play are largely centered around the nature and limits of state intervention and about the appropriated degree of sexual regulation in society. It also addresses the age-old dilemma of justice and law enforcement. There is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal that I stole from a Dan Brown novel somewhere that goes, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?”, or, “who will guard the guards?” that seems to be relevant to this play.

Some random morsels of information about this play: The title Measure For Measure comes from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:2, “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” meaning be prepared to be judged in the same way that you judge others. The play is argued both as pro-Christianity and as evading Christianity. According to Harold Bloom, he says, “I scarcely see how the play, in regard to its Christian allusiveness, can be regarded as other than blasphemous” And according to Frye there are three well-known folk tale themes: the disguised ruler, the corrupt judge and the bed trick.

Final Paper Topic

The topic for my final paper is going to be an extension of my previous blog, which addresses the question, what is Shakespeare trying to tell us? Suffering acts as the driving force through Shakespeare's plays and all I want to know is why.. Is that too much to ask? I hope not.

The Implicit Critique of Love

As Bloom tells us in 'Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human', "The implicit critique of love, by Shakespeare, hardly can be termed a mere skepticism." (487) As we read play after play, the "mere skepticism" of love becomes an overwhelmingly apparent idea. Without having read Bloom's text I wouldn't have been able to tangibly identify this idea, but NOW there's a literary world waiting to be uncovered. Ultimately we must face the question, what is Shakespeare trying to tell us?

In King Lear, the overbearingly love-starved Lear tortures himself and the audience with his paternal desire to be loved and appreciated by his family. To borrow from Bloom, "Love is no healer in 'The Tragedy of King Lear', indeed it starts all the trouble, and is a tragedy in itself." As King of Britain and father of three daughters Lear has the sense of entitlement one might expect from someone in his position. His notion of love is nearly inseparable from that of ownership, and with the bequeathment of his kingdom to his daughters, he assumed he could spend the remainder of his days surviving simply off of the love of his family. As we fast forward to Lear's demise his loss of ownership over his kingdom has left him with nothing as he realizes the possession of his daughters' love was always imaginary and he now has nothing left.

Similarly in 'The Winter's Tale' love harasses, poisons, and ultimately leaves the audience with a vacuous sense of 'nothingness'. Leontes's speech in act 1, when his jealousy is about to lead him down a dark road, exemplifies this idea.

Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh? A note infallible
Of breaking honesty! horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
that would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,
My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
(1.2.283-95)
Since we know that everything he claims to have seen between Polyxenes and Hermione was false, the only tangible thought we can take from this speech is that it all means nothing. He says, "Is this nothing? Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing, the covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing, my wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings, if this be nothing."

The more Shakespeare I read the more I believe he and Samuel Beckett would have got along disgustingly well together. If we break down Shakespeare's plays to their central ideas, we can easily interpret that all of this suffering caused by love and the loss of ownership can be avoided by avoiding the matter all together. But clearly that's easier said than done, and what Shakespeare has done is hold up a mirror to show us how truly ridiculous we really are. But unless we are willing to remove ourselves from this cycle of suffering and attain a boddhisatva sense of enlightenment, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. Beckett knew this and used it as dramatic inspiration in plays like 'Waiting for Godot' and 'Endgame'.


As Beckett says in his novella titled Worstward Ho, "Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Man's Earliest Form of Intoxication: Women

Man's Earliest Form of Intoxication: Women

Antony in Act 1 is in a spot where every guy has been, blinded by a foggy mixture of love and lust. Those on the outside looking in can see that Antony has started to lose his grip, his common sense, his identity even. He sees this early on in the play when he learns of the death of his wife Fulvia.

I must from this enchanting queen break off:

Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,

My idleness doth hatch (1.2.127-29)

The idea of a man losing a part of himself to a woman has been present in human culture for as far back as mythology can take us. In the epic of Gilgamesh for instance, one of the oldest surviving myths, Enkidu loses his wild, untamed nature after he makes love to the prostitute in the woods. After that he is no longer accepted by the creatures of the forest and must accompany the woman back to Babylon.

In Pop Culture today it is easiest to spot this concept in music, notably rap music. Due to technological ignorance, I've shared the song Got to Go by the artist Mac Dre in the following blog. In a snailshell, Mac Dre spits hot fire about the dangers of allowing women to cause men to "grow comfortable" in a sense. Please be aware, the song is crude, crass, and hardly academic. The specific lyrics I have in mind occur at 1 minute, 53 seconds through 2 minutes. If you decide to skip listening to this song the lyrics go like this:

Baby I got to go

Can't f*** (make love) no more

I gots to get my dough

Hella money in the streets and I want it.

Though the creative outlet is different, the concept that women somehow take something away from men is the same. There seems to be the conviction that a man cannot maintain his course of responsibility he gives into his carnal desires, thus neglecting his duties.

If using this concept as a lens through which to interpret the play, Antony and Cleopatra can be perceived as an eternal lesson to warn against what might happen to any man who chooses to follow a similar path. Marc Antony, who is one of the great heroes of Roman history, meets an end seemingly unworthy of his noble life. The pinnacle of Antony's effemination/loss of identity occurs in Act 3, where news of how he abandoned his troops in the midst of battle to chase after the fleeing Cleopatra reaches his captain Enobarbus.

She once being luffed,

the noble ruin of her magic, Antony,

Claps on his sea wing, and, like a doting mallard,

leaving the fight in height, flies after her.

I never saw an action of such shame;

Experience, manhood, honor, ne'er before

Did violate so itself. (3.10.19-24)

Ultimately, in the only way to conclude the story with any sort of Shakespearean balance, Antony kills himself, thereby retaining whatever honor he had left and freeing himself of the intoxicating Cleopatra. Ironically, Antony killed himself asa way to rejoin Cleopatra, but in so doing he unknowingly leaves her behind.

Within the play Cleopatra/Egypt represent Antony's addiction. There is no such thing as a man without faults, and this always seems most apparent among those who have accomplished great things. Antony's weakness for his plush life in Egypt and the seductive Cleopatra leads him to his demise, but the question of whether he did the right this is still unclear. Logical perception of the events tell us Antony clearly made a fatal mistake by allowing himself to become so captivated with Cleopatra, but Shakespeare leaves the audience with a sense of admiration from Antony's final minutes. His passion for that hing he loved most ultimately hilled him, but it seems Shakespeare poses the question, "Would death be such a high price to pay in exchange for a life with that thing one loves most, no matter that thing's nature?"