Bardisms (31 page)

Some details:

This speech offer some interesting examples of one of Shakespeare’s standard rhetorical devices. He likes to build excitement and energy in his language by grouping ideas in threes and arranging these groupings so that each idea of the three is somehow bigger or more outlandish than the one that came before. Theater artists call these groupings
three-part builds
. We’ve seen one or two already and observed how they create very flashy effects with great economy.

The first of Hotspur’s three-part builds here describes Glendower as harder to endure than (1) a tired horse, (2) a railing wife, and (3) a smoky house. Each image is more extravagant, crazier, and further over the top than the one that comes before. The next three-part build is the content of line 4: Hotspur would rather live (1) on an exclusive (and nasty) diet of cheese and garlic, (2) in a windmill (which would be a very cramped and loud place to live), and (3) in the middle of nowhere. Again, the images get more grandiose as they continue. Finally, Hotspur proposes that this backwoods existence of
windmill con formaggio e aglio
would be preferable to a life of (1) eating delicacies, (2) listening to Glendower, and (3) living in the loveliest country house in the world. Speaking each of these three-part lists, you can feel their intensity build, and Hotspur’s disgust crest, as you continue. Allow each one to have its own little crescendo, and allow the speech as a whole, which is, after all, a three-part build of three-part builds, to heat to a boil as you move through it.

O, he is as tedious

As
a tired horse
,
arailing wife
,

Worse than
a smoky house
. I had rather live

With cheese and garlic
,
in a windmill
,
FAR,

Than
feed on cates
and have
HIM TALK TO ME

In
ANY SUMMER HOUSE IN CHRISTENDOM!!!!!!

SHAKESPEARE ON THANKS

For this relief much thanks.

—F
RANCISCO
,
Hamlet
, 1.1.6

Given the number of life occasions for which Shakespeare provides us just the right words, it seems reasonable to expect that the people for or about whom we say those words might want to requite our efforts with some of their own. Here, then, a handful of Bardisms of gratitude. Use them in speeches, toasts, or as some Shakespeare on the Occasion of Finally Sending that Thank-You Card You’ve Been Procrastinating About for Too Long.

THANKS A MILLION

First, the most basic Shakespearean expression of appreciation:

This kindness merits thanks.

—P
ETRUCHIO
,
The Taming of the Shrew
, 4.3.41

Next, a slightly more elaborate way to put it:

I can no other answer make but thanks,

And thanks, and ever thanks.

—S
EBASTIAN
,
Twelfth Night
, 3.3.14–15

Here’s some Shakespeare for when you need a moment to figure out exactly the right way to say thank you; this, a promissory message that your gratitude will come in the form of some future good turn:

I will pay thy graces / Home both in word and deed.

—P
ROSPERO
,
The Tempest
, 5.1.70–71

In other words:

I will repay your kindness in full, both with words and actions.

Should you feel yourself for some reason unable to express your thankfulness through future recompense, or should you be acknowledging the largesse of someone more well-heeled than yourself, either in material wealth or magnitude of generosity, the Melancholy Dane is ready to pen your Hallmark card:

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you.

—H
AMLET
,
Hamlet
, 2.2.265–66

If you need to thank two people, then listen to the plainspoken Vincentio:

Many and hearty thankings to you both.

—D
UKE
,
Measure for Measure
, 5.1.4

How to use it:

Substitute
all
for
both
, and you’re set to thank a group of any size.

Finally, in case you’re moved to up the rhetorical ante and really unfurl a thicket of thanks, a mellifluous
merci
, a doozy of a
danke
, and a goodness-gracious
gracias
, you can always pick up your trowel and lay on these five lines:

For your great graces

Heap’d upon me, poor undeserver, I

Can nothing render but allegiant thanks,

My prayers to heaven for you, my loyalty,

Which ever has and ever shall be growing.

—C
ARDINAL
W
OLSEY
,
Henry VIII
, 3.2.175–79

In other words:

In exchange for all the huge kindnesses you’ve done me—someone who doesn’t deserve them—all I can offer is my faithful gratitude. And also my prayers to God on your behalf. And my devotion, which always has and always will grow greater.

SHAKESPEARE ON APOLOGIES AND FORGIVENESS

I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends.

—S
IR
H
UGH
E
VANS
,
The Merry Wives of Windsor
, 3.1.74–75

Shakespeare stopped writing in 1612, left London for Stratford, and lived there in quiet retirement until his death four years later. His last playwrighting efforts before decamping to the countryside were collaborations with John Fletcher, the popular dramatist fifteen years his junior, who succeeded him as the house writer of his theater company, the King’s Men. Scholars differ over how much and which parts of their joint efforts
Henry VIII
and
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Shakespeare wrote, and no one knows how much of
Cardenio
is his, because that play, based on an episode in Cervantes’
Don Quixote
, is lost.

Shakespeare’s final solo effort was
The Tempest
, written in 1611. It centers on Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan, who, during his enforced exile on a remote island, has mastered the occult arts and become a magus, or sorcerer, capable of casting spells, conjuring storms, rendering himself invisible, commanding troops of spirit-world minions, and even raising the dead. The play opens with him stirring the titular tempest and shipwrecking his enemies on his island. With them in his power, Prospero plots revenge. But just as he is about to loose his pent-up rage and inflict a terrible punishment upon them, his better instincts, prodded awake by his sensitive servant Ariel, take over, and he decides that the quality of mercy is indeed not strained: “The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance.” (
Rarer
here is synonymous with “more extraordinary,” hence, “superior.”) Pronouncing an eloquent “I quit!”—“This rough magic / I here abjure”—he plunges his sorcery books into the sea and breaks his magical staff, renouncing his black art forever and granting forgiveness to those he wanted dead only moments before.

Critics who insist on the futility of reading Shakespeare’s works autobiographically tend to trip over
The Tempest
. It’s impossibly tempting to view Prospero as a Shakespearean self-portrait—he stages performances, he reads voraciously, he has daughter trouble—and to see the Bard’s abjuration of his own magic just a year after writing Prospero’s as a sure case of his life imitating his own art. Yes, yes, the whole theory may well be nothing more than romantic speculation, but life and art rarely come together this neatly, so what’s the harm?

But whether or not
The Tempest
is Shakespeare’s self-conscious curtain call (his Swan of Avon song?), it is an indisputable end point, not only of the greatest canon of plays ever written in English but also of a debate that rages throughout the thirty-five plays that came before it. It’s a spiritual debate, a philosophical one, an ethical, moral, and existential one.
Is virtue in fact preferable to vengeance?
Hamlet wrestles with the question for five long acts and votes no. Macbeth and Othello ponder it too, but both men are so addicted to violence that virtue for them is hardly a possibility. Lear’s universe comes unmoored from its moral anchors before he can even frame the question coherently. Yet after writing all these plays—all this blood, all this death, all this nihilism—Shakespeare ends his career by writing for Prospero his most Christian line. If it’s harmless to read
The Tempest
as Shakespeare’s farewell to the theater, then I say it’s positively uplifting to read the play as his declaration that what the whole thing’s all about—all the characters, all the stories, all the antitheses, all the iambic pentameter—is this: Turn the other cheek. Embrace goodness. Issue apologies, and accept them. Love.
Forgive
.

I APOLOGIZE

For an all-purpose apology that manages to be gracious and flattering at the same time, here’s the Prince of Denmark.

Give me your pardon, sir. I’ve done you wrong;

But pardon’t as you are a gentleman.

—H
AMLET
,
Hamlet
, 5.2.163–64

How to say it:

Transgendered, the lines might read
ma’am
for
sir
in line 1, and
gentlewoman
for
gentleman
in line 2.

I FORGIVE YOU

This plainspoken line is the great Shakespearean response to apologies simple or elaborate.

I have forgiven and forgotten all.

—K
ING OF
F
RANCE
,
All’s Well That Ends Well
, 5.3.9