Shakespeare References in Granta Issue 74

The summer 2001 issue of the literary magazine Granta contains a couple of Shakespeare references. The first comes in “Confessions Of A Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater.” The anonymous author writes, “I do not mean to invoke images of Zen and Buddha – my son is roughly as Zen-like as Eminem – but the transformation was as striking as it was palpable, this sea change” (p. 20). That last phrase comes from The Tempest, where Ariel sings, “Nothing of him that doth fade/But doth suffer a sea change.” The second comes in “The Andes Of Martin Chambi,” written by Amanda Hopkinson. Hopkinson writes, “She preyed on innocuous and unlikely citizens until, with a cry of ‘Here’s my King Arthur!’ or ‘You are Ophelia: kindly weep!’ she would introduce them to her dressing-up trunk and her makeshift studio, to be transformed according to her personal vision” (p. 91). Hopkinson there refers to Hamlet’s Ophelia.

 

Shakespeare References in Fear Strikes Out

I've been reading my dad's baseball books, some of which contain Shakespeare references. I had seen the film adaptation of Fear Strikes Out, and now finally read the book, and found it contains a couple of Shakespeare references. The first is to a line from Hamlet, with Jim Piersall writing, "If I had known Murphy better, I would have realized that there was a method in his madness" (p. 90). That refers to a line that Polonius speaks, regarding Hamlet: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." The second reference is to Shakespeare himself, and it comes in a passage that Piersall quotes from an issue of Sporting News from July 9, 1952: "The move was like sending Shakespeare out to write obituaries on a country weekly" (p. 171). The article's author, Roger Birtwell, was referring to the Red Sox sending Jim Piersall to the minor leagues to work on his hitting.

Fear Strikes Out: The Jim Piersall Story was written by Jim Piersall and Al Hirshberg, and was published in 1955. The copy I read was a first edition.

Shakespeare References in The Curse Of The Bambino

Dan Shaughnessy's book The Curse Of The Bambino contains a few Shakespeare references. The first two are to Hamlet. Shaughnessy is talking about Don Zimmer working as a coach with the Yankees in 1983 and renting Bucky Fucking Dent's apartment. He writes: "Every night when coach Don Zimmer closed his bedroom door, the last thing he saw was a picture of Dent hitting the home run off Torrez. Good night, sweet prince" (p. 147). Obviously, that's a reference to Horatio's line, "Good night, sweet prince,/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." A little later, Shaughnessy writes: "Sox fans expect something to go wrong. They go to the theater even though they have seen the play before. The cast changes and new liberties are taken with an ancient script, but Hamlet always dies in the end" (p. 158). Then in the book's epilogue, he quotes Lou Gorman: "Everything goes against the Red Sox. They're star-crossed lovers in a sense. The wrong thing always happens to the Red Sox" (p. 214). That's a little nod to Romeo And Juliet and the line "A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life."

The Curse Of The Bambino was published in 1990. The copy I read, with the additional epilogue, was published in 1991.

Shakespeare Study: Romeo And Juliet, Revisited

It had been a while since I’d read Romeo And Juliet, and I found I had a few books I hadn’t yet enjoyed. So…

Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare – This time I read The New Cambridge Shakespeare edition, edited by G. Blakemore Evans. The introduction begins with an attempt to date the play, then moves onto the sources of the story, and the ways in which Shakespeare departed from them. For example, G. Blakemore Evans writes: “Tybalt and Paris appear in Brooke only when events demand them. Tybalt is unheard of until he is needed as the ringleader of the Capulet faction in the street brawl, which breaks out some months after Romeus and Juliet have been secretly married (955-1034), and he no sooner appears than he is slain by Romeus. Shakespeare, however, introduces Tybalt in the first scene in his self-appointed role as leader of the younger Capulets and then underscores this by showing him as a troublemaker at the Capulet feast (1.5), a further foreshadowing of Tybalt’s later decisive function that finds no place in Brooke” (p. 9). G. Blakemore Evans then writes, “The play is unusually full, perhaps more so than other Shakespearean play, of words like time, day, night, today, tomorrow, years, hours, minutes and specific days of the week, giving us a sense of events moving steadily and inexorably in a tight temporal framework” (p. 10). In a section on the characters, G. Blakemore Evans writes, “The slaying of Paris has raised some critical questions, but there is a mysterious rightness in it that validates Paris’s love and allows him, in company with Romeo, to be joined with Juliet in the silent communion and consummation of death” (p. 21). A note in that section reads, “Juliet’s passing suspicion (4.3.24-9; not in Brooke) that Friar Lawrence may have given her a poison instead of a sleeping potion suggests that she recognises the personal dangers inherent in the Friar’s position” (p. 24). Regarding Romeo’s urge to stab himself, G. Blakemore Evans writes: “His attempted suicide here is an important index of his comparative immaturity, a moment in the scene that owes nothing to Brooke. The implied commitment of such an action – to die for love – disguises nothing more than a selfish and thoughtless emotional reaction, without any real consideration for Juliet’s feelings of the difficulty of her position” (p. 27). The text for this edition is Q2. Notes on differences in the texts do not include just Q1, Q2 and F, but also Q3 and Q4, and sometimes Q5, F2, F3 and F4, as well as emendations. There are lots of notes at the bottom of each page. Regarding Romeo’s speech beginning with the line “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,” a note reads: “These lines ironically describe the present stage and foreshadow the three later stages of Romeo’s love: (1) his professed love for Rosaline (‘smoke’ and ‘sighs’); (2) his new love for Juliet (the ‘smoke’ cleared away (‘purged’), a mutual ‘fire’ burns in the lovers’ eyes); (3) his love threatened  (‘vexed’) by banishment and inundated by the tears of love; (4) his love, turned to desperation (‘a discreet madness’), finds death (‘a choking gall’) and finally immortality (‘a preserving sweet’)” (p. 62). Regarding Mercutio’s lines to Benvolio in Act III Scene i, a note reads: “Mercutio’s characterisation of Benvolio as a quarrelsome gallant who will pick a fight under the most whimsical pretexts, or for none, is borne out by nothing we learn of Benvolio in the play; if anything, he is the opposite. Thus, in his pique at Benvolio’s suggestion that they should withdraw because ‘the Capels are abroad’, Mercutio’s criticism tells us more about himself than about Benvolio” (p. 121). Regarding Juliet’s speech about taking Romeo and cutting “him out in little stars,” a note reads: “i.e. let me have Romeo to myself as long as I am alive, and when I die then I will share him with the whole world as a source of light that will put the sun to shame. Q4 ‘he’ for ‘I’ in 21, adopted by many eds., too suddenly changes the focus to Romeo’s death, something, as Delius points out, Juliet ‘cannot, in her present happiness, conceive’. Accepting ‘he’, Dover Wilson (NS) paraphrases: ‘if, gentle night, you will give him to me now, you may have him when he is dead to make stars of’” (p. 131). And regarding Romeo’s lines about the apothecary, a note reads: “Romeo’s recollection of the Apothecary (37-8) and his earlier thought of his possible utility suggests that suicide had not been far from his mind during his banishment – a brilliant touch not in Brooke or Painter” (p. 178). There are more notes after the play’s text, as well as a textual analysis and excerpts from Arthur Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. This book was published in 1984. The copy I read was from the 1989 reprint.

Juliet’s Nurse by Lois Leveen – This novel relates the events of the play from the perspective of the Nurse, and actually begins almost fourteen years before those events, with the birth of a child who is quicker to leave this world than to enter it. The Nurse soon joins the Capulet home, here the Cappelletti, to nurse Juliet, who was born the same day as her own daughter. And we learn more about that family, how Tybalt’s mother died during Rosaline’s birth, and how Tybalt’s father sent Rosaline away to be nursed. Interestingly, nightingales and larks are mentioned early on. Friar Lawrence is here Friar Lorenzo, and he plays a big part in the story. It is he to whom Angelica (the Nurse) makes confession, and it is he who baptized her daughter and made arrangements for her to nurse Juliet. We also learn that Juliet was named after her father’s first wife, who died from the plague. The plague also plays a big part in these characters’ lives. The Montague family is here the Montecche family. This story also gives us a different view of Paris, and here it is the Nurse who urges him to be at Juliet’s grave, which leads to his death. This book was published in 2014. The copy I read is an advance reader’s edition.

Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare – Well, it turns out that I own two copies of The New Cambridge Shakespeare version of Romeo And Juliet, but the second is the Updated Edition from 2003. Thomas Moisan has added a new section to the introduction, covering more recent theatrical and film productions, plus recent criticism. Also, there are a couple of new photos. The added section focuses on gender issues and father figures. Moison writes, “And of these the most complex is, of course, Capulet, a figure whose mixture of comedic traits and tragic destructiveness makes him a microcosm of his play; bearing a resemblance to the comically conventional obstructionist fathers we encounter in ‘lighter’ works such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream or the various renderings of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, he is a figure whose emotional volatility and irascible assertion of authority are instrumental in destroying the daughter he initially calls ‘the hopeful lady of my earth’ (1.2.15), and in vitiating the very nuptial decorums his position as patriarch would ordain him to uphold” (p. 52). That section also touches upon the effects of new historicism, and mentions Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation. This edition also contains an updated reading list at the end. This updated edition was published in 2003. My copy is from the ninth printing, 2010.

Prefaces To Shakespeare Volume IV: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo And Juliet, The Merchant Of Venice, Othello by Harley Granville-Barker – This volume contains four of the prefaces written by Harley Granville-Barker, including the one for Romeo And Juliet. In that one, Granville-Barker writes, “The dominating merit of this is that Shakespeare takes Brooke’s tale, and at once doubles its dramatic value by turning its months to days” (p. 40). Regarding the feud between the two families, Granville-Barker writes, “If it were not for the servants, then, who fight because they always have fought, and the Tybalts, who will quarrel about nothing sooner than not quarrel at all, it is a feud ripe for settling; everyone is weary of it; and no one more weary, more impatient with it than Romeo” (p. 41). Then, regarding the silent moment following Tybalt’s challenge to Romeo, Granville-Barker writes, “The moment is, for Romeo, so packed with emotions that the actor may interpret it in half a dozen ways, each legitimate (and by such an endowment we may value a dramatic situation). Does he come from his ‘one short minute’ with Juliet so rapt in happiness that the sting of the insult cannot pierce him, that he finds himself contemplating this Tybalt and his inconsequent folly unmoved? Does he flash into passion and check it, and count the cost to his pride and the scorn of his friends, and count them as nothing, all in an instant?” (p. 47). He gets a bit into each of the main characters, and, regarding Romeo, writes, “Romeo has been called an early study for Hamlet” (p. 76). Then: “But Romeo is not a younger Hamlet in love, though Hamlet in love may seem a disillusioned Romeo. The very likeness, moreover, is largely superficial, is a common likeness to many young men, who take life desperately seriously, some with reason, some without. The study of him is not plain sailing. If Hamlet’s melancholy is of the soul, Romeo’s was something of a pose” (p. 76). And then: “He is posing to himself certainly, more in love with love than with Rosaline, posing to his family and friends, and not at all displeased by their concern” (p. 77). In the preface to The Merchant Of Venice, regarding Antonio’s line “In sooth I know not why I am so sad,” Granville-Barker notes, “It is worth remarking that the word ‘sad,’ as Shakespeare uses it, may mean rather solemn and serious than definitely miserable” (p. 105). The copy I read is the First Princeton Paperback edition, from 1965.