Shakespeare References in The Discovery Of Poetry

 

The Discovery Of Poetry is a textbook by Frances Mayes that I got in college, and finally decided to read. Shakespeare is mentioned many times throughout the book, sometimes with full sonnets quoted. The first mention comes in the introductory note to the reader: “Don’t think anyone expects Shakespearean results” (p. vi). That is related to a note on writing exercises. Frances Mayes includes some lines from Macbeth, first writing, “If you have read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, you probably remember the witches’ chant (Act IV, scene i)” (p. 7). The next page then contains the speech that begins, “Double, double toil and trouble” (p. 8). Frances next turns to Troilus And Cressida, introducing a few lines from that play by, “Shakespeare must have been thinking of concrete naming when he wrote” (p. 37). The quoted passage is from Act IV Scene v: “Fie, fie upon her!/There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,/Nay her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out/At every joint and motive of her body” (p. 37). Then, regarding phrases that have become too common in poetry, Mayes writes, “Some of the phrases on the list were brilliant when they were first used: ‘crimson tide,’ though now a hand-me-down, was new in Shakespeare’s Richard III” (p. 38). Mayes continues: “We may still have some difficulty learning to read early poems with vocabularies very different from our own. Shakespeare requires us to work a little harder in order to participate as readers” (p. 38). Regarding word choice, Mayes writes, “‘Words, words, words,’ Shakespeare wrote” (p. 46). That line is Hamlet’s answer to Polonius’s question, “What do you read, my lord?” Mayes also includes the song from the end of Twelfth Night (pages 56-57), Sonnet 73 (p. 58), and the song from the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost (p. 79). In introducing “Winter,” Mayes writes, “Because it is grounded in the senses, Shakespeare’s ‘Winter’ still seems immediate to contemporary readers” (p. 78).

Mayes then moves to Romeo And Juliet, writing: “When Shakespeare says, ‘Juliet is the sun,’ he transfers the sun’s qualities to Juliet. More is at stake than if he’d said, ‘Juliet is like the sun.’ Juliet’s life-giving powers, brightness, and all-importance are intensified by the direct link. There is only one sun in our solar system. Perhaps other women could be ‘like the sun,’ but only one can be the sun” (p. 96). Mayes again refers to that play: “Though metaphor works first on an intuitive level, it also works on a logical level. We can know exactly how ‘Juliet is the sun’” (p. 97). Mayes then returns to Twelfth Night: “If we remember Shakespeare’s ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ and similar treatments of the subject of love, we’re ready to read this as a poem of that type” (p. 98). In a section on metonymy, Mayes quotes a line from As You Like It: “…doublet and hose/ought to show itself courageous to petticoat” (p. 102). And then in a section on synecdoche, Mayes quotes lines from The First Part Of King Henry The Fourth: “Worcester, get thee gone for I do see/Danger and disobedience in thine eye” (p. 102). Then in a section on oxymoron, Mayes quotes Romeo And Juliet: “Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!/Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!” (p. 104).

Frances Mayes includes the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet (pages 155-156), the great “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech from Macbeth (p. 165). She mentions Macbeth again, as well as King Lear, Troilus And Cressida and Richard II, when talking about repetition: “When dethroned King Lear fantasizes taking revenge on those who usurped him, he says, ‘Then Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill.’ With each repetition, the word becomes more intense, a little wilder and more sinister. When Macbeth says ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/To the last syllable of recorded time/And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!’ the repetition of ‘tomorrow’ sounds more and more weary each time the word occurs. The two commas and two conjunctions stretch out the sound even more. The short monosyllables ‘out, out’ contrast with ‘tomorrow.’ Shakespeare made frequent use of the technique of repeating a single word, often with subtly different inflections depending on the context. ‘O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false,’ from Troilus and Cressida, sounds childlike and petulant. In Richard II, the triple use of ‘little’ sounds smaller with each use: ‘And my large kingdom for a little grave,/A little, little grave, an obscure grave.’ That ‘large’ also begins with l heightens the contrast between the ‘large kingdom’ and the ‘little grave’” (pages 206-207). Of course, I object to Mayes’ use of the word “usurp” when referring to King Lear. He willingly gave up his throne. Mayes mentions Macbeth again a little later: “In Macbeth’s speech quoted earlier (page 206), notice that the repetition of ‘tomorrow’ is followed by ‘in this petty pace,’ ‘from day,’ ‘to day,’ ‘to the last syllable,’ ‘of recorded time’: five prepositional phrases. Unlike verbs, which keep the sentence moving, prepositional phrases are merely directional; they point our attention toward the action. The repetition of this pattern is, like the ‘tomorrows,’ slow and weary” (pages 214-215).

Of course Frances Mayes mentions Shakespeare in the section on iambic pentameter: “Because blank verse is even more adaptable to speech than rhymed iambic pentameter, Shakespeare chose to write his plays in it, often alternating blank verse sections with prose” (p. 247). Mayes includes the famous “All the world’s a stage” speech from As You Like It (p. 248). She also includes some of the dialogue from the beginning of Act III Scene v of Romeo And Juliet, the lark and nightingale section (pages 274-275). Regarding sonnets, Mayes writes, “The three major types of sonnet are Shakespearean, Petrarchan, and Spenserian” (p. 335). Then: “The Shakespearean sonnet (also called the English sonnet) consists of three quatrains rhyming abab, cdcd, and efef followed by a concluding couplet rhyming gg. The action of the poem proceeds, then, like three quick spins and a sudden leap. The final rhyme, coming so close to its partner, closes the poem with finality; there is no doubting the end” (p. 335). Sonnet 98 is included (pages 335-336). Mayes then writes, “The Petrarchan is hard to sustain because the writer works with only four different rhymes instead of the six of the Shakespearean sonnet” (p. 336). Sonnet 116 is also included (pages 363-364), as is Sonnet 97 (p. 364). In the section on John Keats, Mayes writes, “No writer except Shakespeare uses imagery as sensuously as Keats” (p. 401). Mayes also quotes from Sonnet 138: “For example, Shakespeare wrote, ‘When my love swears that she is made of truth/I do believe her, though I know she lies’” (p. 477). Sonnet 130 is also included (p. 485). Mayes writes, “In Sonnet CXXX, Shakespeare makes fun of the conventional comparisons made in love poems” (p. 485). The book’s final mention of Shakespeare is a portion of a speech from Act V scene i of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling,/Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;/And as imagination bodies forth/The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen/Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name” (p. 547).

The Discovery Of Poetry was published in 1987.