Listening to Shakespeare
and His Foreigners
JONATHAN GIL HARRIS
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
ASHOKA UNIVERSITY
12 JUNE, 2014
Listening to Shakespeare
SHAKES-SEEING
Ours is a very visually
oriented age. We often
read visual information
better than we read text.
SHAKES-SEEING
Ours is a very visually
oriented age. We often
read visual information
better than we read text.
Perhaps that is why, when
confronted with the
difficulty of Shakespeare’s
language, we want to “see”
him to make sense of him.
SHAKES-SEEING
Our desire to “see” in order
to make sense of
Shakespeare is apparent in
how we imagine his
characters’ differences in
terms of their physical
appearances.
SHAKES-SEEING
Our desire to “see” in order
to make sense of
Shakespeare is apparent in
how we imagine his
characters’ differences in
terms of their physical
appearances.
In particular, we tend to
imagine characters from
different backgrounds –
whether ethnic or religious
– simply as looking
different, as if identity were
literally skin deep
SHAKES-SEEING
SHAKES-SEEING
SHAKES-HEARING
But Shakespeare
presents difference at the
level not just of the
visible, but also of the
audible.
After all, the people who
came to his plays were
not spectators but
audiences.
Prose versus Poetry
BRUTUS
Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear
me for my cause, and be silent, that you
may hear. Believe me for mine honour,
and have respect to mine honour, that
you may believe. Censure me in your
wisdom, and awake your senses, that
you may the better judge. If there be
any in this assembly, any dear friend of
Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love
to Caesar was no less than his.
MARK ANTONY
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me
your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is often interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Prose versus Poetry
BRUTUS
Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear
me for my cause, and be silent, that you
may hear. Believe me for mine honour,
and have respect to mine honour, that
you may believe. Censure me in your
wisdom, and awake your senses, that
you may the better judge. If there be
any in this assembly, any dear friend of
Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love
to Caesar was no less than his.
Brutus’s speech is in PROSE
Sounds more like EVERYDAY SPEECH
The sentences don’t have a RHYTHM
So they are less memorable
MARK ANTONY
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me
your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is often interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Prose versus Poetry
BRUTUS
Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear
me for my cause, and be silent, that you
may hear. Believe me for mine honour,
and have respect to mine honour, that
you may believe. Censure me in your
wisdom, and awake your senses, that
you may the better judge. If there be
any in this assembly, any dear friend of
Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love
to Caesar was no less than his.
MARK ANTONY
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me
your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is often interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Brutus’s speech is in PROSE
Sounds more like EVERYDAY SPEECH
The sentences don’t have a RHYTHM
So they are less memorable
Mark Antony’s speech is in POETRY
Each line is shaped to a specific LENGTH,
so sounds more SCRIPTED
The lines have a RHYTHM
They are much more memorable
Iambic Pentameter
Iambic Pentameter: five feet of two syllables each,
first unstressed and second stressed
(dah DAH/ dah DAH/ dah DAH/ dah DAH/ dah
DAH)
To BOLD/ly GO/ where NO/ one’s GONE/ beFORE
– Star Trek
Iambic Pentameter
To BE/ or NOT/ to BE/ that IS/ the QUEST/ion
– Hamlet
Shakespeare often uses iambic pentameter when he
has characters speaking in poetry – the rhythm most
like the normal rhythms of speech.
Here, there is an extra syllable at the end. What is its
effect?
Trochaic Meter
Trochaic Meter: the opposite of iambic meter; the trochaic foot
starts with a stressed syllable and is followed by an unstressed
syllable (DAH dah/ DAH dah/ DAH dah)
WITCH
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
– Macbeth, 4.1.12-21
Hearing Difference
How does Shakespeare allow us to hear not just
differences of character and type, but also differences
of ethnicity and religion?
Fluellen in Henry V
FLUELLEN Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain
Gower. What call you the town's name where
Alexander the Pig was born!
GOWER Alexander the Great.
FLUELLEN Why, I pray you, is not pig great?
Macmorris in Henry V
MACMORRIS It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save
me: … there is throats to be cut, and works to be done;
and there ish nothing done, so Chrish sa' me, la!
Shylock in Merchant of Venice
SHYLOCK
He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at
my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his
reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And
if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest,
we will resemble you in that.
– The Merchant of Venice, 3.1.48-62
Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice
PRINCE OF MOROCCO
Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets
To try my fortune. By this scimitar
That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince
That won three fields of Sultan Solyman,
I would outstare the sternest eyes that look,
Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth,
Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear,
Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey,
To win thee, lady.
– The Merchant of Venice, 2.1.23-31
Caliban in The Tempest
MIRANDA
Abhorrèd slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known.
– The Tempest, 3.2.133-41
Caliban in The Tempest
CALIBAN
Be not afeared. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
– The Tempest, 3.2.133-41
Listening to Shakespeare’s Foreigners
At the level of sound, Shakespeare’s foreign
characters veer between crass caricature and
nuanced characterization
“The Othello Music”
G. Wilson Knight argued
in 1930 that Othello’s
difference from Iago can
be heard in his “musical”
speech
“The Othello Music”
When we
first hear of
Othello, we
think he will
be a classic
stage-Moor
IAGO Three great ones of the city,
In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,
Off-capped to him: and, by the faith of man,
I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.
But he, as loving his own pride and purposes,
Evades them, with a bombast circumstance
Horribly stuff'd with epithets of war.
“The Othello Music”
But when
Othello
first takes
the stage,
he says:
OTHELLO Tis yet to know-Which, when I know that boasting is an honour,
I shall promulgate--I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege. …
Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.
Good signior, you shall more command with years
Than with your weapons.
“The Othello Music”
Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still questioned me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it …
It was my hint to speak,--such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
“The Othello Music”
OTHELLO O, blood, blood, blood!
IAGO Patience, I say; your mind perhaps may change.
OTHELLO Never, Iago: Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.
“The Othello Music”
OTHELLO Soft you; a word or two before you go …
Speak of me as I am …
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him, thus.
Shakespeare’s World of Words
“I HEAR A FACE”
(A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM 5.1.191)