A Monstrous Little Voice

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This month marks the end of an Epoch.  Or of my high school career, at least, which is as near to an Epoch as an extremely ordinary life ever gets.  On June 1 I did one last round of tidying up - a bit of accounting review and such like - and closed the book, literally and figuratively, on that period of school.  My senior year is squarely behind me and I am looking down the road to a busy summer and, afterward, entrance into college.  Among other, more remarkable implications, this means that for as long as I like, I don't have to pick up another work of Shakespeare.

For those of you who follow me on Goodreads, you already know that I've been jumping from Shakespeare to Shakespeare ever since August.  He was my literature course this year.  Having already done the usual British and American literature, and probably some others that I can't remember now, we were a little at a loss when it came down to my senior year.  The choices were Eastern literature and Shakespeare, and I'm glad we decided to go with the Bard.  Nine straight months of him has been a strain; I can't imagine what nine straight months of Confucius would do to me.

The school year has, I think, been fairly evenly divided between tragedies and comedies (with a few histories thrown in, and sonnets at the end):

comedies

As You Like It, which demanded too much suspension of disbelief;

Much Ado About Nothing, a favorite;

Twelfth Night, another good, lighthearted romp;

A Midsummer Night's Dream, enjoyable but a little brief;

The Taming of the Shrew, possibly the top of the list;

The Comedy of Errors, definitely at the bottom.

tragedies & histories

Antony and Cleopatra, which was almost laughable in its drama;

Julius Caesar, which was also over the top;

King Lear, depressing, but I appreciated it;

Richard III, full of propaganda, but it's got some great speeches;

The Winter's Tale, which doesn't actually fit anywhere because it's so weird;

Henry VIII, which was episodic and rather stilted.

Apparently I leaned more toward comedy, since many of Shakespeare's more famous tragedies, including Macbeth and Hamlet, I had already read.

I didn't enjoy everything: The Comedy of Errors, for instance, or Henry VIII.  Like all writers, Shakespeare was not amazing one hundred percent of the time (although I get the feeling that scholars would like to make him so).  He had plays that were disjointed, puns that stretched humor, and in the main his plots were lifted from ancient or contemporary writers - fortunately plagiarism wasn't a big deal unless the famous person was the one being plagiarized.  Characters are not always given, in a mere five acts, sufficient time for what we might call development.  And, well, there are just some plays that ride the coattails of others' successes. 

However, Shakespeare had to develop some coattails before lesser works could begin riding on them.  A few less-than-stellar writings cannot negate the genius displayed in the true masterpieces - the Much Ado About Nothings, the Richard IIIs, even the King Lears.  For Shakespeare had wit.  He had a deft pen, a way with words, a skill at creating something beautiful out of the English language.  This is particularly apparent in his Sonnets, which, I confess, I did not read straight through; but I had to go write one after I had read about 40, and let me tell you, a man who can write 154 of them is nothing to sneeze at.  

It is also comes to bear, though, on his plays, tragic and comic.  There's a reason Shakespeare is so widely quoted (often incorrectly, I'll grant, but still quoted).  In plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream he infuses the dialogue with a lyrical quality, while in the highflown speeches of Richard III he conveys desperation and, of course, villainy.  The hopeless babblings in King Lear encompass the bleakness of the story, and the writer does banter like nobody's business in Much Ado About Nothing.  Shakespeare was always Shakespeare; having read about eleven of his plays more or less in a row, I picked up Henry VIII and, not knowing that it is thought to have been co-written with Shakespeare's successor, felt that the style was "off."  But Shakespeare was also dexterous enough to craft a story out of comedy, out of tragedy, out of a tertium quid. 

Shakespeare is not altogether popular, and many shy away from him.  Either the Elizabethan speech is thought too hard, or it feels weird to read a play, or they "don't get him."  I was somewhat on the fence; I had read some of his works, even enjoyed them, but with no particular appreciation or relish until I started off on this jaunt.  I'm no scholar now and I admit I'm ready to take a break, but I have enjoyed scratching the surface and, through essays and reviews, observing the genius. 

I've also discovered that there really is no excuse for not delving into Shakespeare, at least a little.  Certainly it is best when performed, and performed well, but the beauty of the dialogue is not lost when read; and as for the style, while not every section makes perfect sense, context and practice do wonders for conveying Shakespeare's meaning.  It takes a bit of work, sometimes a bit of cheating and looking at Dover footnotes, but the more you read, the clearer it becomes.

As I said before, some scholars go overboard: all Shakespeare's works are good, and every element has Particular Meaning, and he was really talking about gender-equality-free-speech-nature-reason-the-mind-true-love-every-other-liberal-keyword-out-there.  Maybe he was.  Maybe he wasn't.  But the short and the long of it is that the centuries after Shakespeare owe him a great debt for his wit and for the beauty of his writing, and writers especially would do ill to discount him.

at the very least, a study of shakespeare adds some splendid quotes to your repertoire.

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
retain that dear perfection which he owes
without that title!"

Thus philosophizes Juliet on her balcony in perhaps the most famous passage of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, referring to the fact that Romeo's surname is that of her family's sworn enemy. Philosophers will argue the validity of her idle comment that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, and in Anne of Green Gables the heroine (most definitely not a philosopher) makes the amusing and accurate observation, "I don't believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage."

Be that as it may, I rather wonder if Shakespeare could have written his play the way he did if Romeo's name were any different - or if it would have been half as popular. "The Tragedy of Gerald and Hepzibah" fails to pull any heartstrings in me. In Scripture a name frequently reflected something about the character of its possessor, such as Solomon's God-given name, Jedidiah, and were chosen with care by the parents to have meaning; sometimes they referred to circumstances of the child's birth (Jacob, for instance), or to appearance (as in Esau), or to some great deed that was foretold about the child's life (most notably Jesus Himself). Occasionally in Scripture there is also revealed the special name by which God called a man, as in the name Jedidiah or the covenant names God gave to His people.

In fact, the answer to Juliet's question is that there is a great deal more in a name than she would think. Names, as much in fiction as in real life, are very important and carry with them strong images; and writers, as much as parents, often face a challenge in naming their characters. Sometimes a character will present himself or herself and have a name already...and sometimes they don't. More's the pity. But if the latter is true, names are too important in a story to allow any writer to just skim over a list of baby names and pick one that sounds interesting, for characters have a tendency to rebel when their name does not reflect their character.

There are several interesting ways to find a fitting name for a character. One is to recognize that letters, as well as names, come with at least a vague impression of the sort of person who might have a name starting with that. M's, for instance, are often applied to villains (Morgoth, Morgan le Fay) and seems to fit that role. If you can consider what sort of a personality your nameless character possesses, sometimes you can find a letter, or a couple letters, that especially fit - thereby narrowing down the list of names to go through.

Another way is to take into account the meanings of names; taking whatever you already know about the personality of Unnamed, you can find names by their meanings and pick one that sounds right and fits. The meaning of whatever name your character has can often play into a story - sometimes this is planned, and sometimes it is completely unintentional.

And then there is the third way, usually necessary for the most elusive characters who are simply too shadowy to fulfill any of the requirements for the above options: go to a source and start searching through names, taking into account both letter-imagery and meanings as you go. I've found it the most tedious way to go, but sometimes nothing else will work.