Everything in Nothing

So, I've been rather enamored recently with the various concepts of nothing that arise in Shakespeare. William, of course, means for us to read much into his time's pronunciation of the word and its connotation of hearsay and gossip, but I think he also is trying to address something much deeper and more profound.

The classic miracle, for instance, is the ability to create something of nothing. Genesis, transubstantiation, and, most importantly, our own imaginative faculty, are all miraculous examples of the Shakespearean concept of nothing. Goddard's criticism argues that within NOTHING is the idea of the actual and the possible, the "two constituents of the imagination" "In this realm," says Goddard, "are all the deeds that were not done when the other choice was made, all the roads that were not traveled when the other fork was taken, all the life that did not come into existence when its seeds failed to germinate."

It's as if Shakespeare asks the questions of Descartes--what is real? What is fact? Can I trust my senses? If not, what do I trust?--and comes to a unique and profoundly mythological conclusion. "It matters not," Shakespeare says, for "the poet's pen...gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." Our ability to trust our senses and our world is inconsequential, for we can live in a world of pure creativity through imagination.

And, indeed, imagination seems to be Shakespeare's most powerfully moving character. Lear's exhortation that "nothing will come of nothing" rings true in Shakespeare's grand sense, for encapsulated in the concept of nothing is the entire realm of possibility. For Cordelia, Goddard says, "her whole spiritual inheritance came from nothing."

"Nothing" then seems to be a stand in for the creative faculty of the imagination.

Let us at least put our lands in order

I like Frye's idea that tragedy and comedy are somehow enclosed in each other. It seems to me that Shakespeare's last four plays  extend upon that concept, attempting to reflect on that fact that every comedy contains possible tragedy, and every tragedy can possibly turn to comedy. The romances show darkly comic situations, misunderstandings that lead to tragic outcomes of oedipal significance, yet they still manage to end with some form of cathartic, redemptive power.

Shakespeare in Lear shows the greatest depth of despair that can be had on this world. In Hamlet he confronts the problems of evil head on. In Macbeth he explores the corruption that follows lust for power. Everywhere Shakespeare asks why. Why do we continue with this existence if it can lead to such overwhelming sorrow? Some may argue that the comedies provide answers, their "happy" endings providing hope to life. This hope, however, hangs by a thread of chance, as every comedy contains tragedy within.

It is in the romances, then, that Shakespeare finds his profoundly mythological answer. For although comedy escapes being tragedy by only chance, tragedy can also be transformed to comedy. The romances attempt to unveil this entire cycle, showing an eternal recurrence, a mixture of possibilities that provide hope that man might achieve either the light or the dark

History and Myth

To say I'm way behind on blogging is like claiming that Cleopatra is "only a little needy"....gross understatement. Anyways, here goes.

I found that Antony and Cleopatra provided the best mix of tragedy, comedy and history that I've read thus far. In Egypt (Cleopatra) and Rome (Antony and then Octavius) we have figures of such historical importance that they are raised nearly to the level of myth just by how their short time on earth shaped the destiny of western civilization, yet Shakespeare manages to both demythologize Caesar Augustus and reshape they mythology of Antony and Cleopatra, elevating them to god'like status whilst using the prodding of comedy to question whether they deserve that distinction.

As we discussed in class, the play and its characters are very much separated into Egypt and Rome. Rome is historical, linear, rational. Rome is passionless ambition, duty, the occident. Egypt is the orient, exotic, erotic and without rhyme or reason.

It is little wonder that Eliot made a nod to Cleopatra in The Wasteland. The second section, whose title, "A Game of Chess", is in itself a nod to machinations of history, explores one distinction that Egypt and Rome embody, the difference between historical and mythological time. "Hurry up please, it's time" says Eliot's Cockney woman at the end, mirroring the perception of Rome, describing a time that presses forward. For Octavius and his ilk time is a constant, linear thing moving inexorably through history. For Cleopatra, however, and, I think, for Eliot, time is not a linear matter. It is cyclic, it is an eternal recurrence. Cleopatra is "fluid" because she is a recurrence of Isis, of the Mother Goddess, and Antony, although he seems to shed his herculean ancestry as he removes the fetters of his Roman past, is also a reincarnation of Hercules. Both are, in the end, profoundly mythological.