Jonathan O'Neill > Recent Status Updates

For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion, carved out his passage,
Till he faced the slave,
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseamed him from the nave to th' chops,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.

Read ‘Midsummer’ Essay

Bloom “rejects the prevailing notion that sexual violence and bestiality are at the centre of this humane and wise drama” and finds the questions of whether or not Bottom was, in fact, the carnal lover of the Fairy Queen, “ambiguous or elliptical” and, in any case, “unimportant compared with Bottom’s uniqueness in the Dream.” [Cont...]

Read ‘Hamlet’ Essay

The crux of the majority of Bloom’s essay surrounds his support of Peter Alexander’s surmise that the Ur-Hamlet, written no later than 1589, was not written, as many believe, by Thomas Kyd, but was indeed perhaps the earliest dramatic effort and failure of a young and inexperienced Shakespeare. {cont...]

Shakespeare perspectivizes his dramas so that, measure for measure, we are judged even as we attempt to judge. If your Falstaff is a roistering coward, a wastrel confidence man, an uncounted jester to Prince Hal, well, then, we know something of you, but we know no more about Falstaff. If your Cleopatra is an aging who're, and her Antony a would-be Alexander in his dotage, then we know a touch [cont...]

In reading Shakespeare's plays, and to a certain extent in attending their performances, the merely sensible procedure is to immerse yourself in the text and its speakers, and allow your understanding to move outward from what you read, hear and see to whatever contexts suggest themselves as relevant...
... Alas, sensible, even "natural" as this way was, it is now out of fashion, and has been cont...

[Shakespeare] is a system of northern lights, an aurora borealis visible where most of us will never go. Libraries and playhouses (and cinemas) cannot contain him; he has become a spirit or "spell of light," almost too vast to apprehend. High romantic bardolatry, now so much disdained in our self-defiled academies, is merely the most normative of the faiths that worship him.

That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking
Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols

Read 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' essay.

'The child of the union of Theseus and Hippolyta, according to Plutarch, was the fanatically chaste young man Hippolytus, whose tragic death comes as a result of his stepmother Phaedra's lust for him [...]
The "happy ending" of this play of romantic love is in the theatre almost completely satisfying. But with Oberon's caution about progeny... cont.

"A play there is my lord, some ten words long,
Which is as brief as I have known a play.
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
There is not one word apt, one player fitted.
And tragical, my lord, it is,
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself;
Which when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water, but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed."

BOTTOM Where’s Peaseblossom?
PEASEBLOSSOM Ready.
BOTTOM Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where’s Monsieur Cobweb?
COBWEB Ready.
BOTTOM Monsieur Cobweb, good Monsieur, get you your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Monsieur; [cont.]

HELENA
And will you rent our ancient love asunder
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly.
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.

The hypocricy of this presumptuous beration, and it extends well beyond what I've shared, after Helena earlier ratted Hermia and Lysander's getaway plan out to Demetrius is craazy! Hilarious.

HELENA
[...]
I am your spaniel, and Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel: spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, loose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love
(And yet a place of high respect with me)
Than to be used as you use your dog?

Good lord, Helena, get ahold of yourself, woman!

ROBIN How now, spirit, whither wander you?
FAIRY Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moon's sphere...

{cont.}

BOTTOM Let me play the Lion too. I will roar that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the duke say, ‘Let him roar again, let him roar again.’
QUINCE And you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek, and that were enough to hang us all.
ALL That would hang us, every mother’s son.

[cont...}

Read Hamlet Essay

...one never does encounter Hamlet "for the first time." Instead the play provides a resonant cultural echo, both forming and reflecting concepts—turns of speech, types of character, philosophical ideas—that seem to preexist any single experience of the play, and at the same time to be disseminated from it.

'Modern quoters cite "Shakespeare" at their peril when they're actually, and recognizably, quoting Shakespearean characters carefully crafted to be at variance with their own language. One of this playwrights most substantial achievements is that, whenever he cites truisms or platitudes, he puts them in the mouths of suspect speakers, [...cont]

HAMLET

[...] We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be, 'tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all, since no man of aught he leaves knows what is't to leave betimes. Let be.

In the Graveyard

HAMLET
Dost thou think Alexander looked o’this fashion i‘ith’ earth?

HORATIO E’en so.

HAMLET And smelt so? Pah!

HORATIO E’en so, my lord.

HAMLET To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till ‘a find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO ‘Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.

cont...

HAMLET […] Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN My lord, I cannot

HAMLET I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

cont.

HAMLET
To be, or not to be – that is the question;
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them; to die: to sleep –
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished – to die: to sleep –

[...cont]

POLONIUS
My liege and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time;
Therefore, brevity is the soul of wit
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes.
I will be brief: your noble son is mad.
Mad call I it, for to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.

[cont]

The finale to Prokofiev's 'Hamlet, Op.77', 'Fortinbras' Final March'... Wow! It's sublime, assertive, heroic and cathartic in a sweeping, cleansing way. However, it's also devastating with a sense of mourning and a subtly nagging ominousness beneath the surface. Bravo, Prokofiev! Bravo!

POLONIUS
'[I know] in part him, but', you may say, 'not well.
But if't be he I mean he's very wild,
Addicted so and so', and there put on him
What forgeries you please. Marry, none so rank
As may dishonour him – take heed of that –
But, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty

REYNALDO
As gaming, my lord?

[...cont]

I feel like every one of Polonius' lines are quotable and want to commit them all to memory! Here's one I could use on my own daughters one day when warning of the affectations of those treacherous young men:

POLONIUS
...
Do you believe [Hamlet's] 'tenders', as you call them?

OPHELIA
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS
Marry, I will teach you; think yourself a baby
[cont.]

HAMLET
Ay, madam, [death] is common.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET
'Seems', madam — nay it is, I know not 'seems'.
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, cold mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
[...]

My heart grows heavy as I turn the page and see the word, 'Epilogue'.
Not ready for this one to be over. I think it can wait until tomorrow.

The atmosphere in the leadup to Svidrigailov's... trip to America! 😳
Palpable.

"But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth..."

[Semyonovich] was one of that numerous and diverse legion of vulgarians, feeble miscreates, half-taught petty tyrants who make a point of instantly latching on to the most fashionable current idea, only to vulgarize it at once, to make an instant caricature of everything they themselves serve, sometimes quite sincerely.

'And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
And he that was dead came forth. . .'