Macbeth

Macbeth is a play written by Shakespeare in 1605-1606. So that's before the other tragedies. It's pretty awesome. You know what's great about Shakespeare? It's that he wrote in this beautiful language but didn't get boring or pompous because of it. I mean, take Milton. Sure, I love Milton, but I find it a lot easier to enjoy Shakespeare as entertainment in addition to intellectual stimulation. So Macbeth is full of action and drama. Lots of psychological stuff, lots of interesting, interesting stuff. Fun stuff. Let's go! Macbeth.

So plot. Umm. K it's in Scotland and Macbeth is the Thane of Glamis, which is a high title, like Duke. He was a hero in a recent war and you see that the King Duncan likes him and respects him, as he's a good ol' likeable, respectable, cool tough soldier guy. When you first see Macbeth, he's with Banquo, his best friend, and they run into the three witches, and they say that Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor, that he'll be king, and that Banquos won't be king but his descendents will be. They're both pretty spooked and grow more so when they find out that Duncan actually assigned him thane of Cawdor. So Macbeth pretty quickly starts contemplating killing Duncan, and tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, about the witches. She's a pretty ferocious person and pushes good-but-tempted Macbeth to go through with the patricide. Banquo grows suspicious and when Duncan comes to Macbeth's house, and he falls asleep, Macbeth kills him and Lady Macbeth frames it on two guards by getting them drunk asleep and putting bloody knives in their hands. Macbeth feels super guilty but Lady Macbeth keeps him clean and they buy it, but Macbeth ends up killing the two guards when they awake. He becomes king and Banquo, super-suspicious, goes into the woods with his kid, Fleance. Macbeth sends three murderers to kill them, but Fleance escapes. At the supper for Banquo later on, Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost and gets very paranoid. Meanwhile, Malcolm and Donalbain, Duncan's sons, had fled to England and Ireland after Duncan's death, since they didn't want to seem like usurpers, and so everyone, naturally, believes that they killed Duncan. Then there's a random supposedly-added scene with Hecate, goddess of withes, saying they've got a plan. Then from messengers, you find out that Macbeth sent Macduff to find Malcolm, whom King Edward, the very good and just king of England, likes and is housing. Edward is prepared to help Malcolm in a war to dethrone the now tyrannous Macbeth. The witches then show up again, as Macbeth seeks them out. They tell him that he doesn't have anything to fear until the Great Birnam woods meet the high Dunsinan hill, and no one born of a woman can hurt him. They also show him that Banquo's descendents will still be king, which annoys him. Macbeth at this point decides that Macduff is not a threat, since everyone is born of a woman, but decides to kill him and his family anyways, sending murders. Macduffs wife and kids are murdered. That's the last of Macbeth you see for a while, as you focus on other people. Malcolm explains that he'd make a terrible king since he's a bad person, and Macduff finds out about his family and they prepare for war. Then you find out that Lady Macbeth has been having sleepwalking nightmares about what she and Macbeth have done, and seems very remorseful, I think. The English are marching now, and Macbeth's still not that fussed because of the forest thing. He hears a woman cry and ignores it but then fins out that it was Lady Macbeth committing suicide. Right after that, he's told that the Birnam woods are moving. He gets armed and goes out to fight, fearless of anyone born of a woman. He kills young Siwar, the kid of an English war-head-guy and then is killed by Macduff who was cut out of his mother through C section, so wasn't born. An iffy explanation, I think. Macduff carries his head out and everyone hails the king sarcastically.

Alright. This is my second shakespeare blog. Other was King Lear. Then I just decided to do one speech by Lear. I think I'll just do that again. Or hm.........Lady Macbeth.

Alright I have a plan. I'm going to very very relatively briefly sketch out the character, as characters are the most important aspect of a book, of Lady Macbeth concerning guilt in comparison to Macbeth. I know it seems like a huge topic, and it definitely is, but briefly sketch! I have so many quotations for Macbeth that this may just be more of a quotation blog with groups and one-sentence connectors. Let's see how it goes.

So my friends had been pushing me to read this for a while and they all described Lady Macbeth as a terrible person, which led me to assume that Macbeth was better. I don't really agree. Sure Macbeth's early speeches, the one about killing her baby and the unsex me speech make her seem super scary, and sure Macbeth probably wouldn't have gone through with murder if it weren't for her, and sure she kept her head beer than him, but I guess I have a way of seeing how things turn out rather than start, and in that sense, Lady Macbeth seems more remorseful, and Macbeth more brutal.

This is their attitudes at the beginning.

Macbeth: Stars hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears , when it is done, to see. (I, iv)

So there Macbeth is trying to look away from his act because he is disgusted by it. He wants Duncan dead but he doesn't want to kill.

Macbeth: Is this a dagger I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? (II,i)

Macbeth starts hallucinating a bit too here, haunted by the idea of killing. He's really scared. On the other side...

Lady Macbeth: Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. (II,ii)

Lady M's not scared at all. She thinks the lifeless are harmless, and the physical connects directly to the psychological. However, they end up switching. Macbeth, after the first kill, gets rather paranoid and has Banquo killed, Macduff's family, and a bunch of other people, until he is desensitised towards it.

Macbeth: Who wear our health but sickly in his life,
Which in his death were perfect. (III,i)

He says this of Banquo. That he can't rest until Banquo is dead. Now B was his best friend and he moral anchor of the play, so it's rather terrible killing him. M, in seeing B's ghost after he murder, is haunted and still shaky, but as the massacre continues, his opinion on death becomes less and less, as seen in the Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech. Life becomes worthless to him. This called to my mind the bit about the murderers Macbeth hires to kill Banquo.

Murderer 2:I am one, my liege,
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incensed that I am reckless what
I do to spite the world.

Murderer 1:And I another
So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance,
To mend it or be rid on ’t.

M becomes like them. He too is so thrown about that he becomes cruel to the world, and careless towards his own well-being. Strange huh. It's a bit like the Hamlet killing Polonius carelessly. Or Romeo killing Paris, which is often excluded in interpretations of the play because it paints Romeo as too much a killer. Macbeth becomes a killer. Hence the tragedy. However, instead, LM becomes less cruel but very remorseful.

Lady Macbeth: Naught’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. (III,ii)

Here she says she tried all but in the end, all spent, is still unhappy. Thus it really is better to be the dead than the so discontented killer. She'd take it back. This haunts her dreams and she is seen as always waning to clean herself, particularly her dirty, bloody hands.

Lady Macbeth: Out, damned spot! out, I say! (V,i)

Lady Macbeth: What, will these hands ne'er be clean? (V,i)

This idea of washing your hands clean is very classical, isn't it? You have Pontius Pilate, for one, after condemning Jesus to crucifiction, asking for water to wash his hands of it. Then it also is seen in Hamlet, of course, with the Queen saying 'Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,/And there I see such black and grainèd spots/As will not leave their tinct.' to Hamlet. She's dirtied. And you have others, like Blanche in The Streetcar Named Desire, who is constantly bathing so as to cleanse herself after her vivacious past. So this obsession is very useful since it carries so much already, and you see people using this over and over.

Interesting thing here is, remember how I said that LM separates physical from mental? Well, here they're reversing, aren't they? She is mentally affected, and connects it to physical, as opposed to finding physical effects to be translatable to mental. Right?

So Macbeth obsesses over cleansing near the beginning too, and they switch.

Macbeth: Whence is that knocking?
How is't with me, when every noise appals me?
What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes!
With all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
clean from me hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green - one red. (II,ii)

So he's jumpy, and, unlike LM, instead of trying to cleanse himself, he rather quickly assumes that he'll never be clean again. He expresses the idea of hiding things too, early on, like...

Macbeth: False face must hide what the false heart doth know. (I,vii)

So there's the connection of how bloody hands and a bloody conscience is not only harmful for you personally and your self-respect, but for your image, and he separates here the physical and mental, thinking of at least preserving the physical.

In the beginning, LM is convinced, however, that it could wash off easily:

Lady Macbeth: Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.(II,ii)

But then there, she's talking of actual blood on Macbeth's actual hands. Her hands are also physically red, but she m=mentally is only later afflicted:

Lady Macbeth: My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white. (II,ii)

She is not capable of feeling remorse at that point. She instead takes on her physical bloodiness as something that was necessary and so not worth fussing over:

Lady Macbeth: Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done, is done. (III,ii)

This seems somewhat healthy in context, killing Duncan, but later on, she says something similar.

Lady Macbeth: what's done, cannot be undone: to bed, to bed, to bed. (V,i)

This again is about killing Duncan, but also, about killing all those other people, and contributing greatly towards making a tyrant out of Macbeth. Then she wishes for undoing, can't, but can't live with it either. Hence suicide. Now Macbeth's idea of suicide is a bit different.

Macbeth: Why should I play the Roman fool and die
On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes
Do better upon them.

He thinks it's ridiculous to kill yourself, when you could still kill others, which is infinite;y more noble and productive and meaningful, according to him, because he'll die with his harness on, as he argues. But that just shows again the gruesomeness of his adopted logic. Now, he does not imagine daggers, because he has a dagger, and his hands are ever bloody bu he worries not of them. Instead, people say for him:

Angus: Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands (V,ii)

There Shakespeare likens Macbeth's situation to LM's, both with bloody, dirty hands. The difference is though, that only one is trying still to cleanse themselves. Macbeth seems no longer to understand the grasp of remorse and the foreverness of remorse as he had known. Instead, he asks the doctor to help LM in her nightmares, expecting a solution where once he may have known there wouldn't be one.

Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart? (V,iii)

So conscious reverses and I feel sorry for LM. If it had ended with LM still cruel an M still remorseful, it wouldn't be a very fun play, but I'd sympathise for M as opposed to LM. Instead, as it is, I always support the remorseful. That was a weird way of blogging. Alright there. Here are a ridiculous amount of quotations.

Read, folks, read.

Witches: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air. (I,i)

Macbeth: So foul and fair a day I have not seen, (I,iii)

Macbeth: Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. (I,iii)

Macbeth: Prithee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none. (I,vii)

Macbeth: Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. (II,i)

Lady Macbeth: A little water cleans us of this deed (II,ii)

Macbeth: To know my deed 'twere best not know myself.
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst! (II,ii)

Macbeth: Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There 's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of. (II,iii)

Donalbain: where we are
There's daggers in men's smiles (II,iii)

Old Man: God's benison go with you; and with those
That would make good of bad, and friends of foes! (II,iv)

Macbeth: After life's fitful fever he sleeps well (III,ii)

Macbeth: And make our faces vizards to our hearts, Disguising what they are. (III,ii)

Macbeth: O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! (III,ii)

Macbeth: Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill (III,ii)

Witches: Double, double toils and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. (IV, i)

Witch 2: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way come (IV, i)

Lady Macduff: He wants the natural touch: for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.(IV, ii)

Son: Then the liars and swearers are fools,
for there are liars and swearers enow to beat
the honest men and hang up them. (IV, ii)

Macduff: each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows (IV, iii)

Malcolm: I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
Is added to her wounds

Macduff: Not in the legions
Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn'd
In evils to top Macbeth.

Malcolm:Nay, had I power, I should
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth.
Macduff: O Scotland, Scotland!

Macduff: O my breast,
Thy hope ends here!

Malcolm: Macduff, this noble passion,
Child of integrity, hath from my soul
Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts
To thy good truth and honour.

Ross: Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be called our mother, but our grave, where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy. The dead man’s knell
Is there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.

Ross: Would I could answer
This comfort with the like. But I have words
That would be howled out in the desert air,
Where hearing should not latch them.

Malcolm: Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.

Malcolm: let grief
Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.

Malcolm: Receive what cheer you may;
The night is long that never finds the day. (IV, iii)

Macbeth: I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. (V,iii)

Macbeth: I will not be afraid of death and bane
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane. (V,iii)

Macbeth:I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in ’t. I have supped full with horrors.
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me. (V,v)

Macbeth: She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
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!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (V,v)

Macbeth: There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I 'gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish th' estate o' th' world were now undone.—
Ring the alarum-bell!—Blow, wind! Come, wrack!
At least we’ll die with harness on our back. (V,v)

Siward: Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.
Macduff: Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death. (V,vi)

Macbeth: I bear a charmèd life, which must not yield
To one of woman born. (V,viii)

Macduff:Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o' th' time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
'Here may you see the tyrant.' (V,viii)

Macbeth: Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!' (V,viii)

Ross: But like a man he died. (V,ix)

Siward: Why then, God's soldier be he! (V,ix)

All: Hail, king of Scotland!(V,ix)

Malcolm: Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen (V,ix)

King Lear

King Lear is a play written by Shakespeare some time around 1605 or so, who knows. Well, seeing as it's the first Shakespeare anything that's been on this blog, and seeing as I refuse to edit or plan these, I'll really be trying to figure out how this is going to work during; you know, because Shakespeare is a bit different. I've been doing old books that can then be put into terms of Sylvester Stalone...that's a it weird with Shakespeare. Well, here goes.

So King Lear's a tragedy (spoiler!) about this King who decides to hand over his land o his three daughters, distributed based on how well they flatter him. His one good daughter, Cordelia, angers him really early on, and he sends her away even though he actually likes her most. His other daughters, Goneril (I know) and Regan (I know!) get the land but are totally screwy people that then screw everything up with greed ad cruelty. Meanwhile you have Edmund, bastard son of the Earl of Gloucestor, who is ticked off about being a bastard so he lashes out by getting Gloucestor to exile good ol' Edgar, his favourite son, and later on he plucks out Gloucestor's eyes. So all this is going on with a bunch of other characters, good and bad, and Lear's just overwhelmed to the point that he becomes unable to lash about anymore and just gets more and more crazy. He descends eventually very very deep into madness until they get Cordelia to talk to him whilst the evil sisters are taking over, and France is waging war. So it's all around bad really. Cordelia gets him a bit more sane but then she's hanged and he dies out of shock, really, by her side. It's very sad. Edmund dies too, along with some other characters, good and bad, and Edgar in the end says we all should just say what we think without being so shadily political about things and maybe then we can avoid repeating such a tragedy. Tadaa!

So summary done. Now, this, obviously, being Shakespeare, being Lear, is full of stuff to talk about that I can't hit or even understand in thousands of formal doctorates and things. That's true for a lot of books, most the books on this blog, really, but Lear's got that air about it though that commands you to admit to it publicly. So that's done too now. Focus: characters, of course. The characters are the most important aspect of a book. Now I could, of course do a billion things with Lear, but let's focus on ACT TWO SCENE FOUR, KING LEAR FINDING OUT THAT HIS DAUGHTERS GONERIL AND REGAN ARE COLD AND SLIMY VULTURE-LEECHES

LEAR
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars 261
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady.
If only to go warm were gorgeous, 265
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm.
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both! 270
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags, 275
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall--I will do such things,--
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep
No, I'll not weep: 280
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

Amaaaaziiiiing~~. So, to translate a bit, well, actually context first. Let's see. So the daughters are telling him here that they can't house him and keep him if he didn't lower the number of soldiers from a hundred to fifty, then to twenty-five, then maybe even zero. This is especially cruel because of the way it's said like some dreadful hagglers which are just trying to ruin you completely. Lear's first rejected by Goneril, and then he turns to Regan, but then Regan matches Goneril's cruelty and they gang up on him, worsening their offers, forcing Lear to yet settle for one as the lesser evil, and finally they won't even take that, breaking him even more thoroughly thereafter. It's very sad to watch this self-confident, possibly narcissistic, very voluble, very powerful king - however irrational and incompetent he may have been - be suddenly treated as dirt and he turned pathetic before the eyes of the audience by his own daughters to which he entrusted his kingdom. I sympathise with him, at least. Anyways, so when the shit hits the fan, he says the above.

Now brief translation.Regan asks 'what need one?' concerning even one soldier, so in response, Lear says not to reason for how much you need something because even a beggar has a few superfluous things, and so if you don't let people have more than they need, then you make people's lives equal to beasts'. This is reminiscent of what Hamlet says to Polonius about paying the players: 'Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.'So yeah, continuity. I'll get back to this. So then Lear says if to be gorgeous is simply to be warm, then the sisters don't have to be wearing all their trinkets. But they do. He then tells heaven that what he really needs is patience. He says he's equally wretchedly old and grieving, and that if it's the heavens that are turning the daughters against him, heaven should at least not make hi so foolish as to take the abuse complacently. Heaven ought to grant him noble anger and let him avoid shameful tears. Then he directs his speech to his daughters again, the 'unnatural hags', which is just like monstrous, and claims that he'll take his terrible revenge on them, though he doesn't know yet what exactly that will be. He says then that he won't weep, though they my expect him to and though the situation expects tears, he'll break into a hundred thousand pieces before he weeps. Then O fool, (to his fool, or clown, present on scene) I shall go mad!

Wonderful no?! Wonderful wonderful. And that's just twenty-two lines. But these are my favourite twenty-two lines. They're heartbreaking huh. Whatever sense of formality I wished to cling to for the sake of Lear is lost now. It's too amazing to stop being excited. You know, most the essays I write, in school, have the common issue of being over-excited, so I ramble. It's an issue that's not really being solved. But I digress.

Generally, what I like about it is all it's position in the play, it's significance in the psychological evolution, or I guess revolution, of Lear's character, the claim made about needs, the way he switches from speaking to the daughters and the heavens, Lear's broken speech and repetition near the end, the plea for anger, and most of all, the magnificent, glorious ending of such powerful will, and such ideals concerning suffering. So LOTS LOTS LOTS going on. LOTS. Don't you love it? Adore it? dahhhhhh it's so awesome..... So, do you think I could do all that in one blog? Don't know. It's two AM now, Swiss time...don't know why that matters, but yes, and it may take me the next five hours or so. Let's see.

Well, I'll go with the one example for each thing. ONE! k, maybe a few, but ONE in depth. All right, and I', off. Psychological evolution!!! Well, this is placed well in the beginning since it's all broad and all, so you all can get Lear's condition better. He's at this point, not had that much of a shock to his mental-state minus the bit at the beginning when Cordelia, his third and favourite daughter, refuses to flatter him pettily for land, like her sisters, and he feels so offended and unloved that he sends her off to marry in France without dowry. So Lear's probably shaken up about all that, but he still has two daughters that supposedly love him more than themselves and all good things in the world, and whom ostensibly are faithful to him through this love. He also is, in his mind, king, and he also has his fool that's been cheering him up all the while. This then, end of Act II shows for the first time what will unfold over the rest of the story. It's the spark. You see his madness to come, and the weeping provides irony concerning the fact that he does weep by the end of the play, and is probably broken into a hundred thousand pieces...emotionally. Lear loses his other daughters, cruelly, and through that, he also loses the idea of him as still 'king'. So by the end of this bit, he refers to the fool. Now I want to pause on the significance of this for a bit and that'll be it for the situation and it's significance as a cracking point and foreshadowing tool. The fool, in this time, from what I know rather unprofessionally, were these guys that knew you, if you were rich and probably royal enough, since you were an infant and would just amuse you with all potential until death. So whilst the idea of turning to a fool, by the words definition as just a stupid or easily tricked person, make the action of a 'king' addressing him in a time of need to make a personal confession of madness seem really base and sad, as though he is already mad, being solely friends with the weird kid that's amusingly witty. But no, Lear has a special connection with his fool, as it seems, many did, like Hamlet with Yorick. I guess it's sort of like Juliette and her Nurse in a way too. So anyways, turning to the fool is significant as one, it shows there's no other closer to his heart for which to rationally call for then sets to foreshadow how close Lear gets t be with his fool and thus how much the fool'd death affects Lear.

Onwards. Needs, NEEDS! by all means needs. The idea, I suppose, we've all considered some way or another. Why do we have such superfluous things? Why don't we just be like those olden people that liked fat people because that meant they're rich? Well, because cause-and-effect relations seem to have taken a back seat to what we prefer just because it's emotionally reasonably, thus comforting.

Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s.

is alike to 'Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.' But just alike. The difference between the two, in meaning is I guess fundamentally, that the former discusses needs and the latter deserts; and the latter speaks of the granting above what is needed as honourable, though as somewhat expected to an extent as common courtesy, whereas King Lear expects it as purely logical, as part of nature rather than part of human society. So the difference of needs and deserts is important because it raises the question of how much Lear actually deserves, he being the father and formally he king, but at that being a bad king and an arguably bad father, and also how much Lear really needs, because in natural form, he naturally doesn't need any of these soldiers or any of the grand lifestyle he has now, but concerning the psychological state of having always been so doted upon, these superfluous things to which he clings may be necessary. Now, that past sentence was a Pandora's box that can go on, so I'll leave that at a taste.

The second difference, concerning courtesy and expectation I'll write of with a focus on the second line of Lear and the words 'scape whipping' from Hamlet. Man's life's as cheap as beast's. Firstly, the three apostrophe-s's may show that this is particularly difficult for Lear to say, especially with the as's in these too that make the same sound. So cheap is the only clear word, which is then connected strongly to beast's and needs through the double e sounds. So lots of phonetic stuff happening here that if said in a rage, can lend well to a sort of splutter, and the sounds of the double-e's then become more important in punching through the meaning despite. Moving on though. So 'needs' 'cheap' and 'beast's' are important because, well, they're nouns. I find interesting the word 'cheap' though. Can a life be cheap? Well, sure in the sense of paying for the things they need, like raising a dog's cheaper than raising a cow, and raising a cow's cheaper than raising a person. But that's because you just give the cow or dog what it needs. Hence, it makes sense, the whole, man's life's as cheap as a beast's thing, but, well,do we deserve more? According to Hamlet, we all tend to deserve whippings, like working animals, because, well, in Hamlet, the majority of the characters have done something very very wrong,save Ophelia...and Laertes...and Horatio...and the guards. Well, aside from that, why do we deserve more? I guess because we can enjoy it emotionally, and I guess because we need to see ourselves as above beasts to maintain some sanity concerning self-importance and purpose. So in saying what he needs, the daughters aren't really making a point of anything because what a man needs is not actually what he physically needs, as what one man needs is different from another, and Lear, at this point, needs his soldiers, probably as some physical form of defence to compensate for his vulnerability of age and losing Ophelia, and now his other daughters.

Switching from daughters to heaven back to daughters.

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!

No, you unnatural hags,

So these are the two switches and they are both in response or at least addressing what has already been said by him to the other; to the heavens, he talks of what he needs, which he's been talking to his daughters about, and then the 'no' is talking about the tears he's asking the heavens to save him from, which he continues talking of to the daughters after taking a bit of a pause to say he'll take revenge on them for his grief. So this effectively makes Lear seem to be changing audience as it occurs in his mind to, spontaneously, as his words and message birth and are expressed at once and as the trail spins out, the new directions of his speech lead him in whichever way without clear conclusions. This makes then his speech to the heavens and to his daughters very closely related. Now, this raises the question then of how much are the heavens controlling what's going on with his daughters. So I'll concentrate on this line.

If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts

You, here, is the heavens, and Lear is now addressing the heavens for direction concerning his situation like when a person is chiding you as a youth with your parents near by, and the chiding person begins addressing the parents rather than you, but about your own actions because they seem to think your parents have something to do with it all. The heavens are the parents then. Now, Lear, then, must think that he may have done something that would make the heavens do this to him, unless it's a sort of ancient Greek situation where the gods just do thing arbitrarily. That aside, if it's a Christian God, which presumably it is, this being Shakespeare and this being England, the actions of God would be somehow justified, and justifiable to man though often leaving men in doubt. Shakespeare may here then be very very subtly showing that Lear feels some form of responsibility for the beginnings to his immense grief. there is the 'If' though, that keeps all this subjective as it may be the devil controlling the girls, or just them acting evil for the sake of it. So Lear isn't sure but still, he's referring to them, which may be natural since if the youth is being really annoying and acting very naughty and won't stop it, you have to ask the parents since at least they might be able to give you some kind of helpful explanation for the youth. If that made sense. Right, so I guess I wanted to point out the significance of this switching in this sense; it's practical as the girls are really not communicative at the moment, or ever, really, and also revealing of a possible feeling of responsibility. Can Shakespeare have written this whole speech as addressed to the daughters? Well, perhaps, but it may have seemed less sympathetic towards Lear, as it seems with the address to the heavens that they too are ganging up on him and that he does feel some sort of inferiority even if to God. So good move on Willie's part, I think.

Lear's broken speech and repetition near the end!!!

No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall--I will do such things,--
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep
No, I'll not weep:

So this here is one and a bit of a sentence which isn't even finished yet but both of which are elongated because Lear keeps interrupting himself with by-the-way-comments and dashed asterisk sort of things. The 'No' at first is referring to the tears he was asking of the heavens to prevent. Let's start with that. So what follows this 'no', you'd presume to be, 'I'll not weep.' but that doesn't appear until five lines later. In those lines, he first sets his addressees as the daughters, by saying 'you unnatural hags'. Now I could go into why that's significant, considering how he was talking about nature only moments before, but I'll resist. Now, this, as I said before, is when he stops talking to the heavens, so the interlude of saying 'you unnatural hags', aside from serving the purpose of obviously insulting them, which he probably wants to do to keep face by exerting power or something, is actually practical in showing the change in addressee.

The following thing about revenge though is not exactly practical as it's implying that he won't weep by saying he'll attack rather than grieve, but still does so in a implicative way. This is when the broken speech starts. 'That all the world shall--I will do such things,--/What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be/The terror of the earth.' So the bit about 'that all the world shall' never gets finished. Shall what? Well, the dashes are clear indicators of interruptions, as always, and what follows that, which usually would complete the sentence which had been begun and interrupted, does not do so. That all the world shall what they are, yet I know not. What does that mean? So that's abandoned. Then there's the colon. Not sure what that means actually, as colons usually introduce an explanation or list. I suppose it could be the explanation of what the revenge is actually going to be.

Anyways, after that, you get the final bit of the sentence that is pretty vague too. 'the terrors of the earth.' What's that? It sounds great, sure. Perhaps similar to natural disaster? Or all the terrors alive on Earth? If the former, he'd be aligning himself with God, which you could suggest and make points about, I suppose. Well, nevertheless, a pretty strange and choppy sentence ends there; implying that he won't weep but not saying it, changing addressees, starting a sentence that doesn't end, interrupting with dashes to say something that he actually just said a moment before (I will do such things...yeah. We know [I think Lear's just assuring them because they might have mocking sceptical faces or maybe he's talking to himself, stalling to think what to say next or maybe to confirm the spontaneous plan with himself]), then admits to not really knowing what he's doing, further straying from the original strain of the sentence, and then using a questionable colon to right himself, ending with an unclear metaphor that is yet quite arresting and profound.

Finally, he says 'No' again, maybe rounding things off, and giving us the 'I'll not weep', though after the 'You think I'll weep'. Now, here's another pretty questionable punctuational thing. There's an implied pause at the end of the 'You think I'll weep', but if it was written out, it'd need some mark. Maybe 'You think I'll weep; no, I'll not weep.' That works. Anyways, maybe it's like that in other editions, I don't know, but that's probably the least of Lear's concerns at least. It reflects the breaking of his amazing rhetorical capabilities here, at least. The 'You think...' but also provides for good physical acting too, I think, in body language through facial expressions between the daughters and Lear. He could look at them and they'd be looking at him sceptically, and Lear may seem on the verge of tears.

Moving on!!! The plea for anger.

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both! 270
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,

So I won't do every line again but here goes. So I stuck the first few lines in there because it paints him in a piteous light. He's not a railing king, he's a poor elder that people are picking on. Then the last three lines, gosh I love them. Such romanticist stuff going on. SO much emotion, so much rage and passion. How magnificent. So he takes upon himself the grief of betrayal and dismay but he refuses to take it lying down. 'fool me not so much/ To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger' Just saying, there's the 'tamely' connects back to the idea of beasts, added with the 'bear' which also means...well...bears, and also the 'fool' connects to the Fool he talks to a few lines later on. So I guess, on second thought, rather than ranting vaguely, I'll talk of the significance of the 'tamely' in juxtaposition with 'noble anger'.

Now 'noble anger' is not something Shakespeare made up for Lear. It's been around. The idea of nobly feeling an extreme feeling, that is. We have Hamlet wishing he could take up his sword and nobly feel the fire as the player does concerning Hecuba, and off the king. We have the debate over Romeo killing Tybalt, whether the noble anger's fine, after seeing Mercutio be killed, or whether the shame of taking that in and greeting it with patience is a fair price for considering Juliet. We have Marc Anthony tackling this issue in his satirical speech after Caesar dies, and after Lear, Shakespeare has Caliban's anger which again pull on the beauty and nobility anger bring when exerted with such passion, self-principle and persistence. Then there's the world outside Shakespeare, like Heathcliff's anger after Catherine's death or John the Savage dumping all the soma and flogging himself later on, we have the world outside England, with Chillingworth's violent vengefulness in parallel with Hester's quiet strength of endurance, with Leper yelling at Brinker at the end of the trial, and we have the world outside of English, with...well I can't think of noble anger but noble gruesomeness, I guess, like Tomas and Sabina's sexual escapades, or the commandant from the penal colony's torturous death, or, alright outside the Czech Republic...Rimbaud's poems about violent revolution...that guy being hanged in Night...Treplyov burning his book before offing himself, Hedda manically playing the piano, Antigone telling people off before she's sent off and offs herself too...Alright, so apparently I have to read more foreign literature. That was very strange. Moving on!

So that's what noble anger is, if you were wondering. Well, the idea of nobility, I guess is fundamentally a human thing, and Lear sees the Chillingworth side over the Hester side, he shows nobility through lashing out and fighting the abandoned fight rather than quietly apologising for everyone's hatred and his offence and then giving the world the silent treatment. Lear's more the yelling guy; if you're going to kill me, you're going to be beaten pretty badly before you manage. Now, do animals think this? Well, I don't think they think this but they do it. If you've got a chicken in a tiny pen and you're going to kill it, well, it really has no chance but it's going to run and peck like hell before it goes. So that's probably what Lear means when he says he won't be tamed. He's not going to foolishly head towards the guy expecting chicken food and get slaughtered instead. Now the irony with this is that he said he won't be made a beast in that bit I analysed before. Then, he meant he won't have everything taken from him like he's an animal which needs but what it needs to survive. Now he's talking about animal reactions. So he doesn't want to be an animal but he wants to act like one? Well, that's true for a lot of people, I suppose. He wants total freedom to pursue whatever he feels entitled to as a noble being. I think that's enough no? Well, please let it be yes.

FINALLY, The magnificent, glorious ending of such powerful will, and such ideals concerning suffering.

No, I'll not weep: 280
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

Well I suppose this blog was somewhat chronological then, but it worked, I think. Now just read the above excerpt again. Isn't it wonderfully powerful? So by powerful will and ideals concerning suffering, I guess I'm talking about the same thing: that he will by no means weep and will leave that last of all sufferings. 'I have full cause of weeping' That's true, I think, in context of his lifestyle. So why not weep? Lear says tears are womanish, which you have to take in account, as, well, it's the early early early 1600s. But I still think it's more than that. By womanish, I don't think he's saying he's got woman-phobia, but that it is a weakness and is demeaning. Lear has already lost so much as a King, so to debase himself further by exposing his heart and grief through tears, through pain, is unforgivable to himself. He must guard himself of emotions though all know he is in grief, and all know he is in pain. Despite, he will portray a face of cold strength that shall deprive the unnatural hags of pleasure fro their successful rampage of his dignity.

So: 'but this heart / Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, / Or ere I'll weep.' Woah. Yeah. Awesome. I'm definitely saying that someday. I love when people say 'this + something' because you could imagine them pointing at whatever it is and thus exemplifying it over all others of it's kind and showing his control and faith over it. It's very much the 'You think I'm licked? You all think I'm licked? Well I'm not licked! And I'm going to stay right here for this lost cause!' huh. That's great. It just summarise everything I've been quoting, the You think I'll weep No, I'll not weep, and the Fight out the abandoned fight. That's James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Great film, watch it, but anyways, I wouldn't be surprised if the writer was thinking back on Lear...maybe pleasantly surprised...that I may be.

Onwards. There's heart-break. No explanation needed. A hundred thousand flaw!!! There we need some words. So there's the Shall, first, which, well, have to point it out, DIFFERENT from 'will' because will is something you're willing to do and shall is something you must do. So if this heart must break, it shall; but if it shall, I will it to break within a still form, and when this heart is but crumbs and sand, then I shall break fully and then may you enjoy tears spewing from my wasted eyes, weeping for my wretched, poor, and dead heart. Hooray!!! The hundred thousand flaws though. Right. I like that he says a hundred thousand. It makes you wonder how much a heart can actually break and it's so much more dramatic than 'a lot of flaw'. ugh. 'flaws' is an interesting word. Let's end with that. Flaws is interesting because it lets you read the thing a bit differently, though probably for an indirect meaning. The direct meaning would be that flaws are like fissures in a ceiling, but here they are in a heart, and when the hundred thousandth one is made, the heart will shatter. The indirect meaning may be to do with the meaning of flaws in a heart as misdeeds, sins. If I say that guy has a flaw, I usually mean he has weird hair or he is not a mannerly person or tells really racist jokes or something. So in that sense, Lear might have a bunch of flaws in his character, and character can be metaphorically referred to as heart. Lear's flaws then. He's very proud, he has to have things go his way, he can't contain his emotions, he's not very responsible, he enjoys flattery, he is violent, and then it gets more ambiguous. But yes, he has lots of flaws. He however does not have the flaw of being a coward or weakling. Therefore, he must not cry, so maybe he says he'll take on a hundred thousand more flaws in becoming more vengeful, more violent, becoming brutish and more cruel, in cursing and in fighting and will do all such things and suffer all such flaws before he'll meet weakness standing before him and embrace that as well. This is the indirect line, I acknowledge, but in the end, it sort of happens. Lear weeps by Cordelia's body, and by the end, he has said lots of cruel things, and has gone mad, become pathetic, and become lost. he's debased to an extreme extent but still refuses to weep until the very end, at which point he shatters and falls to his long-outlasted death.

Now that's in Act II. It's amazing how much more passionate everybody in the play gets, and more twisted and pained. Concerning language though, I consider this my own personal high point. It's a turning point, and within the plot, this bit is yet early enough that planning and action need not be a part of it, leaving but evaluative reaction. That's the one flaw I see in King Lear. It's not even a flaw, really. It's my own single preference. In Romeo and Juliet, you have long stretches of wooing, of expressions of love and then suddenly something happens...the nurse talks to Romeo, and then there'd be a huge stretch of just reacting to that and expanding, expanding. In Hamlet, you have Hamlet going on and on about suicide and then the ghost appears, and then there's a huge amount of just reacting to it. Hamlet's thinking, thinking, talking to people about sub-plots that you're ish about. Caesar's a bit like King Lear in all the planning that goes about, but then you have the happening of Caesar's death, and huge reaction again with speeches, ghosts, conscience! Lear is pretty long, but it has equally as much stuff happening in it. Every scene, someone talks to someone else about someone else and there'd be lies hidden in there and conniving, and you're like, Ok, so this is going to happen, and then it happens, followed by another action, followed by another action, and it seems it's only when someone is broken that they get a voice, like Gloucester after the blinding. So I guess I just don't like when things are planned to happen and when thing happen. It's just tolerable for me. But that really is just me, and I absolutely loved Lear because even the most plotty stuff is written well enough to force you to read the whole play aloud. Anyways, if you are suddenly annoyed at me for criticising Lear, there's a bunch of praise out there to read. Act II, or the very ending of it, that is awesome. All I wanted to say.

Read, folks. Read.

FOOL
Thou should'st not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
LEAR
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!
(I,v)

LEAR
...this tempest in my mind...
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out? Pour on; I will endure.
(III, iv)

EDGAR
The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman?
(III, iv)

EDGAR
When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
Who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind:
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'er skip,
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
How light and portable my pain seems now,
When that which makes me bend makes the king bow,
He childed as I father'd! Tom, away!
Mark the high noises; and thyself bewray,
When false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee,
In thy just proof, repeals and reconciles thee.
What will hap more to-night, safe 'scape the king!
Lurk, lurk.
(III, vi)

OLD MAN
You cannot see you way.
GLOUCESTORI have no way, and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled whn I saw.
(IV, i)

EDGAR
O gods! Who is't can say 'I a at the worst'? I a worse than e'er I was.
(IV, i)

GLOUCESTER
'Tis the tie's plague when ,madmen lead the blind.
(IV, i)

GLOUCESTER
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
(IV, i)

KENT
That from your first of difference and decay
Have followed your sad steps
(V, iii)

LEAR
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
(V,iii)

KENT
Break, heart; I prithee, break!
(V,iii)

KENT
The wonder is, he hath endured so long:
He but usurp'd his life.
(V,iii)

EDGAR
The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
(V,iii)