March 25th 2019
Shakespeare talks a very great deal about locking things in the memory. He clusters images within all the plays, around certain characters and certain ideas, but that image-group goes across several works but it seems more embedded in Shakespeare's thinking even than that, even than as a stylistic ubiquity: it's an underpinning of plot, that seminal plot about betrayal of others and of the self, of declaring an oath and then failing to secure it so it is vulnerable to loss or theft. All the great plays are about that, certainly all the late tragedies and the problem plays / late plays / Romances / tragicomedies, the plays from, I suppose, Othello to The Tempest. where Shakespeare works out what the theatre of the psyche is and packs it in with the incoherent plots, crap puns and hey-nonny-nonnyism. All, at one level at least, about promises stolen, about principles mislaid.
For most of us, who don't swear fealty to a dynasty or a quest, those promises are to ourselves, our lovers and our children. We must lock those safely and keep them secure. I've promised Sparrow a couple of things. One is never to lie to her. I never have, knowingly. Another is to stand by her side. I will. You want Shakespeare, you want the gravitas of poetry to describe your life? Keep your promises to those you love.
Shakespeare talks a very great deal about locking things in the memory. He clusters images within all the plays, around certain characters and certain ideas, but that image-group goes across several works but it seems more embedded in Shakespeare's thinking even than that, even than as a stylistic ubiquity: it's an underpinning of plot, that seminal plot about betrayal of others and of the self, of declaring an oath and then failing to secure it so it is vulnerable to loss or theft. All the great plays are about that, certainly all the late tragedies and the problem plays / late plays / Romances / tragicomedies, the plays from, I suppose, Othello to The Tempest. where Shakespeare works out what the theatre of the psyche is and packs it in with the incoherent plots, crap puns and hey-nonny-nonnyism. All, at one level at least, about promises stolen, about principles mislaid.
For most of us, who don't swear fealty to a dynasty or a quest, those promises are to ourselves, our lovers and our children. We must lock those safely and keep them secure. I've promised Sparrow a couple of things. One is never to lie to her. I never have, knowingly. Another is to stand by her side. I will. You want Shakespeare, you want the gravitas of poetry to describe your life? Keep your promises to those you love.
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