Bardisms (14 page)

I flatter myself that recovering Shakespeare geeks and even non-initiates might have done more or less what I did in the first two situations. The third, perhaps, requires some explanation.

I gave my ovine command performance at a place called Dover’s Hill, a bucolic escarpment that overlooks the picture-postcard-perfect Cotswold village of Chipping Camden, about ten miles south of Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. The hill’s claim to fame is that its namesake, Shakespeare’s contemporary Robert Dover, began in the early 1600s to hold an annual festival there designed to counter England’s prevailing atmosphere of Puritanical restraint with a few days of fun. The festival featured food, drink, music, and dancing, of course, but the main attraction was a series of sporting competitions Dover called the “Cotswold Olimpicks.” Events included cross-country races, horse racing, fencing, jumping, hammer throwing, and one sport that really should make an Olympic comeback: shin kicking. (The best way I can describe it is to point out that the Cotswold Olimpicks are today again an annual celebration on Dover’s Hill, and the 2007 Shin Kicking Champion is named—and you can Google it if you don’t believe me—“Stupid Steve.”)

As entertaining as they were, however, all these events were mere prologue to the games’ centerpiece: wrestling. Some say that it’s these Cotswold Olimpick bouts that Shakespeare has in mind in the contest between Orlando and Charles the Wrestler in Act 1 of
As You Like It
, and that’s why I journeyed there to read the scene.

Wrestling may be the only sport that gets its own Shakespearean scene, but it’s by no means the only one mentioned in the canon. Shakespeare talks about tennis, football, equestrianism, fencing, and even some sports he didn’t even know he was talking about. Here, then, Shakespeare on the Occasion of the Many Games of the Olimpicks.

A DAILY CONSTITUTIONAL IS GOOD FOR THE MIND

Shakespeare was way ahead of the cadres of fitness gurus who preach the gospel of daily exercise and its benefits both physical and emotional. Here’s the Bard’s take:

A turn or two I’ll walk / To still my beating mind.

—P
ROSPERO
,
The Tempest
, 4.1.162–63

In other words:

I’ll take a little walk to decompress a bit.

I’M GOING FOR A RUN

Rise early, pull on your Nikes, and, as you hit the road for your morning five miles, listen to this fun Shakespeare song on your iPod:

Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,

And merrily hent the stile-a.

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.

—A
UTOLYCUS
,
The Winter’s Tale
, 4.2.113–16

In other words:

Go for a run, go for a run, along the country trail. When you come to a fence, be happy and grab the gate. A happy soul can run all day. A sad sack’s exhausted after one mile.

LET’S FURTHER THINK ON THIS…

Shaquille O’Neal spoke from his heart when the L.A. Lakers won the NBA Championship in 2000, and his heart spoke the words of the Bard. At a rally attended by more than two hundred thousand giddy fans in downtown Los Angeles, he paraphrased
Twelfth Night
as he rendered judgment on what he and his teammates had achieved. “Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” he told the crowd. Shaq didn’t specify which of the three categories his Lakers brought to mind, but he did add a thought that would have sent chills through the starchy and reserved Malvolio, who says the famous line about greatness: “I love ya. Thank you for your support. I love you.” A few days earlier, Shaq told reporters that he wanted to be known as “the Big Aristotle,” and then quoted the philosopher at a press conference (“Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit”), but at the Championship rally he amended that request. “I want to be ‘the Big Shakespeare,’” he told his fans. He earned that moniker that afternoon, so by the power vested in me by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I hereby pronounce the name change official.

WE SWAM LIKE HECK

This vivid description of swimmers making their way through a raging river is worthy of the best play-by-play announcer or the finest narration of some Michael Phelps gold medal triumph. Work all its verbs and verb forms and you’ll hear in the very sound of the language itself the gargantuan physical effort it describes. Switch
we
to
he
or
she
, and you’ve got the perfect Shakespeare to Describe Your Kid’s High School Swim Meet.

The torrent roared, and we did buffet it

With lusty sinews, throwing it aside,

And stemming it with hearts of controversy.

—C
ASSIUS
,
Julius Caesar
, 1.2.109–11

In other words:

The water thundered along, and we punched it, our muscles throbbing. We threw it out of our way, and fought it with struggle in our hearts.

THREE MODERN SPORTS

Here’s Shakespeare on the Occasion of a Line Drive to Center Field:

A hit, a very palpable hit.

—O
SRIC
,
Hamlet
, 5.2.223

And Shakespeare for the Occasion of Rebuffng an Insult from Brett Favre:

You base football player.

—K
ENT
,
King Lear
, 1.4.74

And when you finally grow sick of waking up stiff and feeling like your spine is as rigid as the steel in the Eiffel Tower, here’s Shakespeare for the Occasion of Learning Vinyasa Yoga:

ANTONIO
      I’ll teach you how to flow.

SEBASTIAN
              Do so. To ebb

Hereditary sloth instructs me.

—
The Tempest
, 2.1.218–19

Hereditary sloth
means “genetic laziness.” Exactly the factor that keeps couch potatoes, Shakespearean or not, away from the yoga studio.

LET’S FURTHER THINK ON THIS…

Baseball color commentary is replete with memorably stirring lines—“Holy cow!” and “How
’bout
that!” and “That ball’s
outta
here!”—but I know of no Al Michaels nor Mel Allen who could beat the late Ned Martin, longtime radio voice of the Boston Red Sox, for sheer literary aplomb. Martin used to quote from
Hamlet
whenever things started to go south for the boys in Fenway. He didn’t choose an obvious line, like “Something’s rotten in the state of Massachusetts” or “O, what a rogue and peasant slave is this pitcher!” He turned instead to King Claudius, and quoted him verbatim:

 

O Gertrude, Gertrude,

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions.

Top
that
, Phil Rizzuto!

SHAKESPEARE ON HOLIDAYS

Now I am in a holiday humor.

—R
OSALIND
,
As You Like It
, 4.1.59

Shakespeare celebrates a number of annual holidays in his works. Many are saints’ days, the commemorations that organize the Christian calendar around the dates of the deaths of martyrs. St. Crispin’s Day, St. David’s Day, and St. George’s Day receive special mention, and if Sts. David and Crispin can thank Shakespeare for a measure of their posthumous fame, only George, patron saint of England, can boast that his day marks not only his slaying of the dragon but also the birth of Shakespeare himself. Some, but not all, of the major Christian festivals merit mentions in the plays, and a few pagan and ancient Roman celebrations—Hey, gang, it’s Lupercal!—get an airing, too.

The search for Shakespeare’s favorite holiday ends in vain. He doesn’t seem partial to any one celebration, and, indeed, in
King John
, he offer an appealingly New Age formula for making every day a special day:

To solemnize this day, the glorious sun

Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,

Turning with splendor of his precious eye

The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold.

The yearly course that brings this day about 5

Shall never see it but a holy day.

—K
ING
P
HILIP
,
King John
, 3.1.3–8

What a beautiful thought: the sun in his orbit is an alchemist, whose bright rays turn the thin, lumpy earth into magnificent gold; he makes this day special, solemn, and holy, and will do the same every year. These six lines fashion a one-size-fits-all Shakespeare on the Occasion of a Holiday, but on those days that call for something more specific, the list below will serve.

NEW YEAR’S

Here is Shakespeare’s great New Year’s resolution to cast off the bad old ways and move into a future resplendent with newness and promise. Turn to it next New Year’s Eve, and by the vernal equinox you’ll be skinnier, happier, in better shape, and wealthier than you could ever have imagined. And if you aren’t, so what? Iambic pentameter goes great with champagne.

We will…like a bated and retirèd flood,

Leaving our rankness and irregular course,

Stoop low within those bounds we have o’erlooked,

And calmly run on in obedience

Even to our ocean…. Away, my friends! New flight, 5

And happy newness that intends old right.

—S
ALISBURY
,
King John
, 5.4.52–61

In other words:

Like a flood that has abated and shrunk, we will give up our unruliness and misbehaving ways. We’ll drop back below the banks we’ve overrun, and we’ll flow calmly and respectfully toward the ocean. Let’s get going, friends! A new journey begins! And it’s a happy new journey, because it’s aimed at time-tested better ways!

How to say it:

The language in this speech nicely suggests through the metaphor of a roiling, flooding river, the inappropriateness and turbulence of the old behavior your New Year’s resolution is meant to undo. It then characterizes the healthfulness of the new behavior toward which you aspire, with such phrases as
stoop low
and
calmly run
and the words
obedience
and
happy
. As you say the speech, give as much vocal color and expressiveness as you can to each side of the image. That is, make
rankness
and
irregular course
really paint a word picture of the terrible habits you’re trying to reform, and put into
happy newness
all the joy your reformation will bring.

Note that the final two lines of the speech rhyme. They happen also to be the final lines of this scene. In his early plays, of which
King John
is one, Shakespeare does this a lot, ending many scenes with
rhyming couplets
. He uses them as a signal to the audience that the scene is over, harnessing their special sound, in particular the sense of closure it conveys, to bring matters to a rousing finish. “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” is one famous example; “Never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo” is another. Rhyming couplets have a special zing, an uncommon energy, and should be used to give the language punch and vitality.

Ignore the ellipses, which mark material I’ve cut, in this case a few words specific to the state of the dynastic battles that drive the plot of
King John
.