Bardisms (16 page)

SHAKESPEARE TO SAY “I LOVE YOU”

Hear my soul speak.

The very instant that I saw you did My heart fly to your service.

—F
ERDINAND
,
The Tempest
, 3.1.63–65

I love you. Three little words that can move mountains. Shakespeare writes many versions of them, some in more than three words, and the mountains he moves are bigger than the whole wide world. Below is a selection of the Bard’s vows of love. If you don’t know the occasions on which they’re best used, then I’m not going to tell you.

I LOVE YOU

Here’s the basic, no-frills Shakespeare on the Occasion of Saying the L-Word.

Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul

But I do love thee, and when I love thee not,

Chaos is come again.

—O
THELLO
,
Othello
, 3.3.91–93

In other words:

You superb little devil! I’ll be damned, but I love you. And when I don’t, it will be the end of the world.

Some details:

Othello clearly means
wretch
affectionately, but decorous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Shakespeare editors had trouble with the notion that Shakespeare would employ such a coarse word as a term of endearment. Hence they theorized that it must have been an unfortunate misprint. “I make no question but that the poet wrote
wench
,” argued one expert, “which was not then used in that low and vulgar acceptation as at present.” This is pure supposition, of course, and a later editor offered a commentary on
wretch
that will more than suffice for anyone who would use these lines as a modern expression of love: “Such words of endearment are resorted to when those implying love, admiration, and delight seem inadequate.”

I REALLY LOVE YOU

It’s an understatement to say that the marriage of Othello and Desdemona doesn’t turn out well. But the spectacular violence in which it goes down in flames does nothing to erase the intense love that set it afire in the first place. Indeed, the depth of the passion that prompted the marriage is precisely what makes its horrible dénouement so tragic. Here’s another of Othello’s oaths of love for his cherished wife.

If it were now to die

’Twere now to be most happy, for I fear

My soul hath her content so absolute

That not another comfort like to this

Succeeds in unknown fate.

—O
THELLO
,
Othello
, 2.1.186–89

In other words:

If it were my fate to die at this very instant, it would be my good fortune. I’m afraid that I am so totally and completely joyous right now, that there’s no way I could ever experience anything as positive again in the future.

How to use it:

This is an “I love you” to be saved for one of those rare moments when everything in life lines up perfectly. It’s for a breathtaking sunset on the beach, for an “I’m the king of the world” howl at the prow of an ocean liner, for some intimate pillow talk, for the dessert course at the Michelin three-star restaurant you visit on your honeymoon.

By the way, the soul is always female in Shakespeare, regardless of the gender of the body that contains it.

I ADORE YOU, SO PLEASE LOVE ME IN RETURN

Sometimes we want to say “I love you” to someone we’re not sure loves us back. Or to someone we know for sure doesn’t love us back. Or to someone we once saw across a crowded room, or on a bus, or wearing nothing but underwear on a billboard in Times Square, who would certainly love us back if only they could somehow meet us. On such an occasion, we can turn to this Bardism, one of Shakespeare’s most poignant expressions of hopeless, selfless, stars-in-the-eyes-but-sighs-in-the-heart love.

So holy and so perfect is my love,

And I in such a poverty of grace,

That I shall think it a most plenteous crop

To glean the broken ears after the man

That the main harvest reaps. Loose now and then 5

A scattered smile, and that I’ll live upon.

—S
ILVIUS
,
As You Like It
, 3.5.100–5

In other words:

My love is so sacred and so complete, and I am so lacking in your estimation, that I would consider it a bumper crop to gather up the damaged ears of corn that the farmer leaves behind when he harvests the field. Just flash me an offhand smile once in a while, and that will give me everything I need.

LET’S FURTHER THINK ON THIS…

The debonair composer and lyricist Cole Porter detailed the glories that can redound to a skilled Shakespeare quoter in one of the great songs from his musical
Kiss Me Kate
, based on
The Taming of the Shrew
.

 

Brush up your Shakespeare,

Start quoting him now,

Brush up your Shakespeare

And the women you will wow.

Just declaim a few lines from
Othella

And they’ll think you’re a helluva fella,

If your blonde won’t respond when you flatter ’er

Tell her what Tony told Cleopaterer,

…

Brush up your Shakespeare,

And they’ll all kowtow.

 

The song goes on for six more verses, and as Porter cites increasingly obscure Shakespeare titles, his rhymes get more and more hilariously rococo. When should you quote
The Merchant of Venice
? “When her sweet pound o’ flesh you would menace.”
Troilus and Cressida
? For “the wife of the British embessida.” And a true stroke of genius: what should you do “when your baby is pleading for pleasure”? Why, “let her sample your
Measure for Measure
.”

YOU’RE SO INCREDIBLE THAT ONLY POETRY CAN EXPRESS YOU

One of the surpassing love poems in the English language, which begins with one of the most famous and widely recognized Shakespearean lines of all, serves as the quintessential profession of amorous devotion. Use it to woo your love, and as you do, tip your hat to a poet who knew his work would have staying power.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 5

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, 10

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

—S
ONNET
18

In other words:

Should I write a line that says you’re like a day in summer? It wouldn’t really work. You’re more beautiful than a summer day, and more even-tempered. The early part of summer is stormy, and anyway, summer’s over as soon as it begins. What’s more, some summer days are oppressively hot, and others are overcast and gloomy. In fact, every lovely thing loses its loveliness sooner or later, through some accident, or because it’s nature’s way to make things plainer and plainer as they age.

But you’re different. The summertime of your life will last forever, and you’ll never lose your loveliness. Not even Death will be able to boast of conquering you—because my imperishable poetry will make you one with time itself, and you’ll go on as long as time does. So long as there are human beings, so long as there are eyes that can see letters on paper—that’s how long this poem will live. And this poem will give everlasting life to you.

How to say it:

This sonnet requires a good, strong launch. Be sure you make the question in its first line as real as possible, so that you can spend the next five lines working through the answer to your satisfaction. Imagine yourself a poet, in the middle of composing a poem to your lover. You’re about to write something like “You’re as beautiful as a perfect day in July.” Before setting pen to paper, you ask yourself if that’s such a good idea.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
The force of the question makes you really think it through, and you talk your answer out, point by point.
Well, you’re prettier than summer. You’re more temperate. Summer has storms, it’s too hot, sometimes it’s cloudy.
Before you know it, you’re on line 6, simply by making yourself reason out a real answer to a real question.

Note how the sonnet’s argument changes direction with that ever-powerful word
But
at the beginning of line 9. The answer to your initial question led you to acknowledge that not just summer but all things lose their beauty over time. Now
but
contradicts that assertion by proposing the one thing whose gorgeousness never fades: your lover. The rest of the poem spells out precisely how he or she pulls off that time-defying trick: by being immortalized in your poetry. By line 14, the answer to
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
turns out to be “No, but I’ll find a way to write a poem about you anyway.” Ask a question, then answer it, and follow that answer in whatever direction it naturally evolves. That’s about as good an approach to Shakespeare as any.

The verbs do yeoman’s service in this sonnet. They are:
compare, shake, shines, dimmed, declines, fade, ow’st, brag, wander’st, grow’st, breathe, see, lives
.
Ow’st
at the end of line 10 is the present-tense declension of “owe,” which in Shakespeare’s period was synonymous with “own.” (
That fair thou ow’st
means
the beauty you possess
.) In almost every Shakespeare play I’ve directed, I’ve simply substituted
own
for
owe
in order to make the sense clear to a modern audience. Doing that here is far trickier, alas, because of the rhyme between
ow’st
and
grow’st
. (
To time thou groan’st
. Yikes!) This is a case where we have to live with an archaic word and rely on the clarity and specificity of our thinking to make its sense emerge.

Perhaps the most important word in the entire poem is
this
, which appears twice in its final line. It’s clear from the context that both occurrences of the word refer to this poem, or this collection of poems, or poetry in general. In order for the reference to be clear, you’ll need to point to—physically, with a gesture—the paper or book you’re reading from as you really hit each
this
. That won’t be hard: you already know to take every word in this line slowly and with strong emphasis because it’s entirely monosyllabic. For this reason, both
this
’s are already nice and juicy, so all you need is to give them just a little extra edge in order to ensure they land.