Bardisms (7 page)

SHAKESPEARE ON SONS

O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother!

—H
AMLET
,
Hamlet
, 3.2.300

Shakespearean parents of daughters love their girls but try desperately to control them out of a deep fear that things might go horribly wrong if the girls’ fates are left to themselves, especially where husbands are concerned. Shakespearean parents of sons love their boys no less, but they don’t even try to influence their life choices, because they know that no matter what they suggest, want, or do, their stubborn boys will simply reject it out of hand. Put more simply, in Shakespeare, daughters are delightful, enchanting, and entirely lovable—until they discover boys. Then the gates of hell open wide, and there’s never a peaceful moment again. Likewise, sons in Shakespeare are sources of pride and warmth, joy and love—until they reach a crossroads of their own. But it’s not girls that are their undoing, it’s their own pigheadedness, insistence on independence, and implacable, infuriating willfulness. These will wreck a parent’s peace of mind as totally as any bad behavior a wayward daughter can muster.

And yet, of all the varieties of familial love one encounters in the
Complete Works of Shakespeare
, the love of parents for sons, and especially firstborn sons, may be the most intense and incandescent. To be sure, Shakespearean moms can be less than perfect, loving their sons not wisely but too well, and the Bard’s dads can be imposing, distant figures who intimidate and belittle their boys. But despite their flaws, they love. And love, and love even more. Here are but two expressions of this abundant affection, both of which move me whenever I use them.

IT’S GOOD TO HAVE SONS

When a dear friend called to tell me his pregnant wife’s ultrasound revealed she was carrying twin boys, I rifled through my
Complete Works
to find something that might take the edge off the happy panic I heard in his voice. I found a wonderful Bardism to commend to anyone blessed with a baby boy.

Why, ’tis a happy thing / To be the father unto many sons.

—K
ING
E
DWARD IV
,
Henry VI, Part III
, 3.2.104–5

I ADORE MY SON

This is one of my favorite Shakespeare passages, because it seems to me so truthful and mature an expression of a father’s love for his son. Free of sugarcoating, it captures the way in which parenthood is magical, despite being full of moments as frustrating and hair-raising as any in life.

LEONTES
                My brother,

Are you so fond of your young prince as we

Do seem to be of ours?

POLIXENES
                If at home, sir,

He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter;

Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy; 5

My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.

He makes a July’s day short as December,

And with his varying childness cures in me

Thoughts that would thick my blood.

—The Winter’s Tale
, 1.2.164–72

In other words:

LEONTES
My dear friend, do you adore your young son as much as I appear to love mine?

POLIXENES
When I’m at home, he’s everything I do, every moment of my time. He’s my every delight, he’s all I think about. One minute he’s my best friend, the next, he hates my guts. He’s a hanger-on, he’s a fighter, he’s a negotiator—he’s all things. He makes a long summer day feel as short as the winter solstice, and his boyish ways, in their constant changes, snap me out of dark moods and depression.

How to say it:

I sent this excerpt to a friend after a wonderful conversation in which he told me how much he’d lately been enjoying time spent with his little boy.

Don’t worry too much about Leontes’ lines that cue Polixenes’ wonderful speech. I’ve included them here only for context. Polixenes’ speech stands on its own, and can even begin with line 4,
He’s all my exercise
, or, if you like,
Tommy’s all my exercise
, or whatever Junior’s name may be.

Polixenes’ speech (his name is pronounced
puh-LICKS-uh-neez
) has some interesting features.
If at home
is simply there because at this point in the play he’s been away from his beloved boy for nine long months and he misses him. Feel free to drop this phrase in the interest of clarity. The antitheses between
friend
and
enemy
and
July
and
December
are important. The two occurrences of
all
, in lines 4 and 6, can be quite powerful: Polixenes’ son takes up his
every
moment (line 4), and is absolutely
everything
to him (line 6).

You can make this speech describe your daughter by changing each
he
to
she
and, perhaps, cutting line 6—about the parasite, soldier, and statesman—because to Shakespeare these were exclusively masculine character types.

Some details:

Lines 7 and 9 merit closer inspection. When Polixenes mentions
a July’s day
, he simply assumes that his listeners know he’s referring to how
long
such a day is (as opposed to how
hot
or
bright
or any of the other things summer days are). Good parallel construction would require him to contrast a long July’s day to, say,
a day as short as one in December
. He doesn’t say anything like that, but instead collapses this latter image into the name of the month itself. Yet we understand full well what he means. This kind of poetic density, in which meanings are implied rather than spelled out, and in which language is imprecise on its surface yet exquisitely concrete in the thoughts behind it, is characteristic of late Shakespeare, and of
The Winter’s Tale
in particular. It’s Shakespearean writing at its most sophisticated.

Also typical of late Shakespeare is his ability to convey a person’s entire life through one short phrase. Polixenes says that the best thing about his son’s mercurial boyishness is that it eliminates
thoughts that would thick
[his]
blood
. In this provocative phrase we get a glimpse of a whole person, with moods, heartbreaks, dark moments, a past that’s led to all these, and a life that extends beyond the boundaries of this moment, this scene’s dramatic circumstances, and even this play itself. But what makes the phrase noteworthy is how unnecessary it is. The story of the play doesn’t require it; Polixenes needn’t have a history of struggles with depression in order for
The Winter’s Tale
to make sense, and all that’s really required of the character is that he do things that move the plot forward. Still, details such as this one make the whole play more believable, more lifelike, and more real. It’s just good writing, and it’s also gold for an actor: What kind of thoughts are thickening Polixenes’ blood? What’s preoccupying him? Is he worried about his cholesterol, perhaps, or something more metaphysical? For our purposes, such queries are irrelevant—when I sent the passage to my buddy, I wasn’t suggesting that he was in need of antidepressants—but they do help us understand why Shakespeare is for all occasions: because his characters seem to be real people with real lives, to reflect life as we know it to be lived, and, through their extraordinary turns of phrase, to give voice to our own experiences in all their varieties and complexities.

SHAKESPEARE ON MOTHERS

Nature makes them partial.

—P
OLONIUS
,
Hamlet
, 3.3.33

Given the strength of the bond between mother and child, it’s remarkable how little Shakespeare actually wrote about it. He dramatizes mother-son (and, to a much lesser extent, mother-daughter) relationships in a number of plays, but he doesn’t exactly anatomize them. His preference is less to talk in the abstract about how mothers and their children relate than simply to show them in action and let these relationships speak for themselves.

Sometimes he chooses not to address the subject at all. Many of the mothers in the plays are conspicuous by their absence: Prince Hal’s mother, the mother of Lear’s three daughters, the mother of Shylock’s beloved daughter Jessica, the mothers of Miranda, Rosalind, Desdemona, Portia, Ophelia, Viola—we hear a resounding silence from these women, who are dead before the curtain rises on the plays in which their children feature. And interestingly, in the case of the character who is arguably the most complex, vividly drawn, and loquacious mother in the plays, Coriolanus’ mother, Volumnia, the most emotional moment her son shares with her has in it no language at all, as this simple stage direction from the play demands: “He holds her by the hand, silent.”