Read How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare Online

Authors: Ken Ludwig

Tags: #Education, #Teaching Methods & Materials, #Arts & Humanities, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare, #Language Arts & Disciplines, #General

How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (32 page)

3. The Lover

And then the lover
,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow
.

Shakespeare starts these lines from the premise that it is typical of a young man or woman to write poems to his or her loved one. Fair enough. And it is equally typical that a lover sighs in longing for the object of such youthful obsession. But to sigh
like furnace
is an exceptionally witty, Jaques-like thing to say. A furnace is full of hot air and expels that air with loud groans.

Equally witty is the notion that a lover would write his woeful ballad
to his mistress’ eyebrow
. Lovers adore everything about their loved ones, and here the lover is so obsessed by his beloved that he’s writing an entire poem about her
eyebrow
.

4. The Soldier

Then a soldier
,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard
[leopard],

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel
,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth
.

Shakespeare paints the picture of a soldier who has just been off to war. He is full of
strange oaths
because he has been in foreign parts. He is bearded like a leopard because that was the look that soldiers cultivated in Elizabethan times: an exotic look with just those few hairs sticking out of their chins.

The soldier here is also jealous of his honor—in other words, he’s just waiting to be challenged so he can fight. He moves with sudden movements, and he is quarrelsome because he’s anxious—indeed, overanxious—to prove his worth.

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel
,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Not seeking “high reputation” or “worthy reputation” but
the bubble reputation
.

BUBBLE?

Bubble
is a good word to discuss with your children. It has a subtlety that they might otherwise miss. Shakespeare is reminding us that reputations are fleeting and subject to bursting, and that everything that the soldier is quarreling about is ephemeral and likely to change overnight. Famously, there have been many economic bubbles over the years, and when the market bursts, the economy explodes and readjusts. Shakespeare suggests all this and more in a single phrase:
the bubble reputation
.

5. The Justice

And then the justice
,

In fair round belly with good capon lined
,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut
,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part
.

Justice
means “justice of the peace,” which was a lower court judge or magistrate. It is a job for someone in middle age who has earned a level of respectability. Shakespeare portrays the justice as having a comfortably large belly, which is lined with capon (a small edible bird).

Of all seven descriptions, I find this one the most vivid. I feel that I know this man. I have seen him in country towns. He is one of the local worthies who goes to a club, eats well, and tells good stories. His beard is of
formal cut
. He is no longer
bearded like the pard
—that was youthful and daring. Also, he is full of
wise saws and modern instances
. A
saw
is a saying, and a
modern instance
would be the kind of example that he, as a justice, would hand down from the bench. Finally, at the end of this description, Shakespeare brings the opening section to a close with a nice, steady cadence of finality:
And
so
he
plays
his
part
.

Your children are now over halfway through the speech, and they’ve learned five of the seven ages. Point out to them the accuracy of the picture that Shakespeare has painted of the march of time. Nothing can stop the process as it moves along from innocence to self-awareness to wisdom—and then, as we’ll see in a moment, to the feeble existence of old Adam in the play. It is the way of the world.

The Second Half

6. The Pantaloon

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side
,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big, manly voice
,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound
.

A
pantaloon
is a feeble and rather ridiculous old man. The literal meaning of the word
pantaloon
is the baggy trousers that old men often wear;
and the word is also used for one of the stock characters in a form of sixteenth-century Italian stage comedy called commedia dell’arte. In that tradition, Pantaloon was the foolish old fellow who was losing his memory because age was overtaking him. (Shakespeare paints a perfect portrait of him in Justice Shallow in
Henry IV, Part 2
.) Have your children notice in particular that the age
shifts
into the pantaloon. How exceptionally clever to imply that the age itself slips
into
the pair of trousers while at the same time saying the age moves from the justice to the foolish old man.

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side
,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank
,

Other words to point out include
pouch
, which is a purse, and
youthful hose
, which are the stockings that the old man would have worn when he was young. Touchingly, he has saved them, and they are now too big for him: They are too wide for his
shrunk shank
. Shakespeare has chosen to emphasize the
w
sound (
well … world … wide
) to approximate an old man’s speech.

His youthful hose
,
w
ell saved, a
w
orld too
w
ide

And he has chosen the words
shrunk shank
in order to make us slow down as we say the line, just as the pantaloon is slowing down as he walks.

Shakespeare then contrasts the sound of a young man with the sound of an old man:

and his
big, manly voice

[which sounds big and manly with its strong

consonants]

Turning again toward
childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound
.

Every great actor whom I have ever heard recite this speech has used the words
pipes, whistles
, and
sound
to subtly emphasize the whistling sound of an elderly person’s speech.

pipessss and whisssstlessss in his ssssound

Have your children try it that way. Have them pretend, with dignity, that their speech sounds like that of an old man or woman. Their voices should move higher into the treble (upper) range, and we should hear, just slightly, the whistling
s
’s.

7. Second Childishness

Last scene of all
,

That ends this strange eventful history
,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion
,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything
.

The last scene of this play called life is second childishness, when we lose everything but our last breath. We descend into
mere oblivion
, or nothingness. The word
mere
is simple but telling. In the end, even our oblivion is paltry and insignificant.
Sans
(pronounced in English to rhyme with
pans
) means “without.” (
Sans
is the French word for “without” but is pronounced differently in French.) Treat the last line as a list. Use gestures to memorize it, as we’ve done before.

Sans
teeth
,

sans
eyes
,

sans
taste
,

sans
everything
.

This final line, with its repetition of
sans
, has a relentlessness to it. Remind your children that it is reminiscent of Macbeth’s

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Ironically, this witty, melancholy speech appears in one of Shakespeare’s sunniest comedies. But that is also typical of Shakespeare. None of his comedies is all lightness and humor. Even
The Merry Wives of Windsor
gets serious for a moment about adultery; and even
The Comedy of Errors
has a plot that puts an old man’s life in danger. The Ages of Man Speech ends in melancholy partly because of Jaques’s melancholic perspective, but also because Shakespeare was fearlessly true to life. Throughout his plays we see not only comedy and not only tragedy but also, always, the truth.

CHAPTER 29

Passage 19
O, for a Muse of Fire!