Ashes, ashes we all fall down

While it’s been a long time since I actually believed in any sort of god or savior beyond my own psyche, I never fail to grow contemplative around Ash Wednesday. As a holiday – a holy-day in the truest sense of the word – Ash Wednesday always fascinated me. It was eerie, beautiful, dark. The creature hidden in the closet that nobody talked about but, when you open the door on that one day of the year, stepped out with a strange and feline grace, her dark fur glossy and dusty and oh-so-elegant in its secretive and forbidden finery.

It reminds me, in the way that things can only remind a creature of book and word, of Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday.” And not simply because of the title.

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Ash Wednesday is a time of silence. A time where congregations of people who are uncertain and unsure – both of who they are and why they pause in their lives, in the very midst of their days, to sit and daub themselves with ash – gather to simply breathe in one another’s company, to draw into themselves the air and the word. The Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

We are the people. We are the suffering, the crucified, the dying. We. The ashes smeared on our foreheads are our own. They are the reminder – the words we hear every year, at every funeral, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” – of where we have been and what we will become. They are our signal to mourn the losses of our lives, the little and the large, to allow ourselves one hour out of our day to lament and languish, to smear ourselves with the paint of grief and wallow in the strange patters we find our fingers drawing on our skin.

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

We force ourselves to believe in hope. We force ourselves to believe that there is something more, something beyond… but we rarely manage to answer beyond what? We do not hope to turn, we do not hope, we do not hope to turn again…

We have turned before, O my people, we have turned and will turn. Our lives are composed of the turning of the stair, of the twisting and winding of the hourglass, the turning and turning over, the timeless moment before the grains tumble the other direction, carrying us back and forward all at once.

the time of tension between dying and birth

Our lives are… turnings. Windings. Stairs. Our lives are the moments that exist between birth and death, and we hope for a turning that leads us back, from death to birth. And there is no shame in that hope. No folly. There is shame only in no hope. Shame in refusing to hope for another turn, to hope for another day, another hour. There is folly only in placing our dreams beyond our own hands. Dreams are meant to be shared. Meant to be formed and reformed, turned and returned, drawn and written and revised. Reenvisioned.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

In my Ash Wednesday, I sit alone, naked, in a warm garden filled with flowers curling from the ground like smoke, their leaves and stems and petals the sepia tone of old photographs, the fading black-brown wash of ink. In my Ash Wednesday, the ashes are a thick paste-like paint, kept in pots that rest their little clay bottoms and feet on stone and grass. And all the color of ink and ash. They are warm. The ashes glide onto my skin like silk, stain it like henna set for days, draw out the patters of my lives and hopes – oh, yes, I have had many lives, many hopes – and trace the promises of my dreams. And I have dreams.

Dreams in which Angels sing demons to sleep, in which wings are formed of feathers made of words, in which my skin gleams with sweat and sings in a language I cannot yet understand, but one I hope someday I will learn.

In my Ash Wednesday, there are hands that are not my own, and they draw new patters, trace new words, new dreams, new hopes, onto the canvas that is my skin. They are gentle hands, warm hands, hands with patches of rough that tingle and tickle what they touch. I know whose hands they are.

In my Ash Wednesday, there is no division between life and loss, no division between hope and despair, no division – Suffer me not to be separated – but all is a revel in the glory of our lives, our dreams.

In my Ash Wednesday, there is fire. Heat. Passion. There is screaming. There is laughter. They are the same. In my Ash Wednesday, there is promise.

And let my cry come unto Thee.

In my Ash Wednesday, a phoenix is born.

The Blood is the Life

Now the Christian church was founded on blood, strengthened by blood, and augmented by blood; yet nowadays they carry on Christ’s cause by the sword just as if He who defends His own by His own means had perished. And although war is so cruel a business that is befits beasts and not men, so frantic that poets feign it is sent with evil purpose by the Furies, so pestilential that is brings with it a general blight upon morals, so iniquitous that it is usually conducted by the worst bandits, so impious that it has no accord with Christ, yet our popes, neglecting all their other concerns, make it their own task.¹

Blood defends the faith, establishes the borders of nations, and strengthens – or so we say – the bonds of nation and brotherhood. We use blood as a demarcation of rites of passage: blood-brothers, the blood of the first battle, the first kill, the blood of menstruation, the blood of birth, the final blood of death. The blood – as so many of fiction’s vampires seem so fond of saying – is the life. But it is also the death. It is the fluid that marks the passage from this life into the next – or into whatever it is that awaits us, be it another life or simply the long silence at the end of our fitful lives.

Blood can be beautiful. It flushes our cheeks in moments of passion or anger or embarrassment. It warms our skin, fuels our bodies, and makes us alive. Bright red blood is, in fact, a very pretty color. It draws our attention, inspires our curiosity and our poetry.

Blood can also be ugly. It stands for loss, death, and pain. It congeals and dries into a coppery, muddy color unlike anything else. Dried blood screams its identity. It stains and doesn’t come out. It crusts and flakes and nevertheless retains that strangely sweet-salty-coppery scent that makes our mouths water and turns our stomachs. It makes us – like Lady Macbeth – want to wash our hands.

Blood incites panic. It howls in our heads that primal scream of bad thing! We want to stop its flow, stifle the brightness, the liquidity, of that precious, disgusting fluid. Blood makes us faint, makes us scream, makes us vomit. Blood is a sign that something is very wrong. Ask any parent or teacher – blood is bad.

And in today’s world, blood is a carrier of disease – “blood-borne pathogens” are the new hidden threat. HIV. AIDS. Hepatitis. The silent and invisible monsters that hide inside our blood.

And yet, so much has been built on blood. The Church, as Erasmus notes above, the nation (pick one), what we so desperately cling to as “freedom.” Built on blood. Mortared with a paste of blood and dirt and crushed bones and hopes. “Founded on blood, strengthened by blood, and augmented by blood.”

And still, our politicians, our armies, our supposed saviors, “neglecting all their other concerns, make it their own task.”

In the thousands of years of civilization on this planet, we haven’t figured out a way to solve our differences, to build our cities and our societies, without blood. We mouth the words that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” murmur platitudes that say “give peace a chance,” and click our tongues in censure at the violence in other places, but we do not acknowledge – do not want to acknowledge – that we are creatures of life and death, creatures of healing and violence, creatures of blood.

I do not say that I support war. I do not say that I am in favor of violent means as an end to conflict. I do neither. But neither to I deny the violent impulses I have – I don’t follow them, but I also don’t deny them. Our society is one in which violence is a source of entertainment. It makes us feel good, provides our catharsis. We revel in shadenfreude. We want to watch pain. We want to see blood. We’re just happier when that blood isn’t real, when the shiny red drops are corn syrup and food coloring, starch and dye. When they wash out or wipe away. But they, for all their falseness, are still drops of blood. Symbolic, yes, but blood, nonetheless.

I say that blood does us more good when it stays inside our bodies than when it is let out. But I also say that it has a place in our lives. Every woman who menstruates, who has given birth, knows what I mean. Everyone who has skinned a knee, cut a finger, scraped an elbow, knows what I mean. Everyone who has lived rather than died because someone else gave a pint of blood knows what I mean. Everyone who has waited to hear the yes or no of a blood-borne pathogen test knows what I mean. Blood is a part of us, a part of our society, a part of who and what we are.

I am a creature of blood. So are we all.

1 Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 100-101.

What is "rational," anyway?

In his article, "Rational Control, or, life without virtue" (from The New Criterion, September issue, 2006), Harvey C. Mansfield suggests something with which I want to simultaneously agree and for which I'd like to beat him with a wet noodle.

God is the foundation of the irrational order. Modern liberation is liberation from God as the source of irrational custom. (41)

Mansfield defines "rational control" as things, rules, and/or people who control the actions of others for a "rational" purpose, here identified with things like "life" or "the greater good." Things like mandatory seatbelts, airbags, auto-flush toilets, and those automatic sinks that never seem to work right. These things make our lives better, or would if they worked properly instead of getting stuck in their dispensers and car doors, going off for no good reason, flushing and wetting one's behind, and refusing to turn on or off no matter how much hand waving is involved. The idea behind them is, ultimately, altruistic. Designed to prolong and better (or at least sanitize) our lives.

The "irrational order," then, is that which goes against "rational control."

Don't get me wrong. I'm an atheist. While I personally do not have any faith in a higher being/power/flying spaghetti monster/invisible sky wizard, I also recognize that belief in a deity or deities gives great comfort, solace, and even joy to other people. I'm all for that - as long as they keep it to themselves.

But how is placing our human inclination to have faith in something in the handlessness of brainless technology any more or less "rational" than placing it in the possible handlessness of an unseen divinity? Given the track-record of auto-flush toilets, I personally don't feel any more inclined to allow the auto-plumbing of the world to have "control" over my "rational" impulses, thank you very much. Particularly since the faucets repeatedly confound my perfectly "rational" desire to wash my hands after using the equally "rational" (and often equally malfunctioning) auto-flush toilet.

How is the auto-flush toilet a better "replacement god" than god?

At least nobody asks god to flush for them. They're perfectly willing to do it for themselves.

But, Mansfield says, we are unable to exercise that kind of "rational control" over ourselves.

To liberate us from subjection, modernity must show that men can control themselves. (41)

Great. I'm with you Mr. Mansfield. But I do have one teensy little problem... Auto-flush toilets do not let me control myself. They don't even let me control my own fecal matter. The auto-flush is most certainly not an instance of human control. It represents our desire to give up control to some sort of porcelain god that will happily whisk away all unpleasantness from our spanking-clean bottoms. And this is most emphatically not a case of giving up liberty for progress - it's a case of transferred reliance. From god to technology. From ourselves to unreliable auto-plumbing. It's a case of the age-old human problem of "not-my-problem."

But Mansfield is aware that progress can come at the cost of our liberty. I wish - oh, how I wish - he weren't.

It appears that the two aspects of modernity are liberty and progress, and that the two are linked. Liberty means liberation from unreason, which is progress; progress means expanding the scope of liberty. Is there no difficulty here? Yes, there is, and not a small one. There is no liberty to be irrational or to be satisfied with less liberty. For example, women today are equal to men, or closer to equal than they used to be. Men, however, are less free to be their old sexist selves. No doubt this is all for the good, but men are still less free in a sense. Moreover, having abandoned the "traditional stereotypes," we have set in place new, non-sexist stereotypes. These are to be taught to children by parents, to parents by the mainstream media. (41)

I think I was just catapulted back to 1950. No, wait. To 1789 and the writing of the Bill of Rights. Not only do I find it extraordinarily insulting that Mr. Mansfield considers his freedom "to be [his] old sexist [self]" to have been curtailed by feminism, but the very idea that sexism - or racism, homophobia, etc. - is a freedom... For Pete's sake. Okay, fine. Freedom of speech says that you can feel free to be vocally sexist if you want. Fine. But it also says that I don't have to take that crap from you if I don't want. Just because I get to retaliate doesn't mean you are any less free to say what you think. It just means you might have to weigh some consequences before you open your big, fat, bigoted mouth.

Now I will concede Mr. Mansfield's point - modernity has led us down many paths on which improvements in medicine, government, and social expectations have also led to restrictions in our "liberty." But pick a less offensive example, please. In all fairness, perhaps that is Mr. Mansfield's point. He doesn't feel "free" to use offensive examples, so he does it anyway, just to push some buttons. But I think that in so doing, he does himself and his ideas a great disservice.

In this age of Patriot Acts and phone taps, there needs to be some recognition that just because we've allowed our language and ourselves to be "rationally controlled" doesn't make us any more "rational." It makes us, in my humble opinion, a good deal less "rational." I acknowledge that political correctness may seem like a restriction, but I will also say that does not stop us from saying what we want to say. It simply asks that we consider our speech.

And what I say - what I have always and will always say - is that if what you have to say is important enough, you should say it anyway. Speak up, speak out, political correctness be damned. To requote the oft-and-over-quoted Voltaire, "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."

Just remember, the auto-flush toilet has a button that lets you exercise your independence, to defy "rational control" and flush whenever you want.

The poor player

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (Macbeth 5.5.24-28)

This particular passage, so often quoted (and, like any Shakespeare, misquoted) is the subject of today's rant. Specifically, the following elucidation by Harold Fisch:

The problem arises when one comes to evaluate the total function and meaning of this metaphor. Does it suggest simply, in reference to Macbeth, the ‘automation of the stage-actor’ as Mr. Kantak remarks – the hollowness of an illusory existence which has lost all its meaning? The comparison of the world to a theatre and of the people in it to actors had certainly served to ‘stress the empty, ephemeral nature of life on earth’ and certainly this represents the main direction of Macbeth’s thinking in the fifth act.¹

But does the trope of the theatrum mundi, as here Fisch (after Kantak) implies, really suggest that life is “empty, ephemeral” and “hollow”? Or is the implication that what is rich is performance itself? That the color and quality of life is contained entirely within the realm of the theatrical? Let us examine, for a moment, this inversion. If Macbeth, for example, has just recognized that performance is the core of existence, that richness, power, and monarchical glory are all contained within the ability to perform them well, then his nihilistic attitude is not that life is empty, but that his life, in specific, has been empty. I suggest that the argument should not be that life is “empty,” but that Macbeth has failed to perform it. It is his failure, and not the intrinsic quality of life, that indicates the “hollowness” of which Fisch speaks. In essence, then, the message of the theatrum mundi is not that we are “mere” anything, but that the whole of creation is available to us through the power of performance.

Is not the actor image essentially ambivalent? For whilst it implies on the one hand that life is a play of phantoms, a meaningless repeated cycle, in another sense surely it implies that life has the gripping significance of a dramatic plot, that it has design, intention, purpose. It may serve to introduce something not less, but more meaningful than the neutrality of a non-dramatic order of existence. The world of nature is without pattern; but the world of drama is full of pattern – a mighty maze but not without a plan.²

"Not without a plan"... Dear god, intelligent design is infiltrating my damn literary criticism. Okay, Mr. Fisch, so drama is better than nature because it has "a plan"? You have, sir, come up with what may be the driest, most boring reason that life is like theater and vice versa. Your theater, Mr. Fisch, makes me want to go to sleep. Or, better, cry out of sheer, desperate boredom. No wonder Macbeth gave up and his wife offed herself. While life is hollow and empty, at least it is... "dramatic plot." Good god, man! Better yet, it's okay that our lives are mere theater because we get something "more" when we're dead. The applause from god. Oh, goodie. I can't wait. Ugh.

My issue with Fisch and Kantak - and Macbeth - is principally this: what is so bloody wrong with the theater that you are so damn against it? Why is it so bad to be a "poor player"? What's wrong with "strutting and fretting"? That's all most of us spend our time doing! Strutting and fretting. I'm all about strutting and fretting, thank you very much Mr. Harold Fisch. Lay on Macduff! On with strutting and fretting!

Okay, so that's a little melodramatic. But still. This is Shakespeare's way of saying "life is what we make of it," and, Mr. Macbeth, you sucked at it. You fretted more than strutted and you killed a few people that made you crazy... but you didn't ever just say "To hell with you and your prophecies you stupid hags, I'm going to be a real King!" Nope. Not once. You whined at your wife, who told you to act like a real man, and you whined at your friend (whom you killed), and you whined at the witches to "make it all better" for you. But did you ever just try to rule the damn country you killed Duncan for? No. Much better to blame everybody else for your problems, Mr. Macbeth. Because then you don't have to pretend that you failed because you are a terrible "player."

So, my dear Mssrs. Fisch and Kantak and Macbeth, I say Shakespeare was a bloody smart guy - smarter than you guys anyway, and certainly smarter than me - and when he says that "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing" through the mouth of a complete whiny failure...

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that what he means is not that life is empty, but that it is oh, so rich. So impossibly, beautifully full of possibilities, of costumes, jewels, and roles, of hats and gowns and robes that we can don and cast aside, glittering and shiny things, swords and pens and shimmering silks and rattling bones, bits and bobs and all manner of fantastic and wonderful things that can let us be anything we want, if we only take a deep breath, push aside the stage door, and step out into the wide world - that great Globe - and play.

1 Harold Fisch, “Shakespeare and ‘The Theatre of the World,’” The Morality of Art: Essays Presented to G. Wilson Knight by his Colleagues and Friends, ed. D.W. Jefferson (London: Routledge, 1969), 80.

2 Fisch, 81.

History moves in a cyclical motion...

Signs that times haven't changed all that much since 1515...

All these revolutions, treatises made and broken, frequent risings, battle and slaughter, all these threats and quarrels, what do they arise from but stupidity? And I rather think that some part of this is due to our own fault. We do not hand over the rudder of the ship to anyone but a skilled steersman, when nothing is at stake but four passengers or a small cargo; but we hand over the state, in which so many thousands of people are in peril, to the first comer.¹

A pompous man Erasmus may have been, but he wasn't an idiot. When I first read this out loud, K commented that it didn't really apply to democracy, as an election didn't automatically accept "the first comer" as President. I gave him a look. He acceded the point. We now call him King George II. (Yes, I know very well there were other Georges in the Presidency. The point is that this is becoming a dynastic line, which, as my work with Shakespeare continually reminds me, is a very. bad. thing.)

A few days ago, I read a blog published posthumously by a soldier in Iraq that reminded me - contrary, I believe, to his own feelings - that there is nothing we do that is without political ramifications. He'd asked that his name not be used for political soap-boxing (a perfectly reasonable request, in my opinion), and that got me thinking. Considering what I do - i.e. read things published by people over 400 years ago about kings who (if they existed at all) died several hundred years before that - it is strangely relieving to recognize that politics haven't really changed all that much. True, it's also vaguely nauseating that we haven't managed to get any better at government and politics as a species, but it does seem to point to some intrinsic feature in human nature. We lie, we steal, we manipulate the facts and the diction of our speeches, blogs, and publications to reflect our own opinions. We use other people as pawns in our political games, whether that means we send them off to be killed or whether it simply means that we use their names and the grief of their families as a launch-pad for our own political agendas.

Is that a bad thing? Yes. And no. Should we feel that it is acceptable to use people? The moral voice in my head says no. But on the other hand, that's what we, as a culture and a species, do. Much as I hate to ever admit that Ayn Rand might be a little bit right, she was. We use other people. For our own comfort, for our own gratification, for our political, social, and/or religious ends. We use their bodies, their minds, their names, the iconographic representations published by newspapers, television, the military, even their parents. We make these things into what we want them to be, which may or may not have any connection to what they actually are.

Is this bad? No. And yes. We do what we do. Does this mean that we are all fundamentally selfish beings with no sense of altruism? Sometimes. But sometimes we do what we do - we use people - for the betterment of society. (A horrible phrase, that.) Sometimes we create this propaganda because we truly believe it is for the benefit of the majority. The benefit of the future. Shakespeare did. Maybe he didn't figure it would change the world (really), but he had something to say. And he said it. A lot. In verse. And it did something. It made a difference. Even if that difference is only the continual acknowledgment that we see that he made a difference.

Shakespeare wasn't a saint. He wasn't a great bard channeling some divine muse. He was a man. A man who made mistakes both literary and social. He misspelled words, messed up his meter, and sometimes had plot-holes the size of Texas. And he said something. He said that kings are people, too. He said that no one, no matter how lowly, how base, has an influence in the world. Sometimes large, sometimes small, but has an influence.

That is why Shakespeare is, to paraphrase one of my students, "Da man."

1 Desiderius Erasmus, "One Ought to Be Born a King or a Fool," The Erasmus Reader, ed. Erika Rummel (Toronto, 1990), 339.

Updating...

So it's been a while, I know. I've been remiss.

Not much happens academically over the summer... mostly because this magical thing called "eating" needs to be subsidized by "working."

So I've managed to churn out a large chunk of the Edward II chapter, though it's much bigger than either of its brothers. I'm currently working on turning the Maid's chapter into an article, and I have an outstanding proposal to Kalamazoo. My own article is in "Final Production" with Routledge, and comes out in Shakespeare 3.2 in November. In April I'll be heading to Chicago for the RSA national conference to be on a special panel with a paper on Henry VI. Oh, yes, and our play for next year will be Middleton's A Mad World My Masters and will go up the first week in March.

When I put it that way, I've been a busy girl.

Article, Ho!

So today's "mission accomplished" was turning in the corrections for the final page proofs of my article - "Martial Maids and Murdering Mothers" - set to appear in volume 3, issue 2 of Routledge's journal Shakespeare in November of 2007 (going to press in August - next month).

Look, ma! I'm a real acamademic!

Not much else to announce... I don't know whether or not I get a "real" copy of the article (or the journal issue) yet, but I don't really plan on buying more than one (if I buy one at all). I have the page-proof pdf, which is enough for me, since it has all the real things like page numbers, citations, and so on.


The dissertation continues... and continues... and continues...

Well, you get the idea. One of these days I hope to be able to announce that I'm done with this godawful process, but I'm not holding my breath and neither should you. Just know that if I manage by some miracle to get a novel successfully published beforehand, I may decide to alter the course of my life. Then again, maybe not. We'll have to see.

Odd quote of the day...

So in reading this book (some of which is useful, but most of which seems to be tangential to my purposes), I came across the following sentence, which contains one of the oddest parenthetical comment I've seen in non-fiction in a very long time:

"it is impossible therefore to think of the human individual without the family, and in all families authority rests in the male because (says Bodin) the woman is the physical, moral and intellectual inferior (may he rest in pain)" (Simon Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre, 160).

I get what Shepherd is trying to do here, but it still struck me as a terribly odd thing to say. Then again, I may have to appropriate it and use it... though probably not in an academic publication.

Another one under way

Well, the Edward II chapter has been outlined. Not begun, officially, I suppose, but I've decided what I'm going to talk about and roughly in what order. It's a step, even if not the "big" step.

The last two weeks (and it has been [only?] two weeks, which is a little alarming to me) have reminded me yet again why it sucks to have to work to eat during the summers. While I know that *most* people in the real world have to work all the time in order to pay bills, eat, and have fun, as a grad student I find that I have ever so much more time when I'm doing my *real* work than when I'm doing my fake summer work. I always think I'm going to have all this extra time in the summer to work on school-things, work on fun-things, read, etc., but I inevitably barely manage to get the school-things done and nothing more.

Admittedly, it has only been two weeks of summer season (the funny few weeks in the middle of May don't count in my head), so I might get more done than I think, but I'm having a pessimist day. So sue me.

To say nothing of the fact that I do things like post on my blog when I should be reading about Christopher Marlowe... but I feel, at this point, that I've read everything I possibly could need to know about the Elizabethan reception to theater and I'm getting rather sick of it. I want this guy to stop his more general rambling and start talking about Marlowe in particular or - even better - about Edward II.

Bah. Back to tea and tedium with me.

Introduction... check

Well, the introductory chapter is finished. And it was a bitch and a half, let me tell you. Like pulling teeth from a very irritable and unusually voluble sphinx.

Have you ever attempted dentistry on such a beastie? Not an easy thing, believe me. They drool, they talk when you've got your hands in their mouthes, and then there's the tail...

But the draft is done. I fully expect to have to return to it again and again and it will most likely look very little like the creature it currently resembles, but that's why dissertation writing is much like genetic engineering. You never know what it will look like in a couple million years. Which is about how long dissertations take to write.

I do feel like I have much more of a solid grasp of what my theoretical ideas are at this point, though. A definite improvement over when I started the chapter. And I can actually explain what I mean to another human being in under an hour - also an improvement.

I have noticed - with great joy and excitement - that the more questions I find myself asking and the more plays I consider with relation to my thesis (and the more extra-period books K. comes up with), the more solid I find my argument. In other words, there seems to be a kind of universal application to my ideas - both within and beyond early modern drama, which I personally find rather exciting. I've also noticed that my thesis gets more easily proven in the later plays - which points to the idea that this is an evolving idea that becomes increasingly prevalent as the period goes on... all leading to a logical conclusion that (coincidentally or not) actually happened. (Forgive the vagueness, but when your ideas will eventually combine to be a book in a highly competitive academic atmosphere, you have to safeguard them with not only your life, but a highly trained attack dog named "Bruno.")

Next, I turn my attention to my first actual chapter - Chapter One - which will be the third one to get written. This one's on Edward II and the idea that having a red-hot poker inserted through one's rectum and into one's intestines somehow renders the body less sacred... A shocking thought, I know, but there you go.

And for inspiration I have a lovely fire-poker with a very nice wicked hook on the end mounted on my wall, just beside my desk (between the engraving of Elizabeth I and the puzzle of Shakespeare characters).

I should probably make some attempt to eat something... but I just was so excited about the prospect of finishing this stupid chapter tonight that I decided to put off cooking. But now the veggies and beans and cheese are calling to me...

Conference paper, check

Well, there's another project well under way. And by "well under way," I mean "only needs to knock off a few pages and make sure it makes sense." So, Richard II conference paper draft, done.

I'm kind of sad that I'm not writing on Richard II for the dissertation now, though I wouldn't want to replace anything already in there (except The Maid's Tragedy, but I've already written that part). I think it would be really interesting to write a chapter on Richard through Richard II and Woodstock, if only because there's very little out there on Woodstock and it dovetails so nicely with Richard II (since they're about the same King... shocking). It might also be interesting to drag in Edward III, but I've only read that once and not very carefully.

It was suggested that perhaps I keep this for the *next* book (good god), and I think I might have to do an Edward-Richard thing if that were to be the case. Edward II, Edward III, Woodstock, Richard II... Might be an interesting way to look at histories, since everybody else writes on the Henriad (yak). Sure, Richard II leads into the Henriad, but the Edwards and Woodstock (yes, yes, I *know* they aren't Shakespeare, but, believe it or not, Shakespeare wasn't the only guy with a pen in the 1590s) lead right into Richard II in such yummy ways...

*sigh*

I really am a dork, now, aren't I?

Introduction, begun

So in a concerted effort to avoid writing my most recent conference paper, I started the introductory chapter to my dissertation today. (This is the second chapter I've worked on thus far, the other one being the last actual chapter.) I think I've finally figured out how to present these ideas in something resembling a clear manner, but there's just SO MUCH to cover. For instance, my quotation notes for this bugger are 32 pages long. And that's just the quotations. There will be a lot that gets left out, methinks.

I have also started that conference paper (on Richard II, which, unfortunately, isn't going into the dissertation), and I've still got time to finish it before May 10, when I leave for the Medieval Congress. Hopefully I'll make some sense by then.

Either way, I'm going to be doing a lot of talking about performance, tyranny, and monarchical violation over the next month or so.

And maybe I'll stop procrastinating by posting about writing in my blog and actually get to the writing.
Ha.

Cooper's Physics, courtesy Mark Twain

Specifically, an amusing read for anybody who wants to do some hating on James Fenimore Cooper. I'm always up for some good Cooper-bashing. In this case, it's Mark Twain doing the bashing.

K sent this to me a while ago while he was reading all the Leatherstocking tales (that's two more than I ever managed to force myself to read) and I've been a bad girlfriend and not read it until now. But it's pretty bloody hilarious.

Here's a taste for those who want a short version.

The ark is arriving at the stream's exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things, but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.

The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a
minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost five Indians.

The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No, 4. jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian. In the matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious.

I really wish I'd known about this when Scott made us read it.

There's a reason nobody listened to these guys...

Stephen Gosson and Phillip Stubbes are not only incredibly boring, they're also wrong.
Funny, at times, but wrong.

Then again, I'm a horrible heretic and participator in that great evil, the theater, so what do I know?
According to Stubbes, at least, that must mean I'm a sodomite, or worse:

marke the flocking and rūning to Theaters & curtens, daylie and hourely, night and daye, tyme and tyde to see Playes and Enterludes, where such wanton gestures, such bawdie speaches: such laughing and sleering: such kissing and bussing: such clipping and culling: Suche winckinge and glancinge of wanton eyes, / and the like is vsed, as is wonderfull to behold. Than these goodly pageants being done, euery mate sorts to his mate, euery one bringes another homeward of their way verye freendly, and in their secret conclaues (couertly) they play y^e Sodomits, or worse. (Anatomie of Abuses)

Lucky me.

Chapter 4 draft, check

Though I have to say, that was more time than I ever want to spend with Beaumont and Fletcher ever again. Unfortunately, I have the feeling I'm not going to get my wish.

On the other hand, I very clearly hit several very important and interesting things today. For instance, I have a rather fascinating argument about the title of The Maid's Tragedy and a reading of the play as a whole that I've never seen before (which you'll have to forgive me if I don't share - academia being rather competitive as it is, I'm not feeling very open about this stuff just yet). I also got into something of a groove this week regarding this chapter, and it's just been pouring out (with a few little fits and starts, of course, but I've written about 20 pages worth of stuff in three days, as well as a good deal of revising).

I'm still feeling up in the air about including Julius Caesar in the dissertation. On the one hand, it would go very well with The Maid's Tragedy... on the other hand, this chapter alone is 57 pages and I've got three more, an introductory chapter, and an epilogue to go, and I know the chapter on Macbeth and Richard III is going to be a long bugger.

Next up: Hope the prospectus gets approved. Then I can give them this monstrosity. That's going to be fun. If we dick around for a while yet... Start chapter 1, which is on Edward II. I'm actually looking forward to that play, which tells me something about the comparative quality of Marlowe versus Beaumont and Fletcher. And it's not good for Francis and John. It really makes me kind of sad that Kit had to go and get himself knifed before he could write anything else. I often wonder if Marlowe had lived, would we have Marlowe festivals instead of Shakespeare...

At any rate, I'm SO happy this is done. Especially since I can tell my brain is so over-saturated by iambic pentameter that it keeps trying to force my normal speech into Jacobean dramatic patterns. Not good.

Fair reader, fare thee well, for I am done.

Today's Thought-Provoking Quote of the Day

From Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain (New York: Oxford, 1985), which is a fascinating book for those of you who might be interested.

The invented god and its human inventor (or, in the inverted language of the scriptures, the creature and his creature) are differentiated by the immunity of the one and the woundability of the other; and if the creature is not merely woundable but already deeply and permanently wounded, handicapped or physically marred in some way (Leviticus 21:16; 22:21; Deuteronomy 17:1), then that individual is asserted to exist at an ever greater moral distance from God than does the “normal” person. (183)

Not only does this make me think about Richard III in terms of Richard's "distance" from divinity and about Edward II in terms of the final murder as an act of removing Edward's divinity through pain (because what is pain if not fundamentally human), but about Milton and Paradise Lost.

Several years ago I wrote a paper on Satan's wounds as indicative not only of his Hobbesean understanding of the universe, but as the physical manifestation of his sundering from god and divinity. In Paradise Lost - as, amusingly enough, in the movie Constantine (2005) when Gabriel becomes "mortal" - pain is the marker of the Fall. This has all sorts of implications in my own creative work in terms of scarring, marking, and pain, but that's another (very long) story.

Curtain

Well, let's see.

Performing (In)Visibility Conference, check.
Abstract and chapter breakdown passed on to second advisor, check.
Show, check.

To do during spring break:
Write state of the criticism.
Finish chapter one.
Maybe start thinking about the Medieval/Renaissance Congress. Maybe.
Shake this nasty-ass cough.

Life goes on. Sometimes ploddingly, sometimes quickly, sometimes with these funny little fits and starts that make you wonder of god has the damn hiccups. But it goes on.
So doth it with me.

Progress?

Well, yesterday and today a couple of rather profound (I hope) things occurred to me regarding The Dissertation. (Yes, it has taken on capital-letter status in my head.)

One of them provides, thankfully, the link between the two main ideas I've been throwing around for months, and the other allows me to connect those ideas to the plays I'm intending to use. Both also allow me to fight with various established critics (one in terms of extending existing ideas the other in direct opposition), which I guess is a good way to make your entrance into the field. It also seems to be something I tend to do a lot.

I also sent back the article revisions this week - hopefully I've managed not to mess up my English grammar (as opposed to American) too badly and they won't need to send it back to me again. I have to say, if the publication process for fiction is as tedious as it is for criticism, I'm not looking forward to trying to get the novel published. Particularly because it's MUCH longer. Of course, I do have to finish the blasted thing first. Again.

Ah, the story of my life. Write thing. Give thing to reader. Rewrite thing. Give thing back to reader. Edit thing. Give thing back to reader. Rewrite thing. Give thing back to reader...
You get the idea.
Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me that writing is not where my life is intended to go.
Then again, when have I ever listened to anyone who tells me I shouldn't/can't do something?

All the time.
No, really.
I listen. I just proceed to do the opposite.

It begins

Well, it's official. I have written something for my dissertation. Not much, mind you, and it probably won't stay in the final version, but I've actually started it.

My current dilemma - which isn't admittedly much of a dilemma - is that there isn't much out there written on The Maid's Tragedy. I think I've gotten most of the articles, etc., but if anyone happens to know of a chapter, book, or article that deals with The Maid's Tragedy, I'd appreciate them dropping a comment to give me a hand.

I've also decided that it's rather irritating that I still hear the actors in my head when I read this play. Not that they were bad, mind you - as they did a very good job with it - but it's very hard to try and parse some of this when you've got somebody else's voice in your head.

Or maybe I'm just going crazy.

I seem to have overcommitted...

To do list:

1. Write conference paper on Richard III and Henry V for Performing (In)Visibility in February.

2. Put on show (Edward II).

3. Write conference paper on Richard II for Medieval Congress Medieval/Renaissance conference in May.

4. Write chapter of dissertation on The Maid's Tragedy. Maybe convince self and advisors I should write the chapter on Edward II instead. Maybe not.

5. Turn aforementioned chapter on The Maid's Tragedy into an article using the Ohio Shakespeare Conference paper on the above. This is the real reason for starting with this play.

6. Teach Shakespeare class.

7. Maybe possibly finish prospectus before I die. Maybe.