[lbo-talk] Shakespeare

Tahir Wood twood at uwc.ac.za
Tue Dec 11 01:22:00 PST 2007



>>> <lbo-talk-request at lbo-talk.org> 12/11/07 6:31 AM >>>
Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> > Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift: His comforts thrive,
his
> > trials well are spent.

......................

There is a technical matter too, beyond my capacity to analyze, but there is something to be said about (a) the vowel progression in the first line as a whole and (b) in particular in the last three words, combined with the stress there. The line is in some (weired?) way uplifting. And the second line rests at the end.

OK let me help then. The first thing to notice about the first line is that all the vowels, with the exception of the last two, are all different from one other. The last two are both mid-central vowels (schwa) and provide the only assonance in the line. They are a kind of mirror image then of the alliteration provided by the word-initial consonants at the beginning of the line. This mirror effect is strengthened by the recurrence of the liquid consonant that begins the last stressed syllable of the line ("lift"), thereby giving the line a feeling of symmetry and balance. To put that last point more simply, the first stressed syllable in the line and the last stressed syllable in the line begin with the same consonant.

I don't see the issue of stress or rest that is mentioned above. The two lines have identical metres - both lines have five iambic feet - and both therefore end with a stressed syallable, and both end with a verb. What seals the parallel between the two lines further is the occurrence of 'will' and 'well', in each case in the third last syllable of the line, and therefore both in a stressed position. The syntax is arranged simply to preserve the metre, which would be ruined by making the second line say "trials are well spent", for example. This is a commonplace of poetic licence, and would have been virtually second nature to Shakespeare, who wrote very large volumes of verse.

As for the line being 'uplifting', well that's what it says doesn't it?

Coming back to my earlier post concerning bardolatry, I do feel that some of the mystifications concerning the 'magic' of poetic language and the 'genius' of its creators need to be debunked from time to time, if only for purely Bakhtinian reasons (I'll explain further if necessary). Because Shakespeare was primarily a poet - even the prose in his plays is somewhat poetic, hence the apt comparison with Joyce that someone made here - this means that his language was often elevated rather than earthy (not always of course). Hence the kind of literariness that gives one a pain when you get to much of it and you just want someone to say something really crude for a change. The dialectic between high and low speech becomes fully realised in novelistic genres only, and thank god for it.

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