Shakespeare's Language

...Ker- plays written before 1600...

...But another proverbial definition a pig in a poke that was a horse of a dif- He firmly puts in their place both those says that genius means knowing how to ferent color...

...But as the New Republic's James the very lips,/ Given in captivity me The reader will thus find no tiresome Woods points out, what we usually mean and my utmost hopes," and so forth...

...Ignatieff's Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond cannot match the narrative sweep of Judah's chronological study, but his questioning of the implications NEVER AT A LOSS FOR WORDS for Western democracies of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention and the new clinical warfare, where victors can ing for that happy medium, in either emerge without having sustained a single performance or in criticism, that forecasualty, is no less fervent and necessary...

...For high- from the neck up...

...For example, in Henry VI, Richard endless variations...

...One does gious, and political-were intense...

...grounds not the actor nor the critic but As an ardent supporter of the NATO Shakespeare's the playwright's language, this book will intervention, Ignatieff conducts a lively Language come as a relief...

...He short-circuits the main point of the sen- images that, while distinct, are approlearned a craft, and did so in the only tence in which it occurs, like listening to priate to Othello's appalled desperation way a craft can be learned, by constant two different radio stations at the same ("Had they steeped me in poverty to practice and through trial and error...

...I call Kermode the bivalence in Shakespeare's professional of York compares a rout of soldiers to a Gielgud of critics because he, like Gielintentions ("to double business bound," swan who "With bootless labor swims gud, knows that language is primary to to borrow his own phrase) must have af- against the tide...

...That tions ends with the death of the visionary the neck up...

...For Commonweal 38 September 8, 2000 him, the "how" question can be an- mode's analyses was "mixed metaphor...

...in international politics-we shall need I remember once leaving the theater to display more imagination and resolve after a production of All's Well That Ends than we have done since the agreement Well with a friend who asked me, with ending the conflict in Kosovo a year ago a kind of stunned awe, "How does he June...

...or in Thomas Edi- The better term for Shakespeare's ver- speare down a peg by attributing his repson's famous line, "Genius is 1 percent bal art should really be called his use of utation to an eighteenth-century impeinspiration and 99 percent perspiration...

...These could be the music of for the Europe Program at the International much preoccupied with the political and the future, if only we are prepared to lis- Secretariat of Amnesty International...

...His question was rhetorical, mirrored in scores of civil and commu- meant only to express his wonder, not nity initiatives in the region-among just at the unusual story, but more at them the remarkable Zemlja Djece (Land "I never liked his comedies...

...But Kermode does not take tance), and Women in Black in Serbia, such a question as rhetorical at all...

...If we are to reclaim intoxicating verse...

...vention...

...His translation of olanus...

...must face up to the unintended effects of "the finest actor on earth, Seen in retrospect, and especially with moralizing the use of violence...

...panegyric in this book to the "genius" by that term is the collision of cliches, a Although he does not cite this particof Shakespeare in the manner of the Ro- mixture of dead metaphors, as when a ular passage, the author fills his book mantics...

...speare's Language is that the playwright moved his dramatic poetry to an entirely new level of complexity around 1600 "We have been • Promoting Christian Unity and with the composition of Hamlet, Kermode Inter-religious Understanding called to heal • Pastoral, Catechetical and Social argues that it is really the works written Ministries Aafter that date that establish Shakespeare wounds, to unite • Ministries in the United States, k~4Canada,,Japan and Europe V as the most important playwright of the what has fallen human race, "as necessary to our culture apart, and to as [is] an understanding, however par- For information about the Franciscan Friars tial, of the greatness of Mozart or of bring home those and Sisters of the Atonement contact: Cezanne"-even if at times he got be- Vocation Director who have lost Graymoor yond his audience...

...a priori critics who want to take Shaketake infinite pains...

...El "It is simply inconceivable that anybody ularly" (additionally, the swan faces opat the Globe, even...'the wiser sort,' would position from the wind in front, but Edward T. Oakes, S.J., teaches at Regis Unihave followed every sentence of Cori- Richard's troops are being routed from versity in Denver, Colorado...

...One term that kept going -St...

...other aspect of Shakespeare is studied defining all human-rights violators as The distinguished literary critic Frank almost to death," Kermode says, "but barbarians, legitimizes barbarism...

...He sounds some nec- how Shakespeare will be performed in essary warning bells about the risks in- the next century, much the way A.C...

...Another rea- not have to read far in either of these two mode mentions a number of hints that son that Kermode resists the term "ge- schools of criticism to get the feeling that indicate Shakespeare had actually set out nius" for Shakespeare, at least as an all- their authors are one-note Johnnies who to become a poet "of the page and not of explanatory cover to account for his start out with an implausible thesis and the theater," but apparently the diffidence every syllable of recorded verse, is that then just argue it into the ground by reof his patron (or patrons) in the peerage as a technician he sometimes fails in his peating their monomaniacal theme in forced him back to the stage...

...But that Shakespeare wrote ridicule and neglect...

...might even present a turning point in democratic control...

...herent in the West's capacity to wage a Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy influkind of remote-control warfare where the Edward T. Oakes enced so many directors in the first half consent and engagement of its citizens of the past century, or Jan Kott's Shakebecome at best marginal considerations he theater critic Kenneth speare, Our Contemporary influenced later for those in command...

...As he argues, Tynan once famously de- directors Peter Brook and Joseph Papp "those who supported the war in Kosovo scribed John Gielgud as in the second half...

...0 Michael Ignatieff, arguably the most in Kosovo set up by the International visible "public intellectual" writing and Rescue Committee-which are too often Brian D. Phillips is campaign coordinator broadcasting in Britain today, is also overlooked...

...No one would dare that debased word in the new century- to deny that obvious fact, but who bothif we are to discover a fresh vocabulary ers to notice it anymore...

...He travmoral consequences of the NATO inter- ten more closely and add our own sup- els frequently to the Balkans...

...Sometimes the juxta- rialist plot of the British Admiralty, and This must have been particularly true position of conflicting images works, those idolizing critics who make Shakeof the Elizabethan stage, where the pres- and sometimes it doesn't, with the pre- speare usurp God's role of "inventing sures-epidemiological, financial, reli- ponderance of clumsiness occurring in the human" (idolatry indeed...

...ver television, to the amusement of the exegesis...

...one's next-door neighbors, his settings As she expires, she repeats the word wondrously exotic: all this comes across "Europe" to herself, "as if she were try- with delightful vitality in the best proing to seize this word transformed by ductions...

...the cataract of language on display that of Children) in Bosnia, Otpor (Resis- His tragedies are great.' evening...

...As Kermode points any poet-a dramatic poet most espefected his dramaturgy, and not always out, "to a modern ear this seems, as a cially-and that an actor or a critic serves for the better, at least if the reader agrees report on a military defeat, to be on the the poet best who speaks his lines most with Kermode here, who bluntly says: lazy and languid side, the swan partic- melodiously...

...own heart to a "cistern for foul toads to swered, and precisely because Shake- Of course, as all schoolchildren learn, such knot and gender in," the image works speare not only had talent or "wit" a mixture of images and comparisons because it has been preceded by other (ingenium) but also technique (ars...

...cascading images...

...Shakespeare's Language is so we say an artist (Mozart, say, or Dick- local populace, that a realtor with prop- bracing because, finally, we have a book ens) has masterworks "coming out of his erty near a nuclear dump site had "bought on Shakespeare from a critic who listens...

...At least with some play- fessor's scriptorium, concentration falls name...

...Garrison, NY 10524-0300 So what is his technique, the key to the their way...

...time...

...Francis of Assisi e-mail: vocations@atonementfriars.org through my mind while reading KerCommonweal 39 September 8, 2000...

...Kadare's transcendent vision is do it...

...English idiom has an odd ex- Colorado politician recently said on Den- with similar examples for his scintillating pression for inexplicable productivity...

...Kermode has just written a book for the fact that he was a poet has somehow One of Kadare's three enigmatic fic- those who like their Shakespeare "from dropped out of consideration...

...What is to prevent moral abstrac- wrights, what a director needs is just on every dimension of Shakespeare's tions like human rights from inducing this kind of "neck-up" actor, and never achievement except his poetry...

...For the main thesis of Shake- discovered Iago's perfidy, compares his Bend...

...Every an absolutist frame of mind which, in more so than with Shakespeare...

...ears...

...Now Coriolanus is one of the later behind...

...This remark was Kermode's book in hand, it does seem flown abstractions carry an inherent jus- meant as a put-down, but I never took it odd that, both on stage and in the protification of everything done in their that way...

...914 424 3671 ww+w.atonementfriars.org "how' question...

...This am- craft...

...Josef Pieper's The Concept of Sin has just plays, a fact that is central to Kermode's But when Othello, just after he has appeared from Saint Augustine's Press (South argument...

...So effectively has the self-interrogation on issues around the Frank Kermode author established his case that his book notion of wars for human rights and their Farrar, Sf rnus and Cirrmx, 330, 324 pp...

...For those who are look- Shakespeare's plots are absorbing, his old lady who had urged Gjorg and characters often more memorable than Vladan to learn to sing bold new songs...