THINKING THROUGH MY FINGERS: It's All In Shakespeare!

Sunday, 29 October 2017

It's All In Shakespeare!

I love this clever reminder from theatre critic Bernard Levin of all the words and phrases that have become part of our language and national (and international) conscientiousness - all of which were first penned by the Bard, William Shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE

“If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me'', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have ever been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a doornail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.”

Bernard Levin

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Marks on a Page

I have always loved the sound and feel of words. I’m sure that I didn’t understand most of what I was singing when, as a child, I stood in school assembly each morning singing from the great Ancient & Modern Hymnal but I can still vividly remember being gripped, excited and mesmerised by the power and beauty of the words in front of me: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, In light inaccessible, Hid from our eyes, Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise”. How could one not be moved and excited by those words? Or, as a callow teenager from the back streets of a northern industrial town I was, I remember, bowled over by the simplicity and beauty of Robert Browning’s wonderful evocation of a spring morning in his short verse Pippa’s Song: The year's at the spring ,And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven — All's right with the world! If that doesn’t make you feel good about the world and about mankind then you really are a lost cause!

My world in those far off days was seldom, if ever, one of dew pearled hillsides or larks or snails on thorns; it was a world of endless grim rows of terraced houses, of the smoke belching factory chimneys and pavements vibrating as you walked past the mighty cotton factories such as Horrockes’. The very earth shuddered beneath your feet when you walked past these dark satanic mills; the great looms pounding out as they wove the cotton cloth which, as I was often reminded by my aunty and mother – both weavers, - was why “England’s bread hung by Lancashire’s thread”.

But I loved those words – the sound of them, the feel of them, they way they looked on the page, the visions that they conjured up in my young mind - the great hymns of my school days, poetry such as Browning’s, books such as Treasure Island or Children of the New Forest took me to other places and other lives far away from the dark satanic mills of northern England. And I have never lost that love and fascination with words. When I sit in a Mozart opera or a Shakespeare play or enjoy a musical such as Les Mis I am quite mesmerised at the cleverness of it – the production the costumes, the energy......but most of all the words; their beauty, power, how they "fit" the music or the context; I find them both compelling and often overpowering.

Now, as teacher long retired, I look back on my years in the classroom. I can still quote the words from many of the poems and books that I read to children and the lessons that I taught. Nothing gave me a greater thrill than when the class were hanging onto every word – whether it be a fun poem like The Hairy Toe, one of the great children’s poems such as The Highwayman or wonderful children’s books such as Alan Garner’s Elidor – a classic of fear and magic that leaves Harry Potter looking a pale, limp imitation – or Meindert DeJong’s evocative and beautifully written The Wheel on the School. Even today I still get the occasional email from a past pupil who remembers being in my class perhaps thirty or forty years ago and still remembers with excitement or affection a particular book or poem that we read or listened to.

But, today, in the eighth decade of my life, I am saddened when I look around me and see how language and words, through carelessness, neglect or action, are being debased and devalued. The impact of text messaging/email and the like, a lack of care with diction and pronunciation, a desire for “plain English” (a euphemism for an easy, shallow vocabulary and structure) and the lauding in the media and in public life of people who in the misguided name of equality, speak “the language of the people” – often coarse, badly structured and poorly expressed – is for me source of worry and regret. The ability to communicate through language – be it spoken or written - is largely what separates us from the animal kingdom; it is why humanity has developed to the stage that it has. It is the secret of how we think and act – without language and effective communication with others we could not think, act, understand or create in the way that we do.

Yet the opportunities for using and developing language are so great today; as I sit writing this I can in a few seconds put it onto my blog and through the magic of the internet it is immediately available to everyone in the world should they care to look. What would Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Darwin, Aristotle, Dickens or Milton have thought of that? What would the men like Johannes Gutenberg who half a millennia ago laboured – often in great fear of persecution - to print the first books and so bring the printed word to Europe have thought of that? They would have marvelled – and yet we, today, show scant regard and an increasing tendency to not value it. We have a President of America – the most powerful and influential man in the world - who is functionally illiterate. But people believed that it was wise to vote for such a man and months after his election still tolerate his ignorance; and more worryingly, he is happy to display his linguistic deficiencies and his ignorance to the whole world. It really is a perfect illustration of the Emperor's new clothes where millions are so easily taken in by the obviously false and trivial.

We live in an increasingly complex and interdependent world and in order to make sense of that world and to function within it, to make the right decisions when we vote or when we listen to those who would lead or influence us we need to understand the complexities and nuances of language. Sadly, society across the western world, but especially in the UK and USA, is becoming lazy, uncaring or dismissive of this important fact. We will all, in the longer term, suffer and pay for it.

And as I get older I increasingly feel the need to write things down – not particularly to help me remember things, important though that is – but rather to leave my humble scratching on the page just as the first cave men drew their wall pictures to retell their story, and later hooded monks wrote beautiful manuscript to retell the Bible stories, and then great authors, scientists, playwrights, travellers, journalists, philosophers, politicians, poets and the rest recorded their ideas, created imaginary worlds, and spread mankind’s knowledge. This blog is my digital equivalent of marks on the page – my words and those of others.

Sunday, 29 October 2017

It's All In Shakespeare!

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