Pet Shakespearean Peeve
Leaving aside matters of literary interpretation to focus on simple facts, I want to correct, once and for all (if only I could), the single most annoying (perennial, ubiquitous) of the English-speaking world’s Lapses in Cultural Literacy; Department: appeals to authority; Subdivision: quotation from Shakespeare.
I am not talking about the simple and understandable mistakes of neophytes. I am perfectly happy to correct students who recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and incorrectly stress the second syllable of the word “damasked” instead of the first syllable. I don’t mind enlightening those (often the same ones) who say “she belied” in that same sonnet as if the words formed a subject-verb unit instead of the subject of a subordinate elliptical clause and a modifying passive participle. (The line means “I think my love as rare [in beauty] as any woman [is rare in beauty] who has been lied about in the false comparisons of other poets).
Similarly, the least bit of patience will suffice to instruct the uninitiated that the word “wherefore” in Juliet’s famous line—“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” (Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.33)—means “why” and not “where.” (“Why must your name be Romeo Montague?”)
It’s a mere bagatelle to inform students and actors that in The Tempest, “Milan” is pronounced by Shakespeare with the stress on the first syllable, not the second. And only a modicum of increased effort is needed to persuade them that in The Taming of the Shrew the hero’s name is spelled “Petruchio” precisely because Shakespeare wanted it pronounced by his English actors as the Italians would pronounce “Petruccio.” (Where it is not ignorance, you can be pretty sure it is pretentiousness that causes modern actors and directors to reverse Shakespeare’s intentions and say “Petrukio”—they want to show you that they know their Italian pronunciation even if you don’t.)
But what ever and again tries my patience, what digs under the skin as no other sling or arrow of outrageous ignorance can do, what drives me even to blogging, is the relentlessness with which the pastors, promoters, pundits, purveyors, and puritans of our age misread Hamlet’s comment on the Danish habit of shooting off canons whenever the king takes a ceremonial drink: “It is a custom / More honored in the breach than the observance” (Hamlet, I.iv.15–16).
Countless moralizers have beaten us over the head with a club made from the authority of Hamlet’s phrase in order to accuse this or that person or organization or movement of honoring some custom only in words but breaching it in practice. But the club is Styrofoam, or rather mere hot air, which contributes to nothing but intellectual global warming. Why? Because THIS IS NOT WHAT HAMLET MEANT! The misreading of his sentence turns it into an attack on hypocrisy, which is the worst—for Jean-Paul Sartre the only—sin in our modern moral lexicon, but which is not what Shakespeare is discussing at the moment. Why can the abusers of the bard not get it into their anti-hypocritical heads that Hamlet does NOT mean that the Danes are breaching a custom they pretend to follow?
In the context the word “honored” means “to be honored” or “honorable.” Hamlet means it is a custom that it would be more honorable to break than to keep. As the rest of the speech makes clear, he doesn’t like the idea that the otherwise excellent reputation of the Danes is ruined by this one compromising custom of rocking the whole countryside with canon fire whenever the king takes a gulp of Rhine wine. The point relates to the rest of the play in the parallel Hamlet draws between that one bad custom of the nation and the one dram of evil in particular men that can ruin their otherwise stainless virtue (as happens to Hamlet himself later in the play). But we’re leaving literary interpretation aside.
When Hamlet wants to talk about hypocrisy, he does it in no uncertain terms. Let the anti-hypocrisy pundits study Hamlet’s speech to his mother and comprehend the kind of act that “Calls virtue hypocrite” or what it means when “reason panders will.” But please stop trying to turn a custom Hamlet hates into one he wishes people would follow.
Once and for all: “more honored in the breach than the observance” means “breaching it is more honorable than observing it.” Repeat. Fix it in your mind. Spread the word. Interrupt the perpetuation of this solecism with resolute correction. Help stamp the erroneous “honored in the breach” right straight out of the language. Think of the next generation being born and brought up in a world in which everyone, to an English-speaking man, woman, and child, knows what Hamlet meant.
Now watch carefully for the correct usage in the following dialogue:
Rap:
Our moralizers mangle Hamlet’s meaning.
Stranger:
Is it a custom?
Rap:
Ay, marry, is’t,
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance
(To say the least).
I am not talking about the simple and understandable mistakes of neophytes. I am perfectly happy to correct students who recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and incorrectly stress the second syllable of the word “damasked” instead of the first syllable. I don’t mind enlightening those (often the same ones) who say “she belied” in that same sonnet as if the words formed a subject-verb unit instead of the subject of a subordinate elliptical clause and a modifying passive participle. (The line means “I think my love as rare [in beauty] as any woman [is rare in beauty] who has been lied about in the false comparisons of other poets).
Similarly, the least bit of patience will suffice to instruct the uninitiated that the word “wherefore” in Juliet’s famous line—“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” (Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.33)—means “why” and not “where.” (“Why must your name be Romeo Montague?”)
It’s a mere bagatelle to inform students and actors that in The Tempest, “Milan” is pronounced by Shakespeare with the stress on the first syllable, not the second. And only a modicum of increased effort is needed to persuade them that in The Taming of the Shrew the hero’s name is spelled “Petruchio” precisely because Shakespeare wanted it pronounced by his English actors as the Italians would pronounce “Petruccio.” (Where it is not ignorance, you can be pretty sure it is pretentiousness that causes modern actors and directors to reverse Shakespeare’s intentions and say “Petrukio”—they want to show you that they know their Italian pronunciation even if you don’t.)
But what ever and again tries my patience, what digs under the skin as no other sling or arrow of outrageous ignorance can do, what drives me even to blogging, is the relentlessness with which the pastors, promoters, pundits, purveyors, and puritans of our age misread Hamlet’s comment on the Danish habit of shooting off canons whenever the king takes a ceremonial drink: “It is a custom / More honored in the breach than the observance” (Hamlet, I.iv.15–16).
Countless moralizers have beaten us over the head with a club made from the authority of Hamlet’s phrase in order to accuse this or that person or organization or movement of honoring some custom only in words but breaching it in practice. But the club is Styrofoam, or rather mere hot air, which contributes to nothing but intellectual global warming. Why? Because THIS IS NOT WHAT HAMLET MEANT! The misreading of his sentence turns it into an attack on hypocrisy, which is the worst—for Jean-Paul Sartre the only—sin in our modern moral lexicon, but which is not what Shakespeare is discussing at the moment. Why can the abusers of the bard not get it into their anti-hypocritical heads that Hamlet does NOT mean that the Danes are breaching a custom they pretend to follow?
In the context the word “honored” means “to be honored” or “honorable.” Hamlet means it is a custom that it would be more honorable to break than to keep. As the rest of the speech makes clear, he doesn’t like the idea that the otherwise excellent reputation of the Danes is ruined by this one compromising custom of rocking the whole countryside with canon fire whenever the king takes a gulp of Rhine wine. The point relates to the rest of the play in the parallel Hamlet draws between that one bad custom of the nation and the one dram of evil in particular men that can ruin their otherwise stainless virtue (as happens to Hamlet himself later in the play). But we’re leaving literary interpretation aside.
When Hamlet wants to talk about hypocrisy, he does it in no uncertain terms. Let the anti-hypocrisy pundits study Hamlet’s speech to his mother and comprehend the kind of act that “Calls virtue hypocrite” or what it means when “reason panders will.” But please stop trying to turn a custom Hamlet hates into one he wishes people would follow.
Once and for all: “more honored in the breach than the observance” means “breaching it is more honorable than observing it.” Repeat. Fix it in your mind. Spread the word. Interrupt the perpetuation of this solecism with resolute correction. Help stamp the erroneous “honored in the breach” right straight out of the language. Think of the next generation being born and brought up in a world in which everyone, to an English-speaking man, woman, and child, knows what Hamlet meant.
Now watch carefully for the correct usage in the following dialogue:
Rap:
Our moralizers mangle Hamlet’s meaning.
Stranger:
Is it a custom?
Rap:
Ay, marry, is’t,
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance
(To say the least).
posted by G.Rap | 2:08 AM
10 Comments:
Huzzah to you, but unless this blog is disseminated throughout the land (and especially among would-be English teachers), I fear your words, though full of sound and fury (and clearly signifying something), are like the proverbial tree that falls in the woods. Alas.
O ye, to quote a different source, of little faith! I don't see why, if you email ten of your friends on the subject, my peevish correction shouldn't spread through the internet as fast as the latest virus hoax or cure for having a heart attack!
Perhaps it is a testament to your teaching or to any of my other Shakespeare teachers, but that incorrect interpretation never even occurred to me until I read it in your blog. How someone could intuit that from Shakespeare's words, I do not know.
So thanks for being a great teacher.
Dr. Rap--
If you create another blog and upload all your Shakespeare papers (or whatever you want to say about Shakespeare), I'll read it and repeat it to the best of my ability to whomever will listen, whenever it is appropriate... and probably even when it isn't.
Slowly but surely.
Much to my benefit.
I've just started reading Shakespeare with the OED in hand this semester and have now gotten a taste of what I've been missing.
Not a word. Not a single, minuscule interjection, letter, or syllable goes unaccounted for.
On another note, how do you define a "romance"? I've tried to understand it, but I still can't really figure out how Twelfth Night isn't a Romance, but A Winter's Tale is. Then again, I'm just about to abandon putting any play into any of the four categories, because I'm starting to feel like each play is its own category.
Thanks to Evan for that comment. The last four plays of Shakespeare (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest) are called, depending on who is calling them, romances, tragi-comedies, late romances, late comedies, and comedies. They are distinguished from Shakespeare's earlier comedies by their tone more than anything--very magical, very mystical, very spiritual, very healing, very much about death and resurrection. It's good to discuss the categories of play because it is important to know what Shakespeare meant us to think he was doing in any given play. At the same time, it's also good to realize that he is always transcending the categories, and the last four plays transcend them as much as any.
P.S. That's "to whoever will listen," not "to whomever," because, as you may remember, the case of the relative pronoun is determined by its use in its own subordinate clause, and in your clause "whoever" is the subject of the verb "will listen," the whole clause being the object of the preposition "to." I thought you'd want to know.
In the words of Martin Heidegger, "every secret loses its force." The moment Shakespeare's words leave the page and enter into my mind, they are mutilated, affected, changed. Imperfect. No longer Shakespeare's. Mine. And now that they're my words, I can do whatever I please with them. Shakespeare, being dead for one and not being an actual part of me for another, cannot tell me that I'm wrong. As an artist, you must surely appreciate that your art is only yours before you create it. The moment you give it to somebody, it is its own beast, and the more you spin around in your artistic coffin, the more your art mutates.
A reporter once asked Bob Dylan whether the "rain" he referred to was a rain of nuclear ash brought on by World War III. Dylan looked at him and said "No. It was a hard rain."
Craig's doctrine is Humpty Dumpty's: words mean whatever he wants them to mean. Fine, enjoy life in the solipsistic universe of non-communication. In truth his assertions constitute the abandonment of meaning in favor of self-expression, a form of despair. In his view, art exists not to communicate but to vent, and every reader is his own artist.
But his doctrine is illusory. Why would an artist go to the trouble of making a work of art if he thought that what his audience would experience in it would bear no relation to what he intended?
Of course any work of art is subject to interpretation and misinterpretation with changes in time, place, language, context, and audience, and the artist has no more power to limit those effects than that which he gains by making the work itself have a compelling integrity. But to renounce all effort to comprehend a work's intention is to render every work of art nugatory. Why seek to enjoy anyone else's art at all, then? Just express yourself yourself. Why mangle Shakespeare's words? Just write your own--but not for an audience. Why bother writing for an audience who will think you mean only what it wants you to mean?
I have no idea what Heidegger meant by the quoted phrase, but then I don't tend to take Heidegger as an authority on anything. As for Craig's attitude, I'm going to take his advice just this once and read what he wrote to mean "Thank you for helping your readers learn a truth about a misused phrase in Shakespeare." You're welcome, Craig.
While you were dealing with misunderstood and misused quotes why did you not deal with the one juxtaposed to the one you were concerned with, namely "And to the manner born" which people use and spell to be ""And to the manor born?"
I haven't found that misquotation to be common, and correcting it requires only looking at the spelling in the text.
Post a Comment
<< Home