Some Sonnets for your consideration

Shakespeare's Sonnets are something that i'm not overly familiar with. Over the next few days, I'll delve into them a bit more. For now though, here are two that caught my eye.

The first is Sonnet 19 (I wonder if it's overlooked because it comes immediately after the famous Sonnet 18). A classmate led a discussion on Sonnets in a teaching class earlier this semester and he used 19, which I thought was a fun read.

Devouring Time blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do whate'er thou wilt swift-footed Time
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in thy course untainted do allow,
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

I like this one because of the sense that the subject of this sonnet will live on forever, even should Time rob her of her youth and eventually her life, because she is put into prose. Since she is written about, she will be remembered as Shakespeare remembers her, for all of time.

As I went through the sonnets, #14 caught my eye, possibly because it mentions "Astronomy" and one of my favorite poems is "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman, though the sonnet has a differing subject matter.

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;
And yet methinks I have Astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert; 
   Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
   Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

This Sonnet urgers the reader to get on with continuing his line, or else his family will die out. Foreseeing this does not take much knowledge in the stars (astrology) it's just common sense.

Is Bottom the inverse Arachne?

Dr. Sexson asked us earlier about the significance of Bottom's occupation of a weaver. My initial reaction was that it seemed appropriate that the weaver is the only character traverse both the world of men and the fairy realm. He is the character that blends the story threads together. But, this explanation seemed to simplistic to me. Snug the joiner could join the stories together, after all.

So, I thought about it a bit and thought of Arachne. Arachne was a weaver in Greek mythology that believed her skill to surpass that of Athena. Athena was outraged, and challenged her to a weaving contest. Arachne, feeling that she had not meddled with the Olympian enough, wove a tapestry depicting embarrassing moments of the gods. Athena, still angry, turns Arachne into a spider in order to punish her hubris.

Now, Bottom does not do anything to bring upon his metamorphosis. He is an unwitting accomplice to Puck's scheme. However, the weaver being turned into something less than human to punish hubris is constant in both stories. The metamorphosis is not to punish Bottom, but instead to punish Titainia. The whole point to the scheme is to embarrass Titania in order for her to give up the changeling. Bottom is convenient to Puck, but Bottom would have been enough by itself to embarrass The Queen of the Fairies. He is dim witted, presumably I attractive, and oblivious to his surroundings. Puck takes things a step further by giving him the head of an ass. Shakespeare gives him the added detail of him being a weaver, perhaps referencing the myth of Arachne.

Love-juice is just Shakespearean for Dopamine

Our discussions of the affect of the love-juice in A Midsummer Night's Dream got me thinking about chemistry. And not just the chemistry between Titania and Bottom! (go on, groan. It was a terrible pun). But the actual chemistry in love.

When we are in love, there's an actual chemical reaction going on in our mind. How Stuff Works has an excellent write-up about it. Chemicals such as dopamine and norepinephrine are essential to the love process. Dopamine helps us feel bliss. Norepinephrine gets the heart racing. A surge of dopamine could lead to addiction and other nasty habits.  We talked in class today about stalkers. Here's a doctor that refers to dopamine as the stalker chemical.

There is some evidence of drugs and hallucinogens being used in Elizabethan England.  Whether or not Shakespeare dabbled in drugs is debatable, but given his power of insight and observation, he no doubt saw its effects on people. To equate drugs and love is an easy step. I think everyone has seen something about love being like a drug. In A Midsummer Night's Dream we have a drug causing love, which is a fun play on the trope.

With that in mind, here is part 1 of 9  of  "A Midsummer Night's Rave"

Now, I haven't watched it, but have read about it. I'll watch it soon and give you a full report. I'm sure you'll be waiting with baited breath.

"Do you bite your thumb at me?"

As we near a discussion of the Hermia vs Helena battle royale, I thought I might share something I came upon. In my Teaching Reading and Writing Coure we are about to do a "workshop" on teaching Shakespeare. So, we have been scouring the Internet for resources. Obviously, there are a lot of resources for teaching Shakespeare out there. But, one source I really enjoyed was this site, which deals with teaching Shakespeare to reluctant learners. Teaching Shakespeare the "fun way" talks about acting it out, assigning roles and the such. But, my favorite part is the insult generator. I don't believe it was on this site, but another said one of the best ways to teach Shakespeare is to not hide the dirty jokes from students and let them know of the humor of it. In my first go around with Shakespeare, finding these jokes made what can be heavy reading (especially for students that don't like to read as much as we do!) made the work more enjoyable.

So, it is in that vein that I present the Shakespeare Insult Generator.

The quote for the title of this post comes from Romeo and Juliet (which I am reading for an upcoming post). Its kind of a funny scene where two men of House Capulet come upon two men from House Montague and decide to bite their thumbs at them. Abraham asks Sampson "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" Sampson confers with Gregory that the law would not be on their side. So, he says that he bites his thumb, but not at them.

These insults and little verbal wars are fun to read. I think its a good example of where Shakespeare shows his wit.

At any rate, enjoy coming up with your insults, you loggerheaded elf-skinned flap-dragons.

Alan