Disclaimer: If you already hate Shakespeare, this blog may not concern you.
I think I have just stumbled onto the same frustration many people face when reading a Shakespeare play. No, it’s not the language. I get that. Believe it or not, I have been exposed to so much Shakespearean language over the past ten years that I have come to understand it and thus to love it. But, actually, my frustration does have something to do with the language. Let me explain.
I am torn, as the alternative title to this blog suggests, by my love of Shakespeare’s language and the almost ridiculous situations in which he places his characters. I’ve started reading “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” An old college professor of mine would ask one of the most intelligent questions I have ever heard: Why?
Anyone who knows me well is aware that my taste in literature changes faster than the weather. It is the reason why I take forever to finish a novel, because my ADHD will kick in, I’ll become interested in something else, and I’ll start reading that instead.
So my recent “reinterest” in Shakespeare lead me to reading one play I had not been exposed to, hence “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” It begins well, two best friends Proteus and Valentine, arguing over love. Proteus is smitten by young Julia, and Valentine ridicules him and love: “Love is your master, for he masters you, and he that is yoked by a fool methinks should not be chronicled for wise.”
Then some other stuff happens, Valentine goes off to work for a duke, Proteus stays behind because he loves Julia too much. But… gasp… Proteus’ father makes him go to work for the duke, as well. So, before he leaves, he exchanges vows (and rings) with Julia, swears his undying love and wishing a curse upon every second he does not think about her: “And when that hour o’erslips me in the day wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake, the next ensuing hour some foul mischance torment me for my love’s forgetfulness.”
The fun stuff starts (note sarcasm) when Proteus arrives at the duke’s “royal court” and learns that his friend Valentine has recently fallen in love with the fair Sylvia. And guess what…? Proteus falls in love with her, as well, at first sight. So, right after his meeting her, he begins to devise a plot to forget about Julia, have Valentine banished from the duke’s court, and live happily ever after with Sylvia. Therefore proving that even in the romantic world of Shakespeare, men are pigs, yes we are, destined to a life of infidelity and woe.
Come on. I really want to love this play, I truly do. It has some of the most eloquently written lines I have read in any Shakespeare play. “What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by and feed upon the shadow of perfection except I be by Silvia in the night, there is no music in the nightingale; unless I look on Silvia in the day, there is no day for me to look upon; she is my essence, and I leave to be, if I be not by her fair influence foster’d, illumined, cherish’d, kept alive.” But man, what a horrible situation he has these characters in.
I have not finished the play (but, oh, I will) but apparently it gets worse. I’ve heard that Proteus tries to force his love upon Sylvia (yes, that means what you think it means) and Valentine catches him. It gets better. Proteus apologizes, and Valentine decides to give Sylvia to him as a token of their renewed friendship.
Wow.
So where is the juxtaposition? I love Shakespeare so much that I am going to subject myself to the torture of such a horrible situation in order to venture into a world of his I have not yet experienced. How can you not resist such lines as “Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. Love doth to her eyes repair, to help him of his blindness, and, being helped, inhabits there.” That’s powerful stuff. I hate Shakespeare, yet I love him, yet I hate him. I’m so confused.
Just wish me luck. I’m off to read Act 3.
Until later– “There’s no turning back not that you open up to your mind.”
