Scribble Bibble: A Greek Paean in Shakespeare's "Love's Labor's Lost"????

Crikey! Has it been over a year since last I posted? Tempus fugit, nocte venit. (and there seems to be a lot more veniting of nocte as of late - getting old I suppose). ANYWAY!

Reading this very strange early play by Shakespeare and came across something intriguing.

Here is the rough process of thought so far.

In Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labor’s Lost” the bard has his four main characters attempt to create an academy of learning so that they might win renown in the world. To do this the four characters agree to completely excise women from the academy and take a vow of celibacy for at least four years. What follows, though, is a comical study of the futile attempt to learn in a cerebral, celibate, dispassionate world separated from the physical world of romantic love and physical attraction.

Bobbyann Roesen writing in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Oct., 1953) comments on this artificial world of academic study created by men.

With the coming into the King's park of the Princess of France and her companions a new stage in the development of Love's Labour's Lost has been reached, and a theme we have not heard before begins slowly to rise in the musical structure of the play. Before the arrival of the ladies, it has been made clear that the Academe must fail, and it is no surprise when in the opening scene of the second act we find each of the four friends stealing back alone after the initial meeting to learn the name of his love from the obliging Boyet. As life itself breaks swiftly through the artificial scholarship of the court, the vitality of the play rises to an amazing height; the Academe is kept constantly before us, the reasons for its failure elaborated and made more plain, but at the same time, while the world of the royal park becomes more and more delightful, while masque and pageantry, sensuous beauty and laughter flower within the walls, it becomes slowly obvious that more than the Academe will be destroyed by the entrance of the ladies. Not only its scholarship, but the entire world of the play, the balance of artifice and reality of which it was formed, must also be demolished by forces from without the walls.

The Princess and her little retinue represent the first penetration of the park by the normal world beyond, a world composed of different and colder elements than the fairy-tale environment within. Through them, in some sense, the voice of Reality speaks, and although they seem to fit perfectly into the landscape of the park, indulge in highly formal, elaborate skirmishes of wit with each other and with the men, they are somehow detached from this world of illusion and artificiality in a way that none of its original inhabitants are. The contrived and fashionable poses which they adopt are in a sense less serious, more playful than those of the other characters, and they are conscious all the time, as even Berowne is not, that these attitudes are merely poses, and that Reality is something quite different. With them into the park they bring past time and a disturbing reminder of the world outside, and from them come the first objective criticisms which pass beyond the scheme of the Academe to attack the men who have formed it. Maria, remembering Longaville as she saw him once before in Normandy, criticizes in her first speech the unreality with which the four friends have surrounded themselves, and points out for the first time in the play the danger of attitudes which develop without regard for the feelings of others, of wit that exercises itself thoughtlessly upon all.

In the wit of the ladies themselves, it is a certain edge of reality, an un- compromising logic, which cuts through the pleasant webs of artifice, the courtly jests and elaborations in the .humor of the men, and emerges victorious with an unfailing regularity. Unlike the women, the King and his companions play, not with facts themselves, but with words, with nice phrases and antithetical statements, and when their embroidered language itself has been attacked, their courteous offers disdained as mere euphemisms, they can only retire discomfited. Even Berowne is utterly defeated when he approaches Rosaline with his graceful conceits.

Ber. Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.

Ros. Pray you, do my commendations;

I would be glad to see it.

Ber. I would you heard it groan.

Ros. Is the fool sick?

Ber. Sick at the heart.

Ros. Alack, let it blood.

Ber. Would that do it good?

Ros. My physic says "ay."

Witty as Berowne, as agile of mind, Rosaline attacks his conventional protestations with a wit based on realism, a ridicule springing from a consciousness of the absurdity of artifice. That Berowne could be expressing a real passion in these artificial terms never enters her mind; he is merely mocking her, and she defends herself in the most effective way she can. Berowne is, however, like the King, Dumain, and Longaville, suddenly and genuinely in love.

Roesen’s point is that the men who vow so eagerly to forego the pleasure of women’s company in their pursuit of higher learning cannot but quickly succumb to the charms of the fairer sex when they actually come into contact with them. Cerebral thought cannot be divorced from carnal, or incarnate, existence.

The exchange that follows in Act II of the work enters into a musical cadence of lilting couplets.

ROSALINE

Alack, let it blood.

BIRON

Would that do it good?

ROSALINE

My physic says 'ay.'

BIRON

Will you prick't with your eye?

ROSALINE

No point, with my knife.

BIRON

Now, God save thy life!

ROSALINE

And yours from long living!

BIRON

I cannot stay thanksgiving.

Retiring

DUMAIN

Sir, I pray you, a word: what lady is that same?

BOYET

The heir of Alencon, Katharine her name.

DUMAIN

A gallant lady. Monsieur, fare you well.

Then shifts into a series of exchanges between Boyet and the three men who have taken vows of chastity. Each one asks the obliging Boyet about the identity of the masked women with whom they have become smitten.

LONGAVILLE

I beseech you a word: what is she in the white?

BOYET

A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.

LONGAVILLE

Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.

BOYET

She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.

LONGAVILLE

Pray you, sir, whose daughter?

BOYET

Her mother's, I have heard.

LONGAVILLE

God's blessing on your beard!

BOYET

Good sir, be not offended.

She is an heir of Falconbridge.

LONGAVILLE

Nay, my choler is ended.

She is a most sweet lady.

BOYET

Not unlike, sir, that may be.

Exit LONGAVILLE

BIRON

What's her name in the cap?

BOYET

Rosaline, by good hap.

BIRON

Is she wedded or no?

BOYET

To her will, sir, or so.

BIRON

You are welcome, sir: adieu.

BOYET

Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.

Shakespeare is employing in this passage the prosodic foot called the anapest, a rhythmic pattern generally consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable (xx/)

Anapaestic verse is always found in dimeters (two feet) or tetrameters (four feet), each dimeter consisting of four feet. The most common type of foot is the spondee (– –), followed by the anapaest (u u –), then the dactyl (– u u).

We see examples of anapestic rhythm in other familiar poems.

Anapestic bimeter is a form frequently employed by Theodor Geisell; thus the statement that Shakespeare’s verse is “Dr. Seussy”:

The Cat in the Hat by Theodor Geisell (Dr. Seuss)

Then our mother came in anapest anapest (xx/ xx/)

And she said to us two, anapest anapest (xx/ xx/)

“Did you have any fun? anapest anapest (xx/ xx/)

Tell me. What did you do?” anapest anapest (xx/ xx/)

The comic author, Lewis Caroll, employed the anapest in several of his comic poems. In You are Old Father William, for instance, we find Anapestic trimeter:

"You are old, father William," the young man said,

anapest anapest anapest iamb (xx/ xx/ xx/ x/)

"And your hair has become very white;

anapest anapest anapest (xx/ xx/ xx/)

And yet you incessantly stand on your head —

iamb anapest anapest anapest (x/ xx/ xx/ xx/)

Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

anapest anapest anapest (xx/ xx/ xx/)

Byron employed an unwavering Anapestic tetrameter in the famous poem, The Destruction of Sennacherib:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,