Talk Like Shakespeare Today: Carpe Diem

Twelfth Night, celebrated on January 5 (and also called Epiphany Eve), is the traditional last day of the Christmas holiday festivities. It also marks the adoration of the Magi, and many cultures celebrate it as almost a second Christmas Eve. It marks the start of the Carnival Season which ends on Mardi Gras. Beginning in Tudor England (1485-1603), Twelfth Night was often commemorated with a large festive party - lots of cake and ale - to mark the end of the Winter Festival. William Shakespeare wrote his joyous comedy, "Twelfth Night, or, What You Will" (1600), to be performed at Twelfth Night feasts. The illustration shown here is William Harrison Ainsworth's "Mervyn Clithroe's Twelfth Night Party by 'Phiz'" (c 1840).

William Shakespeare’s high comedy, “Twelfth Night, or, What You Will,” (1600), centers on themes of love – unrequited love, lost love, secret love, fickle love. But another theme is also explored – carpe diem, or “seize the day.” The idea that we should embrace life and live it to the fullest and in the present was a very modern philosophy for Shakespeare (1564-1616) to tuck into a 17th Century play.  Plays during the Elizabethan Era were generally moralistic in nature, reflecting the prevailing Puritanism.  

Now let’s slip into a scene in “Twelfth Night” in which carpe diem is expressed:  

"Olivia" (1888) from "Twelfth Night" by Edmund Blair Leighton

detail from painting, "Twelfth-Night (The King Drinks)" 1634-40 by David the Younger Teniers show the Court Jester entertaining a crowd.

Act II, Scene iii opens in Olivia‘s vast house in dreamy Illyria on the Adriatic Coast. As Olivia is a rich noblewomen in step with the fashion of the day, she keeps a clown on staff whose name is Feste. Feste is a witty jester dressed in crazy clothes. His job is to say clever things, tell his mistress the truth (as would any decent court jester), and amuse her and her guests, who, at this moment, include her alcoholic uncle Sir Toby Belch and his drinking buddy, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a bumbling knight who has his eye on Olivia for a bride.  

It is quite late at night when we join Sir Toby and Sir Andrew in the drawing room. They have been drinking quite a lot. By the time Feste the Clown joins them, they have gotten so noisy and stinking drunk, they are disturbing the peace of the sleeping household.   

"Twelfth Night, or, What You Will," Act II, Scene iii: (l to r) Feste the Clown, Sir Toby Belch, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek whoop it up with a drink and a song, rousing the household in the wee hours of the morning.

Both Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are in the mood to hear a song. Sir Toby gives Feste sixpence to sing a love song. Feste obliges. His beautiful song –  ”O Mistress Mine” –  is an ode to free-spirited, impulsive, and delicious love. Life is short; you’ve got to grab joy when it’s within reach:  

 

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear! your true-love’s coming,

That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

Journeys end in lovers meeting—

Every wise man’s son doth know.

 

What is love? ’Tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

 

(1) The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. New York: The Viking Press, 1969.

Readers, for more “Talk Like Shakespeare Today” posts, click here.

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Mark Twain Wrote (and Smoked!) in Bed

American author and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, well-known by his pen name of “Mark Twain,” served as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River until the American Civil War broke out in 1861. The Mark Twain image shown here adorns an early Twentieth Century cigar box. Mark Twain was beloved and enjoyed public goodwill all his days.

 I used to have a notion that there was only one place in the world where I could write,” American author Mark Twain once told a friend, “That was Elmira, where I used to spend all my summers. But I’ve got over that notion now. I find that I can write anywhere.” (1) 

Anywhere meant exactly that: anywhere. Twain didn’t even require a desk to write. As it turns out, Mark Twain (1835-1910), also known as Samuel Clemens, did a good deal of his writing in bed. Unlike many other authors who complained of the difficulty of the writing process, Twain did not find creative work difficult. 

Just try it in bed sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees, and I scribble away. Thinking is easy work, and there isn’t much labor in moving your fingers sufficiently to get the words down.” (1) 

In his old age, Mark Twain was often photographed in his heavenly bed, smoking away on a cigar or a pipe and writing.

Mark Twain writing in his heavenly bed.

While Twain had many houses in his lifetime and all of them special, he had but one favorite bed, which he kept with him all of his life.  He had bought it in 1878 in Venice, Italy, when he and his wife Olivia were furnishing their ridiculously- expensive three-story Victorian palace in a Hartford, Connecticut neighborhood known as “Nook Farm.” 

The Mark Twain House in the Hartford, Connecticut, community known as "Nook Farm." Mark Twain said of this house, "To us, our house . . . had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with." (Mark Twain Wrote (and Smoked!) in Bed," Lisa's History Room)

The master bedroom at Nook Farm occupied its own wing on the second floor. The massive Venetian oak bed dominated the room. The bed was heavy and made of carved oak. It featured: 

a headboard carved into a bas-relief of cupids, nymphs and seraphs, the six-wing angels who guard God’s throne. [Twain] claimed he found it so sublime he had put the pillows down at the foot of the bed and slept backward so that this heavenly vision of worldly success would be the first thing he saw every day when he awoke.” (2) 

Mark Twain's carved oak bed. ("Mark Twain Wrote (and Smoked!) in Bed," Lisa's History Room)

It was in this bed that Twain died. (3) The bed remains the most famous furnishing of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. This house proved so costly to furnish and maintain that it drove Twain into bankruptcy in 1891. He was forced to go on tour in Europe to raise funds.

Mark Twain and family at Nook Farm

However foolhardy the house was, it was during those spendthrift years at Nook Farm that Twain wrote many of his best-known and most-loved works, probably while smoking in his favorite heavenly bed: 

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876),
•  The Prince and the Pauper (1881),
•  Life on the Mississippi (1883),
•  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). (2)

(1) “How Mark Twain Writes in Bed. The New York Times, April 12, 1902. 

(2) Wolfe, Tom. “Faking West, Going East.” The New York Times, April 24, 2010.
(3) Power, Ron. Mark Twain: A Life. New York: Free Press, 2005.

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The Cottingley Fairies

Frances Griffiths is shown playing with fairies in Cottingley Beck, near Bradford in England, in 1917. Her cousin Elsie Wright was the photographer. This is one of 5 photographs the cousins took of themselves playing along a creek with dancing fairies.

Do you believe in fairies? Frances Griffiths, 16, and her cousin Elsie Wright, 10, did. They claimed to play with dancing fairies along the enchanted stream [the beck] behind Elsie’s house in Cottingley Village, England - and they had 5 photographs to prove it. There in the frames, dancing around the girls, were four female fairies!

When Elsie’s parents saw the photos, they didn’t know what to think. Elsie’s father examined them and proclaimed them clever fakes. But Elsie’s mother wasn’t so sure. Mrs. Wright wanted to believe the girls, as she was a spiritualist. [Among the country folk in England at the time was a lively fairy-faith. ] The parents searched the girls’ shared bedroom and around the beck for scraps of paper to reveal tomfoolery. Still nothing turned up. Mrs. Wright was inclined to believe the girls. Her husband made his camera off-limits.

Time passed. At first the photographs were only shared with close friends and family, but, in 1919, Mrs. Wright attended a lecture on fairy life, bringing the prints with her. By 1920 the prints had come to the attention of one of the leading spiritualists of the time, Edward Gardner, who examined them and had two new negatives made, clarifying the pictures.

The story of the Cottingley fairies got even more attention when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries) learned of them.

Detective Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, played by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. The characters of Holmes and Watson were created by British doctor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a renowned spiritualist.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was famous for more than his books. He was an outspoken believer in the spirit world. He immediately believed the Cottingley fairy story and began writing letters to the Wright family in support. Doyle published his book The Coming of Fairies in 1922, maintaining until his death that the Cottingley fairies were real.

Still, public opinion was divided. Supporters claimed the photos provided long-awaited proof of the existence of spirits. Others said the photos were nothing more than clever fakes. The Cottingley Fairy Photos caused heated debate. Nevertheless, the girls held to their story, even as they aged.

Finally in 1983 Elsie came clean. She divulged in a letter to a friend that the photographs were indeed a hoax. She described how she and Frances had used the fairies in Princess Mary’s Gift Book as inspiration for cut0uts. They then used hatpins to prop up the paper dolls in the bushes for pictures.

Fairy figures in Princess Mary's Gift Book

 

Elsie insisted that they had meant no harm. They were just having a bit of fun. It had been Elsie’s idea as a way to get back at her parents for scolding her little cousin. Evidently, her mother and father had gotten angry with Frances for getting her clothes wet one day while playing in the beck. Frances had claimed to be playing with fairies when she’d fallen, and the elder Wrights had teased her. Elsie had come up with the idea of taking the first pictures to have the last laugh. All along they had planned on confessing their little trick until Arthur Conan Doyle got involved. By then, the matter had grown so out of proportion thatthe girls became terrified of a public backlash should they confess.

 

Elsie Wright is shown receiving a flower from a fairy. This is one of the famous Cottingley fairy photos from 1917.

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Abe Lincoln: The Freedmen’s Monument

Freedmen’s Monument, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.; sculptor, Thomas Ball. The sculpture was funded solely from freed slaves, primarily from African-American Union veterans, to pay homage to the American president who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, thus liberating them from bondage in the Confederate States. The statue was dedicated on April 14, 1876, 11 years after Abraham Lincoln's assassination by the Confederate rebel John Wilkes Booth. Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass delivered the dedication speech.

Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln

Frederick Douglass delivered a speech at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln at Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1876. This is the conclusion of what Douglass said to the crowd:

 

“Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery–the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.

Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually–we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate–for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him–but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.”

Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, daguerrotype, 1855. Douglass recruited black men to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Readers, I’ve posted many articles on Abe Lincoln. Scroll down the right sidebar to Categories/People/Abraham Lincoln for more! Enjoy.

Also on this blog: “Frederick Douglass, An American Slave.”

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Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

The American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, in a rare photo taken c. 1840, around the time he became a runaway slave.

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)

The following is an excerpt from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which includes recollections of Douglass’ experiences on a Maryland plantation:

“To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd [his master] would be almost equal to describing the riches of Job. He kept from 10-15 house servants. He was said to own a thousand slaves, and I think this estimate quite within the truth. Colonel Lloyd owned so many that he did not know them when he saw them; nor did all the slaves of the out-farms know him. It is reported of him, that, while riding along the road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual manner of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the South:

‘Well, boy, whom do you belong to?’

“To Colonel Lloyd,’ replied the slave.

‘Well, does the colonel treat you well?’

‘No, sir,’ was the ready reply.

‘What, does he work you too hard?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, don’t [sic] he give you enough to eat?’

‘Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it is.’

The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the man also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing with his master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of the matter, until two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master, he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader….

It is partly in consequence of such facts that slaves, when inquired of as to their condition and the character of their masters, almost universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind. The slaveholders have been known to send in spies among their slaves, to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition. The frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the maxim that a still tongue makes a wise head.”

Also on this blog: “Abe Lincoln: The Freedmen’s Monument“

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Langston Hughes Gave Jim Crow a 1,2 Punch

MERRY-GO-ROUND by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

colored child at carnival:

 

Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can’t sit side by side.

Down South on the train
There’s a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we’re put in the back–
But there ain’t no back
To a merry-go-round!

Where’s the horse
For a kid that’s black?

It wasn’t like young Langston Hughes to get into trouble. But, in 1914, when his seventh-grade teacher moved him and the other African-American students into a separate row in class, he got angry. So he put cards that read “JIM CROW ROW” on the black kids’ desks. He was soon expelled. But a protest rose up among the parents and Langston was eventually allowed to return to school. He had fought back and won a victory: separate seating in his school was no longer permitted.

Although Langston Hughes attended school with whites in Kansas, he wasn't allowed to play sports of join clubs. Signs throughout town read: "No Coloreds Allowed" and facilities for whites and blacks were separate. This anti-black caste system was known as Jim Crow Laws and operated mostly in the Southern United States between 1877 and the mid-1960s. It was used to keep blacks as second-class citizens.

Readers, you might also enjoy: Langston Hughes: When Sue Wears Red.

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Langston Hughes: When Sue Wears Red

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was an African-American poet, novelist, columnist, short story writer, and playwright. His exceptional literary talents were recognized early in life; he was elected class poet at his Lincoln, Illinois elementary school.

Langston Hughes scoffed at the “honor” of the position:

“I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everyone knows — except us — that all Negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet.” 

Langston is best associated with the American literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s)  and was one of the pioneers of a new literary form, jazz poetry.

Langston wrote his first jazz poem when he was in high school in Cleveland: “When Sue Wears Red.” Here it is:

When Sue Wears Red

 

When Susanna Jones wears red

Her face is like an ancient cameo

Turned brown by the ages.

Come with a blast of trumpets, Jesus!

 

When Susanna Jones wears red

A queen from some time-dead Egyptian night

Walks once again.

Blow trumpets, Jesus!

 

And the beauty of Susanna Jones in red

Burns in my heart a love-fire sharp like pain.

Sweet silver trumpets, Jesus!

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Talk Like Shakespeare Today: No Beauty Queen for Him

Sonnet #130 by William Shakespeare

Pass the breath mints! 

The Bard paints an unflattering portrait of his mistress.

 

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun [brown],

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked [mingled red and white], red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath than from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak; yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go [walk];

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

    As any she belied [deceived] with false compare [comparison].

Readers: For more “Talk Like Shakespeare Today” posts, click here.

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Walt Whitman: Animals Don’t Whine

Walt Whitman, the American poet, photographed in Camden, New Jersey, 1887

from “Song of Myself”

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

 

I think I could turn and live with animals,

they are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

 

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

 

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

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Charles Dickens: Ragged Factory Boy

Charles Dickens at writing desk

By the time Charles Dickens turned ten, his family had lived in six different houses, each poorer than the one before. Although Charles’ father John Dickens was employed as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, he lived well beyond his means. Plus, the family kept growing; there were eight children in all, which meant many mouths to feed.

Then, in 1822, John Dickens was transferred to London and the family followed. Things went rapidly downhill. John Dickens was soon in debt up to his eyeballs. He informed Charles that he no longer could afford to send him to school. This broke Charles’ heart. The headmaster at his school had already recognized Charles’ special intelligence and imagination and Charles wanted to be a man of letters.

To pay the butcher and the baker, Charles was sent with armloads of books to sell at the pawnshop. Charles was humiliated and heartbroken. Gone were the wonderful hours in his little attic room in Chatham, reading tales of heroes like Robinson Crusoe and Peregrine Pickle. Now he was forced to part with his beloved stories, his only escape from the drudgery of his life. The books were soon followed by all the household goods, sold in an attempt to pay off the family’s debts, and keep John Dickens out of debtors’ prison.

In this 1840 engraving, 'Love Conquered Fear,' fictional character Michael Armstrong, a boy adopted by the mill owner, is shown embracing his brother Edward who is one of the ragged factory boys working amongst the spinning mules. By Michael's foot, a child can be seen crawling out from under a mule, employed to keep the floor under the mules dust and fiber free to minimise risk of fire. These poor boys often suffered horrific injuries when crushed by the moving machinery. From Frances Trollope's ''The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong'' London 1840.

Then, in “an evil hour for me,” Charles was offered work at Warren’s Blacking Factory at six shillings a week, or about $1.40.  Charles’ parents jumped at the offer. Charles remembers:

“It is wonderful [shocking] to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age….My mother and father were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge.”

No one – no neighbors, friends, or family members reached out to save Charles from this terrible fate. So, on Feb. 9, 1824, at the tender age of twelve, he entered the business world to earn wages for the family. From eight in the morning until eight at night, six days a week, Charles worked alongside rough boys in a dark room covering pots of boot polish and gluing on labels.  The work conditions were appalling:

“The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old gray rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place,rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river.”

 Victorian children are shown working in a cotton mill. At the beginning of British Queen Victoria’s reign (1837), many children worked in factories for cheap wages. Some workers were as young as five. Few citizens questioned the practice of employing children at the time as there were no laws to protect them. The novels of British author Charles Dickens (1812-1870) with their depiction of poverty did much to bring about positive social change and improve the living conditions of the poor.

 

 

Then, two weeks later, John Dickens was arrested and thrown into Marshalsea Prison, where he had to stay until his debts were paid. Charles’ mother and his seven siblings were allowed to live there with him, everyone living in one room, except, alas, Charles. The blacking factory was too far from the prison for Charles to get back before the gates were shut at night. Charles was sent to live in a cheap boarding house. After work he wandered the dark streets of the big city, utterly alone, totally miserable, shabbily dressed, anticipating a dinner of bread and cheese in an empty room.

 

Those days were so crushingly painful for Charles that, years later, when he was a grown man with a family of his own, he could not walk those same streets without being reduced to tears. As a writer, Dickens filled his books with people and places from those bitter days, offering a social commentary that improved the lives of the poor. The novel Oliver Twist (1839), for example, shocked readers with its depiction of poverty and crime in Jacob’s Island, resulting in an actual clearing of the slum.

For more on Victorian child labor, click here.

Readers: For more on Charles Dickens, scroll down the right sidebar: Categories/People/Charles Dickens. Enjoy!

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Why Dickens Wrote A Christmas Carol

Old Fezziwig's Christmas Eve Ball from "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens (1843)

The Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan owns the entire handwritten manuscript of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The 66-page manuscript written in 1843 bears all of Dickens’ edits in his own hand. “He worked on it with loving care, doing much more rewriting than usual.” (1) The original story is written in light blue ink. Edits are in thick, black ink.

One edit is visible on page 12, where Scrooge encounters Marley’s ghost, and chalks up the vision to indigestion. Dickens originally wrote “a spot of mustard” then changed it to read: a “blot of mustard.”

The manuscript is exhibited each holiday season but, alas, only one page is put on view each year, under glass. This year, however, the Morgan has allowed the New York Times to photograph and display the entire handwritten treasure online at

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/30/nyregion/dickens-christmas-carol-pages.html

The Morgan challenges readers to go online and study the manuscript and submit what they think is the most interesting edit in the work. The contestant judged to have submitted the most intriguing edit will be invited as the newspaper’s guest to afternoon tea at the Morgan.

What motivated Charles Dickens to write his classic holiday ghost story?

“At the time A Christmas Carol was written, Dickens feared for his future. He had six children to feed, a large house in London to maintain, and a lavish lifestyle. Christmas was approaching.

Yet Martin Chuzzlewit, the work he was then producing, a few chapters at a time, was not selling as well as earlier installments of The Pickwick Papers or Nicholas Nickleby. Bitterly, he confided to a friend that his bank account was bare….

Conjuring up what Dickens himself described as a “ghost of an idea,”…he got to work. The 6,000 copies printed in time for Christmas sold out. But because he had splurged on hand-colored drawings by John Leech, one of England’s leading illustrators, the project was a financial bust.

Fortunately for Dickens, his quickie book went on to become a classic.” (2)

(1) Stanley, Diane and Vennema, Peter. Charles Dickens: The Man Who Had Great Expectations. New York: Morrow Junior Books, 1993.

(2) “Dickens the Editor To Dickens the Writer: Make it Sell.” The New York Times. A29. December 2, 2009.

Readers: Check out these other related posts:

“Dickens: Marley’s Ghost” 

“Grip the Raven” about Dickens’ pet raven

“Nellie Bly: Charles Dickens’ Visit to Blackwell Island Asylum 1842″

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Dickens: Marley’s Ghost

The ghost of Jacob Marley visits Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843); Illustration by Arthur Rackham (1915)

“‘Mercy! [Scrooge] said. ‘Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?’

“Man of the worldly mind!’ replied the Ghost, ‘do you believe in me or not?’

‘I do,’ said Scrooge; ‘I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?’

‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world – oh, woe is me! – and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’

Marley's Ghost by John Leech (1843) from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1943)

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.

‘You are fettered,’ said Scrooge, trembling. ‘Tell me why?’

‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?’

Scrooge trembled more and more.

‘Or would you know,’ pursued the Ghost, ‘the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it since. It is a ponderous chain!’”

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The Woman in the Moon

Full Moon Through the Trees

Last night, just before bed, Katie called me outside to look at the moon. I didn’t want to do it; I was tired, but she insisted, so I went. She took me into the backyard and pointed at the corner of the yard, behind the live oak near my bedroom. 

“Up there!” she said. “See it?”

Well, I didn’t, but she made me keep looking.  She scooted me to the right and had me stand on my toes. I craned my neck to see. Then I finally saw it, a full moon hung low in the sky, just over the roof, stuck in the live oak branches, like an errant volleyball. The moon was more white than yellow, not very big, and veiled in smoky haze. With the live oak branches scratching the moon, cloaked in night mist, it looked like a scene right out of a scary vampire movie . It was spooky.  But what intrigued me more was the look that moon looked down and gave me.

Yes, there was a face in the moon – the face of a woman. For just an instant, that moon’s face smiled down on me in a Cheshire Cat kind of way. Then a thin cloud floated across the moon and the face was gone forever.

The Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. The cat disappeared, little by little, but the smile was the last to go

I am not alone. The poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) also saw a woman in the moon.

The Moon

 

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;

She shines on thieves on the garden wall,

On streets and fields and harbour quays,

And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

 

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,

The howling dog by the door of the house,

The bat that lies in bed at noon,

All love to be out by the light of the moon.

 

But all of the things that belong to the day

Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way

And flowers and children close their eyes

Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.

                       

  from A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Faithful Readers:

I’ve written a new teen mystery, THE CANDY RAVERS, which I’ve posted here on this blog in its entirety. Click here to read THE CANDY RAVERS or use the tab at the top of the site. I hope you enjoy it or show it to a young person.

Lisa

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How Did Helen Keller Learn to Speak?

In this rare 1930 footage, teacher Annie Sullivan shows how she taught the deaf/blind Helen Keller to speak:

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Talk Like Shakespeare Today: A Plague on Both Your Houses

Romeo wears a mask to disguise himself so he may enter his father's enemy's ball. Romeo is played by Leonard Whiting in Franco Zeffirelli's masterpiece film, "Romeo and Juliet," made in 1968 with Olivia Hussey starring as Juliet.

Yesterday, I cut my finger with a knife. My daughter asked me, “Is it bad, Mom?” I thought of the street fight scene from “Romeo and Juliet” when Mercutio gets wounded. Romeo says to Mercutio, “Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much.”

Read today’s post to discover Mercutio’s famous response.

“Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, 1595

Our story so far:  Sixteen-year-old Romeo Montague and his friends – in disguise – boldly crash a masquerade party at the home of Romeo’s father’s enemies, the Capulets. There Romeo meets and falls in love with an enchanting young lady. We know that it is Juliet, the 13-year-old daughter of Lord Capulet.

Romeo, watching Juliet dance, asks a servant her name:

“Who is that lady who gives richness to the hand of that knight by simply holding it?”

Unbeknownst to Romeo, Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, hears Romeo’s voice and recognizes it as the son of his sworn enemy, Lord Montague. He swears revenge, although the ruler of the city has forbidden any more bloodshed between the two rival families.

Romeo approaches Juliet and they kiss. Romeo does not know that he was seen by Tybalt. Here is that scene from the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Several scenes later, the two lovers secretly wed.

Act III, Scene I. A public place…

Meanwhile, Romeo’s two best friends, Benvolio, a good-natured guy, and Mercutio, a sassy, hot-headed fellow, are bored, out walking the streets with nothing to do and missing their lovesick friend, Romeo.

Benvolio urges Mercutio to go inside. He senses that the Capulets also might be out, idly about, and up to no good. Neither Benvolio nor Mercutio know that Tybalt saw Romeo at the Capulet ball and has sworn to kill him but the street fighting between the two families has been a long-standing problem.  Benvolio pleads with Mercutio:

“I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire. The day is hot, the Capulets abroad, and if we meet, we shall not [e]scape a brawl, for now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.”

An arrogant Mercutio laughs at Benvolio’s suggestion that he is a quarrelsome fellow and foolishly ignores his friend’s warning that trouble lies ahead….

Enter Tybalt and others.

Ben: By my head, here come the Capulets.

Mer: By my heel, I care not.

Tyb: [To his men] Follow me close, for I will speak to them. [To Mercutio and Benvolio] Gentlemen, good den. A word with one of you.

Mer: And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow [a slash of your sword].

Tyb: You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and you will give me occasion [good reason].

Mer: Could you not take some occasion without giving? [I'm sure you could find a reason without having it given to you].

Tyb: Mercutio, thou consortest [play around] with Romeo.

Mer: Consort? What, dost thou make us minstrels [silly musicians]? And thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords [angry sounds].  Here’s my fiddlestick [sword]; here’s that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort! [By God's wounds, Benvolio, do you hear these insults?]

Ben: We talk here in the public haunt of men. Either withdraw unto some private place and reason coldly of your grievances, or else depart. Here all eyes gaze on us.

Mer: Men’s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze. I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.

Enter Romeo who has just married Juliet. No one knows yet. He is now married to a Capulet and thus, unknown to Tybalt, his cousin by marriage.

Tyb: Well, peace be with you, sir. Here comes my man [meaning Romeo].

Mer: But I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery [uniform]. Marry, [Indeed], go before to field [leave town to fight], he’ll be your follower! Your worship in that sense may call him man.

Tyb: Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford no better term than this: thou art a villain. [villain is the nicest name I can call you, I hate you so.]

Rom: [not wanting to fight] Tybalt,the reason that I have to love thee doth much excuse the appertaining rage to such a greeting. Villain am I none. Therefore farewell. I see thou knowst me not. [as your cousin; you haven't heard the news.]

Tyb: Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries that thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw.

Rom:  I do protest I never injured thee, But love thee better than thou canst devise till thou shalt know the reason of my love; And so, good Capulet, which name I tender as dearly as mine own, be satisfied.

Mercutio is incensed that Romeo returns Tybalt’s insults with loving words, so draws his own sword to defend Romeo.

Mer: O calm, dishonorable, vile submission! Alla stoccata [At the thrust] carries it away. Tybalt, you ratcatcher, will you walk?

Tyb: What wouldst thou have with me?

Mer: Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives….

Tyb: I am for you. [Draws.]

Rom: Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.

Mer: Come, sir, your passado! [a forward thrust of the sword as the foot steps forward]

They fight.

Rom: Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons. Gentleman, for shame! Forbear this outrage! Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath forbid this bandying in Verona streets. Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!

Romeo steps between them. Tybalt, under Romeo’s arm, stabs Mercutio. Tybalt runs away.

Mer: I am hurt. A plague o’ both your houses! [Curse the Capulets and Montagues.] I am sped [done for]! Is he gone and hath nothing?

Ben: What, art thou hurt?

Mer: Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry, ’tis enough. Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.

The page exits.

Rom: Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much.

Mer: No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered [mortally wounded], I warrant, for this world. A plague o’ both your houses! …Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.

Rom: I thought all for the best.

Mer: Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses! They have made worms’ meat of me. I have it, and soundly, too. Your houses!

Exit, supported by Benvolio. Mercutio dies.

 

Here is the fight scene from Zeffirelli’s 1968 film, “Romeo and Juliet.” The clip opens with a wet-haired Mercutio challenging Tybalt to a duel. Tybalt wears a red cap and orange vestments.

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