Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!
From Cymbeline, Act 4 scene 2.
For me, Cymbeline decisively disproves all the Baconian "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" nonsense. Years ago, a week before I went to see Cymbeline for the first time, I read it, and I thought, "Oh my God - this is a mess!" A Shakespearian mess, of course, greater than most other writers' best and brightest, but still, a mess. You know what I mean - it's like he was pressed for time and tossed it together from discarded pages from half a dozen other plays. And when I sat down to see it...it WORKED. As haphazard as it sometimes seems on the page, on the stage it PLAYS. Shakespeare knew that it would. How did he know? Because he spent a lifetime in the theater, acting, writing, directing, producing, counting the house and the receipts, watching the audience until he could predict their reactions down to the barest sigh, the quietest chuckle, the most quickly stifled gasp or yawn. You couldn't learn any of that as a dilettante, writing scripts in between penning philosophical treatises and holding meetings as Lord Chancellor. No way in the world.
ReplyDeleteHaha.
DeleteI have only read Cymbeline, but I love it. It's a crazy play, sure, but I don't get people's complaints at all lol.
Which production did you watch?
"How did he know? Because he spent a lifetime in the theater, acting, writing, directing, producing, counting the house and the receipts, watching the audience until he could predict their reactions down to the barest sigh, the quietest chuckle, the most quickly stifled gasp or yawn. You couldn't learn any of that as a dilettante, writing scripts in between penning philosophical treatises and holding meetings as Lord Chancellor. No way in the world."
I agree though. All the conspiracies about Shakespeare are just stupid, and snobbish. And I can't help thinking that all the people who think someone else is Shakespeare doesn't have any feel for language, because how could you, say, read Edward de Vere's poems and think that man's the real Shakespeare? Rubbish.
I live in Southern California, close to a first-rate classical theater group called A Noise Within. I've seen them do two productions of Cymbeline, separated by about fifteen years.
DeleteAh lovely.
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