What country, friends, is this?

Poems from the world of Shakespeare's plays

Photo by Steffen Petermann on Unsplash

Is a poem about a character from Shakespeare just a little “niche”, in the 21st century? I did a similar post last year, and wondered the same thing then. And, oh well; this year I’m doubling down.

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 VIOLA


This is Illyria, lady,
and if today you bless the boatmen
who pulled you from the wreck onto this shore,
you may not bless them long.

This is Illyria, lady.
Misrule governs here, the gods of appetite,
of longing and excess and longing still – 
jest upon jest, no peace, and all disguise.

This is Illyria, lady.
Conceal you what you are, in brother’s clothes,
exchange the traps of your confining skirts
for tangles of pretense and secret sorrow.

This is Illyria, lady.
Men here and women will employ you,
trust you, lust for you, use you otherwise,
and call it love, and never see you clear.

What hopes you gathered on this shore, abandon;
go back to sea. Here are no happy endings.
This is Illyria, lady. 
Jest upon jest, no peace, and all disguise.

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SOLILOQUY CUT FROM HAMLET, ACT III


To make one in this players’ company –- 
a visitor, no more, to court and courtyard,
then down the dusty road, another clearing,
another makeshift crowd; one night a king,
the next a fool, the next a lackey
mouthing no more than “Anon, sir,
I come;” no kingdom larger than will fold
into a handcart, no crown weighed heavier
than a cap, no lies and bows and intrigues
more than a scene or so contains, no spirits
more than fill a tankard or a flask.
Oh, I could bear hard bed and empty belly
to ‘scape these heavy ghosted walls, to wander
companioned ‘neath the sun, alive and free
to body-forth another’s tragedy!

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[You can listen to an audio version of the poems using the little widget above the photograph.]

Every summer I go with one of my sisters to a “destination theatre” to see whatever Shakespeare plays they’re producing that year. The productions are always inventive, throwing new light on the plots and characters of the plays. Over time the characters have become familiar; I find myself wanting to talk to them, or listening as they talk to me.

I started “Viola” during last summer’s visit, after we’d seen a production of Twelfth Night that left me more than usually uncertain about the “happily ever after” this comedy reaches for. I was keenly aware of the vulnerability and isolation of Viola, a pivotal character in the play, washed up on the shores of a strange land after a shipwreck. She’s witty and resourceful throughout — and she needs to be, because practically every other character wants something from her … except for her twin brother, whom she believes for most of the play has died at sea. In the end she becomes the bride of the nobleman with whom she fell in love at first sight, who turns out to be imperious and ego-driven particularly in relation to women. So … hurray? I had my doubts, and wrote about them.

I wrote the first draft of the miniature soliloquy in April, during the “poem a day” challenge for National Poetry Writing Month. The prompt was to write a poem where the speaker wishes to be someone or something else, and I … can’t begin to tell you why Hamlet drifted into my head. No clue. The premise works, though; in Act Three Hamlet is animated and specific when he instructs the itinerant acting troupe whose play, he hopes, will “catch the conscience of the king.” And he’s hugely ambivalent throughout all five acts about his own role as avenger, if not his role as prince; it was easy to picture him daydreaming about life on the road in company with those vagabond actors.

Once you get anywhere near Shakespeare, I find, it’s hard not to get into a conversation with him. Even today, through centuries’ worth of changes in language and the undeniable whiff of dead-white-guy-ness, the people who walk through his stories and the poetry they speak still draw me back, full of questions and exclamations and arguments. Every writer’s dream! I hope he gets to laugh about it, where he is now.