Bardisms (5 page)

Some details:

The image in line 5, about
native slip
and
foreign seeds
, is worth a closer look. Scientific inquiry took off during the English Renaissance, and in particular, understanding in the area of natural sciences leapt forward. The notion that man could “strive with nature” to nature’s betterment remained a new and controversial idea, but in botany, at least, it was demonstrated repeatedly and vividly through the creation of many new hybrid species of flowers and other plants. Shakespeare turns again and again to images of gardening, planting, and cultivation in his works, but hybridization seems to interest him especially. (His most thorough examination of the subject is in
The Winter’s Tale
, where Perdita and Polixenes conduct a long debate on the morality of the process, and that of tinkering with nature at all.) He sees plant grafting as somehow magical, a perplexing riddle, in which something can be man-made, yet still have about it all the authenticity and power of nature at its purest. Paradoxes of this sort riveted Shakespeare, and in this regard, he is very much a man of his time: countless other Renaissance writers and thinkers wrestled with the disorienting ramifications of the period’s new scientific discoveries. Yet the incisiveness of Shakespeare’s imagination—his remarkable ability to translate specific scientific knowledge into sublime poetic insight—marks him very much a man apart. To view a mother’s love for her adopted child as a kind of botanical procedure is something that only this writer would, or could, do.

SHAKESPEARE ON NEWBORNS

I think I shall never have the blessing of God till I have issue o’ my body, for they say bairns are blessings.

—C
LOWN
,
All’s Well That Ends Well
, 1.3.21

After pregnancy and delivery comes that fateful trip home when Mom and Dad find themselves alone for the first time with their little bundle of joy. Their hungry, screaming, pooping, sleepless little bundle of joy. Between reassuring phone calls from family and friends—“Don’t worry, by three months it’ll be
much
easier”—these lines of Shakespeare can help you cope with some of the craziness that comes with a newborn, and help deepen your love for your angel.

BABY LOOKS LIKE MOM AND DAD

Sonnet 3 is one of the series of seventeen “you should have a baby” poems that open Shakespeare’s famous collection of verse. It contains his most memorable description of a child’s resemblance to his or her mother:

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

(A “glass” is a mirror, and Mama’s “lovely April” her springtime days of youthful beauty.)

Shakespeare didn’t write about a baby’s resemblance to Papa until nearly twenty years later:

[
indicating a baby
] Behold, my lords,

Although the print be little, the whole matter

And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip,

The trick of’s frown, his forehead, nay, the valley,

The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek, his smiles, 5

The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.

—P
AULINA
,
The Winter’s Tale
, 2.3.98–103

In other words:

Look, everyone: it may be a small copy, but it reproduces the father in every detail. Eyes, nose, lips, his very distinctive frown, his forehead—no, seriously—even the little indented groove between his nose and upper lip,
*
the cleft on his chin, the distinctive dimples on his cheeks, his smile, and the exact pattern and structure of his hands, nails, and fingers.

How to use it:

I love reading this short passage with my daughter in my arms, although I’m happy that it’s not entirely true (especially the nose part) and that she resembles her beautiful mother far more than she does me!

Although the baby in the play is a girl, nothing in the speech prevents it being said of a boy. And if, as in my daughter’s case, it’s the mom who is more clearly reflected in the wee one’s features, simply substituting
mother
for
father
in line 3,
her
for each
his
in the speech, and
of her
for
of’s
in line 4, will make it work fine.

LULLABY

One way to help a baby sleep is to sing a lullaby. Shakespeare writes a very pretty one in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. It’s sung by the fairies for their queen Titania as she retires for the night.

You spotted snakes with double tongue,

Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;

Newts and blindworms, do no wrong;

Come not near our Fairy Queen.

Chorus:

Philomel with melody,

Sing in our sweet lullaby;

Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby.

Never harm

Nor spell nor charm

Come our lovely lady nigh.

So good night, with lullaby.

Weaving spiders, come not here;

Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence;

Beetles black, approach not near;

Worm nor snail do no offense.

Repeat chorus.

—F
AIRIES
,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, 2.2.9–23

In other words:

Don’t show your faces, all you multicolored, forked-tongued snakes, and you spiky hedgehogs. Don’t make trouble, you poisonous lizards and tiny-eyed reptiles. Don’t come near our fairy queen.

Chorus
: You nightingale, sing and make our sweet lullaby. Lulla, lulla, lullaby. May no ill will, nor no evil spell nor magic charm, ever come near our lady. So lullaby and good night.

Don’t get near us, you poisonous web weavers, you long-legged silk makers. Just get away from here! Don’t come around, you black beetles. Don’t make mischief, you worms and snails.

Repeat chorus.

How to say it:

The music to which Shakespeare set this lullaby doesn’t survive from the play’s first performance in 1594. Modern productions must commission new tunes for it, and for the handful of other songs in the play. Even without music, however, the soft beauty of the lines is easy to hear. Harley Granville-Barker, one of the great Shakespearean directors of the early twentieth century, described how the language of this and the other songs in the play literally conjures the fairy world to life: “The lilt, no less than the meaning [of the song], helps to express them [i.e., the fairies] to us as beings other than mortals, treading the air.”

To tread the air yourself, be sure to take note of the rhyme scheme in the song (
tongue-seen-wrong-queen
,
hear-hence-near-offense
, etc.) and the strong rhythmic pulse of every stanza, and if you don’t want to make up a tune of your own, use these in a kind of chant or legato bedtime rap, and with them create the smoothly soporific tone every lullaby requires.

Whether you sing or speak the lines, try to convince your listener that you’re really talking to all those nasty creepy-crawlies in the song and commanding them to stay away. The more the creatures sound like a catalogue of Halloween goblins, the better the chorus works to create a bedtime atmosphere of safety and sweetness.

If you’re singing to a boy, substitute
baby
for
lady
in the chorus.
Fairy Queen
is slightly trickier to rewrite, because whatever replaces it must rhyme with
seen
. You’re in luck if your son is named Dean, Gene, or, in a stretch, Ian, but if he’s not, then I’d go with
little bean
.