Last week, I finished reading my first unabridged Shakespeare. This is something that has been in my to do list for a long time now and I am glad that I have finally ticked it off.
In the state of Kerala where I studied, when you reach graduate level in college, there is a course on one of the Shakespeare plays. From the time I was in school, I have seen my mother, who was a college professor, prepare for Shakespeare classes. But I as a lesser mortal knew that I cannot hope to understand such things till I reach that age when I will have enough wisdom. So I managed with children's editions of Macbeth and Othello. But a Henry V with the depiction of the King in full battle armor on its cover in my mother's library attracted me so much that I engaged in multiple rounds of battle with it. Even though I figured out the basic constructs like "thee" and "thou", the rest of the stuff looked too formidable to conquer. Prose or verse, whatever it was, it looked so much like Sanskrit slokas where the start of a phrase will be from the middle of a line while its end will be at the start of the same line! Essentially, you also needed to know which all words to pick to form a legible sentence, not to mention the words that looked like nothing in English. So I resigned to my fate and waited for my degree course to arrive.
But after my schooling, I ended up in the engineering stream where Shakespeare was an unknown entity. Thus I never had the privilege of sitting in a class room and hearing the lecturer shout - "Et tu, Brute!". Something that can be corrected in my next life.
But after my schooling, I ended up in the engineering stream where Shakespeare was an unknown entity. Thus I never had the privilege of sitting in a class room and hearing the lecturer shout - "Et tu, Brute!". Something that can be corrected in my next life.
Last week, I was browsing through stalls in a book fair, and there was this book that I had never noticed before - Shakespeare for dummies*! The best dummies book I have seen so far. It had the original Shakespearean text on one side and the complete translation on the other, with comments. It looked as though I could read the original or the translation depending on how I felt at any given time and thus slowly build up my Shakespeare language understanding. After some reflection, I settled on Henry IV because it looked larger than Henry V and had a similar price tag.
I read the book in pretty good time during the Christmas vacation, and once over, I felt like writing an appreciation. Countless people have felt the same way before and a great many from that set have managed it also. I will not let that dampen my enthusiasm. So here I go, and I will only mention some aspects that struck me.
(1) I realized quite early that the idea of reading the original text while continuously referring to the translation does not work. When you are engrossed in a story, you would not want to read stuff that you do not completely understand, especially when there is an easier translation sitting nearby. So I just read the translations and went to the original text only when I felt like reading some Shakespearean like - "I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots as a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.'"
(2) Henry IV has many humorous dialogues that have double meanings. Maybe the reader will not realize it unless he is reading through a translation that points out each such instance. Looks like Shakespeare would have had trouble with the censor board had he been born in modern India. But India in 16th century was probably okay, looks like there was definitely more artistic freedom then.
(3) Reading a play is like reading the screen play of a movie, you are not really getting the picture! So, maybe I should watch a live performance of the play to get the full experience. What struck me as odd was that I could not see any notes in the text that described the scene and costumes, maybe the translator or the editor of the book left it out, I am not sure. The only description was like "Enter King Henry, .....". Nothing that said whether the King was in pajamas or a regal gown. That surely leaves a lot to the director's imagination and discretion.
So, my new year resolution is to go and watch a Shakespeare play. A safe resolution considering the dangerous ones people tend to make. Let me leave you with a quote from Sir John Falstaff.
"Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on,-how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour; what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then? yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism."
Come to think of it, honour is my family treasure, or so I have been told. Happy New Year 2011!
Note: * The actual book name is No Fear Shakespeare.
