April soft and cold: Spy my shadow in the sun

It’s that time again—yes, Will Shakespeare’s birthday—when we bring out a couple of selections from the master. Always a highlight of National Poetry Month.

As you know, I like to share something from a play, as well as a poem-in-its-own-right. And since this past year has seen the definitive identification of the remains of Richard III, and (finally) his burial as an actual king of England (albeit in Leicester, which is making a complete tourist trap out of it), let’s have something from Shakespeare’s tragedy about the last of the Yorkist kings.

As you recall, Shakespeare’s Richard is deformed in body, mind and soul. As you’ll also recall, Shakespeare was getting his material from Tudor historians; all of them were in the pay (or patronage) of one Tudor or another. Think of it as being a historian or playwright with Stalin looking over your shoulder.

Anyhow, Shakespeare sets up Richard’s wickedness right at the opening scene, which begins with his soliloquy, as Duke of Gloucester:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barded steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other:

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,

About a prophecy, which says that 'G'

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here

Clarence comes.

There’s nothing at all subtle about this: Richard flat out says that—since he’s physically deformed and therefore no one will love him regardless of his actions—he’s fitting his morals to his ugliness. And, by the way, even though the Yorks have only just ascended to the throne (in the form of his tall, hunky brother Edward), he’s already mapping out how to kill the one brother and blame the other for regicide.

Yikes!

So let’s have something different by way of mitigation, then. Here’s Sonnet 30. If there’s any better description of friendship, I want to see it.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.