Much like the narrative poem Venus and Adonis (which I wrote about previously), Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece is an oft-overlooked part of the Bard's oeuvre. There are lots of reasons for this--the fact that it isn't a drama would probably be a large one--but I suspect our motivations, as modern readers, to avoid this poem comes from the topic. Especially in a time when we're (fortunately) becoming more and more aware of the ways in which sexual assault are discussed, The Rape of Lucrece can be a really challenging text.
That being said, it is a really good piece of poetry on almost every level. In fact, the area where it isn't "good" is in the topic it treats: Rape narratives are distasteful, and to speak highly of this one feels contradictory. I fully admit that it's one of my biases at play here. I don't feel that fratricide is too uncomfortable a topic, despite being firmly anti-murder in my morals, so discussing Hamlet doesn't come with it any additional problems. But when it comes to other topics, I'm less keen to jump into the discomfort that the narrative conjures. Reading Lucrece is hard from a modern point of view because of how rapists and rape victims are treated. Things are not good when it comes to this societal ill, despite all of the progress of the past 400 years since Shakespeare wrote his poem. They aren't even better, in my estimation, just different. There are a lot of antiquated ideas that Lucrece espouses as she wallows in guilt and shame after what Tarquin does to her; these are also ideas that modern day victims of sexual exploitation suffer. There are old-fashioned concepts of what it means to be married, and what duties a wife has to her husband (and, implicitly, vice versa); these concepts aren't dead with the advent of the digital age, instead living on in millions of households currently. Oh, the verbiage has changed, true. But the implications of these beliefs are fundamentally unchanged. One thing that is also unchanged from then to now, however, is that Tarquin's act is considered reprehensible by his victim, her husband, her father, and the congregated lords of Rome who arrive at her home to hear her story. The same emotions of fury and rage, of desire for vengeance and violence, flow through Collatine in the final couple of dozen stanzas of the poem that any modern might feel. He doesn't disbelieve his wife or doubt her story, however, which does put him in a different category than many people when victims of sexual abuse step forward. (Look, for example, at the different responses to Dr. Blasey Ford's account during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process.) Another difference between how we view rape victims is that there's a stronger push toward exculpating the feelings of guilt in the victim herself. Life is complicated, and there are usually multiple angles of responsibility and blame in many different actions. Rape, however, is absolutely the fault of the rapist. The (usually) man who does the deed bears the burden of that crime. Lucrece, unfortunately, doesn't believe that. Oh, she comes close, don't get me wrong. Just before her drastic decision to end her life, she asks these brilliant and pointed questions--questions, I should add, that are exactly the right thing to ask, though she presupposes all the wrong answers--of the gathered lords: 'What is the quality of mine offence, Being constrain'd with dreadful circumstance? May my pure mind with the foul act dispense, My low-declined honour to advance? May any terms acquit me from this chance? The poison'd fountain clears itself again; And why not I from this compelled stain?' (1702-1708) She has no "quality of offence" because she's done nothing wrong. It isn't her fault that Tarquin raced from the camp to Collatium where he, despite some of his own misgivings, yielded to his lusts and violated his friend's wife. It's Tarquin's fault. It's always the rapist's fault. But she doesn't believe that--and there's the real crux of the difficulty in this piece. It's not only that it's dealing with one of the most heinous crimes we have; it's the internalized misogyny that Lucrece deals with that makes this poem so hard to read and think about. After the horrendous act (which is not described in any detail by Shakespeare), Lucrece is left alone to wallow in her guilt and shock and dismay and grief. Among many other things, she says, 'Well, well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know The stained taste of violated troth; I will not wrong thy true affection so, To flatter thee with an infringed oath;' (1058-1061) She did no infringing: It was Tarquin. This is the sort of thinking that makes no sense to me, adding an unseen (to Shakespeare, at least) complication to the text. And it isn't as though she exclusively thinks of herself as having betrayed her husband, that the sin resides solely in her…it's just that it's mostly exclusively. She does say, "Not that devoured, but that which doth devour/Is worthy blame" (1256-1257), but that line of thinking isn't supported in the rest of the poem. As a reader, seeing the guilt she carries makes it additionally tricky to deal with something other than the crime when you consider how many great lines that Lucrece drops as she processes her woe. (In a lot of ways, Lucrece is the paragon of Shakespearean women, with voice, presence, compassion, and a piercing insight. It makes it doubly tragic that such a powerful character is so often overlooked.) Consider, for example, these observations: 'The baser is he, coming from a king, To shame his hope with deeds degenerate: The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. The moon being clouded presently is miss'd, But little stars may hide them when they list. (emphasis mine, 1002-1008) This struck particularly hard during our 2020 elections, where one candidate has over two dozen allegations of sexual assault (to say nothing of allegations about paying off a porn star to keep quiet about an extramarital affair) and another whose interactions with at least eight women constitutes sexual harassment--or worse. Seeing this reminded me of the chilling lines from the poorly-named Angelo in Measure for Measure, where he tells the nun, Isabella, "Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true" (emphasis mine, 2.4.170). The point of a leader is to, well, lead. As Lucrece argues to Tarquin's intentions, "For princes are the glass, the school, the book/Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look" (615-616). Even in a democratic-republic where the power is derived from the people and shaped by the Constitution, how our political leaders behave gives license to those who follow. Only a quarter of actual rapes are reported, and of that number, less than 1% lead to felony convictions. When high profile cases of sexual misconduct result in no punishment (consider the aforementioned Dr. Ford, who had to get a security detail to deal with the death threats, while the accused got a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court), it gives a disturbing credence to that Measure for Measure quote. I think it's fair to say, along with Lucrece, that "kings' misdeeds cannot be hid in clay" (608). I'd like to tell you that The Rape of Lucrece is a tale where things go right, where the victim is believed and her shame expunged while the villain is appropriately punished. Unfortunately, that isn't the case: Lucrece ends her life because of the shame, and the men who remain seek vengeance fail to do more than banish Prince Tarquin. This is no small thing: Removing the king of Rome eventually led to the Roman republic. In those times, however, it wasn't considered morally wrong to kill the man who had committed this type of crime. The fact that Tarquin lost his father's kingdom but kept his life is a chilling foreshadowing of many future miscarriages of justice. But what of the poem itself? I mentioned before that it's a beautiful piece of work. There are some stunning pieces of wordplay and fascinating refrains, to say nothing of the nuggets of wisdom that Shakespeare is so adroit at crafting. I'll give a couple of examples to indicate the whole. Throughout the poem, Shakespeare employs "contraries" (his word) or paradoxes (my word) to describe the feelings and events. They're used so frequently that, despite being on the lookout for them, I know I missed a few. "Thou nobly base, they basely dignified" (660); "He in his speed looks for the morning light; / She prays she never may behold the day" (745-746); "How he in peace is wounded, not in war" (830); "To hold their cursèd-blessèd fortune long" (866); "Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief" (889). These contraries help draw attention to the images he's creating, helping us understand the extremities that the characters are dealing with. Shakespeare will also deploy repetition to great effect. Consider this lambasting of Tarquin as Lucrece levels curse after curse on his head. 'Let him have time to tear his curled hair, Let him have time against himself to rave, Let him have time of Time's help to despair, Let him have time to live a loathed slave, Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave, And time to see one that by alms doth live Disdain to him disdained scraps to give. 'Let him have time to see his friends his foes, And merry fools to mock at him resort; Let him have time to mark how slow time goes In time of sorrow, and how swift and short His time of folly and his time of sport; And ever let his unrecalling crime Have time to wail th' abusing of his time. (emphases mine, 981-994) This echo of the word "time" gives us a sense of regret for the now-past moment that led to her tragedy. She recognizes how much can hinge on such an ephemeral, rapidly shifting thing as time, and how it can be so elastic in our perception. More than that, she's calling out to future generations--the story, which transpired in 509 BCE, was well known to Shakespeare's audiences, though its popularity has faded since--to remember the shame that she's suffered. And, in my case at least, I view this less about her shame and more about the deplorable behavior of Tarquin. (Of course, I don't agree with the Renaissance conception that female chastity was a physical condition as much as a mental condition, so it's not surprising I view things differently.) This kind of repetition is also embedded within certain lines, such as "And for himself himself he must forsake: / […] When he himself himself confounds, betrays […]" (156, 160). There's also "Whose deed hath made herself herself detest: / At last she smilingly with this gives o'er; / 'Fool, fool!' quoth she, 'his wounds will not be sore'" (1566). The line 795 has this one: "But I alone alone must sit and pine […]". These work as emphases, but often as grammatically powerful expressions, too. "Whose deed hath made herself herself detest" uses the second herself reflexively (we would render this "made her detest herself"), and puts the emotional feelings squarely on Lucrece. Agree or disagree with her conclusion, it's crucial that we understand the victim on her terms: For her, she is to blame for failing to protect her marital vows more fully. If we can't understand that as her point of reference, the poem becomes murky. Another aspect of this piece that really stood out to me was how, in the depths of her misery, she turned to the classics to find validation. Note, I didn't say comfort. That's not necessarily what the classics (or Shakespeare) are for. In Lucrece's mind--and, I daresay, in the Elizabethan/Jacobean mind, too--the words of the past aren't supposed to act as a balm for the woes of the present. Instead, it's a mirror in which they see a parallel of their own suffering. There's a kind of commiserating solidarity in reading this way, and Shakespeare--whose marginalia (if it ever existed) is lost to us--gives us a glimpse into what he saw when he read the story of the Battle of Troy. For a protracted segment of the poem, Lucrece studies a beautiful painting depicting the sack of Troy. Starting on line 1366 and going through line 1568, Lucrece finds in the tragedy of Ilium the similar feelings and parallels of her own sadness. She casts Helen as both a rape victim herself and a "strumpet that began this stir" (1471). The misery of Priam's death at Pyrrhus' hand (1467) gets attention, and the traitorous Sinon (who convinced the Trojans to allow the wooden horse into their gates) receives a vicious attack from the bereft Lucrece: She tears out his part in the picture with her nails. I, too, often find solidarity in knowing that those of previous eras feel how I feel. It ties me into the broader fabric of humanity, showing me that for all of my advanced technology and specialized skills, I'm still merely human. Though it isn't about comfort qua comforting aphorisms or brain-dulling platitudes, there is some comfort in hearing that I'm not alone. "But I alone alone must sit and pine" stops being true when Lucrece stands up and looks into the lessons and the emotions of the past. She seeks out the universal within the specific and finds herself there--in my mind, that's why I keep returning to Shakespeare. I see myself more clearly through his words than any other's. And what words he chooses. I could dedicate an entire essay just to his word choice in this poem--and the way that words are a type of power within it--but I'll satisfy my itch with highlighting this particular demonstration of the Bard's prowess: 'It cannot be,' quoth she, 'that so much guile'-- She would have said 'can lurk in such a look;' But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while, And from her tongue 'can lurk' from 'cannot' took: 'It cannot be' she in that sense forsook, And turn'd it thus, 'It cannot be, I find, But such a face should bear a wicked mind.' (1534-1540) Shakespeare seems incapable of not utilizing his dramatic flair for demonstrating a person's galloping thoughts, even when he's pulling double duty of narrator and character speaker. Look at how Lucrece lurches from thought to voice to halted conclusion. It's incredible to see Shakespeare so effortlessly giving us the thoughts of this poor woman, all embedded in the rigid rhyme system of the poem's structure, and demonstrate the twisting tumult of her mind. How many of us have had a similar experience? One where we are in the middle of speaking our point only to realize that what we were going to say at the outset no longer connects to the conclusion? To so beautifully capture all of that in a sparse seven lines. That's just incredible to me. And that sums up the contraries of my feelings toward the poem: On one hand, there is incredible beauty and poetic power here. There's a huge amount of pity and pathos that Shakespeare condenses into 1,855 lines, with some gorgeous descriptions and golden phrases. As a piece of art, it's sublime. And yet, looking at what's being discussed immediately reins in my enthusiasm. To make art out of violation is crass at best, even as I recognize that its creation happened in a time when they viewed rape differently than we do now. I struggle to recommend this poem, yet at the same time I definitely want more people to read it. As is so often the case with Shakespeare, his writing is nuanced, expressive, and--above all--filled with the complexity of life. Read at your own risk. Today I see the last day of summer 2020. It is also the last time that I will wake up without having to go into a classroom filled with students since our school dismissed on 13 March 2020. It was like there was a fire in the far corner of our cafeteria when we evacuated. Now, most of the building is in flames and we've been equipped with a spritzer bottle to combat the inferno as we're called to return to our classrooms.
I am not happy about the returning school year, though I think such a bald statement misses what's happening here. I'm not happy because my children aren't getting the annual tradition of back to school shopping, the thrill of new backpacks and lunchboxes, the excitement of seeing their friends, the challenge of a new grade. I'm not happy because instead, my children will be stuck at their grandma's house, wearing masks and tooling around on Chromebooks for the majority of the day. I'm not happy because the hollow words of praise from society about what teachers were able to do in the spring quickly collapsed into criticisms for failures, many of which were far beyond a teacher's power to control. I'm not happy that there are people who are planning on using their children as a political statement and thereby endangering other people's lives when they send their kids to school without the mandated masks. I am not happy because I will not be a teacher this year. Oh, I still have a job. I'm still in the classroom. I'm still covering the same moments in history, the same literature of the time. I'm still doing a job, yes, but I'm not a teacher. For me, a teacher is someone who inspires, instructs, and involves students in the process of learning. It's someone who seeks out ways of connecting--emotionally and intellectually--to the students and curricula. It's a person who wishes to use the content to create better people. I'm none of that this year. In order to do that, there are a handful of things that I've come to expect, almost all of which are givens during normal times. I would expect to have a full classroom, a (sometimes beyond) critical mass of minds that come together daily to discuss the great things that I have in store. Instead, I'm getting half a class every other day. This is an excellent accommodation, given the circumstances, and I'm glad that there's at least that much attempt at allowing for social distancing. I would expect students to chat, have fun with friends, and share their thoughts in class-wide discussions as well as smaller groups and individual conversations. Instead, I have them physically separated (about four feet between desks on either side, but they're in rows front to back with only a few inches between seat and desk), will have to listen to their muffled voices, not see them smile (or frown), and keep them in the same spot throughout the year. I am glad that I have as much space as I do, since not everyone can get their classes down to a maximum of 14 kids (which is twice as many as the room would fit if following the guidelines fully). I would expect to see former students passing me in the hallway, eager to share a fun experience that happened to them over the summer, or maybe recollect an inside joke from our time together. Instead, I plan on arriving before the bell to rotate rings and keeping myself isolated in my classroom as much as I possibly can. I'm grateful that my admin allows for this sort of thing, as I know that other teachers aren't so lucky. Normally, I look forward to the recharge that comes during lunchtime, when I can sit and chat with other adults and build up those communal bonds that strengthen the school's spirit. Instead, I have a microwave in my classroom so that I don't have to go to the faculty room where maskless friends will be eating their lunches. I will sit behind my plexiglass partitioned desk and pretend that I'm not imprisoned by an invisible enemy. I'm glad, at least, that I have that small space in which to try to feel safe. A teacher should be a coach as well, and I am always excited to coach three drama students in Shakespearean monologues for our fall competition. Instead, I have to figure out how to walk someone through the intricacies of the Bard via online meetings and remote conversations. I recognize that many events are completely canceled, so even though the competition is just a video submission this year, we're lucky to even have that. I would have expected that our society would take seriously a clear and present threat to our children and their families, that safety would be paramount. But then I remember Sandy Hook and I realized that money will always be more important than human life, and there's no positive spin I can put on this. In a country where our solution to gun violence and global warning--one an immediate threat and one a larger, more abstract one--is to ignore or deny the problem, can I really be surprised that we exhausted ourselves with conspiracies and half-measures? To say that I feel abandoned and betrayed is to put it so mildly that it may as well not be said. Safety aside (as if that should be a thing), I have to keep reminding myself that these thefts of experience are only temporary, that there will come a time when I can return to the classroom with excitement and enthusiasm, that our competitions and assemblies may return, that the futures we hope to build for the students aren't mired by viral uncertainty and political errors. This reminder, however, always spins around when I push away from what I am losing and to what they will miss. I'm not so egotistical as to think that a student who doesn't attend my class will be permanently hamstrung in their future and that they missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from me. However, it isn't just my class that they're missing out on. It's the entirety of a learning experience that is being lost. I think of my own kids, and how my now-second grader struggled with school at first, but soon learned to really love his class and his school. His enthusiasm keeps twisting about, transforming from excitement into sadness that he can't return to where he wishes to be. Is there ever a year where it's "just fine" that they miss out on everything that year has planned? My now-fifth grader will not get to go on the exciting overnight campout that his grade always gets a chance to attend…I haven't reminded him about that, because why add to his sadness? My now-eighth grader was just starting to get the hang of the middle school experience when we dismissed; now he won't have middle school at all. He will be all online, learning via computer, and missing out on the interactions and friendships that he so desperately needs. As I roll over these realities in my mind, I get more and more frustrated. I don't blame the schools for wanting to be open--I want us to be open. Instead, I keep thinking about all of the missteps, the frittered away months where things could have gone differently but didn't, the energy wasted on pointless arguments and denials that have led to personal tragedies and a nation-wide catastrophe. I try not to look at other countries that sacrificed as needed to get their COVID response under control, mostly because it makes me feel jealous. That could've been us, but you playin'… In all honesty, I'm not surprised that we are in this situation. We are committed to the course we're on, apparently, and though there were offramps galore on this road we've taken, I don't see a lot of people in positions of power moving toward rectifying the situation as it stands. Is it possible to have prevented all of the deaths in the United States? No. Of course not. A novel viral outbreak is going to claim victims. Did we need to lose over 160,000--and be on track to lose maybe as many as 300,000 before year's end?--to say nothing of the untold and unknowable costs of COVID-related infections further down the line? No. Not even remotely. The frustration of people and the desire to seek out the normal we've lost is understandable. I recognize why parents want their kids to go to school--after all, many parents had the option to sign up for online-only schooling; most did not choose it--because of the many different realities that parents have gone through in their own individual journeys. For them, they don't see the risk as greater than the consequence; they likely also never saw their child embraced by cables and wires because that was the kind of hug that would keep them alive. I have. It's not worth saying goodbye to a loved one via Skype so that the soccer team can have a game. So while I understand where parents are coming from, in the end I have to say that what's being asked of me is not "my job"; it's asking for me to risk my life--or worse, my children's lives. I see no beauty in that cause, no desire to flout what's real in favor of hoping for something better. A new school year is supposed to be an opportunity to recommit toward personal growth and learning, to one's own education. All I can see is the potential for a grave, a breach in the ground where what I love has gone. That's not much of a vision for a new school year. And yet that is all I can see. Disney Plus has announced that they're screening their live-action version of Mulan exclusively to Disney Plus members…for an added cost of $30.
My impulse to that is Pffsssh. Not worth it. Admittedly, while I enjoyed the original Mulan, I don't much care about/for the live-action retellings of Disney movies. Aladdin was so bad (to me…my family liked it; then again, we were at the drive in, so the whole experience was new for them) that I didn't even bother trying on any of the others. (At least with Maleficent it's a different version of the story.) As it stands, though, I'm not a big fan of the idea of Disney Retells™ in the first place, so $30 sounds exorbitant to me. But then I saw a tweet by John Scalzi made me realize that I would never be able to take my whole family of two adults and three kids (though I think my oldest is now the price of an adult? I dunno; it's hard to remember these faded details) to see Mulan for that price. It is way cheaper than a family-night at the theaters. Some of the comments by Scalzi followers on the Twitter thread made sense: Paying the higher ticket prices means more of your money is going to supporting the theater, ushers, concession-stand workers, and other people who need the job. Yes, you do pay more for tickets, but that cost is diffused throughout the operating needs of the theater. In this case, it's pouring $30 straight into the pockets of Disney, with the added $8 per month Disney Plus subscription going along with it. Another comment was that this sort of pricing made it clear that Disney wasn't interested in single-viewer experiences, as a person who's correctly quarantined isn't about to have a watching party at their house. If it's just for a single viewing, single viewer, then $30 is outrageously high. (While some 4K and Blu-ray versions can get to be that high, at least the ability to rewatch the film comes with buying the disc. I'm pretty sure this is a $30 rental.) Scalzi's comment about losing 45 minutes of trailers and ads, though, is a really strong selling point for me in terms of paying for brand new movies in this new format. I have been anti-trailer for many years now, and not having to worry about them any more is appealing to me. First, a bit of background: I'm not a big-time movie goer. I like movies as much as the next person, and I think they're an important part of our societal memories and cultural capital. But in terms of the "theatrical experience", only big-budget, special-effects blockbusters really feel like they're "worth it" in terms of the difficulty of getting to the theater. Until just the past few months, we haven't had an at-home babysitter (my oldest turned 13 during the early stages of the pandemic), so any attempt to see a movie involved finding and coordinating with babysitters, dropping kids off, commuting to the movie theater, and then doing it all in reverse once the film was over. It was a lot of hassle, so only films we really wanted to see in theaters made it worthwhile. Trends in theaters--people acting like it's their living room instead of a communal space, frequent texting, or general discourtesy--made me miss very little when the pandemic swept all aside. But the thing that I really disliked--and still do--are ads and trailers. As far as ads go, I find it insulting that I have paid the cinema company to see the film, only to be barraged with advertisements paid to the theater again. If they did that while the movie was going, people would be absolutely furious. After all, they paid to see the movie, not be thrown advertisements. Yet we're surprisingly quiet about the fact that the only difference is the timing: Before the movie is okay (for some reason), but definitely not during. Amazon does this on occasion with their streaming service and it drives me crazy. We're already paying for the Amazon Prime subscription--or paid for the digital rental--so why am I sitting through a subsidy of a payment plan? If they're getting paid to put in ads, they shouldn't be charging me for entrance, whether that's physical or digital. The much more egregious insult, however, would have to be cinematic trailers for upcoming films. They've been getting worse more and more lately--we're all aware of them, of course, because they're so ubiquitous that they're essentially impossible to miss--and I recognize why they are used and how they're crafted. Doesn't mean I have to like them. I think the best explanation is an illustration: Back in the late aughts, the then-new movie Terminator: Salvation was coming out. Being a fan of the franchise (and eager to see a PG-13 Terminator movie with the missus, because Mormons), I was excited that there was another entry in the cinematic universe. Not only that, but the trailer was pretty cool and it showed some really interesting ideas: What would a person who's part Terminator, part human be like? How would he navigate the world where he didn't fit into either side? Would this Humanator have a soul? (I was teaching Frankenstein at the time, so these questions were more frequently in my head.) If you don't remember Terminator: Salvation or never saw it, that's okay. It wasn't that memorable. What I do remember about the film was how confused I was. Throughout the film, the main character--who, based upon the trailer, was a Humanator--didn't seem to know that he was part machine. In fact, that is the primary mystery of the movie: How did Grimy McManliness survive to this point in time? But it wasn't a mystery for me. I already knew the big twist. This is a fairly egregious example--most trailers aren't quite that bad--but we've all been hoodwinked by the ad and given something different than we expected. On the whole, having a movie for which I pay X amount of dollars shouldn't be spoiled by an ad…whether that be an actual advertisement or a trailer that tells too much. |
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