On With The Play!

 

—Original Artwork by First Nations' People, Canada

—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

THE RAVEN’S ONE WORD MORE

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
                      —E.A. Poe

You’d see his body sprawled, his soul’s outflow
Across this chamber floor? You’d trace the pool
To where it seeped through the boards, or where the fool
Form-fits the Turkey carpet, pressed below
It, boneless and spread? The milksop’s in a grave;
Left tinseled rhymes that pin the blame on me
—As if I’d flapped up from some Stygian cave?
Or from “the mountains of the moon” in free
Glide lighted on the bust of Pallas here?
Because I gently tapped, or roundly rapped
Upon that door, or on his thick skull, fear
Possessed him? Cawing one scant word, I sapped
All vital heat, soul’s life from him? I can
Best cogitate on raven’s-life, bird lore.
What croaks not out remains in my brain-pan.
What business is it of mine, this “Nevermore,”
Which radiant fevered maiden killed his heart?
I squawked one word? A bird am I, not Fate.
It counts much with me bird-pride, stoic art
Lock back of this beak sweet croaks of my lost mate. 

 

 

 

 

 

BAX PORTRAYED*
(color photograph of 1907 by Paul Corder)

I first considered Bax more than a name
Of scant inclusion in some music text
On seeing his youthful photo in the frame
Of Lewis Foreman’s book jacket, unvexed
By brazen-shameless, or by chance, neglect.
That face is as a brandished blade against
Indictments of his Late Romantic sect.
Sharp eyes will have with many a critic fenced.
Proved, as all single combat proves, his worth.
The gray-brown suit, the paleness of his face
Hints little of orchestral color: earth
Tones, pearl-gray sky hues—Irish lilt and grace?
That face, that suit, that tie all harmonize,
Cry, Daring Composer-Poet on the Rise.


*Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, later Sir Arnold Bax
(1883-1953), one of the greatest twentieth-century
composers, also a poet, famous in England but with strong
emotional ties to Ireland. 

 

 

 

 

IMPLICIT SHAKESPEARE

Let your imaginary forces work…

In Kenneth Branagh’s Henry the Fifth, all rise
By protocol, duty, on the king’s first entrance.
This is his audience chamber: but who spies
In one brief look at the film, what’s in this dance,
Near-quadrille, two facing files beside the king,
Inclining their heads in homage to His Grace?
We see all duck their pates—on further viewing,
There’s one exception. Carefully watch Lord Scroop’s
Failure to bow, unease etched on his face.
Catch that, and you sense cups of trouble brewing.
Now Shakespeare nowhere says, All but one stoops.
It’s cleverness in the director, to foreshadow
The arrest of conspirator Scroop, the Traitor scene.
In Hamlet, hints of conscience in the widow
Queen (strewn as if behind a denial screen),
Hints that the second husband killed the first;
Hints, Hamlet glimpses Polonius peeking out
From cover, apparent reason for outburst
At poor Ophelia, target of angry doubt.
Implicit Shakespeare! He leaves workable clay
For you to fill gaps, he will not say you nay. 

 

 

 

 

 

CONFOUNDED TRADITION

So sacred is Tradition with “Shakespeare,”
Deer-poaching, Thomas Lucy, and whatnot,
We seldom disentangle all the gear,
Examine it and see just what we’ve got.
One Reverend Ward thought Shakespeare wrote in Stratford
But has him paid a thousand pounds per year,
Just what De Vere was paid per year, and that toward
Mounting plays. Our lens blurs from a smear
Of myths, confounded social ranks. Again
We read: “Shakespeare,” performing for the Queen,
She drops a glove, to see what he’ll do then.
With instant charm, quite noble-like, serene,
He, in a king’s role, bends, picks up; all suave,
Declaims, “Stoop we to retrieve our cousin’s glove.”


Note: In Eliza’s argot, all of pearls,
“Cousin” is her pet term for favored earls.
Yea, “cousin,” impudent past point of wince
From commoners, is good speech, phrased prince-to-prince. 

 

 

 

 

NEAR MISS

…[A]ccording to the Variorum Hamlet… [G.R. French]
identified, not only Polonius with Burleigh, but even
Ophelia with Lady Oxford. How he missed identifying
Hamlet with Lord Oxford is one of these examples
of the perversity of Fate which seems to have dogged
the steps of Shakespearean research.
                   —J. Thomas Looney 

George Russell French, in 1869,
IDs Sir William Cecil as Polonius.*
And Cecil’s family circle does quite fine
As prototypes in Hamlet. Is it felonious
Or libelous to limn sweet Mistress Anne
As pliant Ophelia? Now add Thomas Cecil,
Spied-on in France, a most headstrong young man
Of “primrose dalliances.” What better vessel
(With cunning brother Robert mixed) to seize
Upon? This rounds out Hamlet’s family unit,
From “tedious old fool” to venomed Laertes.
French misses one point: what good’s this Who’s-Who skit
Tucked into Hamlet—but no parallel prince?
Poor scholars omitting Oxford who don’t wince…


* Sir William Cecil (a.k.a. Lord Burghley),
in French’s Shakespeareana Genealogica.

 

 

 

 

 

TO THE HUNTINGTON!
(c. 1989—a reminiscence)

Oxfordian though I was, a sprout or sprat
Was all I then could claim to be, sincere
In unscholar-like enthusing about De Vere.
Where did I read of a lecture on him, that
To be given by Ruth Loyd Miller? Somehow, go
I did, to the famous Huntington Library.
To hear her, drove all night from Sacramento
Till, worn and fog-slowed, nodding dismally
At the wheel, booked at a Motel Six
Around 2 a.m. Somehow—for such is youth—
Fearful of lateness as of the River Styx,
I slept, woke without alarm clock, reached the place
Where RLM was just then starting her talk.
That sunny Pasadena morning, grace
And wit were in her. My head on the block
If I should nod off, eyelids close, head loll!
Yet who could remain a Lollard, hearing her
Discourse of Oxford’s huge annuity?
Slides helped Ruth Miller for De Vere aver
How “Shakespeare” toiled with great acuity
At shaking dramatic, polemic spears against
The Spanish, yea, the internal English foes
Of Queen and realm. Full-flowing yet condensed,
Her sense of England firm amid pangs and throes,
Her famed command of argument, with punch-line
Concluding, clearly on view. She used, I recall,
The perfect quotation to keep our lunch-line
Thoughts at bay. As if she had let fall
A dangling sword blade on the Stratford case,
Declared Lord Burghley displeased at “Hamlet’s” antics,
Concealing Oxford in each motley trace,
Each deadly-sharp barb hid in sweet semantics:
Polonius to his Queen: Lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen’d and stood between
Much heat and him. The perfect quote to end on;
So Queen Elizabeth did stand between
Her Burghley’s dudgeon and De Vere, defend on,
Keep quarterly pay to him in flow, our queen.
Always a zinger in a Ruth Miller conclusion,
Death to Stratfordians’ myth, did they but know.
Now Miller’s daughter Bonner,* in fine profusion,
Deals such darts. On with the play! The Miller show.


* Oxfordian Shakespeare scholar Bonner Miller Cutting.

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Today’s LittleNip:

Never to have suffered would never to have been blessed.

—Edgar Allan Poe

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Today Tom Goff regales us with his musings on history, some done in smooth sonnets. Thanks, Tom! (And of course Raven is always slinking around, looking for what’s in it for him!)

•••Tonight (Sat. 12/4), 8-9:15pm: Sac. Poetry Alliance’s Four for the Quarter features Judy Halebsky, Wm. O’Daly, and Straight Out Scribes. 1169 Perkins Way, Sac. Info: www.facebook.com/SacPoetryAlliance and scroll down.

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—Medusa

 

 

 

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