Gravediggers from Shakespeare's Hamlet
—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Photos and Artwork Courtesy of Public Domain
REPLY TO ROBINSON JEFFERS
(HIS PREFACE TO TAMAR, 1923)
I.
With this I agree: verse should be permanent.
On the particulars, I’m not quite so sure.
You note the airplane, as not a fleeting figment,
No crumbling fantasy, but a secure
Mind-occupant: fervid aspiration made
Steel-rigid, fuel-nourished phenomenon forged by will.
The railroad you treat as a flimsy shade,
Ignoring the scars, the mill-rolled duple ill
We thought to gird all the earth with, but for gaps
Great waters forbid we span. Those, we now cross
With fiber-optics, tensed threads, unyielding straps
To free us and capture us, graft gain onto loss,
Addicting us to intimacy, incest:
Is this no primordial dream lodged in our cerebral nest?
II.
Dreams, vulnerable to touch, phantasmagoria,
But the head’s real fingers into the Void can reach
Some infinitesimal distance, as juts of beach
Downslope into frothing tides…Your witness, cyber-emporia.
(HIS PREFACE TO TAMAR, 1923)
I.
With this I agree: verse should be permanent.
On the particulars, I’m not quite so sure.
You note the airplane, as not a fleeting figment,
No crumbling fantasy, but a secure
Mind-occupant: fervid aspiration made
Steel-rigid, fuel-nourished phenomenon forged by will.
The railroad you treat as a flimsy shade,
Ignoring the scars, the mill-rolled duple ill
We thought to gird all the earth with, but for gaps
Great waters forbid we span. Those, we now cross
With fiber-optics, tensed threads, unyielding straps
To free us and capture us, graft gain onto loss,
Addicting us to intimacy, incest:
Is this no primordial dream lodged in our cerebral nest?
II.
Dreams, vulnerable to touch, phantasmagoria,
But the head’s real fingers into the Void can reach
Some infinitesimal distance, as juts of beach
Downslope into frothing tides…Your witness, cyber-emporia.
FROM THE WORKS TO THE MAN,
FROM THE MAN TO THE WORKS
The subsequent steps in Looney’s process [of identifying the true “Shakespeare”] reversed the direction [first, from the works to the man] and worked from the man to the works—a key step because it was one Stratfordians could not duplicate with their candidate.
—James A. Warren, Shakespeare Revolutionized (2021)
J. Thomas Looney reads The Merchant of Venice
For his own teaching of boys; he reads it well
And reads it often. Bassanio, over-generous,
Most free with others’ money, seems to tell
About “Shakespeare” himself. This was no Shylock
Who wrote the plays. Then brush away the mist;
If you want transcendental Etudes, Dreyschock
Is not your pianist: he you want is Liszt.
Looney’s list of traits in Shakespeare leads
To one man; one man only: Edward de Vere.
Now Looney’s after that man, it is not greed
But new eyes: what more’s unsuspected there
In Shakespeare? Search the works again: miasmas
Evaporate. New findings, found by chiasmus.
FROM THE MAN TO THE WORKS
The subsequent steps in Looney’s process [of identifying the true “Shakespeare”] reversed the direction [first, from the works to the man] and worked from the man to the works—a key step because it was one Stratfordians could not duplicate with their candidate.
—James A. Warren, Shakespeare Revolutionized (2021)
J. Thomas Looney reads The Merchant of Venice
For his own teaching of boys; he reads it well
And reads it often. Bassanio, over-generous,
Most free with others’ money, seems to tell
About “Shakespeare” himself. This was no Shylock
Who wrote the plays. Then brush away the mist;
If you want transcendental Etudes, Dreyschock
Is not your pianist: he you want is Liszt.
Looney’s list of traits in Shakespeare leads
To one man; one man only: Edward de Vere.
Now Looney’s after that man, it is not greed
But new eyes: what more’s unsuspected there
In Shakespeare? Search the works again: miasmas
Evaporate. New findings, found by chiasmus.
CAIN’S WORK
I did my best to have the jury find the death of a poor man
whom he [Oxford] killed in my house to be found se defendendo.
—William Cecil, First Baron Burghley*
It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else.
—First Gravedigger, Hamlet
I.
“What if this hand were thicker than itself
With brother’s blood?” King Claudius, at the prie-dieu,
Kneeling.
With genuine feeling,
He feels his remorse lie slowly drying,
But the expression strange, of stabbing, of blood.
Nothing of what he’s done, indeed seen onstage;
Not the hilt-deep plunge that releases a flood
Incarnadined with red, this should not be dyeing
His mind; the image is pure remembrance of rage.
What of the poison poured
Whisperlike into the ear of his sovereign sibling?
Shouldn’t his thoughts run to “leprous distillments” dribbling,
Trickling like lies into “porches of the ear?”
What we have here,
The imagery of intimate stabbing death,
—A paler prefiguration of Macbeth?—
No more resembles its source in the depicted sin
Than a sliced raw gourd
Resembles a hand-crafted mandolin.
This fratricide summoned up by the unroyal Dane
Reconfigured worthy of Cain.
We have clues: the soon-ensuing gamble
Wagered on swords,
The “pass of practice,” the “envenomed stuck”
With point “unbated,” does this not stem from words,
Wounds, episodes, flashbacks fetched from that dark shelf
Deep in an off-balance adolescent self?
Young Edward’s foil, point “foining” without intent
Into Tom Brincknell’s femoral artery?
Geysering crimson; the poor fellow must needs bleed,
No tourniquet now can rescue undercook Brincknell,
Out spouts enough blood for a Caesar—or an inkwell.
II.
Feel pity for Edward? This incident, not that much.
Just hear Prince Hamlet, playing the Vice, coin jests:
The se defendendo that let De Vere off the hook,
Burghley’s white lie black-lettered in Hamlet’s book,
Turned paltering, juggling unworthy a truthful earl,
Much less a prince. Those cynical words,
That “se offendendo,” that “argall,” puns awhirl
In the grave-yawning mouths of the gravediggers,
Transposed from the stab that left a luckless lad fainting,
Reduced to a smear of eventfulness, odd figure,
The picture plane disfigured with a “perspective”
Joke played on the eye, distortion crass as invective
Let lie in the foreground, puddling a somber painting.
By now, have we not left far behind the venomy
Fluid dripped in the king’s ear by Brother Enemy?
*Burghley was still Sir William Cecil at the time of the incident,
in 1567; Oxford was seventeen.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip(s) from Edward De Vere:
So I the pleasant grape have pulled from the vine; And yet I languish in great thirst, while others drink the wine.
* * *
For truth is truth though never so old, and time cannot make that false which was once true.
* * *
I will not give pleasure to Frenchmen!
____________________
Prodigious thanks to Tom Goff, a SnakePal we know and love, for writing to us this morning about other poets we know and love. For more about “se defendendo” and “se offendendo”, see www.shakespeare-navigators.com/hamlet/Hamlet_Note_5_1_9.html/.
Tonight, Sat., 5pm: William O’Daly will be receiving the second annual American Literary Award, curated by the Korean-American journal, Miju Poetry and Poetics, for his poem, “For Neruda”, which first appeared in his chapbook, The Road to Isla Negra (Folded Word Press). The ceremony will include the awarding of two other honors, remarks from the awardees, and readings of the awarded poems. Go to Zoom: us02web.zoom.us/j/9158342147?pwd=U2R0dEdnRFZEU2xJYnF1WkZWeGRSZz09/. Meeting ID: 915 834 2147 (Passcode: 9191).
Also tonight, 6-7:30pm: Placerville’s Third Sat. Art Walk Open Mic at Toogood Cellars, 304 Main St., Placerville. Host: Lara Gularte. Bring a poem or be an audience.
Tomorrow, Sun., 3pm: Lincoln Poets Club open mic with Guest Poet Maria Rosales on Zoom: us02web.zoom.us/j/85962483608/. Meeting ID: 859 6248 3608 (Passcode: 142237). Host: David Anderson.
Winning Writers is an interesting site for writers of all ilk (winningwriters.com). Check out their resources—including articles on scam-busting in poetry contests—at winningwriters.com/resources/category/scam-busting/. Two poetry contests they have pending:
•••Deadline: 10/1/21: Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest ($15 entry fee): Go to winningwriters.submittable.com/submit/58274/tom-howard-margaret-reid-poetry-contest for info on submissions and cash prizes.
•••Deadline: 4/1/22: Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest (no entry fee): Go to winningwriters.com/our-contests/wergle-flomp-humor-poetry-contest-free for info. Yes, cash prizes!—and yes, it’s a long time away, but (1) time flies, and (2) sometimes it’s best to submit early.
___________________
—Medusa
For another take on all this, see
yankeeskeptic.com/2013/11/06/how-a-gravedigger-saved-shakespeare-or-life-is-an-ensemble-performance/.
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