Don't Send in the Clowns

OK, class, it’s time for a quiz.

What does this picture have to do with Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

You in the back playing with your cell phone—what do you have to say?

Oh, er, that looks like a clown—a woman clown. I don’t think that that has anything to do with Hamlet. I mean, he was a prince, right? And a guy. Not a clown, and not a woman, right?

Well now, take a look at this second picture. I ask the same question: What does this picture have to do with Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

You there, spooning yogurt into your mouth—what do you have to say?

Well [gulp], what he said. That’s a lady clown, not a prince of Denmark.

You two are half right; the first picture is from a magazine advertisement advertising magazine advertisements. It’s from 1970. The second picture is from the front cover of a DVD recording of a 2018 production of Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. 

But maybe, on second thought, both your answers are correct. While the recording is allegedly of Shakespeare’s tragedy, one must wonder what in hell it has to do with the play Shakespeare wrote. [I leave aside for now the issue of whether a woman should play the Prince.] Why is Hamlet made up and dressed as a clown? What in the text signals that? Then again, even if there was clear reason for the Prince to be a clown, why is he dressed in white? Hamlet himself (in Act I, Scene 2) refers to his “inky cloak” and “customary suits of solemn black.” Which is a sign of his continuing mourning for his father. Is the wearing of white meant to be a vitiating or elimination of Hamlet’s deep-seated feeling? 

I have no intention of ever watching the Globe’s production to record other abominations.   

*

Classic theater and opera are unfortunately hostages to directors who harbor IDEAS. These ideas are put to work overriding the intentions of the original creator—playwright or composer/librettist.  

Simon Brett in his 1997 satirical mystery novel Sicken and So Die has landed his fourth-rate actor-hero, Charles Paris, a part in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Unfortunately, the original director succumbs to food poisoning and is replaced by an avant-garde Romanian director, who has an IDEA: the cast will play the comedy nude. Except for the fact that there’s a murder, the book is wonderfully funny and absurd.

Perhaps the most famous 20th century example of a director imposing his IDEA on a Shakespearean play is the case of Peter Brooks’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which appeared in New York in 1971. Brendan Gill, in his New Yorker review, notes that 

And Clive Barnes, who raved about the production in the New York Times [“the greatest production of Shakespeare I have ever seen in my life”], wrote of “an Oberon on a trapeze, a Puck who juggles with plates or dashes across the scene on Tarzan rope or runs on stilts.” [Here is a video of some plate spinning.]  

  

All that was mind-boggling stupidity enough, but perhaps worst of all was having characters on their knees speaking Shakespeare’s great verse affectlessly.

*

Gill was “miserable” during the evening and wondered what Brooks’ intention was.

Mr. Gill, staying the course, had a stronger stomach than me; I walked out very early in the evening and went home to a welcome cup of tea. I figured if I wanted a circus, I would buy popcorn and wait for the elephants.

 

Authentically Fake

Who is Sophie Loren?

Is she the Arabian mistress of an Arabian oil millionaire?

Or is she a Jewish spy?

In 1966, she appeared in two movies, “Arabesque,” in which she was the Arabian, and “Judith,” in which she was the Jewess. (1)

And in the following year, Signorina Loren ascended to the Russian nobility in “A Countess from Hong Kong.”

Back to 1966. In early January, the following advertisement appeared in The New Yorker:

The English theatrical knight Sir Laurence Olivier was to be the Black Moor leader of the Venetian military. Despite some achingly bad reviews (2), Sir Laurence was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards (he didn’t win).

*

Fast forward to the present.

According to the BBC,

The days of "cripping up" - a term disabled actors regularly use to describe those with no physical impairment playing disabled characters - appear numbered now. (3)

This in a report that a disabled actor will take on the role of Richard III in a production of Shakespeare’s play at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The actor selected to play the 15th Century villain, Arthur Hughes, said,

I think a lot of disabled actors will think playing Richard is their birthright.

*

Should homosexual actors think that playing gay characters is their birthright? 

Recently, in the New York Times, Tom Hanks addressed the question “could a straight man do what I did in ‘Philadelphia’ now?” His answer was “No, and rightly so.” He went on to explain:

I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy. It’s not a crime, it’s not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity. (4)

But as The New Yorker recently pointed out, “Last year . . . introduced an octogenarian Hamlet: Sir Ian McKellen.” (5) 

Now, if in the name of “authenticity,” a gay actor—rather than Hanks—should play the part of Andrew Beckett, what “authenticity” are we looking at when it’s acceptable for English gay octogenarian McKellen to play a young heterosexual Dane? Or, as the same New Yorker article pointed out, 

The casting of a female Hamlet . . . is now conventional enough not to raise eyebrows. 

*

Somehow lost in all these “authenticity” debates about casting is the fact that the theater is not about “authenticity”; in its very essence, the the theater is about fakery—the show is all pretense. The actors are not the characters—and the characters are not real. 

The world of the theater is a corrective to the world of life; characters are shot, immolated, poisoned, etc.—and yet everybody lives to take a curtain call. 

In turn, real life is better than the world of art. We feel, we love, we change. We can be “authentic.”

*

Mulling over the problem of “authenticity” in the realm of the the performing arts, we here at drnormalvision have come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve “authenticity” is to have everyone play him/herself. That would place performance beyond the bounds of criticism. The only problem is a major one, however. What we would be left with is a landscape filled with reality shows.

Imagine a world of Kardashian-lites.  

***

(1)  And in “Judith,” Peter Finch plays the head of a kibbutz!

(2)  In The New Yorker, Brendan Gill’s “chief complaint” about the movie was “Sir Laurence’s utterly daft reading of the title role.” (Feb . 19, 1966) 

What Bosley Crowther, in the New York Times, found “most distressing” was “Sir Laurence’s allowing himself to look like a white actor made up in blackface for a minstrel show.” (March 6, 1966)

(3)  https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-61549419

(4)  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/13/magazine/tom-hanks-interview.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share

(5)  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/13/a-hamlet-for-our-time

No Soap

The year 2022 has started slowly for courtroom watchers after 2021 ended with a splash. The biggie in December was the verdict in the sex abuse trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty on 5 of 6 counts, including sex trafficking of a minor. 

I, like many (most? all?) of you, eagerly followed the daily dispatches coming out of the courtroom. The final summings-up by reporters who daily attended the trial indicated that they believed that the jurors had correctly found Maxwell guilty. For example, Naomi Fry in The New Yorker stated, “The government’s case . . . was damning.”* And this was the view of Choire Sicha, who followed the trial for New York magazine:

A full not-guilty slate would have been shattering. What if four women had presented coherent, believable, similar, interlocking stories about abuse that was, at very best, facilitated by Ghislaine Maxwell — and a jury hadn’t agreed she was at fault? Awful.**

My reading of the case agreed.

*

But I have no interest in discussing the case itself here. What I latched onto in Fry’s article was the view of Maxwell’s character Fry determined from observing her courtroom demeanor. Fry cited Maxwell’s “brand of chilly hauteur.”

Maxwell remained sphinxlike throughout the trial, expressing no frailty and certainly no regret. 

And for Fry, worst of all,

[w]hen the jury announced its verdict, Maxwell, who was wearing a black mask and dark clothing, sat very still. According to the Times she took a sip of water and touched her face briefly, before being ushered out of the courtroom. At no point did she betray any emotion.

Sicha called her, “A reactionless Ghislaine Maxwell.”

*

While the Maxwell trial was proceeding in New York City, on the left coast another fascinating courtroom case was taking place: the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing company Theranos, who was accused of fraud. A few days after the New York jury found Maxwell guilty on 5 of 6 counts, Holmes was found guilty on 4 of 11 counts of fraud, not guilty on another 4, while the panel could not agree on a verdict on the other 3 counts.***

While the verdict was being read, the Times tells us, Holmes

sat motionless. Then she gathered her belongings and whispered to her lawyer. She went down the row of family and friends in the court gallery behind her, hugging each one before leaving through a side door.

*

In both cases, the defendant, when found guilty, did not exhibit any emotion—no soap opera histrionics, rending of garments, tears or shrieks. For Fry, Maxwell’s demeanor was a display of what the title of her article called Maxwell’s “relentless ego.” 

This was a woman [Fry wrote] who has long acted, and has continued to act, as if she had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Fry even found fault in Maxwell’s contention that she need not testify, because 

"the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and so there is no need for me to testify."

While we may never know whether that refusal hurt her defense, certainly Maxwell was within her rights to challenge the government to make its case. Perhaps it was legal judgment (or gamble), not ego, that persuaded Maxwell to decline.

*

One who does show his feelings (of grief) is Hamlet. Clad in an “inky cloak” and “suits of solemn black” and emitting sighs and tears, he, nevertheless, asserts that what he is really feeling no one can know: “I have that within which passeth show.” 

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play:

But I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

(Act I, Scene 2)

The lesson that Naomi Fry and others should take away from Hamlet is the old saw “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” The lack of emotional display by Ghislaine Maxwell (and Elizabeth Holmes) was not necessarily due to ego or hauteur (it might even have been stoicism). 

Find the women guilty of their crimes, if you wish, but don’t claim to read people's minds or to determine their inner emotions through their outward demeanor. They may have "that within which passeth show."

***

 *  https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-relentless-ego-of-ghislaine-maxwell

**  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/ghislaine-maxwell-trial-it-doesnt-matter-why-she-did-it.html   

***  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/elizabeth-holmes-guilty.html

(What impressed me about the verdicts in both cases was that the jurors obviously took great pains to consider the implications of each accusation, and did not just toss a blanket guilty or not guilty judgment over the cases. It made me feel good about my fellow citizens.) 

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK, the Prequel

Received a message in the email box today that Disney is planning a prequel of The Lion King. Now let me say first off that “prequel” is one of my most hated words; it ranks with another made-up word, “threepeat,” as a rank abomination. The word I most hate in the English language, though—because of what it sounds like—is “catsup” when used for the red stuff that you pour over your hamburger. It noses out “hashtag” for first place on the ugliness scale.

But anyway, back to “prequel.” It seems that every movie and TV producer is trying to keep their franchise alive by trying it out, no matter how silly it may be in the context of their original show. Example: Endeavour as a prequel to Inspector Morse. How could anyone believe anything other than that Morse was born full-grown as a gloomy middle-aged cuss?

Ruminating on this, I thought I might undertake a new endeavor of my own as a creator of prequels for classic texts. 

Thus we have:

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK, the Prequel

SCENE 1:

[The Queen’s room at Elsinore.]

The King: My prayers have been answered. The Queen has been safely delivered of a son. I shall name him Hamlet, after me. [Turns to Captain Shute.] I will celebrate with my troops. Go, bid the soldiers, Shute.

The Queen [aside]: I would it had been a girl. I’d have named her Ingrid.

SCENE 2:

[A room in the castle. Five years later. Hamlet playing with his toy soldiers. The Jester enters.]

Hamlet: Why do you look so gloomy? You are supposed to cheer people up.

Jester: I lost all my money last night at a game of cards with some of the court musicians.

Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorick.

SCENE 3:

[Two years further on. A hallway in the school. Hamlet walking aimlessly. Enter the Principal.]

Principal: What are you doing here, you young scoundrel? Why aren’t you in your class? Is it 2B or not 2B?

SCENE 4:  

[Ten years later. Ophelia’s room. Ophelia reading a letter.]

Ophelia: Doubt that the ocean is wet.

               Doubt that we never met.

               Doubt that the heaven is high.

               But never doubt that my love will ever die.

[Enter her father, Polonius.]

Polonius: What are you reading, Ophelia?

Ophelia: Oh, just a recipe for Danish butter cookies.

Polonius: Well, as long as it isn’t any of that so-called poetry nonsense of Hamlet’s. In my day we knew how to write—tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Not that mushy June/moon stuff that passes for literature these days. . . . Oh, go into the kitchen and give cook that new cookie recipe. If it’s good, we might be able to put it in tins and sell it. It would be nice to get some new source of income.

SCENE 5:

[Four years later. A tavern in Wittenberg, frequented by university students.]

Students [drinking and singing]: 87 bottles of beer on the wall,

                                                     87 bottles of beer . . .

Hamlet: You know, there’s been one thing that has bothered me for the three years I’ve been here in Wittenberg: Which of you is Rosencrantz, and which of you is Guildenstern?

[Suddenly there enters a messenger, covered in mud from hard riding through the night.]

Messenger: Where is Prince Hamlet? I have come from the court in Elsinore.

Hamlet: I am Hamlet.

Messenger: Sire, I have some sad news for you—your father is dead.

Hamlet: Oh no! I can’t believe it. He was so alive when I last saw him.

Student 1: So sorry for you, Hamlet.

Student 2: He was a goodly man, in faith.

Student 3: He should have died hereafter.

Horatio: Wrong play, Scotty!

[The students all stand and raise their glasses high.]

All: The King is dead. Long live King Hamlet!

[Curtain.]

 

Even More Flags

A scene in a British comedy film from probably the 1950s or ‘60s*: The location is a movie theater (I guess I should write “theatre”) on whose screen the last images of the film are fading away. Suddenly, the patrons jump to their feet and make a mad rush to the exits—until the recorded strains of “God Save the Queen” freeze the less fleet of foot in their tracks.

*

The Olympic games have gone, and with them their usual cornucopia of Kitsch, Nazi-iconography, cheating, biased judging, and out-of-water stupidity (stand up, Ryan Lochte!). With the addition this year of the manufactured outrage at American gymnast Gabby Douglas’ non-placing of her hand over her heart during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”** 

I have watched zillions of international sporting events and observed that members of some national teams all do the hand-on-heart bit, while on other teams, it’s laissez faire, some team members do, others don’t. Same with the singing of national anthems (except for the Spanish teams—there are no words to their national anthem). Not that the more ostentatious displays of patriotism equate to better athletic performance. Joe Hart, goalkeeper of choice for the England national team at Euro 2016, stood out for his boisterous warbling of “God Save the Queen," but his indifferent play at the tournament has led to his being sat down by his club, Manchester City (and quite possibly, by the end of this month, shown—if not rushed to—the door of the club). 

*

Patriotism may (or may not) be “the last refuge of the scoundrel,” as Dr. Johnson proclaimed. But coercive patriotism is the blood sport of nationalistic heresy-sniffers. Consider, for example, the time the Boston police barred one of the greatest of 20th-century composers, Igor Stravinsky, from conducting his arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Carly Carioli relates the story:

During World War I, the Massachusetts Legislature had narrowly passed Chapter 264, Section 9, which prohibits the performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as dance music, as part of a medley, or with “embellishment.” And now the officers were apparently ready to arrest Stravinsky on the spot if the conductor attempted to perform his version of the anthem. “Let him change it just once,” one reporter quoted [Captain Thomas J. Harvey, head of the police department’s “Radical Squad”] as saying, “and we’ll grab him.”
A half-hour before curtain, Boston police officers visited Stravinsky backstage and threatened to remove the sheet music from the music stands.***

Stravinsky bowed to the threat and conducted the Boston Symphony's usual version of the anthem. Carioli continues:

Shortly after the conclusion of the anthem, but before the rest of the program, Captain Harvey and his squad of would-be music critics got up and “stalked out indifferently,” according to the [Boston] Post.

It didn't matter to the radical chasers that there was no official version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

*

I wonder if Stravinsky could have gotten away with conducting his arrangement had he shown up with an American flag pinned to his lapel. Were he around today, he could take advantage of this offer from Fahrney's Pens:

I, myself, will not be enticed. I don't need to wear that pin to be patriotic.

As Hamlet says about external displays of internal feelings:

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show. . .

Act I, Scene 2 [My Emphasis]

Besides, how would it look on my t-shirt that reads: “I Don't Got To Show You No Stinkin Badges”?

***

*The Smallest Show on Earth possibly?

**For the record—I never place my hand over my heart.

***http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/06/30/stravinsky/rfnaZtqjCQXZAobdv7kVkI/story.html

In a Manner of Speaking

In the last blog post, "Faces and Places," I ventured "to slightly revise Hamlet," by writing, "I am native there and to the manner born." It is possible (even probable) that many (if not most) people did not recognize that the one word changed was "there" from the original "here," but thought that the change was to "manner" from "manor." Such is the curse of homonyms--and--more importantly, not knowing the original sources of quotations.

In Act I, Scene 4 of Hamlet, the Prince, Horatio, and Marcellus are on the battlements of Elsinore awaiting (they hope) the re-appearance of Hamlet's father's ghost. In the meantime, below them in the castle, they hear "A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off." Horatio, clearly surprised, asks, “What does this mean, my lord?” Hamlet informs him: 

The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail*, and the swagg'ring upspring reels,
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

 “Is it a custom?” asks Horatio. And with Hamlet’s response Confusion makes his entrance.

Ay, marry, is't;
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

Indeed, a double dose of Confusion, that merry addler of people's brains.


As a pun (one assumes in this case the creators really did know the original), the title of the successful British sitcom To the Manor Born (1979-1981), starring Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles worked perfectly, for the series involved the desire of the previous occupant (now rather impoverished), Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, to regain possession of the manor from the present owner, the nouveau-riche supermarket tycoon, Richard DeVere (original name, Polouvicka). Now a manor is a pretty nice place to dwell in, I imagine (being an American peasant myself), but consider that Hamlet is a prince and calls the castle Elsinore his home (when he is not off studying at Wittenberg). Thus, he's not likely to be calling himself "manor born." 

Recall that Horatio's question was about "custom"; Hamlet's reply is that the wassailing is customary, but that even though he is native to the culture, it is a practice of which he disapproves. To his mind, he says (and here's the second bit of Confusion's mischief),

. . . it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

It's that word "more," which can modify something quantitative or something qualitative. "I caught more fish than you today"--quantitative. "The judge's sentence was more lenient than the guilty party deserved"--qualitative. Hamlet's statement is a qualitative judgment (as we will see in a moment). And the misuse of his phrase arises because people take the "more" as signalling a quantitative observation, rather than a moral judgment. Thus  we get the creeping-along puritanical motorist who's being passed by all other drivers complaining that the speed limit is "more honored (sorry, but as I said above, I'm American) in the breach (i.e., not being observed) than in the observance."


After making the above remarks, Hamlet goes on for twenty-two lines to complain to Horatio how such customs of hard drinking make Danes 

traduc'd and tax'd of other nations;
They clip [call] us drunkards and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform'd at height, 
The pith and marrow of our attribute.

To better explain the origin of the negative reputation of his nation, Hamlet uses the analogy of how individual men--men with “the stamp of one defect,”—are forever branded in the eyes of others by that fault, no matter what “virtues else—be they as pure as grace” they may have. 
 

 *

Back in August, 2011 the blog post entitled "Ask the Wrong Question . . ."** focused on Prof. Joshua Knobe of Yale, a pioneer in the field of experimental philosophy, who had the observation that "people are more likely to assign blame for things that go wrong than to give credit for things that go right" (Stanford magazine)*** named after him--the "Knobe Effect." (Isn't this where we're all supposed to go "Duh"?) The Stanford article (Knobe's an alum) goes on to pose (in paraphrase) some of Knobe's questions ensuing from his "Effect:"

Why should the results of an action have a bearing on intentionality? And when it comes to questions of character, why do we tend to give more weight to negativity? Why does it sometimes happen that a single misdeed in a lifetime of otherwise exemplary behavior can destroy a reputation? 

The article points out that "Knobe has office space in both the philosophy and psychology departments at Yale."

Perhaps if he had space in the English department, he'd have learned that Shakespeare dealt with the issue over 400 years ago.  

***

*"Wassail"-see http://openliterature.net/2011/12/16/word-of-the-day-wassail/

**http://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2011/08/ask-wrong-question.html

***http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=43991

Fancy That!

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

***

A despiser of “this weak piping time of peace . . . these fair well-spoken days,” our first speaker, A, is a distinguished warrior, a nobleman of royal blood, unlike every noble and courtier in the room he has just entered:

Because I cannot flatter and speak fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
I must be held a rancorous enemy.
Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abused
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

*

Speaker B is another man renowned for his military prowess. Though not of royal blood, he is the heir to a substantial earldom. Here he relates his version of an interruption on the field of battle by a courtly messenger from the king:

I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap'd
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home;
He was perfumed like a milliner;
And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took't away again;
Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk'd,
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He question'd me; amongst the rest, demanded
My prisoners in your majesty's behalf.
I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
To be so pester'd with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience,
Answer'd neglectingly I know not what,
He should or he should not; for he made me mad
To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman
Of guns and drums and wounds,--God save the mark!

*

Speaker C is very high up the hierarchal ladder. The previous speaker was “pester'd with a popinjay”; when speaker C is approached by a young courtier, he asks his companion, “Dost know this waterfly?” and then deliberately mimics the “holiday and lady terms” of his interrupter:

Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though,
I know, to divide him inventorially would dozy th'
arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither in
respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of
extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article,
and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to
make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror,
and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.

*

Another military man is speaker D, but he is the equivalent of a modern non-commissioned officer, while the person whose manners offend him is the equivalent of a graduate from Officers Training School:

He takes her by the palm .
. . . Ay, smile upon
her, do; I will gyve thee in thine own courtship.
. . . it had
been better you had not kissed your three fingers so
oft, which now again you are most apt to play the
sir in. Very good; well kissed! an excellent
courtesy! 'tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers
to your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!

*

Speaker E, a relation of the ruling family of the area, despises a certain member of a noted town family:

The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting
fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! 'By Jesu,
a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good
whore!' Why, is not this a lamentable thing,
grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with
these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these
perdona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form,
that they cannot at ease on the old bench? O, their
bones, their bones!

*

Speaker F loyally serves his master, the King; he hates the arrogance and airs of those (noble and otherwise) who abuse the trust of his lord:

Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain:
I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant.

And like speaker C is quick to mock a fanciful mouther of words:

Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity,
Under the allowance of your great aspect,
Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
On flickering Phoebus' front . . . .

***

The identity of the speakers:
A—Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later, King Richard III);
B—Henry Percy (Hotspur) in I Henry IV;
C—Hamlet (speaking about, then addressing Osric);
D—Iago (speaking about Michael Cassio) in Othello;
E—Mercutio (speaking about Tybalt) in Romeo and Juliet:
F—Kent in King Lear, speaking to the Duke of Cornwall.

***

The plain speakers versus the fancy. The blunt, straightforwardness of the former set against the rhetorical flights (indeed excessiveness) of the later. And shown also in the plainness of dress and manners opposed to the peacockery and mannerisms of the fashionable courtiers.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this opposition is the fact that it does not break down into an easy dichotomy of good guys versus bad guys. Look at the plain speakers: Richard III, a usurping, murderous villain; Hotspur, a gallant warrior, but a rebel against the crown; Hamlet, a good guy; “honest” Iago, a treacherous deceiver; Mercutio, a lively, fun-loving good guy; and Kent, an honorable servant of Lear, even when banished by the foolish king.

In a competition between “plain, honest speaking” and affected rhetorical flourishes, we would probably all back the former. But, as we see from Shakespeare’s examples, plainness does not guarantee honesty or honor.

In fact, we need not go back over 400 years for examples of this. Compare two “plain speakers” of about a half-century ago: the honorable “Give ‘em hell” Harry Truman and Richard (“I am not a crook”) Nixon, who resorted to plainness in the “Checkers” speech, which saved his political career (“Well, that's about it. That's what we have and that's what we owe. It isn't very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours. I should say this—that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat”).

Patriotism, as Dr. Johnson so famously proclaimed, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Perhaps the first refuge of a scoundrel (or of many of them) is plainspokenness. It is, of course, the perfect camouflage. And we don’t even have to duck back into the last century for a perfect example of this. The pretense of being “natural,” “real,” “honest” is easy to adopt: drag yourself out of the northern tundra, wink a lot at “people like us” and lie through your teeth (“Death Panels, anyone?).

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It may very well be that the most over-the-top, campy, and affected person in the room could just be the most trustworthy.