Prison, Shakespeare and the Meaning of Life

            The quote that struck me most when I was watching “Shakespeare Behind Bars” this afternoon was when Hal, the inmate who plays Prospero in The Tempest, talks to us about his experience with the program.  “It’s helped me to forgive myself,” he says, “but the self-forgiveness doesn’t seem to be enough.  It’s kind of hollow.  I try to find deeper meaning in my life, but this can’t be it.”

            Just about all the other performers talked about how much the Shakespeare Behind Bars program helped to change their lives for the better.  Hal was the only one who spoke about it as something ultimately unfulfilling.  I was surprised that he said that at first because the parts of the play I saw him perform were really good.  In the context of Hal’s life, however, I begin to understand how play-acting with his fellow inmates could merely serve as a temporary diversion to keep himself occupied.  With the guilt of killing his pregnant wife by dropping a hair dryer into her bath water hanging over his head for decades, a Shakespeare play probably does the same for him as would a Band-aid on a severed limb.

            Hal admits that “It’s helped me to forgive myself” and I can definitely see how that could be.  Taking on a role like Prospero, who has to learn a major lesson about forgiveness, could help someone to come to the same discoveries.  Finding forgiveness for one’s self and one’s neighbor can be extremely healing. 

On the other hand, Hal knows that any amount of genuine forgiveness isn’t enough to redeem him from the harsh reality that surrounds him on a daily basis.  He will spend the better part of his life confined to a prison.  He will never have the kind of opportunities to create meaning for his life like a normal person would in the outside world.  The reality is that he will never have a normal life.  Maybe performing in a Shakespeare play will allow him to forget about his tedious, restricted life for a while, but once the costumes are put away and the handcuffs get snapped back on Prospero’s last lines take on an almost sarcastic tone.

“As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free.”

That’s all fine and good for Shakespeare to say, but from the lips of a convicted murderer it’s an overly simplistic view of the way society actually treats criminals.  Prospero’s plea falls flat on the ears of our criminal justice system. 

He’ll find no “indulgence” from the powers that be,

To set truly penitent murderers free.   

Health as the Greatest Pleasure

   The Utopians’ ideas about pleasure intrigue me.  “To be sure, they believe happiness is found, not in every kind of pleasure, but only in good and honest pleasure. Virtue itself, they say, draws our nature to this kind of pleasure, as to supreme good.” (pg. 561)  These lines caught my attention mainly because I was curious by what standard they determined what was “good and honest” and what wasn’t.  When we’re caught up in any kind of pleasure, we’re inclined to think it’s pretty great.  I find it hard to believe that Utopians could possibly be so rational all the time.

            I was hard pressed to uncover their standard for “good and honest” pleasure, but at the end of the “Social Relations” section, I found this: “…For they are somewhat inclined to think that no kind of pleasure is forbidden, provided harm does not come of it.” (pg. 556)  This makes sense to me, but still, sometimes we discover only in retrospect that one of our seemingly innocent pleasures has caused some unforeseen trouble.  If I was a Utopian, I think I might be slightly paranoid of having fun because I might risk public scorn by accidentally do something wrong.

            In spite of these qualms, I completely agree with the Utopians in their understanding of health as “the greatest of bodily pleasures.” (pg. 565)  Before reading “Utopia” I always valued my health very highly, but I never thought of health as a pleasure before.  More describes it this way: “The second kind of bodily pleasure they describe as nothing but the calm and harmonious state of the body, its state of health when undisturbed by any disorder.” (pg. 565) 

This is such a simple concept, with which I think anyone would be inclined to agree, but our materialistic, consumerist society keeps us so busy hopping from one physical stimulus to the next that we eventually forget the foundation of all our enjoyment in this life.  In our quest for tastes, sights, smells and touches we often neglect the very vessel (our bodies) which allows us to experience anything at all. 

As an illustration, I reference my recent trip to New York City.  On my first day out exploring downtown Manhattan, I spent hours looking at shops, tasting all sorts of food, inhaling all sorts of smells both lovely and foul and buying way too many things that I never knew I needed before I saw them.  I can honestly say I got a lot of pleasure out of the experience, but afterwards my mind felt disoriented, my feet were sore and my stomach ached from too many rich foods.  I had to spend the rest of the day recovering on the couch.  Unlike the Utopians, I neglected the supreme pleasure of bodily health and harmony for scattered sensual pleasures.  To one extent or another, we’ve all done similar things and, according to Utopian logic, squandered one ultimate pleasure for a few minutes of passing sensation.

I’ve been so much more appreciative of my health ever since I read this section of “Utopia”.  Not only is taking our health for granted potentially dangerous to that health, but it also makes us miss out on enjoying the wonderful and perfect way our bodies work and allow us to experience the simple things in the world around us.  We too often wreck ourselves on quests for bigger and better and more when we already have sources of perfect pleasure literally right under our noses and at our finger tips.

Creative Engagement - Utopian Art Gallery

   I've been reading the current discussion going on about the potential for More's "Utopia" to be translated into a play and I'm inclined to think it's possible, but not at all probable.  However, I started thinking about other mediums which would be more condusive to depicting "Utopia".  This lead me to discovering a whole slew of art (paintings and scupture especially) that are entitled "Utopia" or have obvious references to "Utopia".  It's really interesting to see the variety of art that stems from this one concept.  Some are colorful and optomistic while others are extremely macabre and weird.  And,of course, there's everything in between as well.  Every artist has THEIR ideal world. 
   I've posted a few of the pieces that most intrigued me below.  They're not at all famous, but the point is that someone is trying to show us their idea of what "Utopia" is or should be.  My commentary is just my personal interpretation.  I have a lot of fun figuring out what art means.  The stranger and more avant-garde the better, really.  I'd like to invite you to have some fun doing the same.  Do a little searching and add your own discoveries either directly here, or perhaps post the art to your blog and then post a link below this post.  Hopefully, we'll end up with a "utopian art gallery" of sorts highlighting as many incarnations of the concept as possible. 



"Utopia" by Barbara Mendes

   This painting, like Mendes' other work is vibrant and full of life sprouting from practically every crevice.  Behind the main woman in the front, the rectangular gardens remind me of the tidy gardens of the Utopian's in More's book.  I get the impression that Mendes' idea of a utopia would be full of beauty, art and a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.  Also, since the only figures I see here are women, she would probably wan't women to be in charge (most graciously and wisely) of just about everything.

"Communist Utopia" by Tom Hornung

    Definitely dark!  This painting puts me in mind of the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwel. The artist lived for years under a communist regime in what used to be Czechoslovakia and admits on his blog that this influences much of his art.  A "communist utopia" requires everyone to submit to the will of the state "for the greater good" but this requires that the eyes of the government be everywhere and in everyone's business. Suspicion runs rampant (all the eyeballs) and the individual (the lone figure) is cruely suppressed.



"In the Grave of Intergalactic Utopia" by Basim Magdy

    I'm sure you all can find lots of other meanings for this one.  It's modern art and pretty out there, but still, I think, more thought provoking than it is purely strange.  I've always found it interesting that some people are so excited at the possibility of the human race leaving earth, living on other planets and populating the universe.  They don't realise that we're just going to take all of our problems and vices with us.  I think this is at least part of what this peice is trying to say.  For example, if we're tied to our TVs here, we'll probably do the same if we lived on Mars.  What do you think of the cage and the dogfood bowl?  Is this saying we'll become like animals compared to the alien life forms we meet...?




"Utopia" by Gregor Ziolkowski

    This one is a bit harder for me to interpret, but I think that the artist is trying to say that the concept of utopia is just a kind of flimsy poster that we put up to cover over the reality of the world as it is.  The girl in the painting looks ragged and distraught.  She sits in the rubble of the stone wall and looks up at what she thought was the blue sky and finds it torn apart.  Yes, the wall (society?) might be crumbling, but the birds (natural order of the universe?) still find a way to break through the facade and continue on with there existence.  Can you think of a different interpretation?
 

Letter: My First Trip to New York City

Clever Conceits in Donne’s “Elegy 19. To his mistress going to bed”

This poem revels in its magnificent bawdiness and poetical explicitness.  Donne renders this age-old theme of admiring a woman and calling her to bed enthrallingly and entertainingly new through his use of extended metaphor or “conceit.”  Even though we know from the first two lines (“Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy/ Until I labor, I in labor lie!”) that the poem is about the poet calling his mistress to come and have sex with him, we keep on reading because he pours so much lushly descriptive language into every line. 

The poem starts off with a bunch of playful couplet similes describing the mistress’ attire and body with lines such as “Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glistering, /But a far fairer world encompassing” (5 and 6) and “Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals /As when from flowery meads th’ hill’s shadow steals.” (13 and 14)  But these are mere enticing comments compared to the full poetic force of Donne’s conceits that follow soon after his description of his mistress taking off her clothes.

The first conceit compares the experience of caressing his mistress to discovering and conquering a previously undiscovered land:

License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America!  my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
There where my hand is set, my seal shall be. (25-32)

He is incredibly explicit here.  He obviously is having sex with this woman, but that’s not the extraordinary part.  The extraordinariness of this conceit is that he compares having sex to exploring a new country and claiming it for one’s own.  Even now, the metaphor retains its freshness among the million other trite euphemisms and metaphors constantly appearing and reappearing in love (and lust) poetry.   

This conceit is followed almost immediately by another which strangely uses religious references:

Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings, made
For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
 (Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed…(37-41)

                Women, according to the poet, are like religious books made “for laymen.”  They may have “gay coverings” (clothes), but laymen (all men) won’t truly know them unless they are “revealed” (naked).   This very oddly juxtaposes the carnal with the sacred.  I’m sure this wasn’t a poem that Donne talked about very much after he became a clergyman.  I would guess that quite a few of his fellow clergymen would think it profane.  I think, though, that this extended metaphor is very witty.  Donne does an excellent job of displaying his cleverness without distracting us from the main point of the poem.  I would read this one again and again, not because it has any deep truths about life and death as some of his later poems do, but because it’s so full of wit.  It’s impossible to appreciate and enjoy all of it after reading it only once.

Another Exhortation to Make Good Use of Youth

Sonnet 3 reminded me of another, perhaps more famous, poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674), one of Shakespeare's contemporaries:

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME.

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,     Old time is still a-flying : And this same flower that smiles to-day     To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,     The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run,     And nearer he's to setting. That age is best which is the first,     When youth and blood are warmer ; But being spent, the worse, and worst     Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time,     And while ye may go marry : For having lost but once your prime     You may for ever tarry.

Making Use of Youth in Shakespeare's Sonnet 3

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 3 talks about using your youth unselfishly by creating children in your image to go on after you.  “Now is the time that face (the youthful you in the mirror) should form another” the speaker says.  This sonnet caught my interest because it goes so much against what our culture impresses upon us about how to best make use of our youth.  Young people in America are generally told to use their teens and twenties to get an education, have fun and “discover themselves”.  It’s a proven fact that people in our country are choosing to have children later and later in life. 

There is definitely a big difference between Shakespeare’s time and our own on the subject of when (and if) one should have children.  For one thing, back in the 15 and 1600s, people usually lived a good thirty or forty years less than the average middle-class inhabitant of the western world today.  Shakespeare was very much acquainted with death not just as an amorphous poetic idea, but an everyday reality.  For instance, he isn’t squeamish when he talks about dying in Sonnet 71 in quite graphic detail: “…I am fled/ From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.” (lines 3 and 4)  Yuck!

The speaker in Sonnet 3 sees youth has a precious and fleeting thing to be used very wisely and not wasted on selfish pursuits.  Lines 7 and 8 ask the young man “Or who is he so fond will be the tomb/ Of his self-love, to stop posterity?”  In other words, the speaker asks rhetorically, “Are you so self-absorbed that you won’t use your youthful beauty and strength to carry on the human race?  If you don’t have children, you will die alone with nothing but your own narcissism to keep you company.”

“This is thy golden time” says line 12.  That simple phrase taken out of context would be read much differently by the young people of our time.  Our longer life-span and comfortable consumerist society support the pervasive mentality that we have plenty of time to enjoy ourselves now and take on the responsibilities of raising a family later (or not at all).  Unlike the people in Shakespeare’s time, we do our best to forget about death an inevitability.  If we are not confronted with death on a daily basis, why would we see the need to make the most of our limited time?  Why would we desire to create children to carry on after us if we cannot even conceive of a time when we will not be living?  It’s fascinating how much our culture (media, medical advancements, technology, access to goods and resources, etc.) can drastically change how we think about something as basic and essential as having our own children.