Mercy and grace and gravity

[Mark Kohut]

yeahp. reading and rereading Tanner afterwards as I reread most of the
plays. His clarity is as constant as the sun to Richard II.


On Sat, Jul 27, 2019 at 10:14 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "Almost stoic" – that echoes what the great Tony Tanner wrote in his
> preface to the play – and let me again recommend all his prefaces to
> Shakespeare that he completed before his quite untimely death:
>
> It is a long speech and a curious one for a friar, containing not a trace
> or hint of Christian hope, redemption, the soul, the after-life,
> immortality, whatever. It is, in fact, much more in the tradition of the
> ancient Stoics, the overall drift being that, when it comes to life, you
> are better off without it. This is certainly a tenable position; but, for a
> man of God, an odd one to advance. It denies man any dignity and honour,
> and human existence any point or value. It could have been spoken by
> Hamlet, and is in keeping with the bleak mood which often prevails in these
> ‘problem plays,’ but it is hard to see what the Duke-Friar is up to.
> However, that turns out to be true of a lot of what he does.
>
> I never read a wittier explanation of the Stoic's take on life than his.
>
> And Pynchon's disparagement of his early story is still a mystery to me I
> hope to solve before I die.
>
> PS. Claudio's line: 'Ay, but to die, and go we know not where' finds a
> powerful correspondence in the first stanza of Larkin's "Aubade". (And, btw
> Mark, if you can read Measure for Measure you should be able to read PL
> again.
>
>
>
>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 6:04 PM Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I’ve always loved the Duke’s line in Act 3 Scene 1:
>> > “Be absolute for death; either death or life
>> > Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
>> > If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
>> > That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
>> > Servile to all the skyey influences,
>> > That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
>> > Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
>> > For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
>> > And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;
>> > For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
>> > Are nursed by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant;
>> > For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
>> > Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
>> > And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st
>> > Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
>> > For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
>> > That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
>> > For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
>> > And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;
>> > For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
>> > After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;
>> > For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
>> > Thou bear's thy heavy riches but a journey,
>> > And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
>> > For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
>> > The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
>> > Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
>> > For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,
>> > But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
>> > Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
>> > Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
>> > Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
>> > Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
>> > To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
>> > That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
>> > Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
>> > That makes these odds all even.”
>> >
>> > Almost stoic... It reminds me of Rev. Cherrycoke’s intro on Chapter 4 in
>> > M&D: “Had it proved of any help that the Rev’d had tried to follow the
>> > advice of Epictetus, to keep before him every day death, exile, and
>> loss,
>> > believing it a condition of his spiritual world as given.
>> >
>> > I also love the language... very stark and idiosyncratic, a vein Milton
>> > would soon inhabit...
>> >
>> >
>> > Sent from my iPhone
>> >
>> > On Jul 19, 2019, at 3:41 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > We know Shakey's Measure for Measure went deep enough into young Pynchon
>> > that he used a famous line from it for a story influenced/inspired? by
>> it.
>> > What a play, as I reread and it was a youthful fave of mine too. What it
>> > means to be human, argues one reader. A study of evil, says another.
>> > Nihilistic, says Harold Bloom.
>> > A parable of Jesus' mysterious teachings, says another. So many
>> readings of
>> > ambiguity that a famous passage is IN Empson's *Seven Types of
>> Ambiguity. *
>> >
>> > And there is this: a linking of mercy and grace early. Act 2 scene 2.
>> > Isabella
>> > "Become them with one half so good a grace/ as mercy does", in her first
>> > pleading for her brother's life. I might argue P's grace resonates in
>> these
>> > lines
>> >
>> > Angelo, whose blood is snow-broth until he desires the forbidden, who
>> can
>> > spare her brother's life: Act 2 scene 4:
>> > ..."Yea, my gravity/ Wherein--let no man hear me--I take pride, "
>> >
>> > That is all.
>> > --
>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> >
>> >
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>