1769-2016 and All That Jazz

by David P. Gontar (April 2014)

                                        –  Shakespeare

Come, brothers of Stratford, these flocks let us shear,
Which bright as if washed by our Avon appear!
The coolest are they who from fleeces are free,
And who are such trimmers, such trimmers as we?
(England, 22)

Hung be the heavens with black! Yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars

But let us pause to lend Mr. Garrick an ear.

To what blest genius of the isle,
Shall Gratitude her tribute pay.
Decree the festive day,
Erect the statue, and devote the pile?
Do not your sympathetic hearts accord,

While sportive Fancy round him flew,
Where Nature led him by the hand,
Instructed him in all she knew,
And gave him absolute command!

To him the song, the Edifice we raise,
He merits all our wonder, all our praise!
Yet ere impatient joy break forth,
To tell his name, and speak his worth,
And to your spell-bound minds impart
Let awful silence still the air!

Did Shakespeare write for praise?

He that is proud eats up himself.
Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own
devours itself in the praise.
(Troilus and Cressida, II, iii, 152-156)

And what is flattery but the antechamber of pride?

He does me double wrong
That wounds me with the flatteries
of his tongue.
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air.
Through the velvet leaves the wind
All unseen can passage find,
That the lover, sick to death,

Air, would I might triumph so.
But, alack, my hand is sworn
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me
That I am forsworn for thee,
Thou for whom great Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiop were,
And deny himself for Jove,
(IV, iii, 99-118)

The raging rocks
And shivering shocks
Shall break the locks

Shall shine from far
And make and mar
Funny, but pretty awful. Yet David Garrick was not to be outdone in bombast. He echoes the very worst in Shakespeare.

From the dark cloud, the hidden light
Bursts tenfold bright!
Prepare! prepare! prepare!
Now swell at once the choral song,
Let Rapture sweep the trembling strings,
And Fame expanding all her wings,
With all her trumpet-tongues proclaim,
SHAKESPEARE! SHAKESPEARE! SHAKESPEARE!

Let it bear,
The precious freight the envious nations round!

Thou soft-flowing Avon, by thy silver stream
Of things more than mortal, sweet Shakespeare would dream,
The fairies by moonlight dance round his green bed,
The love-stricken maiden, the soft-sighing swain,
Here rove without danger, and sigh without pain,
The sweet bud of beauty, no blight shall here dread,

For the raptures of fancy here poets shall tread,
Flow on, silver Avon, in song ever flow,
Be the swans on thy bosom still whiter than snow,
Ever full be thy stream, like his fame may it spread,

will be the Ex Cathedra [!!] Choir and the Orchestra of the Swan.

Jubilee: The Sequel is sure to reap megabucks for those poetry-loving merchants of County Stratford. Princess Kate and hubby Prince William will be putting in cameo appearances, as flashbulbs pop. Make your reservations early. Our own reservations are on record.

What, then, says our poet of things to come? Do we not whistle in the dark?

These late eclipses in the sun and moon
portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature
Can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship


We have seen the best of our time. Machinations,
hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow
us disquietly to our graves.
(King Lear, I, ii, 101-112)

WORKS CITED:

Ewan Fernie, personal correspondence, September 27, 2013

David P. Gontar, Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review Press, 2013

William Shakespeare The Complete Works, 2d ed., S. Wells and G. Taylor, eds., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2005

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