"Dost Know This Water-fly?" – Effeminacy in Shakespeare
by David P. Gontar (March 2014)
Not at all.
Other points may be examined.
HAMLET
MARCELLUS
You shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET
Hold off your hand.
HORATIO
Be ruled. You shall not go.
HAMLET
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artere in this body
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
(I, iv, 57-63)
Why to a public count I might not go
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aimed them.
(IV, vii, 16-24)
HORATIO
You will lose this wager, my lord.
HAMLET
I do not think so. Since he [Laertes] went into France, I
have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds.
(V, ii, 155-157)
VIOLA
I will return again into the house and desire some
onduct of the lady. I am no fighter.
(III, iv, 235-236)
Pray God defend me. A little thing would make
make me tell them how much I lack of a man.
(III, iv, 293-294)
i.e., femininity) is apt and used to marvelous comic effect. Prince Hamlet on the other hand possesses an intact manhood, battling with pirates and enraged siblings, with his life in jeopardy on both occasions.
[He] was a man. Take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
(I, ii, 186-187)
HOTSPUR
But I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin, new-reaped,
Showed like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
Out of my grief and my impatience
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!
Was parmacity for an inward bruise,
And that it was a great pity, so it was,
This villainous saltpetre should be digged
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed
So cowardly, and but for these vile guns
He would have himself been a soldier.
(I, iii, 28-63)
eros. (See, e.g., Phaedrus 253d, ff.) Despite being emotionally distraught, in a moment of dramatic lucidity and frank self-revelation, Hamlet details his ideal relations with members of his own sex. It is as far from effeminacy as one might get.
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
flattered?
No, let candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
As I do thee.
(III, ii, 52-72)
HAMLET
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you
make of me! You would play upon me, you would
seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest
music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot
To be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument
you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play
upon me.
(III, ii, 351-360)
Having examined Hamlet and King Henry IV, Part One, it may be well to turn to other moments in Shakespeare in which there are instances of effeminacy and its concomitants. We continue with Antony and Cleopatra.
My Man of Men
From Alexandria this is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
Than Cleopatra, nor the Queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he . . . .
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.
Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
So much as lanked not.
(I, iv, 55-71)
O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
(III, i, 257-278)
MARDIAN
Yes, gracious madam.
CLEOPATRA
Indeed?
MARDIAN
Not in deed, madam, for I can do nothing
But what is honest to be done.
Yet I have fierce affections, and think
What Venus did with Mars.
(I, v, 12-18)
O, see, my women,
O, withered is the garland of the war.
Are level now with men. The odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
(V, 16, 64-70)
I drunk him to his bed,
Then put my tires and mantles on him whilst
I wore his sword Philippan.
(II, v, 21-23)
(I, ii, 70-71)
ENOBARBUS
Your presence needs must puzzle Antony,
What should not then be spared. He is already
That Photinus, an eunuch, and your maids
Manage this war.
CLEOPATRA
And as the president of my kingdom will
Appear there for a man. Speak not against it.
I will not stay behind.
(III, vii, 10-19)
SCARUS
The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,
Claps on his sea-wing and, like a doting mallard,
Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.
I never saw an action of such shame.
Did violate so itself.
(III, 10, 18-23)
for love.
(Asimov 1, 371)
CLEOPATRA
Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought
You would have followed.
ANTONY
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me.
(III, xi, 54-61)
But this is most inadequate, for even if it is true that Antony was under her thumb (and it is), there was no call, no beck from her. This is no soldier obedient to command. We thought to find:
A second Hector, for his grim aspect
And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs.
Alas, this is a child, a seely dwarf.
It cannot be this weak and writheled shrimp
Should strike such terror to his enemies.
(King Henry VI, II, iii, 18-23)
MARTIUS
I sin in envying his nobility,
And were I anything but what I am,
I would wish me only he.
COMINIUS
You have fought together!
MARTIUS
only my wars upon him. He is a lion
I am proud to hunt.
(I, i, 228-236)
MARTIUS
Worse than any promise-breaker.
AUFIDIUS
Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor
More than thy fame and envy. Fix thy foot.
MARTIUS
And the gods doom him after.
AUFIDIUS
If I fly, Martius,
Holla me like a hare.
MARTIUS
Within these three hours, Tullus,
Wherein thou seest me masked. For thy revenge,
AUFIDIUS
Wert thou the Hector
That was the whip of your bragged progeny,
Thou shouldst not scape me here.
(Here they fight, and certain Volsces come
in the aid of Aufudius. Martius fights till
the Volsces be driven in breathless, Martius
following)
(I, ix, 1-13)
MENENIUS
Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.
VIRGILIA
O, no, no, no!
VOLUMNIA
VOLUMNIA
,
But owe thy pride thyself.
(III, ii, 127-129)
VOLUMNIA
I pray you, daughter, sing, or express yourself
I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won
honour than in the embracements of his bed where he
would show most love. When yet he was but tender-
bodied and the only son of my womb, when youth
with comeliness plucked all gaze his way, when for a
an hour for her beholding, I, considering how honour
To a cruel war I sent him,
I
tell thee, daughter, I sprang not more in joy at first
he was a man-child than now in first seeing
he had proved himself a man.
VIRGILIA (to Volumnia)
Beseech you give me leave to retire myself.
VOLUMNIA
Indeed you shall not.
As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him.
Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus:
With his mailed hand then wiping, forth he goes,
Or all or lose his hire.
VIRGILIA
His bloody brow? O Jupiter, no blood!
VOLUMNIA
Away, you fool! It more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba
When she did suckle Hector looked not lovelier
At Grecian sword, contemning.
(I, iii, 29-48)
AUFIDIUS
O Martius, Martius!
Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart
A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter
Should from yon cloud speak divine things
Than thee, all-noble Martius. Let me twine
Mine arms about that body whereagainst
And scarred the moon with splinters.
He embraces Coriolanus)
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
Sighed truer breath. But that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Beside my threshold. Why, thou Mars, I tell thee
We have a power on foot, and I had purpose
Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,
Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
We have been down together in my sleep,
And waked half dead with nothing. Worthy Martius,
Had we no other quarrel else to Rome but that
Thou art thence banished, we would muster all
From twelve to seventy, and, pouring war
Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,
Who now are here taking their leaves of me,
Who am prepared against your territories,
Though not for Rome itself.
(IV, v, 102-136)
See, Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, 1997)
other:
Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
We have been down together in my sleep,
(Dollimore, 220-221)
ULYSSES
The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns
The sinew and the forehand of our host,
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurrilous jests
And, with ridiculous and awkward action,
He pageants us. Sometime, the great Agamemnon,
Thy topless deputation he puts on,
And like a strutting player, whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
He acts thy greatness in. And when he speaks
Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropped
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff
The large Achilles on his pressed bed lolling
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause,
Now play me Nestor, hem and stroke thy beard,
Of parallels, as like Vulcan and his wife.
And then forsooth the faint defects of age
Must be the scene of mirth: to cough, and spit,
And with a palsy, fumbling on his gorget,
Sir Valour dies, cries, O enough, Patroclus!
Or give me ribs of steel. I shall split all
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace extract,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field or speech for truce,
Success or loss, what is or is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.
(I, iii, 142-184)
NESTOR
And in imitation of these twain
Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
With an imperials voice, many are infect.
Ajax is grown self-willed and bears his head
In such a rein, in full as proud a place
As broad Achilles, and keeps his tent like him
Makes factious feasts, rails on our state of war
Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites,
A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint,
To match us in comparisons with dirt,
To weaken and discredit our exposure,
How rank so ever rounded in with danger.
(I, iii, 185-196)
THERSITES
Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery. All the argument
is a whore and a cuckold. A good quarrel to draw emulous factions and
bleed to death upon. Now the dry serpigo on the subject, and war and
lechery confound all.
This line of bombast continues in Act 4.
PATROCLUS
Here comes Thersites.
ACHILLES
How, now, thou core of envy,
THERSITESWhy, thou picture of what thou seemest, and
ACHILLESFrom whence, fragment?
THERSITES
Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.
PATROCLUS
Who keeps the tent now?
THERSITES
PATROCLUS
Well said, adversity. And what need these tricks?
THERSITES
Prithee be silent boy. I profit not by thy talk.
PATROCLUSTHERSITES
Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten
diseases of the south, guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
the like, take and take again such preposterous
discoveries!
[Taylor and Wells provide a longer rant of Thersites from the Quarto:
Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten
diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, loads
eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of
bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter [skin disease],
PATROCLUSWhy, thou damnable box of envy thou, what
THERSITESDo I curse thee?
PATROCLUS
Why, no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson
indistinguishable cur, no.THERSITES
No? Why art thou then exasperate? Thou idle
immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarsenet flap
Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such waterflies!
Diminutives of nature.
(V, i, 3-31)
_______________________________
WORKS CITED
Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy, Duke University Press, 1993
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, Vintage Books, 1991
William Shakespeare Complete Works, J. Bate, E. Rasmussen, The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2007
Hank Whittemore, The Monument, Meadow Geese Press, 2005
___________________
To comment on this essay, please click here.
here.
here.