Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

He is not, however. He is referring to Battista Spagnoli, an obscure Italian Renaissance poet, who used "Mantuan" as his pen name.

Jaquenetta brings Holofernes a poem delivered her by Costard and supposedly intended for her. It is the letter, however, written by Berowne in the form of an eloquent sonnet and intended for Rosaline. Jaquenetta can make nothing of its high-flown style.

Nathaniel the Curate, a humble admirer of Holofernes, is also present, and he reads it. Holofernes criticizes the reading at once, of course, and falls into admiration of the Roman poet Ovid (see page I-8). Quite irrelevantly, he makes use of the poet's name to make a ridiculous metaphor, saying:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 125-27

"Naso," you see comes from nasus, the Latin word for "nose."

In another part of the park, Berowne is still trying to write love poetry and still berating himself for it, saying:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 6-7

This refers to the tragic death of Ajax in madness and frustration, killing sheep under the hallucinatory belief they are his enemies (see page I-110).

He hears someone coming and hides. It is the King, who reads aloud a lovesick sonnet to the Princess, then hides as Longaville comes in to read aloud a lovesick sonnet to Maria, then hides as Dumaine comes in to read aloud a lovesick sonnet to Katherine.

Each one is in love against their original intention and each moves in a simultaneous and symmetrical way. Each one in turn steps forward to announce his discovery of the next and then Berowne steps forward to berate them all in most hypocritical fashion considering his own activity. He affects to bemoan the conversion of serious scholars into moaning lovers and says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 164-69

The contrasts he cites are extreme ones. He pictures Hercules, the epitome of strength and heroism, and Solomon and Nestor, bywords for wisdom in Greek and Hebrew literature, respectively, engage in childish occupations. (This is like serious Navarrese scholars writing love poems.) As for "critic Timon," this is Timon the misanthrope concerning whom Shakespeare was to try to write a play, Timon of Athens (see page I-133) fifteen years later.

But, of course, in the midst of Berowne's self-righteous scoldings, in come Jaquenetta and Costard with Berowne's letter, which they still don't understand. Berowne, to his chagrin and embarrassment, must admit that he too has been writing sonnets.

The others are very naturally quite anxious to turn the tables and they make unsparing (and, by our standards, unchivalrous) fun of Rosaline, who is Berowne's love. Rosaline is a brunet at a time when it was conventional to consider blondness beauty.

The King sneers at Rosaline's blackness (meaning her hair, of course, and not her skin). Loyally, Berowne insists that he considers blackness a sign of beauty, but the King says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 253-54

The phrase "school of night" is a puzzler. Some people think it is a misprint and that what is meant is that black is the "shade" of night.

On the other hand, some think "school" is what is really meant and that this is another of Shakespeare's partisan references. This may have referred to a group of amateur scholars who gathered together in a secret group to study the new astronomy that had arisen out of Copernicus' book in 1543, which held that the Earth moved round the sun and not vice versa.

Shakespeare never accepted this and, in fact, his view of science is always strictly conservative and medieval. The Copernican view was widely held to be against the Bible and religion, and therefore atheistic. The group of scholars would be, then, according to their enemies, a "school of night"; that is, one where devilish doctrines were taught.

Raleigh was supposed to patronize this wicked school, which, of course, gave the Essex faction a handle with which to strike at him.

Once again, he blames the King and the others for even trying to abolish love so that they might study undisturbed. Constant study will wither, while love will supply true inspiration. He says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 301-3

The phrase "Promethean fire" harks back to Prometheus (the name means "forethought"), who was considered, in the Greek myths, to be one of the Titans, the race of divine beings who ruled the universe before Zeus and his relatives (the Olympians) won that rule by force.

In the war between the Titans and the Olympians, Prometheus foresaw that the latter would win and he was careful to avoid joining the other Titans or to do anything that would offend Zeus. He was therefore allowed to retain his freedom when the other Titans were condemned to Tartarus.

Nevertheless, Prometheus was still a Titan and he could not wholeheartedly be a friend of the Olympians. Recently created mankind did not have the secret of fire-which was deliberately withheld by Zeus. Prometheus therefore stole fire from the sun and brought it down to man.

Zeus punished Prometheus for this by chaining him to a crag in the Caucasus where an eagle (or a vulture) gnawed at his liver all day long. The liver regenerated at night so as to be ready for fresh torture the next day.

It is possible to consider Prometheus the embodiment of man's forethought or ingenuity-personified "inventiveness." The fire he brought man might be, symbolically, the light of insight and inspiration and that is what Berowne would mean by "the true Promethean fire."

Berowne's defense of love is in the tradition of courtly love that was developed in southern France in the mid-twelfth century and was associated with the troubadours. Eleanor of Aquitaine (see page II-209) was one of the first great patrons of such notions.

Courtly love had little to do with real passion or with sex but rather presented love as a kind of game to amuse an idle aristocracy, a game which consisted of complex rules of behavior, of love poetry, of exchanges of wit, of idealization of women-of everything but actual contact.

So Berowne speaks in grandiloquent phrases of love as an act of heroic aspiring to idealized woman, saying:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 339-41

For his eleventh labor, Hercules had to obtain golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. The Hesperides were three nymphs who were descendants of Hesperus, the evening star. The name is from the Greek word for "west," since the evening star is always visible in the west after sunset. The Hesperides are thus the individuals to whom the garden belongs, but Shakespeare takes it to be a region in which the garden is located. Of course, Hercules must climb the tree if he is to get the apples, and the valor consists of doing so despite the fact that it is guarded by a fearsome dragon.