13.SING WITH SHAKESPEARE-7

13.SING WITH SHAKESPEARE-7

John Gilbert painting of  scenes and characters from Shakespeare's Plays, 1849


Marriage & Family

Family has been the foundation of organised life in all forms of civilised societies. There were variations in the details of the arrangement. Under Christian influence, families tended to become nuclear, as their injunction was:

Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." ... He who loves his wife loves himself.

For the Hindus, it was the other way. The young bride was welcomed into the family as the harbinger of fortune and happiness, wealth and welfare- Mahalakshmi. After a certain stage, it was the old father, now grandfather, who had to leave the family, and proceed to the forest! [ Vaanaprastam- retire from active social life] He could take his wife along, or leave her in the custody of his son.

Whatever the difference, marriage and family were sacred institutions. The roles of husband and wife were clearly defined.

source: 1.bp.blogspot.com

 Marriage and family have been terribly impacted by modernity. Marriage has become a civic formality, to  be dissolved at convenience. It is treated as no more than a lifestyle choice. The roles are blurred.

The result is there for all to see: rising divorce rates,(40% to 50% in the US) children with single parents,  unwed mothers,(  In the US, in 1960, only nine percent of children lived in single parent families. Today four out of every ten children are born to an unwed mother.)   teen age pregnancies, ( Over 1100 teenagers, mostly aged 18 or 19, give birth every day in the United States.) live-in arrangements, etc.

 These are forces of social disruption but under the modernist dispensation, no one can raise a voice. Anyone daring to do so would be dubbed 'fascist', 'conservative', 'moral police' etc! This trend is fast catching up in India too.

Enforced vaanaprastam?

In old societies like India, the impact is terrible. The joint family has disappeared under the pressure of modernism. With the girls  getting highly educated and employed, they are quite independent, financially and emotionally, by the time they marry, with their mindset  firmed up. Family now means just the husband and wife.The married sons do not live with the parents,as it is not liked by the girls.  The seniors are left to fend for themselves. In the absence of proper social security, this is a terrible situation to be in.The so called senior homes are pricey. Perhaps, this is a form of "vipareeta vaanaprastam"! 
[ Vipareeta here means disorderly or abnormal.]

Marriage: rules of the game

All organised religions (except Islam) have rather strict rules on marriage, but they have lost their hold over society and state. The Bible says:

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." 

Matthew 19:6.

But courts are freely giving divorce. And it is said that over 60% of applications for divorce emanate from women in the US! It is estimated that about 40% of first marriages are likely to end up in divorce within 10 years!

Islam permits a man to have more than a wife, and is also liberal in granting annulment or "Talaq" in India. It is said that 80% of divorced women in India are Muslims, but figures are disputed. Over all, divorce rates are much lower among Muslims than among other groups in the West.

picture: Al Jazeera

In such circumstances, no one talks of 'responsibility of husbands' or 'wives' duties' in marriage! [ In India, even orthodox circles have stopped talking of  'grihasta dharma' ie duties relating to householders or 'stree dharma' ie duties of women! Divorce rate among educated Hindus seems to be rising.

Divorce rates in Indian cities are increasing at an alarming rate. The number of divorce cases filed in Mumbai in 2014 was 1667 and Kolkata recorded an all-time high in divorce cases in 2014. There was a 350% increase in divorces in Kolkata from 2003 to 2014. Divorce rates in Indian states also mirror this growing trend. Lucknow is known for being a conservative city but still it recorded 2000 cases of divorce in 2014 alone.  The demand for divorce increased so much in Bangalore that 3 more family courts had to be opened in short notice in 2013

From:www.rajeevaranjan.in Accessed 16 April 2017


It is therefore amusing to read in Shakespeare some verses about the duties expected of husband and wife!

 Troilus and Cressida exchange vows to be faithful to each other in the presence of Cressida's uncle Pandarus.

TROILUS

O that I thought it could be in a woman--
As, if it can, I will presume in you--
To feed for aye her ramp and flames of love;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
Or that persuasion could but thus convince me,
That my integrity and truth to you
Might be affronted with the match and weight
Of such a winnow'd purity in love;
How were I then uplifted! but, alas!
I am as true as truth's simplicity
And simpler than the infancy of truth.

CRESSIDA

In that I'll war with you.

TROILUS

O virtuous fight,
When right with right wars who shall be most right!
True swains in love shall in the world to come
Approve their truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath and big compare,
Want similes, truth tired with iteration,
As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre,
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth's authentic author to be cited,
'As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse,
And sanctify the numbers.

CRESSIDA

Prophet may you be!
If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory,
From false to false, among false maids in love,
Upbraid my falsehood! when they've said 'as false
As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,
Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,'
'Yea,' let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
'As false as Cressid.'

PANDARUS

Go to, a bargain made: seal it, seal it; I'll be the
witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin's.
If ever you prove false one to another, since I have
taken such pains to bring you together, let all
pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end
after my name; call them all Pandars; let all
constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids,
and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.

 What an exchange!

TAMING OF THE SHREW







In 'The Taming of the Shrew' we have a hilarious scene. Katherine was the shrewish wife of Petruccio. After she reforms, she is asked by Petruccio to instruct her sister and another woman about wifely duties!

Petruccio

Katherine, I charge thee tell these headstrong women
What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.

KATHERINE

Fie, fie! Unknit that threat'ning unkind brow

And dart not scornful glances from those eyes

To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.

It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,

Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,

And in no sense is meet or amiable.

A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,

Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,

And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty

Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintenance commits his body

To painful labor both by sea and land,

To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,

And craves no other tribute at thy hands

But love, fair looks and true obedience—

Too little payment for so great a debt.

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband.

And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel

And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

I am ashamed that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace;

Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.

Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions and our hearts

Should well agree with our external parts?

Come, come, you froward and unable worms!

In these days of women's lib and feminist interpretation of literature, such words are pure poison!

All marriages do not work:

Henry VIII

Though we have had the ideal of marriage, all marriages have not worked ideally! Marital discord is quite old. But no discord disrupted history as that between King Henry VIII of England and  queen Katherine. The king sought annulment of the marriage which the Pope did not sanction. Henry VIII broke away from Rome and started his Anglican Church, which is the official Church of England still.

The queen did not take it lying down, though. She appeared in the court and appealed against the king's desire for divorce. Here is the statement she made in the court, kneeling before the king:

QUEEN KATHERINE

Sir, I desire you do me right and justice;
And to bestow your pity on me: for
I am a most poor woman, and a stranger,
Born out of your dominions; having here
No judge indifferent, nor no more assurance
Of equal friendship and proceeding. Alas, sir,
In what have I offended you? what cause
Hath my behavior given to your displeasure,
That thus you should proceed to put me off,
And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness,
I have been to you a true and humble wife,
At all times to your will conformable;
Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,

Yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry
As I saw it inclined: when was the hour
I ever contradicted your desire,
Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends
Have I not strove to love, although I knew
He were mine enemy? what friend of mine
That had to him derived your anger, did I
Continue in my liking? nay, gave notice
He was from thence discharged. Sir, call to mind
That I have been your wife, in this obedience,
Upward of twenty years, and have been blest
With many children by you: if, in the course
And process of this time, you can report,
And prove it too, against mine honour aught,
My bond to wedlock, or my love and duty,

Against your sacred person, in God's name,

Turn me away; and let the foul'st contempt

Shut door upon me, and so give me up

To the sharp'st kind of justice. 

           Please you sir,

The king, your father, was reputed for
A prince most prudent, of an excellent
And unmatch'd wit and judgment: Ferdinand,
My father, king of Spain, was reckon'd one
The wisest prince that there had reign'd by many
A year before: it is not to be question'd
That they had gather'd a wise council to them
Of every realm, that did debate this business,
Who deem'd our marriage lawful: wherefore I humbly
Beseech you, sir, to spare me, till I may
Be by my friends in Spain advised; whose counsel
I will implore: if not, i' the name of God,
Your pleasure be fulfill'd!

The queen is a strong willed lady, and she releases some sparks:

Sir,

I am about to weep; but, thinking that
We are a queen, or long have dream'd so, certain
The daughter of a king, my drops of tearsI'll turn to sparks of fire.








Addressing Cardinal Wolsey:

My lord, my lord,
I am a simple woman, much too weak
To oppose your cunning. You're meek and
humble-mouth'd;
You sign your place and calling, in full seeming,
With meekness and humility; but your heart
Is cramm'd with arrogancy, spleen, and pride.

You have, by fortune and his highness' favours,
Gone slightly o'er low steps and now are mounted
Where powers are your retainers, and your words,
Domestics to you, serve your will as't please
Yourself pronounce their office.

 I must tell you,
You tender more your person's honour than
Your high profession spiritual: that again
I do refuse you for my judge; and here,
Before you all, appeal unto the pope,
To bring my whole cause 'fore his holiness,
And to be judged by him.

 In the end however, the marriage was annulled and the queen was also killed.So, it was not easy even for a queen!

 [ The whole matter started because the queen did not deliver a male  heir to the throne, and 7 years senior to the king, she was crossing child-bearing age! This preoccupation with a male issue and heir has been common among all ruling classes. Kshatriya kings were allowed to take many wives for this purpose.]

After all, we have our Rama, king of Ayodhya, who banished Sita, the queen! But it is still held up as an ideal marriage! Because the banishment was in his capacity as the king, bowing to public criticism, but he continued to be faithful to his wife; he did not marry another woman!

Marriage as an institution was enduring, though individual marriages suffered. But we do not judge anything by the bad specimen.Today, the whole institution of marriage is crumbling all over the world! In our preoccupation with petty little things, we are not paying attention to the long term implications of this trend for society as a whole.

Picture: wannemakers.com Thanks.

12. SING WITH SHAKESPEARE- 6

12.SING WITH SHAKESPEARE-6

"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Albert Einstein

Insight of the Rishis

INDIANS  are naturally preoccupied with Immortality. At any rate, this is true of those Indians who still retain their traditional cultural affinities, in spite of nearly two centuries of Macaulayan assault in the name of modern education. This is the result of millennia of philosophical reflection on the mysteries of Time and Life on the part of their Rishis and their Insights. The Indian discovery is that there was not a time when we were not, and will not be! The Rishis called :

शृण्वन्तु बिश्वे अमृतस्य पुत्रा

आ ये धामानि दिब्यानि तस्थुः 

 Shrunvantu Vishve Amrutasya Putraa
Aa ye dhaamaani divyaani thasthu:

 Listen Ye Children of Immortality [Immortal Bliss]  and those occupying the celestial spheres!

The wandering saints and singers, the minstrels of God, spurned fame and fortune in the courts of royals, traversed the length and breadth of the country and brought the message to the common people. Even unlettered Indians [ still untouched by the poison of modernist ideas ] are still imbued with this conviction.

Our present birth is but a link in a long chain. It is said that we are reminded of our past just before our birth by a Divine Presence, and the new born cries at the loss of this vision when he is thrust into this world! And when infants laugh and cry in the cradle on their own for no apparent reason, we believe it to be due to remembrance of some scene from past lives ! This is what we believe; let the modern scientist break his head or pluck his hair!

Mystical Time!

Every great poet who writes of Time is aware of its mystical dimension and connection with Immortality. For the Jnani, there are no artificial divisions of time into the past, present and future. It is an eternal continuity. They live in the eternal present.

We have these lines from Khalil Gibran:

And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?" 

And he answered: 

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. 

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. 

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. 

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, 
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream. 

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. 

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? 

And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? 
But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,

And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

We are all born with some innate sense of our immortal nature but as we grow we forget it in the hurly-burly of the world.  Our hope is that we shall recover it sometime!

Modern or modernist poets have lost this sense of a vision beyond the physical.  Wordsworth asked:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

This question  greatly exercises Shakespeare. He writes about the strong hand or wave of time against which none has power.

Time: its office and glory


Time's office is to fine the hate of foes,
     To eat up errors by opinion bred,
     Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.#

[ #money should not be spent in ways adversely affecting marriage]

Time's glory is to calm contending kings
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
     To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours
     And smear with dust their glitt'rng golden towers.

To fill with worm-holes  stately monuments,
To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient raven's wings,
To dry the old oak's sap and blemish springs,
     To spoil antiquities of hammered steel,
     And turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel.

To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
     To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
     And waste huge stones with little water drops.

[The Rape of Lucrece]

rsc collection

Time does strange things. Great heroes are forgotten, along with  their glorious deeds. No one can therefore rest on his laurels, but continue to work to renew the reputation. This is the message given by Ulysses to Achilles.

Envious and Calumniating Time

Time hath, my lord,
A wallet at his back, wherein he puts
Alms for oblivion, a great sized monster
Of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past,
Which are devoured as fast as they are made,
Forgot as soon as  done.
Perseverence, my dear lord,
Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail
In monumental mock'ry. 
Take the instant away,
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast.
Keep then the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue:if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun run and trampled on.
Then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past,must o'ertop yours.
For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand
And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer.
Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing.
O let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone,desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin-
That all with one consent praise new-born gauds
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt,
More laud than gilt overdusted.
The present eye praises the present object.

[Troilus and Cressida ]

We live in the age of instant celebrities- 'present eye praising present object'! And instant communication brings us worldwide  news of 'heroes' in various fields, so that people with the same interests and inclinations- be it politics, foot-ball, cricket or cinema  instantly band together : "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."! Yet each hero has a very short run! 

Shakespeare reckons only two things to stand against time: for a man to raise a family and get children who will perpetuate his name. And  his verse will stand against time and also make the subject immortal!  

Sonnet 12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst fro heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the waste of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
     And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet 60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before;
In sequent toil all forwards to contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
     And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
     Praising thy worth despite his cruel hand.

Sonnet 65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid,
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
     O none, unless this miracle have might:
     That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

The sonnets are generally regarded as love poems. If we examine the contents of these sonnets, Shakespeare's concern with the question of time and how it snatches away youth, looks, everything, and his engagement with the idea of immortality  are unmistakable.

 Shakespeare shows how time heals some things but also changes things for ever. It takes away everything it gives. Great poetry  can defy time.

Authentic Indian poets have never lost touch with the mystic quality of Time. Gurudev Tagore writes:




Endless Time 

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.

 
There is none to count thy minutes.

 
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.

 
Thou knowest how to wait. 

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower. 

We have no time to lose, 
and having no time we must scramble for a chance.

 
We are too poor to be late.

 
And thus it is that time goes by
while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, 
and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last. 

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut; 
but I find that yet there is time.

Oh, what a beautiful thought!