Germaine
Greer led a close reading of four of Shakespeare's sonnets. She started
the session by introducing Shakespeare as poet and discussing the printing of
the sonnets. She pointed out that although today he is best known for his
plays, during his life he was famous for his poems, indeed he may have been
quite obscure as a playwright, not an uncommon situation for members of the
profession at the time. He shot to fame in 1593 with Venus and Adonis which
went through at least sixteen editions before 1643. As he wrote the poem in the
vernacular women and slaves could read it, giving him a much broader
readership. His
sonnets were published in 1609 and only thirteen of the original editions
survive. Greer warned against taking the text to be entirely accurate, likening
it to a fossil. Much of this unreliability comes from the bad printing of the
originals, which were hastily and messily produced. In addition, Shakespeare
did not see it through the press as he had with Venus and Adonis.
The
first sonnet to come under Greer's close inspection was sonnet 57. She pointed out
that it begins with a question, as if we have dropped in mid-conversation,
evidence that the sonnets are like mini plays. The tone is domestic,
hinting that the speaker may be a woman. In Elizabethan times women couldn't
follow their husbands unless called by them to do so. Greer
questions whether or not it is slightly over-dramatized and remarks on the
unconventional structure - the two parts of a sonnet are meant to contrast, but
here they do not. She also takes issue with the final rhyming couplet, a common
problem she sees in Shakespeare's sonnets, that they don't quite fit with the
rest of the poem, suggesting that he should perhaps have used the twelve line
form instead.
She
focussed briefly on sonnet 94 which she sees as having a completely different
pace to 57. The subject being of people who manipulate others taking the glory while those who
show their emotions are losers. This she sees as relevant to today, being
particularly evident on social media. Greer concludes her discussion of sonnet
94 by highlighting the similarities between psalms and sonnets in that they are
addressed to someone who is away, who will not hear or respond.
The
final sonnets to gain her attention were 110 and 111. 110 has an air of
cockiness about it, a feeling of the cavalier. The speaker is saying that
by having relations with others they have realised that the subject is their
best love. 111, by contrast, reads more as an apologia in which the
speaker bemoans their lack of integrity and having fallen into what people
think they are.
To
host a close reading with such a large audience is no mean feat but Greer
handles it well, providing an hour of entertaining, engaging thought. She left
us with the challenge to learn the sonnets by heart, a challenge I'm tempted to
take on.
Caitlin
Moran in conversation with Stephanie Merritt:
Caitlin
Moran spent an entertaining hour talking to Stephanie Merritt about her latest
book Moranifesto, which lay the way clear for discussion of pretty
much anything. She gave her opinions on the Internet - an invention that she
sees as extraordinary for its ability to allow people to communicate unmediated
for the first time. She spoke of its benefits of connecting people, reducing
feelings of isolation, and its power to help bring about change. That's not to
say it's not without its problems of course, she admits that it is still a baby
and has its tantrums but that it will mature. She also spoke of the importance
of girls learning to programme. In the digital world it is the language of the
future and if you don't know it you will be excluding yourself.
Talking
of exclusion, she moved on to the narrowing of voices in the media. She decried
the uniformity caused by the current culture of lengthy spells working for
nothing to gain experience, excluding all but those whose families are able to
support them while they do so. She pointed to the loss of libraries in having a
huge impact on the widening of this divide. Before I go off on a vociferous rant
in agreement on the state of the employment market and the crushing loss of one
of the public's most valuable commodities I shall leave you with Moran's
excellent statement - equality is not a luxury, it is absolutely essential for
our happiness and progress.
John
Crace and John Sutherland: a Brontësaurus:
The
end of my Hay experience this year came with John Crace and John Sutherland
portraying the Brontës in very different styles. Crace
performed a short parody of Jane Eyre which drew a fair few laughs
from the audience. Staying with the novel, Sutherland's discussion was somewhat
darker, touching on an aspect of the historical context that had never occurred
to me before. We know, of course, that Bertha is not English, but he goes
further in the thought process by considering where Rochester's fortune
comes from - Jamaica, linked to slavery. Even further still - where does Jane's
eventual inheritance come from? Madeira, again from work reliant on the toil of
slaves. This puts a rather different spin on their 'happy' ending.
In
his hotchpotch overview of select academic thought on the Brontë sisters Sutherland's focus rests predominantly on the
defiant nature of all three. He points to Patricia Beer who highlighted the
defiance of the well-known phrase 'Reader, I married him.' She married
him, not the other way round, not an even 'we were married'. At the time
of publication this would have been a shocking concept.
Emily
is known as of fiery temperament and with little interest in social customs,
but Sutherland claims that what she left in her second novel was so shocking
that Charlotte is suspected as having destroyed it. One can't help but wonder
if given the chance she would have done the same to Wuthering Heights,
as both she and Anne were shocked by the content as they worked on their
novels alongside each other (thank goodness it did not suffer the
same fate!). Her second novel, of which I knew nothing previously,
seems set to remain a tantalising mystery. He spoke of her killing
herself, a questionable assertion, by refusing to eat, that she'd obviously
found something in the world she couldn't cope with.
He turned finally to Anne, the sister so often over-looked in the face of the passionate, unforgettable characters created by Emily and Charlotte. Sutherland claimed that she was the most disobedient of the three, an assertion that sparked questioning murmurs from the crowd. Calmly, he explained that in her final weeks she refused to go to her sick bed but instead demanded that she go to Scarborough via York. Testament to her strength of determination that it was in Scarborough that she spent her final moments, and to Charlotte's charity in burying her there, where she had been happy, rather than bringing her back to lie with the rest of the family at Haworth.
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