Samuel Johnson - Prose Stylist

"The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous; yet fame, power, and riches are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependance, and poverty of greater numbers. This universal and incessant competition produces injury and malice by two motives, interest and envy; the prospect of adding to our possessions what we can take from others, and the hope of alleviating the sense of our disparity by lessening others, though we gain nothing to ourselves." - from Samuel Johnson's, The Rambler,  #183

from "Church Going" by Philip Larkin

...A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Mercutio's Curse

Wondering about those final lines of Mercutio...

Help me into some house, Benvolio,

Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses!

They have made worms' meat of me: I have it,

And soundly too: your houses!

What is it about each household exactly that Mercutio's character takes issue with - aside from the fact that their feud got him killed? (Yes, I know I should mention that.) If, for example, the Capulets are demonstrably the more violent, honor-conscious clan (consider Gregory and Sampson at the beginning of the play, the fights that Tybalt starts or brings down upon himself, Papa Capulet's mercurial wrath and rash threats of "disowning" his daughter ("Out, baggage!"), Juliet's willful defiance of  her parents' wishes and fierce denunciation of Paris, the fact that Juliet stabs herself at the end) then the Montagues, their foil, could be described, by contrast, as the dreamy pleasure-seekers,  flighty, fickle, restless, impulsive, intense but not bellicose, hedonists extraordinaire - except for the fateful moment when Romeo is forced, one could say, out of guilt, out of loyalty, to avenge Mercutio's death. (Interesting that he should feel this imperative on a par with his own love for Juliet...) But with Romeo and Juliet paired off so problematically - even from the outset!- (despite our sympathies for their them), is it not Mercutio's role in the play, even if he be ignorant of R&J as a couple, to show Romeo some third-option of comportment, that he himself embodies beyond what is offered by the Capulets and the Montagues,  (mindless honor-seeking/languorous pleasure-seeking) and if so, would not such a path prove somewhat incompatible with these two options?  Mercutio - passionate as he is - seems at odds with where these passions lead. His remedy is humor, ridicule and games,  yet these are not necessarily intended to help him stay out of danger. On the contrary, he relishes his role as gadfly and antagonist. He ends up dueling with Tybalt! And perhaps he IS in love with someone... But, no doubt, he views these involvements as partial and problematic while holding out for something "other" - more thoughtful, more philosophical. This may seem like quite a stretch, but I see Mercutio as the forerunner to Lear's fool - standing apart from the enthusiasms that surround him, but  not entirely free of their influence. His mind remains invulnerable, but alas, not his body.

Emily Bronte - Prose Artist

Emily Bronte

One family - three great prose artists - and one brother. How does that happen?

The Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller

Georg Lukacs' Theory of the Novel

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"The contingent world and the problematic individual are realities which mutually determine one another. If the individual is unproblematic, then his aims are given to him with immediate obviousness, and the realization of the world constructed by these given aims may involve hindrances and difficulties, but never any serious threat to his interior life. Such a threat arises only when the outside world is no longer adapted to the individual's ideas and the ideas become subjective facts - ideals - in his soul. The positing of ideas as unrealizable and, in the empirical sense, as unreal, i.e. their transformation into ideals, destroys the immediate, problem-free organic nature of the individual. Individuality then becomes an aim unto itself because it finds within itself everything that is essential to it and that makes its life autonomous - even if what it finds can never be a firm possession of as the basis of its life, but is [only] the object of a search." - Georg Lukacs - Theory of the Novel

Soothsayer says....

Soothsayer: "Beware the ides of March." 

Caesar: "He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass." (1.2)

               

Portia: "Thou hast some suit to Caesar, hast thou not?"

Soothsayer: "That I have, lady. If it will please Caesar/To be so good to Caesar as to hear me, I shall beseech him to befriend himself."

Portia: "Why know'st thou any harms intended toward him?"

Soothsayer: "None that I know will be, much that I fear may chance. Good morrow to you." (2. 2)

Caesar: "The ides of March are come."

Soothsayer: "Ay, Caesar, but not gone." (3.1.)