The Case of the Extended Metaphor: An Experiment

Shakespeare’s language, as it is for all poets (or, until the 20^th century, most poets), is predicated on the metaphor, and the extension of a metaphor, otherwise known as the fashioning of a ‘conceit,’ is one of Shakespeare’s natural gifts as a writer, part and parcel of his unique brilliance. When students preparing for the AP Lit exam ask me what they should focus on if confronted with a poem or passage from Shakespeare, I inevitably answer: look for the extended metaphors. Hunt them down. Turn them inside out.

Almost always, particularly in a soliloquy or longer passage of dialogue, the extended metaphor is the engine of the main idea: in the case of dialogue, it may be the connective tissue of the characters’ argument; in the case of soliloquy, the heartbeat of the speaker’s internal conflict.

A cursory analysis of the Sonnets, for example, alerts us to this fact immediately.

Indeed, allow me to risk an experiment. I’ll randomly pick five of Shakespeare’s sonnets and see how often the sustained metaphor arises. (On a side note, I would imagine somewhere on this infinite Internet of ours one could find out how many of the sonnets contain conceit… but I won’t do that search. Let’s just trust to luck.)

I’m going to go to shakespeares-sonnets.com and click on numbers “1-50.” Next, I’ll look on my desk for the first number I see between those numbers… I see… (scans the desk top)… “22.” So, Sonnet 22 it is. It reads:

Sonnet 22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O! therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

Right… Well, unless a case can be made for the ‘heart’ motif, I don’t think we have an extended metaphor here. I would say, however, that the entry and re-entry of the heart of the speaker as well as that of the lover (which, in line 7, is the self-same heart) is an extension absolutely necessary for a true understanding of the poem. But, alas, no unquestionably extended metaphor…

0 for 1.

Next up: something from 51-100… And we have… “55.”

Sonnet 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Now, here’s an example of something more in the way of conceit than the sonnet above, yet still not true conceit. The recurring trope of “marble / stone / masonry” clearly works to establish the basis against which the lover will be judged: the power of art triumphing over the lesser power of time and the works of man. Will you allow me a .5?

.5 for 2.

I must admit at this point I’m not appearing especially water-tight in my argument, but fingers crossed…

Off to “101-154″ and our third pick… “117.”

Sonnet 117

Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all,
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call, 
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear-purchased right;
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
And on just proof surmise accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate;
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue of your love.

This time we do have a solid nautical metaphor in lines 7-8, though, regrettably for my case, it does not resolve into extension. We can argue that there’s a bit of extension, if we assume: “sail” as synecdoche for boat = speaker / “winds” = causes for transporting the lover from the beloved. I think that earns another .5, yes?

1 for 3.

Now, I’ll randomly select a page in the nearest book on my desk… “35.”

Sonnet 35

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That I an accessary needs must be,
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

Though “Roses / canker / bud” brings us to the lip of a metaphorical extension, it doesn’t quite push us over…

But… at last! We do finally have the genuine article. Lines 10-11 (“Thy adverse party is thy advocate, / And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence”) state that the beloved’s legal opponent is also his/her attorney (i.e., the speaker-lover) and against himself the speaker-lover offers a lawful plea of just cause. Arguably, line 9 initiates this conceit with the pronouncement that the speaker-lover ‘brings in reason to your sensual fault’ (probably ‘lust’) as a way of introducing into court the proceedings against the beloved. A very complex bit of extension, to be sure, and not one, I’d bet, immediately graspable to our students. Nevertheless, the dedicated examiner must wrestle with it as well as can be in order to make complete sense of the third quatrain and, therefore, the sonnet itself.

2 for 4.

Finally, I’ll pick another number at random… “123.”

Sonnet 123

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

Well, here we have a rather sparse sonnet for Shakespeare, particularly in the second and third quatrains. There are no legitimately extended metaphors to speak of; there’s actually rather a lot of ‘telling’ as opposed to ‘showing.’ One could argue that “pyramids / dressings” stretches slightly, but I think that itself would be a slight stretch. In the spirit of fair play, I have to award no points.

2 for 5. Final.

I wish I could have lucked out and gotten a greater sampling, sonnets more in tune with Shakespeare’s passion for conceit, but no matter. It would, of course, be an interesting thing to see just how many of the published 154 do, in fact, have clear extension. Just off the top of my head, I can think of the well-known Sonnets 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), 73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”), and 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”). There really must be many more…

 

Teaching Macbeth, Installment VI: Film

In addition to Roman Polanski’s, Orson Welles’, and The Royal Shakespeare Company’s film/video adaptations of the play, another visual interpretation sure to help students better understand dramatic essentials is Akira Kurosawa’s Kumonosu-jô, known in the West as Throne of Blood (1957). Michael Brooke, writing on IMDB, summarizes:

A transposition of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ to medieval Japan. After a great military victory, Lords Washizu and Miki are lost in the dense Cobweb Forest, where they meet a mysterious old woman who predicts great things for Washizu and even greater things for Miki’s descendants. Once out of the forest, Washizu and Miki are immediately promoted by the Emperor. Washizu, encouraged by his ambitious wife, plots to make even more of the prophecy come true, even if it means killing the Emperor…

Toshiru Mifune as Lord Washizu gets the point of the play…

Taking a heavy nod from Noh theatre’s spooky stylizations, Kurosawa presents us with a re-telling that is at once very Japanese and very true to the spirit of the Bard. Toshiro Mifune is epic as the Macbeth character, striding the blast eloquently and with genuine ferocity; Isuzu Yamada as Lady Macbeth couldn’t be more frightening. The third star here is Kurosawa’s camera: objectively theatrical, never intruding upon the emotions of the characters, but framing them instead against the proscenium arch of devastating indoor and outdoor elements. (Film buffs/students: watch for Kurosawa’s constant use of telephoto lenses to create a distancing two-dimensionality.)

This combination of the Shakespearean and the exotic is fruitful for students: it allows them to see those dramatic essentials in starker contrast, plus it gives them the opportunity to witness Shakespeare’s, and the play’s, universality.

Criterion Collection Trailer for Throne of Blood

Teaching Macbeth, Installment V: Writing

Impromptu essays — or, as I call them, IMPs — are the lifeblood of the AP English Lit. classroom. Here’s a rather generic IMP prompt that would do well in conjunction with almost any passage from Macbeth, but which I tend to use for the following three soliloquies (the page numbers are for the Folger edition):

I.v.15-33, p. 31 [Lady Macbeth’s first soliloquy]
II.i.44-61 to “Thus to mine eyes…,” pp. 51-53 [Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger?”]
V.v.22-31, pp. 177-179 [“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”]

If you have multiple sections, it’s a good idea, I believe, to use different passages throughout the day. One never knows how far in advance a student in one of your later sections may have to prepare unfairly if alerted about the prompt by a friend who has just written it in one of your earlier sections. When there’s a grade at stake, this precaution becomes even more necessary…

PASSAGE IMPROMPTU ESSAY

In a well-written, well-structured essay, analyze the following passage from Macbeth and argue how various literary elements (e.g., metaphor/simile, personification, symbol, etc.) work to advance the meaning of the passage. Stay in the back yard of the passage and don’t wander the neighborhood of the whole play. Use embedded quotes. Cite line numbers. Quote multiple verse lines with a forward slash.

Students appreciate the ‘stay in the backyard of the passage’ metaphor; they’re never quite sure, understandably, how much of the whole text they should analyze, how much they actually need to work with. Like grazing cows (another pet metaphor of mine that students seem to enjoy less), students like to wander in their writing and often don’t recall how they got to where they end up by writing’s end. They only know it’s a long way from home. Giving them a specific, colorful direction like this really keeps them focused on the skills and/or content at hand.

Teaching Macbeth, Installment IV: The AP Exam, Q3

Ah, thou open-ended Question 3 of the Exam! (Indulge me in some apostrophe; I’ve been reading the Romantics with my honors sophomores…) How oft have we seen thee reclining innocent beside some sylvan stream… only to have you bite students where it hurts.

Yes, Q3, I’ve wrestled with you in Louisville, scoring thousands of student attempts to tame you with texts from Hamlet to Horton Hears a Who!, typically failing to make even the smallest dent in your armor. On a more personal, less apostrophic-metaphorically mixed note, ever since College Board has been releasing stats on individual sections of the exam, I’ve been faced with the sad fact that my students do far worse on Q3 than Q1 and Q2. Far worse. (The reason, I believe, is their lack of preparation. That deficit of ownership I can’t do much about.)

I’ve written before about the pros and cons concerning using Hamlet on Q3, and here I’d like to give you three past Q3 prompts I’ve taught or assessed with in conjunction with Macbeth. I’ll give you the prompt and recommend some ways they can be of help. (By the way, these are not the only prompts that would work, of course, just a sample set.)

1.  1975, Also. Unlike the novelist, the writer of a play does not use his own voice and only rarely uses a narrator’s voice to guide the audience’s responses to character and action. Select a play you have read and write an essay in which you explain the techniques the playwright uses to guide his audience’s responses to the central characters and the action. You might consider the effect on the audience of things like setting, the use of comparable and contrasting characters, and the characters’ responses to each other. Support your argument with specific references to the play. Do not give a plot summary.

Naturally, an investigation of the setting of Macbeth would yield profitable analysis: the wild heaths, the nighttime courtyard, even the strangely moving Birnam Wood. Also, the comparable characteristics of the Macbeths, their willingness to destroy moral boundaries; the bedeviled unity of the Weird Sisters; the contrasting natures of Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff as mothers (think of the former’s speech regarding the ‘babe that milks’ her!); how the Porter stands alone in “hell” as jestering sentinel. Consider the responses regarding the Macbeths’ reign from the Scottish aristocracy, not to mention the continuing commentary on that same reign by the Macbeths themselves (Macbeth has several moments devoted to the consideration of his monarchy).

Allow me one criticism of the prompt. I discourage my students from ever discussing the role of ‘the audience’ or, what is more typical, ‘the reader.’ Proper close reading, at least as I see it, is primarily distinguished from reader-response criticism by its avoidance of ‘the reader/audience,’ preferring to remain on the page itself and to concern itself solely with that page’s language, as opposed to matters of biography, history, etc. This belief also applies to the other end of the literature: ‘the author.’ No ‘author uses,’ if you please. Stick to the text itself, I say, not the neighborhood of the text or the builder of the textual house. To that end, I instruct them to write analysis like this:

The colloquial diction of Anse renders him a simpleton to the townsfolk. 

Instead of: Faulkner uses colloquial diction to render Anse a simpleton to the townsfolk.

Or: The reader can see that Anse is a simpleton to the townsfolk because of his use of colloquial diction.

In other words (forgive the caps), MAKE THE LITERARY ELEMENT DO THE WORK!

In the above example, “the colloquial diction” is the specific literary element doing the do. It is the subject of the sentence; it is the engine of the doing.

2.  1988. Choose a distinguished novel or play in which some of the most significant events are mental or psychological; for example, awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. In a well-organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action. Do not merely summarize the plot.

There are a plethora of examples to consider in light of this prompt, most obviously the internal agonies of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: the knocking, the shrieks, the dagger, the blood-stained hands, Banquo’s ghost, the sleepwalking, the witches’ visions, and so on. But, one may also investigate less obvious agonies such as the Porter’s or Macbeth’s in his “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy.

3.  2005, Form B. One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. Write an essay in which you discuss how a character in a novel or a drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be sure to demonstrate in your essay how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.

Macbeth’s ‘seeking of power over others,’ his notorious ambition, moves the play forward in terms of its plot, and of course is a major theme in and of itself. A subtle undercurrent, however, that a student could inject into his essay would be the tension between the actual ambition and the agency of fate (embodied by the Weird Sisters), which is the real driving force, the real theatre of Macbeth.

Teaching Macbeth, Installment III: Criticism

Kenneth Muir (1907-1996)

A.C. Bradley is no stranger to these pages (one wonders what he would make of the pages of this thing called ‘the Internet’!). You can find posts concerning his ‘dramatic appreciation’ and his thoughts on Iago here in the tag archives. Bradley’s influence on modern Shakespeare criticism can be debated, and is, but his work will most likely not fade into the archives of the great unknown.

In this second and last sub-installment concerning the criticism of Robert S. Miola’s Norton Critical Edition of Macbeth (the first installment is here), we have not only Bradley but another, less well known Shakespearean of substance, Kenneth Muir. Muir’s most significant position was as editor of Shakespeare Survey, the major journal in the field, from 1965-1980.

I’d like to share with you my summary notes on these two essays. These notes will help any instructor looking to get a handle on this criticism for a writing assignment, lecture, or Socratic Seminar. Links are provided to online versions of the essays, in case you don’t have the Norton.

A.C. Bradley’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” (1904)

1. Like Coleridge: compression and energy and speed, etc., of play
2. “Shakespearean tragedy”
3. Qualities or “small touches” of Macbeth
   1. Darkness
   2. Colour
   3. Imagery
   4. Horror and supernatural dread
   5. Dramatic irony
4. Danger of relaxing the imagination and oversimplifying Macbeth and Lady M. They are a team!
5. The Character of Macbeth
   1. His positive traits: courage, warrior, etc.
   2. Also ambitious
   3. Also the imagination of a poet! Though there are limits…
      1. He’s appalled by his guilt
      2. And by the judgment of heaven
   4. When these feelings vanish, he is brutal
   5. Never confronts the immorality of murdering Duncan
6. Macbeth’s character develops after this murder
   1. Consciousness + Ambition = the death of Banquo (blood will have a blood)
   2. What a change from the beginning of play; nothing eases him but destruction
   3. The evil in his nature is let loose
7. Yet, he doesn’t quite lose our sympathy: there is still humanity in him that realizes the fall and vanity and the tragedy of his story…

Kenneth Muir’s “Image and Symbol in Macbeth” (1966)

1. Spurgeon’s “iterative image” of garments too restrictive
2. Brooks’s right attention to “babes” images
3. Gardner’s concern and how they’re both correct
4. Sickness and medicine images. Contrast between good and evil, light and darkness, and others
5. The vision of blood
6. The iteration of sleep
7. Theme of sleep linked to theme of time
8. Disruption of order through evil, and its final restoration
9. Equivocation and desire/performance
10. Conclusion: critical misreading and the importance of performance

 

Teaching Macbeth, Installment II: Criticism

As I’m sure we all know, the Norton Critical Editions are an AP English Lit teacher’s best friend. Packed with wonderful notes, thoughtful essays, historical materials, these editions are the sine qua non of high school pedagogy, and many, many has been the time that I’ve riffled through a Shakespeare Norton looking desperately for some gloss or critical idea that would lend a more effective charge to my lesson. On a more palpable note, they also have that lovely heft in the palm of one’s hand (not to mention their trade paperback oddness of length) that just satisfies. You know you are in the company of experts.

In its section on criticism, the Macbeth Norton Critical, edited by Robert S. Miola, offers, inter alia, writings by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Thomas de Quincey. I’d like to share with you my summary notes on these three essays. These notes will help any instructor looking to get a handle on this criticism for a writing assignment, lecture, or Socratic Seminar. Links are provided to online versions of the essays, in case you don’t have the Norton.

Next time, I’ll share more of my notes concerning A.C. Bradley and Kenneth Muir’s respective takes on the play.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “On Macbeth” (1808-19)

1. Comparison to Hamlet
2. The rapid movement of the play/absence of comedy (save “disgusting passage of the Porter”)
3. The Weird Sisters as true Shakespearean creation

William Hazlitt’s “Characters in Macbeth” (1817)

1. Shakespeare as “only tragedy-maker”
2. The play as special blend of imagination and history
3. Macbeth driven along by “the violence of his fate”
4. Lady Macbeth’s wickedness
5. Women as manipulators: Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters sandwiching him!
6. Duncan’s character
7. Play as a series of contrasts
8. Character: Richard III vs. Macbeth

Thomas de Quincey’s “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” (1823)

1. Literary criticism as an attempt to analyze sensation/emotion
2. Murder = human nature at its most abject
3. So, Shakespeare must make us sympathize with Macbeth, i.e. seeing the hell within the man
4. The “worlds” idea = the Porter scene as limbo, in effect, between the heaven of free will and the emerged hell of fate. The knocking is the interim, signaling the beginning of the new, worse world.

Teaching Macbeth, Installment I: Writing

Having just finished a unit of Macbeth, I thought I’d share some materials with you over the next few weeks, something I haven’t necessarily done before — something, I feel, it’s high time I do.

Today, a writing prompt for impromptu essay or full-length paper (for my students, it was for what I like to call an “IMP”).

The passage under scrutiny is that classic “fatal vision,” Macbeth’s illusory dagger: in the Folger edition, pp. 51-53, Act II, scene i, lines 44-61 (from “Is this a dagger” to “Thus to mine eyes”). Here’s the prompt question:

In a well-written, well-structured essay, analyze the following passage from Macbeth and argue how various literary elements (e.g., metaphor/simile, personification, symbol, etc.) work to advance the meaning of the passage. Stay in the back yard of the passage and don’t wander through the neighborhood of the entire play. Use embedded quotes. Cite line numbers. Quote multiple verse lines with a forward slash. Remember to carefully pre-write 7-10 minutes. Remember context/thesis in intro.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the “pre-write” time is that time before an impromptu essay in which students gather their thoughts about the passage or poem in question and outline their essay. It’s a crucial period before the actual writing process because it focuses analysis and adherence to the prompt, as well as stabilizing structure, preventing that deathly wandering on the page.

My words to them right before we begin: “Spend that 7 to 10 minutes thinking about nothing but the text in question. Then, spend the remaining time thinking about nothing but the quality of your writing.” As we all know, writing off the cuff is challenging for the most talented of us, so offering them an effective process, a way to manage their time and think through the procedure, is critical.