Open Writing

My old school, the Magnus Grammar School, Newark-on-Trent, was founded about 30 years after William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. "The curriculum, as everywhere else, was Latin at first with a strong admixture of divinity; Greek was probably taught by the middle of the seventeenth century, if not earlier, and mathematics was added about the same time."

"As everywhere else" gives us a clue to the sort of classical education experienced by some of the people who attended the Globe theatre to see the plays of Shakespeare. Others would not, of course, have had that sort of schooling, if they had any schooling at all.

Over 400 years later, the senior English master (the old term was still in use at the time) at the Magnus recognised my interest in language and literature. Most of the boys and quite a few of the other masters disliked him because of his dramatic manner, declamatory style, and sarcastic wit. As for me, well, I was very fond of him and still hold him in deep respect.

When he introduced us to the poetry of John Keats, he read aloud to demonstrate the use of alliteration and assonance. He also showed us how descriptive language could be used to paint a word-picture. Nearly 60 years later, I remember him drawing our attention to lines in "The Eve of St Agnes:
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeleine's fair breast.

He raised a laugh when he pointed out how much more picturesque this was than:
The moon shone through the window
And made red marks on Madeleine's white chest.

It is in this spirit that we should have a second look at some of Shakespeare's poetic language in Romeo and Juliet.
In Act 1, Scene 1, Benvolio is asked if knows where Romeo is. This is part of his reply:
Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the east,
A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from the city's side,
So early walking did I see your son.

Worshipped means welcomed. Drave is the archaic past tense of drive; today we would say drove. The sycamore mentioned here is a species of maple which was introduced to England from the continent. Shakespeare's reference could be the first to appear in print.

Yes, to our numbed ears in the 21st century, this is a long-winded way of saying, "I saw him under the trees before sunrise". However, read it aloud and savour the sheer poetry of the words.

A short time later, Montague says of his son Romeo:
But he, his own affections' counsellor,
Is to himself—I will not say how true—
But to himself so secret and so close,
So far from sounding and discovery,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves in the air
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

In other words, he keeps himself to himself and just won't listen to advice. He suffers from "a mysterious melancholy". There is a beautiful simile in this speech, comparing Romeo to a bud which will not grow and flower because it has been bitten by an envious worm. From the 1300s, envious meant both full of envy and full of ill-will. An envious worm is a malignant worm.

The Prologue to the play does not appear in the First Folio of 1623 but seems to have been incorporated later, perhaps copied from an earlier Quarto edition. It has the immortal words:
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'ed lovers take their life;

Here is real poetry. In the first line, there is alliteration using the initial letter f. There is also a pun. Fatal does not simply mean deadly. Its original meaning was doomed, condemned by fate. And we have a reference to the contemporary belief in astrology, the superstitious forerunner of astronomy, for their fate was influenced by a malignant star or planet's movements.

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These five short essays have comprised just a few discursive personal reflections on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Let's hope that his ideas, insight and contribution to our language do not get bit by the envious worm of electronic non-communication.

© Copyright Brian Barratt 2009

Sources
— Oxford English Dictionary, CD-ROM version 2, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Boyce, C., Encyclopedia of Shakespeare, Roundtable Press/Facts of File, New York, 1990.
Hinman, C., ed., The Norton Facsimile, The First Folio of Shakespeare, Second edition, W.W.Norton & Company, New York, 1996.
Jackson, N.G., Newark Magnus: The Story of a Gift, J. and H. Bell Ltd, Nottingham, 1964
Sharrock, R., Keats: Selected poems and letters, Oxford University Press, London, 1964.