The Pleasure of his Company

By Louis Phillips

Louis Phillips, a widely published poet, playwright, and short story writer, has written some 50 books for children and adults. Among his published works are: six collections of short stories – A Dream of Countries Where No One Dare Live (SMU Press), The Bus to the Moon (Fort Schuyler Press), The Woman Who Wrote King Lear and Other Stories (Pleasure Boat Studio), Must I Weep for The Dancing Bear (Pleasure Boat Studio), Galahad in the City of Tigers, and Sheathed Bayonets (World Audience). Hot Corner, a collection of his baseball writings, and R.I.P. (a sequence of poems about Rip Van Winkle) from Livingston Press; The Envoi Messages, The Ballroom in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and The Last of The Marx Brothers' Writers, full-length plays, (Broadway Play Publishers). Fireworks in Some Particulars (Fort Schuyler Press) is a collection of poetry, short stores, and humor pieces. That book also contains his play – God Have Mercy on the June-Bug. Pleasure Boat Studio has published The Domain of Silence/The Domain of Absence: New & Selected Poems, and The Domain Of Small Mercies: New & Selected Poems (2). 

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. Stefan Strozier
• Release date: Jul 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546430469

Book preview

In loving memory of

4 teachers & lovers of Shakespeare:

C. Carter Colwell

Oscar B. Goodman

Sam Stetner

Jack Violi

Bill Herman

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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PART I. from The Shakespeare Columns...............................5

PART II. ESSAYS & ARTICLES......................................51

PART III. THE HAMLET VARIORUM............................60

PART IV. MISCELLANIA..........................................116

PART I:

from The Shakespeare Columns

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(The column –The Pleasure of His Company – for a number of decades was a regular feature in The Shakespeare Bulletin. The following pages are excerpts from that column).

THE HOST & HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.

—Max Beerbohm

NUTRITION NEWS

The Big MACbeth – the hamburger that remains with you tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

ON CALIBAN AND PIG NUTS

"Possible people who have never heard of pig nuts may know the same thing under name, but it is a fair guess that they are not profound students of English literature. Caliban (and therefore Shakespeare) knows all about the tubes of Bunsum flexuosum. ‘I with my long nails will dig thee pig nuts,’ says the befuddled monster in The Tempest as proof of his gratitude for the draughts of wine supplied by Trinculo. Richard Jefferies in 'Wild Life in a Southern Country’ refers to 'the earth nut, pig nut, or ground nut, as it is variously called' – which among other things, answers the inquiry whether it is restricted to northern counties.

"As a matter of fact, in one variety or another it is known all over Europe, and in both Sweden and Holland is generally accepted as edible. One of our own naturalists has remarked, however: Though excellent in taste and unobjectionable as food, it is disregarded in England by all but pigs and children, both of whom appreciate it and seek eagerly for it.

But all this is mere book learning, and from personal experience. 'Miscellany' has no available advice on how and where to look for pig nuts. Perhaps a pig or a child should be consulted.

—Miscellany in The Manchester Guardian (Wed, May l7, 1944).

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THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LINE IN ENGLISH VERSE

According to poet Robert Frost, the most beautiful line in English verse occurs in Hamlet: So have I heard and do so in part believe it.

—Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life. (N.Y. Henry Holt, 1999). p.323.

BUTCHERING THE TEXT

...at the heart of Shakespeare is language – rhythm, stress, meaning. I've been concerned with American actors and audiences getting involved with that language – making it their own, without denying the fact that it is still in verse, still 'Shakespearean.' When I started, there were two ways of doing Shakespeare in America – first, butchering the text, which comes from the method, where 'talkin' well is phony, and second, the watered-down Gielgud style practiced by American actors who went to RADA or LAMDA and came back with English technique. My idea of American Shakespeare is to try to bring the same kind of life and reality to it that you would to a modern play, but doing it through the text.

—Michael Kahn, The New York TIMES (August 22, 1976).

A NATURALIST VISITS ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE

While we are quoting naturalists, we might as well reprint the following excerpts from a letter written in November of l87l by John Burroughs when he went for a brief visit to Stratford on Avon. Burroughs wrote to one of his friends:

‘As the sun was about an hour high I set out for Shatterick (Shottery) to see the house of Anne Hathaway – followed a path that followed hedgerows, skirted turnip fields and cabbage patches and meadows, and crossed pastures to a quaint gathering of low thatched houses. I took a good look at Anne's house, and could easily see the divine William leaning against the door-jamb, or gazing out of the two-by-three window panes.

‘Returning I stepped into the Shakespeare Inn, a small, homely, home-made tavern, and the goodwife brought me some homebrewed, which I drank, sitting by a rude table on a rude bench in a little low room with a stone floor and an immense chimney. The fire burned cheerily, and the crane and hooks called up visions of my earliest infancy. Apparently the house, and the atmosphere of it, and the ways of the inmates, were what they were three hundred years ago.’

—from The Life and Letters of John Burroughs by Clara Barrus. (New York, l968).

WHAT DOUBTS ABOUT SHAKESPEARE'S AUTHORSHIP TELL US

What the doubts about Shakespeare's authorship tell us, first of all, is that people find it impossible to believe in untutored genius. Great poets have to be well born and well educated. They must have aristocratic blood lines and sound classical learning....But under the implied social and intellectual snobbery lies a basic incapacity to understand the workings of the imagination. For what makes Shakespeare supreme, though not untypical among great artists, is his ability to project himself into the minds of people different from himself – kings and commoners, heroes and villains, women and men. This is a faculty of the imagination, and it is no more open to logical explanation than the ability of Mozart to write musical compositions at the age of 4.

—Robert Brustein in REIMAGINING AMERICAN THEATER (Hill and Wang).

ON HAMLET

Are the commentators on Hamlet really mad, or only pretending to be?

—Oscar Wilde

Hamlet is a coarse and barbarous play....One might think the work is the product of a drunken savage's imagination.

—VOLTAIRE

OTHELLO – ODD FELLOW

The popular mind resists meaninglessness; or perhaps it would be subtler to say that it insists upon meaning. A groom with two horses, according to Isaac Taylor, called one of them Odd Fellow and the other Thursday Morning. These names had a meaning to him. To be sure, their true names were Othello and Desdemona; but the groom's mind at once converted these unfamiliar sounds into sounds that made familiar nonsense.

—ISAAC GOLDBERG. The Wonder of Words. 1939.

ESME AND SHAKESPEARE

In David Hare’s Amy Views, the character Esme, performed by Judi Dench in both London and New York, reflects on her stage career: My Shakespeare heroines were not a success. I suffered with a gay Orlando, Amy remembers. Everything was fine when I was dressed as a boy.

SHAKESPEARE IN ADVERTISING

I recently noticed a sketch of Shakespeare holding a turtle and reciting a bit of non-Shakespearean verse called 'O Gallant Knit':

O gallant knit

From nature drawn

That soothes each time

We slip it on,

That hugs like Mom

When we are blue

And hides our

Adam's Apple too...

etc.

This time out Shakespeare is being employed to advertise turtle neck sweaters for