On Thursday, I met Jordan C., one of Robyn’s friends from Amherst, for the second time (the first time was at Amherst last fall, when I came to visit for homecoming). Jordan and I went to see Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, which was pure genius. We had dinner in college, and even met with Tony and his friend Ana at the Union Bar later that evening. All in all,  a fun evening…and Jordan even brought Belgian waffles for me, from Belgium. YUM.

The Tuesday prior, Christine, Maggie, and I met with Hillary, Logan, and Morgann at G&Ds on St. Aldates for a goodbye ice cream party. It was sad to see the latter three go, but I’m sure we’ll be catching up in the future, especially since Logan plans to run for President in 2044, haha.

Tomorrow I’m off to Cambridge to visit Talia and Fauzia, which I’m really looking forward to. And then a visiting student picnic, a couple of tutorials, a visit from Aunt Ellie and Uncle Paul, and…home.

Home. It’s become such a tricky word. I feel like I have so many homes now. I used to find the adage “Home is where you are” extremely corny, but I think I’ve finally come to understand it. It’s such an elusive thing. What is home? Oxford feels like home; but so does East Meadow. And Harvard feels like such a home to me. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with having multiple homes.

It really hit me that I’m going “home” this morning, when I shipped my second and last box back to East Meadow. I realized that the box and I will probably arrive back in EM at around the same time. I’m extremely excited to see the entire family, and then to start work in Washington, DC. It’s also cool that Jerel will be joining me for the first week in Washington!

So I’m going to milk Oxford for all it’s worth during this one final week, and I’ll be back in EM a week from today. One week left, and I’ve been here for over 5 months already. Call me crazy, but time really does fly. As I once wrote, time dilates here. It really, really does.

On Tuesday, Logan and the kids from UGA cooked us an AMAZING Greek dinner – spanakopita, greek salad, you name it. It was absolutely wonderful. Afterwards, we hung out around the house, met some more great people, and reveled in the beauty of the UGA House, which is down Banbury Road. It’ll be sad to see them go – they head out on Wednesday, already! Luckily we all have an ice cream date on Tuesday, so we’ll get to see them on last time.

I also want to Stratford-Upon-Avon Monday with Susan, Rory, and Harin to see A Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare). Although AWT isn’t my favorite play, I thoroughly enjoyed the production and found the staging really wonderful. On the way back to Oxford, we coincidentally ran into my Shakespeare tutor, Lizzie, who had just come from the same production. She loved it too, and we spoke a bit on the train ride back about the play’s merits.

As for this coming week, I’ll be continuing my thesis research, as I’ve finally come across a topic that I really love – concepts of mind, body, and soul in medieval medical treatises from the Jews and Muslims in the Islamic Empire. It’s incredible fascinating material, as there is a great deal of religious motivation behind it, but also a number of political and social agendas to the medical manuscripts from the era. I’m truly enjoying analyzing the primary documents, which makes me think that I’ve finally struck gold and found the right thesis topic for me.

On a sad note, I leave in TWO WEEKS from today. That’s insane! But I’m looking forward to my summer job, so it’s all good.

In the mean time,  since I’m finished with my tutorial work, I’ve been keeping busy with other activities. For one, thesis research has already consumed my life. I’m still trying to narrow down my topic choices a bit, but I’m very interested in how medical decentralization has occurred in the information age. Here’s a short paragraph that I wrote trying to describe my interest:

“Patients Without Borders: The Decentralization of Medical Authority in the Information Age”

Over the past decade, there have been fundamental shifts in the flow of medical information in the United States. With the onset of internet phenomena including open innovation and the open-sourcing of ideas, medical knowledge has moved from the hands of a limited number of physicians to many others – and, often, to the patients themselves. With this decentralization of medical authority, it has become more difficult to define the notion of the medical “expert”: who controls available knowledge for its quality, as well as the epidemic spread of uninformed, unproved, or disproved data? Patients’ perceptions and awareness of their own illnesses have been altered by the underlying increase in availability of information and misinformation. As such, the doctor-patient relationship has changed in modern America. This project will examine the transmission of health-related information to patients, physicians, and researchers in the information age. Growing internet-aided collaboration, in its creation of an increasingly collective knowledge base, has challenged the notion of individual contribution in a field whose “gatekeepers” had previously valued medicine’s prestige derived from exclusivity and inaccessibility to the general public. Understanding the redistribution of medical knowledge touches on many aspects of the post-modern scientific boom: debates over information rights, the role of health policy in shaping the United States’ international health agenda, the very definition of a “research institution,” the emergenic properties of group thought, and indeed, the inclusion – or perhaps even inevitable exclusion – of developing nations at the global forefront of research. With the reallocation of medical knowledge also comes the risks associated with self-diagnosis, and consequently, the question of how much information is “too much”. The story of health care in the digital age calls for careful assessment of players on both the small-scale, in the doctor-patient relationship, and the large-scale: between “knowers” within our nation, and even between developed and developing regions.

Anyway, it’s still pretty early, so I can change the topic if need be. The problem is that there are SO many topics that interest me…at least I have the Bodleian Library at my disposal for the next few weeks to try to find some good primary sources.

The past few days have been Summer VIIIs, the big end-of-the-year regatta held here in Oxford in which the different colleges compete against each other. Teddy Hall did really well, with the Women’s First Team maintaining Head of the River and the Men’s Second team getting blades (for bumping on all days of the regatta)! Yesterday was the really big day, in which basically the entire population of Oxford went down to the boathouses to cheer on their teams, have some BBQ, listen to music, etc. It was a ton of fun – I’ve never seen that area so crowded before. Luckily, the weather has been in the mid-70s and sunny lately.

I’ve also become addicted to the TV show ‘Arrested Development’ lately. Sigh. So hilarious…must…not…feed..the habit..

On Friday, Ben, Carolina, and I went to a lecture called “Physics of the Impossible” by Michio Naku, a Harvard graduate (Leverett!) who was a co-founder of the string theory field. While the talk was interesting, I wish Naku would have gone into a bit more depth with the actual science (calculations, experiments, etc.) rather than the popular science aspect of it all. Oh well. At the end, we got to meet him, which was great considering he was somewhat of a childhood hero.

Yesterday, we also had lunch with Andrey, Christophe, and Yasmin, who was visiting from Malaga, Spain, where she is studying abroad. It was great to reunite everyone. I feel like I know half of the Amherst population at this point. Some of us also went for high tea on Thursday, including Julianne and her friend Beth from Villanova. It was a lot of fun, and again, the weather only helped matters.

Tomorrow, I’m going to see ‘A Winter’s Tale’ in Stratford-Upon-Avon, which should be fun. I’m also eating dinner with some friends I made who are here through the University of Georgia. One of them, Logan, is Greek and apparently a really good cook, so he’s cooking for all of us. And then, on Friday, off to Scotland!

This past Friday was also the Oxford University Orchestra concert, for which I played the cello. The concert was a great success. We played Poulenc’s Gloria, Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. Not one, but TWO people fainted – one audience member, and one choir member. But other than that, the concert went off without a hitch. I had a number of fans  from Teddy Hall come to watch (thank you!), as well as some new friends – Logan, Morgann, and Hillary – who attend the University of Georgia but are doing a “Maymester” here in Oxcord. I’m sad that there won’t be any more rehearsals or concerts this term for us, but I’m looking forward to taking lessons this summer with Ms. Laurien Laufman in Rockville, MD.

And, other than that, things have been pretty typical! It’s great to live a settled lifestyle here, but I look forward to new adventures in Scotland and the Lake District in the next couple of weeks!

Hast though, the master-mistress of my passion’ (Sonnet 20)

Discuss representations of the female/male body in Sonnets and/or Venus and Adonis.

Often broadly classified into two distinct categories – the “Fair Youth” sonnets, addressed to a young boy whose beauty the narrator admires, and the “Dark Lady” sonnets, which recount the narrator’s love and likely affair with the so-called “Dark Lady” – Shakespeare’s sonnets, by virtue of such cataloging, beg a gendered reading of their rhetoric. Narrating through an older speaker named “Will,” Shakespeare’s ambiguous relationships towards the subjects of his affection have caused a great deal of critical contention regarding not only the precise nature of Shakespeare’s sexuality, but also Shakespeare’s complex notions of human adoration, desire, and creation. Critics largely disagree on the extent to which Shakespeare upholds a true gender binary between the male and the female. While some, such as James Schiffer, hold that “male and female bodies are cathected quite differently in these poems…mapped onto a gender binary presented as incontrovertible” (Schiffer 442), others, such as Stephen Greenblatt, argue for a more ambiguous categorization of gender in The Sonnets: “… the knowledge that enables one to understand the monstrous conjunction in one individual of the male and female sexes [as in The Sonnets] is the identical knowledge that enables one to understand the normal experiences of sexual pleasure…’” (Greenblatt in Bate 91). Like Greenblatt, Belsey asserts that “Shakespeare disrupts the sexual differences with almost peevish insistence, again and again” (Belsey in Stapleton 271-272).

Upon close examination of Shakespeare’s sonnets, it becomes ever more apparent that the question of which critical interpretation is more valid than the other is one without a true resolution; Shakespeare deliberately writes the poems in such a way that they are dependent on readership to give them meaning – that is, Shakespeare invokes the reader to actively apply concepts from smaller rhetorical scales to larger spectra of meaning. The notion of gender is indeed dependent upon our own readings of The Sonnets. Shakespeare infuses his sonnets with the concept of “relational gendering,” or a comparative, rather than absolute, gender spectrum that depends more on a reader’s comparisons of language from the poems than on an inherent sense of the male versus the female that arises from typical societal conventions. Throughout The Sonnets, Shakespeare makes a physical gender binary quite clear as he explores the typical motifs of the male and female bodies, representing their physicalities in a way that readers might have read in the Petrarchan love sonnets. However, Shakespeare parodies Petrarch’s contributions by enacting an emotional gender scale that is far more ambiguous than the physical binary, thus using spiritual and emotional similarities between the two sexes to render superficial the physical distinction between male and female. Moreover, Shakespeare’s poems rely on active readership to relay this concept; as readers, we are cued to utilize smaller rhetorical tools to understand the larger framework of gender in the entirety of The Sonnets. Just as Vendler asks of self-worth in the poems, “Does it lie in the self, or in the world’s opinion of the self?” (Vendler 53), so too are we forced to confront the gender binary as a primarily physical construct that depends on “the world’s opinion” to uphold the emotional binary – and when this emotional binary breaks down, as Shakespeare “disrupts the sexual differences” on the spiritual level, we are privy to a world in which the notions of human love and desire are almost impossibly complicated.

The nature of Shakespeare’s emotional gender system is best viewed comparatively, in light of the physical gender binary that the author upholds in his sonnets. In his Fair Youth sonnets, Shakespeare reinforces the male physicality of the object of his affection. For instance, the narrator admits that the boy is unable to bring the narrator physical pleasure, as he is physically capable of pleasing a woman, thus implying the presence of male genitalia: “…And for a woman wert though first created, / Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting, / And by addition me of thee defeated / By adding one thing to my purpose nothing” (20.8-12). The speaker blames nature for the part with which she has “pricked” the fair youth, and emphasizes that the fair youth was made for a woman through alliteration and assonance – “woman wert” and “wrought,” for instance, as well as “a-doting,” “addition,” and “defeated.”  Moreover, the word “for” stands out because it is out of meter, and adds an extra syllable to what otherwise might have been a line written in iambic pentameter; this further highlights the speaker’s contempt at the fair youth’s male physicality. However, the primary way in which Shakespeare stresses the fair youth’s male physicality is, ironically, by ascribing him feminine characteristics. Stapleton, discusses “Shakespeare’s decision to define the subjectivity of a masculine addressee with ‘feminizing’ language’” (Stapleton 274) in his criticism of The Sonnets. Yet his discussion of gender subjectivity, in addition to his assertion of Shakespeare’s purposeful use of panegyrics, fails to distinguish the physical form from the emotional. Moreover, it does not relate the comparative nature in which such “feminizing language” is used. By relating the fair youth to a woman, and then lamenting the fact that he is not actually female, Shakespeare draws attention to the fact that the fair youth is physically male. As readers, we are thus thought to think of the fair youth as male in comparison to the female that he (regrettably, to Will) is not. Will speaks, “A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted / Hast though, the master-mistress of my passion; / A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted / With shifting change as is false women’s fashion” (20.1-4). Repetition of the phrase “a woman’s” serves to contrast the fair youth’s feminine qualities with his male physical gender. The notion of the “false women’s fashion” is also significant here because this is precisely what the fair youth is to Will: a male individual whose feminine features are false to his true gender.

Shakespeare, unlike his use of the male traits in comparison to female ones in the Fair Youth sonnets, uses feminine tropes in his Dark Lady sonnets that are both bawdy and generally reserved for the female body. The speaker refers to the dark lady’s breasts[1] in Sonnet 130, stating, “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun” (130.3), defining the lady’s feminine attributes using comparisons to nature – first, by referring to nature in a high, practically divine register, and then bringing his mistress down to the earthly level in his rhetoric, and even literally in a later line: “My mistress when she walks treads on the ground” (130.12). The two verbs next to each other, in this case, juxtapose the notions of “walking” and treading”; while walking implies a typical step, treading connotes a much heavier step, which again brings the mistress farther down to earth than a goddess. Similarly, Will references the dark lady’s ability to please him, which resonates with the fair youth’s inability to do so: “If thy soul check thee that I come so near, / Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will, / And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there; / Thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfil” (136.1-4). In this case, Will puns on his own name, with the word “will” (both capitalized and uncapitalized) taken to mean wishes, sexual desire, futurity, testament, a reference to the speaker, and even to Shakespeare himself.  Because the dark lady is capable of sexually fulfilling Will by “great receipt” (136.6), she is physically contrasted with the fair youth who is incapable of pleasuring Will in the same way. Quite simply, she bears female genitalia and is thus gendered physically female.

Numerous critics have argued that Shakespeare utilizes a gender transitivity that masculinizes women and feminizes men. Greenblatt writes that, “By incorporating the tone…its lightness of touch and its delight in the charms of androgyny, Shakespeare…celebrates sexuality even as it is a disturbing exposure of the dark underside of desire” (Greenblatt in Bate 92). Greenblatt asserts the androgyny of both the fair youth and the dark lady in Shakespeare’s sonnets – but Greenblatt fails to separate the notions of physical and emotional gender, as Shakespeare does in his sonnets. A more apt description of androgyny may have been the emotional androgyny that arises in The Sonnets, compared to the physical binary that is established through tropes and motifs of the male and female bodies, as well as through physical comparisons that demonstrate the ability or inability of the subject to sexually fulfill Will.  After all, an emotional binary is not as firmly established as a physical binary is in these poems; even if a critic were to argue that a physical binary is not in place, they depict love scenes in which the emotional binary between male and female is even less well-established than the physical one – regardless of agreement or disagreement over physical distinctiveness between the genders. Emotional or spiritual gender ambiguity is found in Sonnet 54, in which Will speaks to the fair youth, “And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, / When that shall fade, by verse distils your truth” (54.13-14). Will’s assertion in the rhyming couplet signifies that the speaker relies on verse to distill the truth of the young man whose beauty will ultimately fade with time. Importantly, the speaker splits the youth’s qualities into one of outward demonstration and one of inner passion – “beauteous” the former, and “lovely” the latter – to demonstrate the separability of the physical from the emotional. Emotional ambiguity arises here because the fair youth’s lovely interior, which seems almost frail, is later matched against his spiritual power: “So true a fool is love that in your will, / Though you do anything, he thinks no ill” (57.13-14). The fair youth’s power over the speaker, who refers to himself as a “slave” (57.1), contrasts with the youth’s inner delight. His emotional ambiguity, though, is composed of both internal and external elements.

Although his internal emotions are ambiguous to the speaker, his external emotions are also ambiguous in relation to the dark lady. In a powerful resonance between the fair youth and the dark lady, Shakespeare writes The Sonnets in such a way that the external aspects of the two figures’ emotions are illustrated as quite similar. Will requests the fair youth to refrain from being self-willed, commanding, “Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair / To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir” (6.13-14). The imagery of “[making] worms thine heir” is powerful given the prior sonnets which evoke the fair youth’s potential to create human progeny, which are more typical heirs. Will tells a similar story of his dark lady mistress: “And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee, / Perforce am thine, and all that is in me” (133.13-14). Here, Will indirectly requests that the dark lady “be not self-willed” by implying that his own will is inside of her (“pent in thee”) and thus should be considered. This physical internalization of the speaker is quite powerful; in addition, the resonance with Will’s command of the fair youth is potent both because the statements come as couplets at the ends of their respective sonnets and also due to the fact that Will’s similar requests of both speakers indicates a sense of emotional ambiguity that is far less clearly defined than the physical distinction between the two figures. And the most powerful connection between the dark lady and the fair youth is, of course, their literal union.[2] Furthermore, the dark lady, like the fair youth, has internal emotional ambiguities. For instance, the dark lady’s emotional and moral character is called into question when Will states, “That she might think me some untutored youth / Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. / Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young…” (138.3-5). In this case,  repetition of the phoneme “Un-“ brings with it a negative connotation of the dark lady’s emotional outlook; she is portrayed as a figure who views Will in a pessimistic, off-putting light. The dark lady and fair youth are thus joined on the outside, having similarly androgynous emotions, and jointed on the inside in their ambiguous, or even contradictory, emotional states, thus bringing the extent of emotional ambiguity between the two figures – male and female physically, but perhaps indistinct emotionally – in a full circle. Just as Shakespeare writes in the line, “In our two loves there is but one respect” (36.4), that there can be a singular, underlying androgyny to an outward binary is a key analytical notion in approaching The Sonnets.

In Reading Shakespeare’s Will, Lisa Freinkel offers a potential way to reconcile the rift between the physical existences and spiritual presences, or emotional elements, of Will’s objects of desire. The potential for time to threaten both physical and spiritual survival, according to Freinkel, may help to bridge the gap between these two distanced forms of being. To Freinkel, it is more significant that “In this world the flesh no longer bears the spirit.” (Freinkel 165). Whereas Freinkel’s critical thought clearly entails a sense of a detachment of the physical from the emotional, Shakespeare’s text is vaguer about the relationship between the two. Unlike the distinctive, easily-defined world that Freinkel reiterates, the space found in these poems is one in which readership is of utmost importance. Just as Vendler argues that self-worth derives from the world’s opinion of the self in this poetry, the relationship between the physical gender binary and the more ambiguous emotional singularity, as depicted through the fair youth and the dark lady, depends on the “world’s opinion” – but as opposed to Vendler’s case, where it comes from Will, the speaker, the world’s opinion is our own invoked readership in this instance. Luckily, Shakespeare guides our role in active readership by engaging us at several points, as if he directly asks us to answer the question he himself poses regarding the relationship between physical and emotional gender. He writes, “What’s in the brain that ink may character / Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? / What’s new to speak, what now to register, / That may express my love or thy dear merit?” (108.1-4); Will, as the speaker, demonstrates the relationship between his own emotional character and his physical gender. He wonders what thoughts he might record or express that would more fully reveal his love for the fair youth. In doing so, he reveals that for himself, emotion is an internalized aspect of personality that can be externalized through speech, record, or writing – just as he does in these sonnets. The relationship between the emotional and the physical, then, is one of inherent, innate detachment that has the potential for attachment, but only if the figure-in-question desires the attachment to be made. This motif continues throughout, as Will recounts, “O me, what eyes hath love put in my head, / Which have no correspondence with true sight!” (148.1-2). In this case, the eyes, which are physical elements, are detached from the emotional feeling of love, causing the speaker to lack “true sight.” By ending the sonnet with an exclamation point and by using apostrophe, Shakespeare allows these lines to even further emphasize the lamentability of such detachment. The poems demonstrate that the physical and the emotional are disconnected, thereby justifying Shakespeare’s revelation of a physical binary, in contrast to emotional union between the physically male and female.

Shakespeare is thus able to write of a world in which human love is complicated because outward physical appearances do not always match the underlying emotional instincts of their characters. As Greenblatt writes, “Union is an enduring reminder of the creative potential of sexuality” in The Sonnets (Greenblatt 92). While he refers to the sexual union of two humans in love, the same phrase may very well apply to Shakespeare’s sonnets themselves, in which union – or, perhaps more aptly, Shakespeare’s discovery of the disunion between outward and inward realities – enables Shakespeare to explore the notion of gender as both an inborn trait (physical) and a social construct (emotional) through representations of the male and the female. Shakespeare’s “creative potential” has been sparked by the very considerations of traditional union. By preserving physical gender whilst maintaining the ambiguity of emotional gender, Shakespeare depicts human love in neither a homosexual or heterosexual way, which remains a heated debate amongst critics. He relates love, instead, in the context of an emotional bond – a bond that can transcend the physical distinctions that cage the soul.

[2] Refer to Sonnet 42, for instance: “That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, / And yet it may be said I loved her dearly” (42.1-2), in which the fair youth “hast” the lady with whom Shakespeare loves – presumably, the dark lady of the later sonnets.

This past week, I finished all of my work for my primary tutorial…for the remainder of the term. This means that I have two essays left to do for the entire term, over the course of the next four weeks. Considering that one is already half-written (or at least outlined), this is basically nothing. It makes me extraordinarily happy, since it means I’ll have a ton of time to explore during these final weeks here in wonderful Oxford.

Besides doing that massive quantity of work, I also did a few other things this week:

1) Christ Church concert (which, unbeknownst to us concert-goers, was actually a mass. lol.)

2) Punting AGAIN – I’ve managed to hone my punting skills and am now actually pretty decent.

3) High Tea at The Rose with Ben, Yvee, and our new friend Kristen from Yale (who also knows our friend Christine from Yale), among others

4) Oxford Philomusica concert, which I went to with Ekim and Christine. We happened to meet three really cool study abroad students from the University of Georgia. They invited us for dinner any time at the UGA house on Bambury Road. Will probably take them up on that, haha.

Oh, anyway, about the concert itself. The orchestra played Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony (which was actually quite predictable, considering I knew it), Bruch’s Violin Concerto (generally among my favorite pieces, but I disliked the soloist…), Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (meh) and a world premiere. Generally, I’m skeptical of modern music, and tend to be a bit biased in my dislike of it. BUT this was a total exception! It was the premiere of Nimrod Borenstein’s Big Bang and the Universe, and it was surprisingly amazing! Definitely want to hear it again soon. It wasn’t as modern as many of the other modern pieces I’ve played or heard; it was almost like a combination of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. They say that the best composers mimic other composers, stealing their music’s best elements. Definitely feel like this was true here. I look forward to hearing about what should be a long-loved career for Borenstein.

5) Croquet. So, Christine, Tony, Ben, and I are on a team for the Teddy Hall charity cup. Having never really played croquet before, we received a lesson from Andrew Bambury, which was awesome. I never realized that croquet was so strategic…I always kind of thought you just hit the ball through the hoop and went around in a circuit. As it turns out, this is a major oversimplification. I look forward to more croquet in the future. Oh, and the best part is, we were supposed to play against another team that afternoon for the quarterfinals, but the team forfeit. We would have lost because that team is amazing, but now, we get to move onto the semifinals. Unclear why I’m so excited about this. But, as I’ve discovered anyway, croquet is more fun than I thought.

6) Angels and Demons. Not much to say except this: decent but not great, wonderful CGI/graphics, and definitely much, much better than The Da Vinci Code. Still, nothing to write home about.

7) Last but not least, my fellow English students and I went to the Globe Theatre in London and were groundlings at a performance of Romeo and Juliet. Overall, it was a lot of fun to be a groundling, and the performance went quite smoothly. I was unimpressed by Romeo, a bit more impressed than expected with Juliet, and thought the awards for best performances went to Nurse and Mercutio. Luckily, it didn’t rain for more than a couple of minutes, so we stayed dry (and fairly warm) despite the lack of ceiling.

Anyway,  that’s about it! Stay tuned for more coming your way in the future.

“We were not born to sue but to command” (RII, 1.1). What is the relationship between inherited and earthly power in the history plays?

 Word Count: 2.497 Words

             Literary critic John R. Elliott, in History and Tragedy in Richard II: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, notes that “…this particular history play can be distinguished from the other history plays because it contains an ulterior political purpose,” which he goes on to define as the demonstration of Bolingbroke’s ascension to the throne and the conflict between Richard II and Bolingbroke over the kingship (Elliott, 265).  But is Elliott’s assertion that Richard II is wholly different for its political motivation entirely correct? In fact, it clashes with C. Mitchell’s notion of Henry V as a “historical play with a political impetus…a play defined by its politics more than its history” (Mitchell, 100). Elliott’s and Mitchell’s statements are at odds: while the former claims that Richard II is utterly different from any other history play for its political purpose, the latter argues that Henry V, too, is a historical play with a political drive. If we complicate each critic’s arguments by determining the relationships between varied types of power, and ultimately, how power shapes both politics and history, then the critics may indeed enter into an agreement that not only are both history plays driven by political circumstances, but the politics are drawn from the relationship between inherited and earthly power.

            In his history plays, Shakespeare grapples with different kinds of power to demonstrate that political leaders often justify their own actions based on authority and supremacy derived from varied sources, including bloodline, divine right claims, and popularity among the common citizens. In Richard II, the title character holds inherited power through his bloodline, but muddles it by declaring his own divine right to rule. He both reinforces his own divine right to rule and has it reinforced by other characters throughout the play. When he learns of Bolingbroke’s plans to stage a coup, he speaks, “Not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed king…The breath of worldly men cannot depose the deputy elected by the Lord” in reference to his divine right to rule (Richard II, 3.2.50-53). Here, Shakespeare utilizes alliteration in the phrase “rough rude” to highlight Bolingbroke’s lowliness compared to Richard II’s “anointment;” liquid plays an important role in these metaphors, as the oil that anoints Richard II to the throne contrasts with the rough, untamed liquid that defines Bolingbroke and his actions. Yet Richard II’s divine right to rule – certainly an element of power that the ruler believes to be inherited, but in actuality, is not as unambiguously inherited as his own blood – is muddled with his primary form of inherited power: his bloodline. In the early acts of the play, Richard II makes it clear that his family’s blood is sacred, and that he rules through the power of inherited blood; he tells Mowbray, “…Were [Bolingbroke] my brother, nay, my kingdom’s heir, as he is but my father’s brother’s son, now by my sceptre’s awe I make a vow such neighbour-nearness to our sacred blood should nothing privilege him…” (RII, 1.1.116-120). Clarifying that his own blood is sacred, but also invoking the fact that Bolingbroke, while a member of his family, is not a direct heir or nor a member of the bloodline that could give him power, Richard II foreshadows the division between himself and Bolingbroke. Using the phrase “father’s brother’s son,” Richard II rhetorically distances himself from Bolingbroke; in addition, the iambic meter of the phrase gives it rhetorical emphasis. It becomes evident later on that this division between Richard II and Bolingbroke is as significant as the language signifies in this instance.

Using these forms of inherited power, Richard II justifies his lack of concern for the English commoners. Richard II’s inability to relate to the common folk invokes his loss of power in the earthly realm, and Shakespeare demonstrates through this that inherited bloodline power, especially when it is unnaturally merged with other forms of power such as the divine right to rule, cannot stand alone; it requires earthly power in the form of public support to maintain the kingship. Richard II’s belief that he can maintain his inherited power without public support, or earthly power, is evident when he affirms, “What reverence [Bolingbroke] did throw away on slaves, wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles…as ‘twere to banish their affects with him” (RII, 1.4.26-29). Referring to commoners as “slaves,” Richard II denounces Bolingbroke for his desire to earn their respect – ironic, considering Bolingbroke earns his populist power this way. The phrase “wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles” uses repetition to lower Bolingbroke to the level of the craftsmen of whom Richard II speaks. In fact, it is by lowering himself to this level that Bolingbroke is able to gain the populist power that ultimately overshadows Richard II’s inherited power. As Elliott points out, it is “Bolingbroke’s ability to speak with those of the middle and lower classes that allows him to take the throne” (Elliott, 265). Although this is true, it can be furthered by stating that it is not only Bolingbroke’s ability to speak with the commoners, but also his ability to relate himself to them – remember that Bolingbroke, like a common criminal, is banished from the kingdom – that earns him his earthly power.

Bolingbroke, unlike Richard II, claims neither divine right nor inherited power, instead utilizing his political savvy and intellect to appeal to the middle and lower classes; in due course, Bolingbroke’s populist power enables him to gain the throne. The ability to relate to one’s subjects is established by Shakespeare as a key defining characteristic of earthly power, and just as one character’s lack thereof causes his political downfall, another character’s aptitude enables his political triumph. Bolingbroke’s power, as bloodily as it is earned, brings with it the hope for a more outright voice on the behalf of the commoner. Bolingbroke “… [paid] his courtship to the common people” (RII, 1.4.22-23), as observed by Bushy, Bagot, and Green immediately prior to Bolingbroke’s exile. Scrope tells Richard II that when Bolingbroke returns to England, “Boys with women’s voices strive to speak big, and clap their female joints in stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown” (RII, 3.2.109-111), litotically describing the commoners who support Bolingbroke in order to make Richard II less worried of Bolingbroke’s popular power. Bolingbroke’s power is unambiguous; it is clearly populist and brings with it no elements of divinity and no element of bloodline inheritance (though he has the blood of the royal family, he is not in the direct bloodline). Moreover, York warns Bolingbroke not to presume too much of his power – “Take not, good cousin, further then you should, lest you mistake the heavens are over our heads” (RII,  3.3.16-17) – and Bolingbroke agrees, demonstrating that in contrast to Richard II, he lacks the arrogance and hubris that would place him at the level of the gods. Bolingbroke’s gain of Richard II’s lost throne results from his simplistic, unambiguous view of his own power: by mobilizing the commoners against Richard II, Bolingbroke gains the populist power thus required for mutiny and, eventually, kingship.

Is the author’s notion of the relationship between inherited power and earthly power similarly depicted in Henry V? Shakespeare illustrates Henry V’s use of earthly, military might, which stems from his inherited power in England, to achieve his claim to the French throne. However, the British king’s power in France is illustrated as impure; instead of being merely inherited, his power is complicated by the further divine right claims that he makes. In his message to King Charles, Henry V evokes his sense of divinity via the Duke of Exeter: “[Henry V] wills you, in the name of God Almighty, that you divest yourself and lay apart the borrowed glories that by gift of heaven, by law of nature and of nations, ‘longs to him and to his heirs” (HV, 2.4.76-81), Exeter recounts to Charles and the Dauphin. The notion of “borrowed glories” in this passage is significant, as attention is drawn to it through repetition of the word “by” to demonstrate that these gloried gifts are brought to King Charles by other figures, rather than rightfully inherited through the bloodline. Henry V’s military prowess, or earthly power, is used to achieve what he believes is his rightfully inherited power in France; it is important to be mindful, however, that Henry’s benevolence keeps King Charles in power, and allows this inherited power to continue through his blood line once he marries Catherine. Use of the earthly power to gain inherited power in France is also demonstrated when in the same speech to the Governor of Harfleur, Henry V refers to himself as “…a soldier, a name that in my thoughts becomes me best, if I begin the batt’ry once again I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur till in her ashes she lie buried” (HV, 3.3.82-86) and as a leader, stating, “Therefore, you men of Harfleur, take pity of your town and of your people whiles yet my soldiers are in my command…” (HV, 3.3.104-106). The dual roles of soldier and leader, who has earned his power through the bloodline (and, as Henry V believes, also through divine right), are evident in this singular speech; while the two roles have the potential to form a rift in Henry V’s persona, they instead are joined together in a causal relationship, with his role of soldier deriving from his desire for more power and leadership. He states, after all, that being a soldier is “a name that in my thoughts becomes me best,” implying that there are multiple roles that he plays, although one might be best-suited for him. By constantly using the possessive – asserting that the soldiers are his and are in his command, for instance – Henry V insists on his inherited power, and by stating his military might, reinforces the fact that he will use the earthly military to gain the “borrowed” throne back.

Why, then, does Henry V succeed in his endeavors, while Richard II fails, although they both fuse their different forms of power? Henry V states that he can play multiple roles, and believes in both his own divine right and bloodline inheritance – so why, then, does he win? Shakespeare deliberately confuses the audience by casting doubt upon King Charles of France’s inherited claim to the throne; if it is true that Henry V has the claim to such inheritance, then Charles lacks any inherited power and is ruling the military from a position to which he has no hereditary entitlement. As such, Charles’ own commingling occurs, and the confusion of his own power is set against the confusion of Henry V’s power. We learn early in the play from the Duke of Canterbury how King Henry V, rather than King Charles, is the rightful claimant to French inherited power: “Besides, their writers say, King Pepin, which deposed Childeric, did, as heir general – being descended of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clotaire – make claim and title to the crown of France…” (HV, 1.2.65-70) and so on, as the dizzying tale of the French bloodline is elaborated. Greenblatt argues that this is a “notoriously elaborate account of the king’s genealogical claim to the French throne, and…this ideological justification of English policy is an unsettling mixture of ‘impeccable’ reasoning and gross self-interest” (Greenblatt, 42). He goes on to say that as the account continues, the audience grows more skeptical of Canterbury. But it is fair to say that the account is beyond “elaborate”; its rhetoric is confusing at best. Greenblatt does not complicate the account by calling it “confusing.” However, just as King Charles’ inherited power is thus called into question, Canterbury’s head-spinning rhetoric mimics this very confusion – the reader becomes confused not only about King Charles’ wrongful claim and Henry V’s rightful claim to the throne, but also about Canterbury’s honesty. Just as he brings in Bolingbroke in Richard II, Shakespeare brings in the alternative figurehead of King Charles of France to portray that it is only with an alternate leader whose own power is not as complicated (i.e. Bolingbroke, rather than Henry V) that downfall occurs, as in the case of Richard II, but not Henry V.

Thus arises one final question: To what end is such confusion of power employed in the history plays? Despite the fact that the relationships between inherited power and earthly power differ in Richard II and Henry V – in the former, inherited power is depicted as ‘empty’ without the earthly power derived from the support of citizens, while in the latter, earthly power is used as a means to gain one’s allegedly rightful inherited power – in both cases, the tangled mixes of types of power serve to emphasize the moral ambiguity of power itself. Henry V’s predominant concern is the nature of leadership and its relationship to morality. Henry V, while an extraordinarily good leader, is forced to act in such a way that, might seem immoral and unforgiveable. For example, while Henry V’s punishment of Scrope is understandable, as Scrope was plotting to assassinate him, his punishment of Bardolph is less comprehensible. In this scene, Fluellen tells Henry V, “…I think the Duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your majesty knows the man” (HV 3.6.91-93), and Henry V, with no visible emotion upon hearing that his friend has been sentenced to hanging for looting, states that “We would have all such offenders to cut off, and we here give express charge…” (HV, 3.6.98-99). By asking, “If your majesty knows the man,” Fluellen alludes to the fact that Henry V does indeed know Bardolph; however, Henry V then plays the role of the good leader, rather than the good citizen by allowing Bardolph – his friend – to be hanged, and stating that the same punishment would be applied to anyone else who had committed such an offense. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the king shows that power complicates the traditional distinction between heroism and villainy. As Henry comments, his power brings with it great responsibility that distinguish him from the common citizen, and as such, he cannot be held to the same standards: “What infinite heartsease / Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?” (HV, 4.1.218-219) Henry asks, offering a rare perspective on the negative attributes of power and depicting how he is distanced from other men by it. Henry offers this in the form of a question so that he might continue trying to answer it as he soliloquizes; Shakespeare also establishes the divide between “kings” and “private men” in this line, indicating that Henry V cannot, and does not, fall into the latter category. A king, in Shakespeare’s portrayal, is responsible for the well-being of an entire nation, and must prioritize national stability over his own individual stability, and even his conscience. The nature of power is thereby rendered morally ambiguous, which accounts for the implicit critique of Henry’s actions in the play – even to the point that Henry himself questions his motives.

In the epilogue of Henry V, the chorus points out that Henry V’s success is in a “small time, but in that small most greatly lived / This star of England” (HV, Epilogue.5-6), demonstrating the difference between a play about a brief period of English history, in which Henry V was highly successful and committed morally dubious acts, and of the full scope of that history, a context in which Henry V was ultimately ineffective, as his and Catherine’s son loses the French throne. This is emphasized by repetition of the word “small,” as if to diminish Henry’s feats in the scope of history, as well as in the punning of the word “star,” which could be taken to mean Henry’s intellect (‘brightness’), his power, or his role as the protagonist of the play. The very ambiguity found here is explored throughout the history plays, and the dichotomy between inherited and earthly powers is expounded once more: Henry VI, as an inheritor to the French throne, is unable to maintain such inherited power despite the fact that he holds earthly power – he does, after all, bring England into war. This final role reversal – while Henry V used earthly power to gain the inherited power he felt he deserved, Henry VI lost his inherited power while invoking earthly, military might – is also found in Richard II, when Bolingbroke transitions from a glorified state to one of mourning, and his mourning serves to glorify Richard II to an extent that the king never had in his lifetime. These are simple depictions of the ambiguities regarding power that Shakespeare so desperately espouses in his history plays, leading us to question the moral ambiguity of these leaders – an ambiguity that derives from the tensions between varied kinds of power.

On Wednesday, I went to formal hall, and invited along a friend of my friend Fauzia’s: Kunaal, who is studying at Pembroke College. We had met briefly at the Harvard-Yale game during my freshman year, so it was nice to catch up. I’ve also been keeping busy with Prosopos stuff (don’t ask), which has been enlighteningly wonderful.

I visited my friend Ashley in St. Catz yesterday for the first time; although the college is concrete and modern-looking, it wasn’t as ugly as I was expecting it to be. A bunch of us hung out for the afternoon, and last night, went to see Cinema Paradiso in the back quad of Magdalen College. Great movie and great company. We also brought along a picnic with raspberries, grapes, and assorted cereals…lots of fun! Besides the fact that it was freezing, of course – at least they served free tea and coffee.

This evening, I’m going punting with some friends (boating on the river), which I did in Cambridge but haven’t done in Oxford yet. Should be an experience. Doing it tomorrow as well. And, of course, keeping busy with the never-ending Rhodes and Marshall Scholarship applications, which make me realize as I do them how much I actually want these scholarships. Sigh.

Overall, though, life is grand!

What else? On Tuesday, Teddy Hall played in the Rugby Cuppers Final, which we’ve won two years running. Unfortunately, we were upset this year by Keble College, but it was really enjoyable to be at the rain. Orchestra rehearsals have started, too; we’re playing Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, among other things. The concert promises to be really incredible, as we’re also doing a piece joint with Schola, Oxford’s premier university choir.

I also had my first tutorial this week in Macroeconomics and International Monetary Policy. I have to say, it was a bit brutal, but I did learn a lot from my time with my tutor (Outi, who is from Finland). She is also allowing me to work with a focus on health policy and global health economic issues, which makes me really happy.

Been a bit stressed lately from the whole Rhodes application process, which is ridiculously intense (EIGHT recommendation letters!), but it will hopefully be worth it. If not, I’m learning a lot about myself in the process anyway. I decided to apply for the M.Sc. in Global Health Sciences.

Oh, and how could I forget May Day! On May 1, I woke up at 3:15am, and met some friends for tea/coffee. The entire university assembled around Magdalen College Bridge to bring in May and spring. It was a lot of fun, and definitely an experience worth having.

Alright, well, I’m off to picnic and go punting (kind of like a gondola, along the River Thames) for a friend’s birthday!