Presented to the
Chicago Literary Club
Monday, October 11, 2004
By
Todd S. Parkhurst
THROUGH OTHER EYES
WHO IS WATCHING WHOM? WHAT DO THE WATCHERS SEE? WHAT DO THEY HEAR? WHAT IS THEIR REACTION TO WHAT THEY SEE AND HEAR? WHY IS THE SPEAKER SAYING WHAT HE OR SHE IS SAYING?
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
THIS IS A MONOLOGUE ABOUT MONOLOGUES
Turn your eyes and ears and minds to this scene, please: Imagine a moderately large room, much like this one. While one portion is brightly lit, lighting in the other part of the room is subdued. One, or perhaps two or three people sit in the semi darkness, watching a person standing in the light. The standing person begins to speak:
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
Many things Nokomis taught him
Of the stars that shine in heaven;
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
Flaring far away to northward
In the frosty nights of Winter;
Showed the broad white road in heaven,
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
Running straight across the heavens,
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
"Thank you! Thank you! I’ll be in touch!” says the watcher and listener. The speaker hands a note bearing his telephone number, e-mail address and other contact information to the listener. The speaker exits. The speaker is an actor, of course. The watcher and listener is likely an agent, whom the actor is attempting to impress. The actor wants to induce the agent to represent the actor in the actor’s endless quest for roles in theatrical plays. The agent wants clients, but the agent cannot afford to waste her time representing actors whom the agent cannot place in theatrical roles. So the agent is evaluating the actor not only for his or her talent, but the agent is also evaluating the agent's chances of finding roles for this actor. How many roles are now available for an actor of this person’s age, gender, race, height, weight, physical appearance, and, yes, acting ability? How will this actor impress a show director and a casting director? For what sort of roles?
The actor wants to impress the agent, of course. He wants to impress her with his range; that is, his ability to engage the listeners and watchers in dramatic and in comedic roles of all sorts. He wants to make his audience laugh in comedic roles; he wants to make his audience empathize in dramatic roles;. He wants to make his audience understand and agree with him if he is teaching or expounding or explaining. It is the thesis of this paper that, during the past two centuries other, previously unrecognized persons have emerged in the room. Fore example, the author of the monologue you have just heard was, of course, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Some of Longfellow's friends and relations were of Native American descent and they help him develop and recognize the speech patterns and the word choices and the results thinking of the Ojibway, Oneida and other northern Midwest Indians. Still others, even less recognizable from this distance, represent the psyches of those involved in the project. It is a subsidiary but important thesis of this paper that the physical and psychological roles of the actor, the listener and the author have changed throughout recorded history. Indeed, the role or uses to which a monologue itself may be put have changed. The very first theatrical plays of which we have any record come from ancient Egypt, and the earliest of these scripts contains, yes indeed, a monologue. The play appears to be a sort of passion play devoted to the god Isis. Of Greek drama, we have a number of extant scripts. Many of these plays involved political and social criticism and commentary of a quality surpassing the commentary currently offered by today's TV pundits. Little psychology is evident to me in these plays, except that which is necessarily involved in setting a comic twist to a word, or phrase, or sentence. For example, Aristophanes wrote The Wasps, a play criticizing the excessive litigiousness of Athenian society, in about 300 B.C. The Greek law courts of the time used juries, which must have been something like our grand juries. The Athenian jurymen met and sat for a considerable period of time, judging a lengthy series of cases. Hear Philocleon’s delight in being a juryman:
PHILOCLEON: At the outset I will prove to you that there exists no king whose might is greater than ours. Is there a pleasure, a blessing comparable with that of a juryman? Is there a being who lives more in the midst of delights, who is more feared, aged though he be? From the moment I leave my bed, men of power, the most illustrious in the city, await me at the bar of the tribunal; the moment I am seen from the greatest distance, they come forward to offer me a gentle hand--that has pilfered the public funds; they entreat me, bowing right low and with a piteous voice, "Oh, father," they say, "pity me, I beseech you!" Why, the man who thus speaks would not know of my existence, had I not let him off on some former occasion. These entreaties have appeased my wrath, and I enter the courts--firmly resolved to do nothing that I have promised. Nevertheless I listen to the accused. Oh! what tricks to secure acquittal! Ah! there is no form of flattery that is not addressed to the court! Some groan over their property and they exaggerate the truth in order to make their troubles equal to my own. Others tell us anecdotes or some comic story from Æsop. Others, again, cut jokes; they fancy I shall be appeased if I laugh. If we are not even then won over, why, then they drag forward their young children by the hand, both boys and girls, who prostrate themselves and whine with one accord, and then the father, trembling as if before a god, begs me not to condemn him out of pity for them, "If you love the voice of the lamb, have pity on my son," and because I am fond of little sows, I must yield to his daughter's prayers. Then we relax the heat of our wrath a little for him. Is not this great power indeed? A father on his death-bed names some husband for his daughter, who is his sole heir; but we care little for his will or for the shell so solemnly placed over the seal; we give the young maiden to him who has best known how to secure our favour. Name me another duty that is so important? But I am forgetting the most pleasing thing of all. When I return home with my pay, everyone runs to greet me because of my money. First my daughter bathes me, anoints my feet, stoops to kiss me and, while she is calling me "her dearest father," fishes out my triobolus with her tongue. Then my little wife comes to wheedle me and brings a nice little cake; she sits beside me and entreats me in a thousand ways, "Do take this now; do have some more." All this delights me hugely. Am I not equal to the king of the gods? If our assembly is noisy, all say as they pass, "Great gods! the tribunal is rolling out its thunder!" If I let loose the lightning, the richest, aye, the noblest are half dead with fright and crap themselves with terror. You yourself are afraid of me, yea, by Demeter! you are afraid.
And then Greece fell to Rome, and then the Roman Empire decayed and fell. Many here are aware that the early and medieval Christian Church routinely and rigidly condemned profane or non-religious theatrical performances and drama so successfully that, by 600 or 700 A.D. the only drama or dramatic monologues were religious in nature. These Easter Plays, Christmas Plays and other religious efforts were first performed in Latin by local priests and were similar in some ways to homilies. Few scripts of what may be called medieval monologues are still extant.
Monologues really reappeared in the late 1500’s when Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights wrote dramas interesting enough and complex enough to draw considerable crowds of people of considerable influence and consequently began to considerably influence society. It may have been Shakespeare who began to first include, and demonstrate, extensive psychology in the personality of at least the lead characters of his plays. And it is the psychology of these characters and the attributes of these characters which the actor, assisted by the director, must learn and portray if he is to deliver a successful, believable, persuasive, monologue. For example, in Shakespeare's King Henry V:
O
that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
What's
he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Well, no one talks that way today, of course, and it is an open question whether anyone talked that way when Shakespeare wrote it, or even when Henry V was king of England stomping around in the mud at Agincourt. What does his monologue say about the personality and the mind and the psychology of the man whom Shakespeare imagined to be King Henry V? A glory seeker, obviously. A Leader? Yes. An experienced public speaker, obviously capable of persuading others to follow him. But what of his fears? Has he none? About that I cannot say. What of the fears of his followers? A neat twist of logic turns his followers’ fears back upon themselves. And so the mental and emotional stage is set, and the minds of the audience are prepared, for the events in the drama to follow.
The psychology of comedy is somewhat different from the psychology of tragedy or drama. Sometimes the psychology of comedy is simply provided by a monologuist whose remarks have an effect on the listeners and audience which the speaker of the monologuist does not intend, or does not understand. Or maybe the monologuist does understand the effect of his remarks and words and intends them--perhaps simply to entertain. Such comedic devices have been employed for very long time. Here is Mr. Tattle, a rake and experienced seducer in William Congreve’s play Love for Love, first presented in 1695:
TATTLE: I have given some temptation that has not been resisted. My witnesses are not present-----but I confess I have had favours from persons-----I can show letters, lockets, pictures, and rings, and if there be occasion for witnesses, I can summon the maids at the chocolate-houses, all the porters of the Pall-Mall and Covent Garden, the door-keepers at the play-house, the drawers at Locket's, Pontack's, the Rummer, Spring Garden; my own landlady and valet du chambre; all who shall make oath that I receive more letters than the Secretary's Office; and that I have more vizor-masks to enquire for me, than ever went to see the Hermaphrodite, or the Naked Prince. And it is notorious, that in a country church, once, an enquiry being made, who I was, it was answer'd, I was the famous Tattle, who had ruin'd so many women. The next Sunday all the old women kept their daughters at home, and the parson had not half his congregation. He would have brought me into the Spiritual Court, but I was reveng'd upon him, for he had a handsome daughter whom I initiated into the Science. But I repented it afterwards, for it was talk'd of in town-----and a Lady of quality that shall be nameless, in a raging fit of jealousy, came down in her coach and six horses, and expos'd herself upon my account; Gad, I was sorry for it with all my heart--you know whom I mean? I hope you don't know whom I mean. For Heaven's sake, if you do guess, say nothing. Pox on't, now I could bite off my tongue
But suppose Shakespearean Kings and wars and neat logic are not wanted. Suppose something more than medieval history revised into drama are called for. Suppose something more complex than restoration twits are desired. Suppose poetry and lyricism are to be juxtaposed to the personal and psychological crush of our times--heavy industry, say -- a favorite and potent exposition in early 20th-century American drama. Here is Paddy, an Irish sailor in Eugene O’Neil’s The Hairy Ape. He is in the darkened sulfurous boiler room of a trans-Atlantic steamer just beginning its run from New York to Southampton:
PADDY: (who has been sitting in a blinking, melancholy daze--suddenly cries out in a voice full of old sorrow) We belong to this, you're saying, Yank? We make this ship go, you're saying, Yank? Yerra then, that Almighty God have pity on us! (His voice runs into the wail of a keen, he rocks back and forth on his bench. The men stare at him, startled and impressed in spite of themselves) Oh, to be back in the fine days of my youth, ochone! Oh, there was fine beautiful ships in them days--clippers wid tall masts touching the sky--fine strong men in them--men that was sons of the sea as if 'twas the mother that bore them. Oh, the clean skins of them, and the clear eyes, the straight backs and full chests of them! Brave men they was, and bold men surely! We'd be sailing out, bound down round the Horn maybe. We'd be making sail in the dawn, with a fair breeze, singing a chanty song wid no care to it. And astern the land would be sinking low and dying out, but we'd give it no heed but a laugh, and never a look behind. For the day that was, was enough, for we was free men--and I'm thinking 'tis only slaves do be giving heed to the day that's gone or the day to come--until they're old like me. (With a sort of religious exaltation) Oh, to be scudding south again wid the power of the Trade Wind driving her on steady through the nights and days! Full sail on her! Nights and Days! Nights when the foam of the wake would be flaming wid fire, when the sky'd be blazing and winking wid stars. Or the full of the moon maybe. Then you'd see her driving through the gray night, her sails stretching aloft all silver and white, not a sound on the deck, the lot of us dreaming dreams, till you'd believe 'twas no real ship at all you was on but a ghost ship like the Flying Dutchman they say does be roaming the seas forevermore widout touching a port. And there was the days, too. A warm sun on the clean decks. Sun warming the blood of you, and wind over the miles of shiny green ocean like strong drink to your lungs. Work--aye, hard work--but who'd mind that at all? Sure, you worked under the sky and 'twas work wid skill and daring to it. And wid the day done, in the dog watch, smoking me pipe at ease, the lookout would be raising land maybe, and we'd see the mountains of South America wid the red fire of the setting sun painting their white tops and the clouds floating by them! (His tone of exaltation ceases. He goes on mournfully.) Yerra, what's the use of talking? 'Tis a dead man's whisper. (To YANK resentfully) 'Twas them days men belonged to ships, not now. 'Twas them days a ship was part of the sea, and a man was part of a ship, and the sea joined all together and made it one. (Scornfully) Is it one wid this you'd be, Yank--black smoke from the funnels smudging the sea, smudging the decks--the bloody engines pounding and throbbing and shaking--wid divil a sight of sun or a breath of clean air--choking our lungs wid coal dust--breaking our backs and hearts in the hell of the stokehole--feeding the bloody furnace--feeding our lives along wid the coal, I'm thinking--caged in by steel from a sight of the sky like bloody apes in the Zoo! (With a harsh laugh.) Ho-ho, divil mend you! Is it to belong to that you're wishing? Is it a flesh and blood wheel of the engines you'd be?
Well, who is Paddy? Who did Eugene O’Neil mean Paddy to be? What is the use of talking about silver and white sails and dreams in a dusty, dirty, trans-Atlantic steamer's stokehole? Is it only for dramatic effect? Is it only to provide momentary relief from the industrial-strength grinding which has been and which is to come in this play? What is the psychology of all this?
Perhaps psychological questions and theories can be more easily addressed by considering a short poetic monologue. Porphyria's Lover appears in Dramatic Lyrics, a book published in 1842 by Robert Browning:
Be sure I looked up into her eyes
happy and proud; at last I knew: Porphyria worshiped me; surprise
made my heart swell, and still it grew
while I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair
perfectly pure and good; I found
a thing to do, and all her hair
in one long yellow string I wound
three times her little throat around,
and strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
This is far too bizarre. What thinking would lead someone to conjure up something like this? And then to write it down? And to publish it? Some abnormal psychology is certainly going on here.
Sigmund Freud’s work is important to the interpretation of literature, including poetry and other monologues such as this. Indeed, late 19th-century literary commentators spent much time expounding upon the psychology to be extracted from the work of Robert Browning and, specifically, pieces such as this.
For Freud, literature was a kind of dream: mysterious, enigmatic and yet central to our lives. There is certainly a connection between dreams, and imagination, and literature. The analysis and interpretation of these relationships arose to some extent from the work of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, who was Freud's best friend, but later his enemy.
The kind of Freudian interpretation that is mostly practiced in literary criticism now derives from the work of a French follower of Freud: Jacques Lacan. Lacan was intellectually outrageous. To understand his ideas you have to follow the sources of this outrageousness, which are twofold: one is in a branch of surrealism known as dada, and the other is in a theory of language associated with the Swiss linguist Saussure. Lacan derived radical conclusions about literary and dramatic interpretation from his combination of Freud, and Dada, and Saussure.
Freud, and then Lacan, insisted that most of the symbols in a dream are in a private language known only to the dreamer: that to interpret them you have to work out this private language, by the method of free association. This is a big problem for Freudian literary criticism, because we don't have the author's associations: we can't put Shakespeare on the couch. What we can do, however, is to see in to the private unconscious language of the author. It's difficult, but it's possible, and when it works, if it works, it can be very interesting.
For instance: Macbeth fantasises that he sees a dagger, its handle towards his hand. He is trying to find the courage to murder the old King, Duncan. The dagger is phallic: Macbeth, as his wife keeps telling him, is trying to become a man; to work out what it is to be a man. Becoming a man in Freudian terms means overcoming sexual rivalry with the father: both the father and the son want to sleep with the mother, and there is jealousy between them. This is why the dagger is not only phallic, it is sharp, cutting, lethal: it is a penis that wounds. The sexual act that Macbeth dreams of is with Duncan, who is like a father to him, and whom he, in Freudian terms, wishes to castrate, so that he can take the father's role: so that he can be the king. So Macbeth becomes a king, acquires the dagger, is a man; but this perverted phallus cannot procreate, it can only destroy, and Macbeth himself, along with half of Scotland, is destroyed by it. All this in one symbol: the dagger, a Freudian would say, is over-determined. Of course you might equally say that this Freudian critic is giving himself a blank check to say pretty much whatever he likes about the dagger. But perhaps the actor, or monologuist, can develop Freudian-based insights into the character which will permit the actor to provide a more interesting, more engaging, perhaps more "right", delivery and presentation.
Choosing, and analyzing in this way can lead the actor to a more believable, more persuasive, more engaging delivery of the speech and performance of the part which he is called upon to portray. So Freud, and Jung, and Lecan and Dada provide tools to help the actor prepare his monologue.
Other tools, more objective in nature, are routinely used by the monologist, of course. These include a close look at the setting in which the monologue was written, the setting in which it is to be performed, the audience to whom the monologue is to be purportedly given and the audience to whom it is really to be given. What does the a audience see? What should the audience believe it is seeing? What does the audience believe when the members come in? What proposition does the monologist want to sell to the audience? That is, what proposition do the monologist and the author want the audience to have accepted when they leave? The answers to these and may similar questions determine how the paragraphs, sentences and even individual words of the monologue should best be delivered.
For example, listen to this simple exercise used in legal advocacy training:
I never promised you that money.
I never promised you that money.
I never promised you that money.
I never promised you that money.
I never promised you that money.
I never promised you that money.
Perhaps the old, almost self-evident tools of dramatic writing and delivery provide the best help after all. Here is the Roman literary and dramatic critic Horace speaking to us from just about 2018 years and 3 days ago.
Certain verse forms and meters, said Horace, have been established as appropriate to comedy, others to tragedy, and these recognized styles should be followed. A tragic hero should not speak in the same rhythm as a comic one. Characters should be consistent with themselves, and should conform to the general expectation: boys should be childish, youth fond of sport, reckless and fickle, mature men should be businesslike and prudent, while old men should remain praisers of the past, sluggish and grudging. The author should not try to change the character of well-known figures of the stage, such as Agamemnon, Medea, Hercules; at the same time, he should not stick too closely to the stock characters. When beginning a play, avoid pomposity and grandiloquence; but when once the play is launched, rush the spectator on through the action, leaving out the ungrateful parts of the story. Do not present ugly things on the stage. The traditional structure of plots should be used, but such contrivances as the god-from-the-machine should not be worked to death. Keep to the three-actor play, and remember to use the chorus for the expression of moral sentiments and religious tone. Above all things, stick to the Greek models. Some people may have been fools enough to admire modern playwrights such as Plautus, but that is no reason why everyone should do so. Modern playwrights are rude and barbarous, not worthy of study beside the Greeks. Every play and every monologue should either instruct or delight--better if it does both. "Mix pleasure and profit, and you are safe."
Put another way, if the monologue is written well, and if the monologue and the audience are evaluated well, and if the monologue is delivered to that audience well, the promise of Shel Silverstein will be fulfilled:
If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A. hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer,
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-Golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!
.