He Jests At Scars and Loud Rumour - accompanying commentary

Creative Commentary

My creative pieces, 'He Jests At Scars' and 'Loud Rumour' are both explorations of Shakespeare plays; namely, an illumination of the contrived nature of a tragedy, and the limitation of art imitating life. The first, a response to Romeo and Juliet, looks at how a play only gives us an incomplete image of people's lives, which are not 'resolved' at the end, whilst 'Loud Rumour' looks at how we can see truth in a work of fiction, and whether anything not mentioned in the text can be taken to exist.

'He Jests At Scars' is taken from the line directly preceding Romeo's famous monologue beginning 'But soft!'; 'He jests at scars that never felt a wound'. This introduces the idea of those outside the action being able to take the damage lightly; an audience can go home after the tragedy, and 'jest at scars', for they have never 'felt a wound' that the characters in the play have inflicted. The tone of the play is absurdist and realistic, beginning with absurd dialogue reminiscent of Beckett, the irony being that the scene is a hanging. The idea of two characters with separate consciousnesses breaks down, leaving one creative entity which speaks through two characters, 'You have to leave/I have to leave'. It also introduces the theme of existential apathy, how no one can find reason to make sense since life as has been known is now changed, bringing a dissatisfying peace.

The next scene is spoken in a more realistic dialogue, exhibiting the characters who have enough purpose to stay in Verona, as opposed to those in the previous scene who left. The ellipses of 'No, no, I wasn't...that...I wasn't' characterises in a more realistic sense than the blank verse of Shakespeare, a stylistic reflection of this more everyday depiction of their lives. Benvolio's monologue in scene three metatheatrically confuses the date of events as '1562. 1595. Umm...oh never mind'. The first is the rough date of events, the second the date of the play's composition, highlighting the temporal duality of any text. His exchange with the prince begins 'Who's there?/Nay, answer me. Stand, and unfold yourself', famed as the opening lines of Hamlet. This original text appropriations serve both to remind us of the characters' origins, as well as providing an awkward clash of styles which exposes fiction as merely a consistent construct, by removing the consistency part.

In this section Benvolio shouts 'Cut it!' at the prince. As the style and storyline of the original composition deteriorate, so does the social hierarchy which is so present in all of Shakespeare's canon. The scene ends with an introspective monologue by the prince which, along with Benvolio's opening speech, frames the scene. This marks the move from a chorus-like exposition to a hard-line realism which will become painfully stark in the next scene. The prince also reflects on the meaning of life, and the absence of that meaning for characters in a play by observing that 'it's just...purposeless. This life, is purposeless.' Scene four introduces an expressionistic element to the play, as the conversation involving lady Capulet is a projection of Montague's dream, who lies on the ground in this section. This satirises Shakespeare's disregard for proper time in many of his plays, and by most playwrights who do not adhere to the classical unity of time.

Whilst Lady Capulet talking to herself may read oddly, it exposes the impossible duality of literary reflection: how can a character reminisce about an episode involving them, when a person can only exist in one place at once? This is a paradox avoided by literature. The ensuing dialogue includes more Shakespearean quotations, such as the passage from Two Gentlemen of Verona, 'if the gentle spirit of moving words can no way change you to a milder form, I'll woo you like a solider, at arms' end, and love you against the nature of love - force you'. This highlights rape as a theme present in both Shakespeare and modern drama. The final scene of the play brings the style full circle, back to absurdism. Capulet and Montague have lost all purpose, devolving into cyclical speech patterns such as 'What's the point?/What's the use?/What's done is done.' Petruchio, of a younger generation, has more hope and continues to make sense. The prince enters, and delivers a monologue full of parenthesis, reminiscent of glib dukes such as Vincentio from 'Measure for Measure'. He also, however, refuses to take action, and he becomes nonsensical as he refers to Petruchio as a servant . Petruchio is surrounded by prating lords, each having surrendered themselves to an empty fate, and himself is caught in a loop of 'Doesn't make sense, doesn't make-'. The only character who may provide any hope is the tactfully silent Peter, the only character who has chosen to think, rather than speak or act rashly with terrible consequences.

'Loud Rumour' is a phrase from the prologue of Henry IV pt. II. This is how the chorus refers to herself, expressionistically personifying a social phenomenon. The poem opens with an emphatic spondee, setting the tone as 'loud'. The regular four line stanzas are often in a loose iambic tetrameter, giving a sense of state, whilst the variation adds to both effect and confusion. We at first see that which the courtiers see, the sennet and the pomp, but the illusion is dispelled at once, referring to all this majesty as 'vacuous' and 'casual'. We are then introduced to something akin to the second scene of the play, and are presented with several antitheses: 'cloudy' and 'sunny', 'father' and 'lord, and to some degree 'kinsman' and 'son'. The poem places Hamlet somewhere in the middle of all these, but fails to find a word for any of these states, instantly recognising the failures of the medium if language through which the poem is expressing itself.

Whilst enjambment is used often, caesura is mostly avoided, contributing to the imagine of a 'riverrun' poem, unable to stop easily. The rhyme scheme is somewhat convoluted, seeming at first well thought out, ABBA, but then descending into a much more occasional rhyme, 'dust' with 'trust', returning again for 'lust'. The idea that rhyme is a pretence such as court appearance which is difficult to keep up, and as the events amongst the courtiers become less decorous, so does the poetry. The motif of the verse 'Blacker than young Hamlet's was' is used both to chart the progression of a character, but also expose the ambiguity of language. At first it speaks in his defence, as to the character of his soul, but in the second instance it refers to the blood on the gown of the man he had killed. Not only has Hamlet changed, but the words have taken on new meaning because they were removed from context, just as we cannot be sure we understand the events of 'Hamlet' because we only have a glimpse of his life, not the full picture.

The long stanza beginning 'The whisper' serves to mock dramatic structure, an idea imposed upon us by dramaturgy. It is altogether unrealistic, since if we were to choose a section of someone's life it is unlikely it would begin with an exposition, end with a denouement and include such processes as climax, catharsis and peripeteia. In the same way, the visual structure of this poem, whilst interesting or aesthetically pleasing for a reader, does not reflect the way language is really used, showing literature not to imitate life at all, but a stylised adaptation of it. It also introduces us fully to the theme of rumour, 'debris from muddy shoals' metaphorically, and how this is one way in which 'truth' is obscured, as well as being taken out of context in literature. The idea of "the 'only truth' [...] in an abyss' is the idea of a single truth being something we strive for but are here mocked for because it doesn't exist, it's merely what we've constructed to fill the 'abyss' of ignorance in which we live, a social constructivist theory.

The ensuing prose exists in sections paragraphicalally: exposition, the Hamlet brothers' story observed from afar, a commentary on this, the Gertrude episode, the Laertes episode in which Gertrude briefly appears, and a question. This contributes to a heavily self-conscious piece of literature, frequently mocking itself and reflecting. An example of this is when it is questioned what happened to old Hamlet, the writing posits that 'it could be the former, the latter, the one in the middle, or all of them at once'. The writing taunts the reader, as it could just deliver the answer, supposedly, but takes the role of a critic instead and speculates philosophically, unhelpfully reminding us that as long as we are unaware, it could be anything. The piece ends with the question '"Who's there?"', the first line from the play. We here have the idea that we have been presented with events prior to the action of the play which may change our understanding of it, and that any excerpt of storytelling is so far from the whole truth that we cannot presume to really know anything about what has occurred.