Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Swan of Avon Explained?
Is what follows too obvious to say, or has it been too obviously overlooked?
I've been looking at Sir Francis Bacon's writings on the beginning of Science, and the Royal Society - spurred on by a CBC radio "Ideas" program that I had to look up quotes for online next day, since I was listening in healthy, true darkness.
Related Google enquiries led to links to the question of whether Bacon wrote Shakespeare. I love such thoroughly eccentric explorations of history, true or false, credible or laughable, for the same reason that anyone who's read a huge pile of history books (and doesn't have their head stuck up their ass) ought to love 'em - they take me far from the well-worn facts of history I've read about, often literally hundreds of times, into genuinely new territory (whether my guide is inept or not.) That's refreshing if you love history but sometimes find it hard to obtain genuinely new grist for the mill.
In the process of encountering many delicious tidbits of otherwise hopelessly obscure history that's refreshingly new to me, it could be I've stumbled on an overlooked clue to the mystery of authorship, just maybe, maybe (if there is any mystery, of course.)
Should you want to know why Ben Jonson called Shakespeare "Sweet Swan of Avon", as Bertram Theobald did:
"Now one word about the 'Sweet Swan of Avon.' Has it ever struck anyone that if this phrase is to be taken at its face value, it is singularly inept as a simile? The verses of a poet are melodious,or should be."
http://www.sirbacon.org/bertrambj1623folio.htm
It may be instructive to look at a line very early on in Robert Green's "Groats-Worth of Wit, bought with a million of Repentance" (1592), incidentally our first published mention of Shakespeare, which line is retailed as if it were a common enough saying of the time:
The Swan sings melodiously before death, that in all his life vseth but a iarring sound.
http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/greene1.html
That is: "The Swan sings beautifully at death, who all his life used (issued) only a jarring sound."
In the context of that popular saying (as it seems from the context in Green's pamphet), Jonson's calling Shakespeare "a sweet swan of Avon" has new meaning. It's quite a funny line (and still packs a punch today) if the the rude Shakespeare from Avon were not much of a poet, but the Shakespeare about to become part of history with the posthumous publication of the Folio, was a very fine poet indeed.
But note that how melodious a swan is depends very much on the species of the swan.
Which leads us to another explanation: that Green's contemporary version of the saying isn't relevant, but the Phaedo is, where Plato has Socrates say that swans "having sung all their life long, do then sing more, and more sweetly than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to Apollo, whose ministers they are." Or even Shakespeare himself, who in Othello has Emilia say "I will play the swan, and die in music."
If so, Jonson only meant to say that Folio was the Bard's beautiful final song, as it was.
Or, we could give the final word to Wikipedia, "Swan Song":
The phrase "swan song" is a reference to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) is completely mute during its lifetime until the moment just before it dies, when it sings one beautiful song.
Cygnus olor was originally native to the British Isles, and that restores the Baconian jest to Jonson's words.
Jonson and Green were both playwrights and contemporaries in London and might be supposed to have used the allusion similarly, or likely so. On the other hand, Johnson was self-educated but would have known Plato. Still Green went to Cambridge and Oxford and could hardly have escaped knowledge of the Phaedo, himself. We report, you decide.
I've been looking at Sir Francis Bacon's writings on the beginning of Science, and the Royal Society - spurred on by a CBC radio "Ideas" program that I had to look up quotes for online next day, since I was listening in healthy, true darkness.
Related Google enquiries led to links to the question of whether Bacon wrote Shakespeare. I love such thoroughly eccentric explorations of history, true or false, credible or laughable, for the same reason that anyone who's read a huge pile of history books (and doesn't have their head stuck up their ass) ought to love 'em - they take me far from the well-worn facts of history I've read about, often literally hundreds of times, into genuinely new territory (whether my guide is inept or not.) That's refreshing if you love history but sometimes find it hard to obtain genuinely new grist for the mill.
In the process of encountering many delicious tidbits of otherwise hopelessly obscure history that's refreshingly new to me, it could be I've stumbled on an overlooked clue to the mystery of authorship, just maybe, maybe (if there is any mystery, of course.)
Should you want to know why Ben Jonson called Shakespeare "Sweet Swan of Avon", as Bertram Theobald did:
"Now one word about the 'Sweet Swan of Avon.' Has it ever struck anyone that if this phrase is to be taken at its face value, it is singularly inept as a simile? The verses of a poet are melodious,or should be."
http://www.sirbacon.org/bertrambj1623folio.htm
It may be instructive to look at a line very early on in Robert Green's "Groats-Worth of Wit, bought with a million of Repentance" (1592), incidentally our first published mention of Shakespeare, which line is retailed as if it were a common enough saying of the time:
The Swan sings melodiously before death, that in all his life vseth but a iarring sound.
http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/greene1.html
That is: "The Swan sings beautifully at death, who all his life used (issued) only a jarring sound."
In the context of that popular saying (as it seems from the context in Green's pamphet), Jonson's calling Shakespeare "a sweet swan of Avon" has new meaning. It's quite a funny line (and still packs a punch today) if the the rude Shakespeare from Avon were not much of a poet, but the Shakespeare about to become part of history with the posthumous publication of the Folio, was a very fine poet indeed.
But note that how melodious a swan is depends very much on the species of the swan.
Which leads us to another explanation: that Green's contemporary version of the saying isn't relevant, but the Phaedo is, where Plato has Socrates say that swans "having sung all their life long, do then sing more, and more sweetly than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to Apollo, whose ministers they are." Or even Shakespeare himself, who in Othello has Emilia say "I will play the swan, and die in music."
If so, Jonson only meant to say that Folio was the Bard's beautiful final song, as it was.
Or, we could give the final word to Wikipedia, "Swan Song":
The phrase "swan song" is a reference to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) is completely mute during its lifetime until the moment just before it dies, when it sings one beautiful song.
Cygnus olor was originally native to the British Isles, and that restores the Baconian jest to Jonson's words.
Jonson and Green were both playwrights and contemporaries in London and might be supposed to have used the allusion similarly, or likely so. On the other hand, Johnson was self-educated but would have known Plato. Still Green went to Cambridge and Oxford and could hardly have escaped knowledge of the Phaedo, himself. We report, you decide.
