Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Shakespeare for the Speaker Clever


Love's Labor Lost--the whole time I was reading, I was torn between disgust at the utter silliness of the dialogue and admiration of the clever rhetoric. I am always one that has appreciated clever rhetoric--I think that is the thing I appreciate most about Jane Austen books, and my favorite part of reading Shakespeare. It reminds me of a friend I have who is always busting out the most ridiculous puns--you can't help but roll your eyes, but deep down you kind of have to admire the quick wit that draws forth puns on every topic at the drop of a pin. She knows it too, and thinks she's pretty punny (ha ha).

There is way too much good stuff to analyze all of it, but this one passage caught my eye,
After explaining to Armado how to "brawl in French", Armado asks Moth, "How hast thou purchased this experience?" Moth's response: "By my penny of observation." I don't know why this clever little metaphor tickled my fancy so much, but I liked it. Armado asks how he "purchased" experience, meaning how he obtained it; obviously experience cannot be purchased for a monetary amount, but is obtained via experience. But Moth keeps with the monetary theme and responds with a monetary reference--my (the ownership indicates that it was particular to him--his own observation) penny of observation.

This follows with clever reference to Hamlet, where the hobby horse represents something of little lasting consequence. Hamlet, in mocking the way his mother has moved on after his father's death, says that you have to build churches to not be forgotten 2 months after your death. If not, then you are like the hobby horse, whose epitaph is “For, oh, for, oh, the hobby-horse is forgot.” When Don Adriano de Armado says, "But O — but O, — ", Moth cleverly finishes the sentence with 'The hobby-horse is forgot.' It's like when we today quote lines from movies--he was

making reference to another Shakespeare play. In quoting this line, it seems like he's discounting the lasting value and reality of Armado's love, which Armado himself questions-- "Call'st thou my love 'hobby-horse'?" which Armado refutes--no, a hackney. So I looked up what a hackney is--it's a particular kind of horse specially bred in Britain intended for carriage driving. They are elegant, and known for their stamina. Pretty much the complete opposite of a hobby horse, which is not only not alive, (unless it refers to the Irish hobby, a breed of horses popular in the British Isles in the Middle Ages that is now extinct, but that's also dead) but particularly in the context of the reference to Hamlet, represents something of fleeting value.

*To add further to the association of the passing value of a hobby horse, I have a personal story that I think of whenever I think of hobby horses. When I was 2 or 3, there was a boy that lived across the street from me. He was, I believe, a month older than me--but when your 2 a month is a significant portion of your existence, and I looked at him the way 7th graders look at 8th graders. He had a hobby horse, kind of like the one in the picture, and I though it was so cool. He would not let me play with it, and I was quite jealous of his little horse. I just had this desire to have one of those little hobby horses, and this idea that they were so cool, even after we moved away from that house, and for quite a while after. Years later, my mom bought one for one of my younger siblings, and I told her that story; and she said she wished that she had known, and that she would have gotten me one. By that point I had grown up, and the idea of a hobby horse was no longer alluring--I was wanting a car, not a horse. My great enamoration for what seemed like such a desirable thing had faded, just as the memory of a hobby horse fades;



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