Refuge!

With the best of intentions, I decided to read something by a contemporary novelist: I had unwisely chosen "The Last Dickens", a meretricious historical thriller by someone named Matthew Pearl- a person bent on sequentially incorporating familiar and reputable writers- I believe Poe and Dante, now Dickens into beach and flight reads.
He was lauded on NPR, feted in every paper in the country, and has produced a very nearly unreadable pastiche of a novel, salted with tantalizing historical lessons, and composed unrelievedly of dialogue along the lines of: '"Pray Marjorie, thou should not venture forthwith in your new crinoline whose style has recently come into popularity when ladies of our social standing seldom leave unaccompanied by a chaperone," said Victoria who had been named for the current monarch.'
It faltered often, but nearly dissipated entirely in several passages thinly stretched through the middle. It might have been written from both ends with the intention of joining there, which is as good a plan as cutting a largish piece of fabric from one side and then the opposite.
I have cleansed myself by picking up Rose Macaulay's "Going Abroad" from which the following bits are taken:
"Madame was sobbing aloud as she clung with her tied hands to her mount's neck. Of all ways of progression she hated mule-back."

"the Church had long since, and probably wisely, decided that confession and penance should cease to be congregational. It had been found to make scandal."

"In some tribes... the beauty doctor is murdered, as a rule, very painfully, by the victim, or the victim's husband or wives, if the appearance is not thought to be sufficiently improved by the treatment.
And does that occur often?
Practically always.
Dear me! One would think the profession would lapse."

More from The Cunning Man

WHEN IRONY FIRST makes itself
known in a young man's life, it can be like his first expe-
rience of getting drunk; he has met with a powerful
thing which he does not know how to handle. Of course
I had been aware of irony in its superficial form, because
Brocky made great use of it; but he was not a master, a

sub de and gentle employer of mockery in almost every
aspect of life, as was Dwyer; it was something Brocky
had learned, not flesh of his flesh. Later, when I thought
I had become wiser, I tried to find out what irony really
is, and discovered that some ancient writer on poetry
had spoken of "Ironia, which we call the drye mock,"
and I cannot think of a better term for it: the drye mock.
Not sarcasm, which is like vinegar, or cynicism, which is
so often the voice of disappointed idealism, but a delicate
casting of a cool and illuminating light on life; and thus
an enlargement. The ironist is not bittei:, he does not
seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or seri-
ous, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker.
He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes
and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally
embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He
sPeaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the

:me nature as the wit, who sooften speaks from the

tongue and no deeper. the wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.

One must have a disposition for irony, but it does not
come without practice; like really good violin-playing, it
must be practised every day. It seemed to me when I
met Dwyer that I had the disposition, but I was an
unpractised hand and, like a beginner on the fiddle, I
suppose my squawks and screeohes were painful to those
around me.

My first foray into R. Davies

The Cunning Man:

He certainly boiled them the February Sunday night
he read his paper titled A Knotty-Point of Shakespeare
Criticism Untied: Where Did Hamlet Hide the Body of
Polonius? This sounded so meaty, so solemnly literary,
that Mr. Thomas Norfolk, the senior English master,
decided to grace us with his presence, in addition to one
of the junior English staff, rely-poly; witty Mr. Sharpe,
w~o took an unschoolmasterish delight in Brocky's mis-
chief. There we sat, puffing away at our strictly legal cigarettes (Mr. Sharpe smoked a pipe with a bowl of
extraordinary size) as Brocky unfolded his manuscript
and began.

The problem of what Hamlet did with Polonius, said
Brocky, had been neglected because so many other mat-
ters of greater immediate interest were raised by the
famous scene (Act Three, scene four) where Hamlet has
his great confrontation with his mother? and treats her
to a most unfilial roughness of tongue. The scene moves
swiftly, as the finest of Shakespeare always does, and
indeed not twenty-five lines have passed until Hamlet
detects the presence of Polonius behind the arras, and
stabs him, without knowing who he is. What then
passes between Hamlet and Gertrude is so laden with
significance-Brocky said that he would not even
attempt to deal with the suggestions of an incestuous
passion in the Prince, and Mr. Norfolk nodded sagely in
approval of this scholarly reticence-that we are apt to
neglect Hamlet's declaration-

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room

-until after the next scene when Hamlet appears,
declaring-

Safely stowed.

Clearly he has hidden the body of the good old coun-
sellor, but where? When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
question .him, he says that he has "compounded it with
dust whereto it is kin," which would have tipped off
the two court toadies if they were not so stupid. We
know better; we remember that "dust" means not only
the flesh that remains when the spirit has flown, but
any cast-off rubbish or human waste matter, and in the

circumstances, what might that be? It is made plain
enough when Hamlet is questioned by the King, and at
last says that they may find Polonius by his stench-if
they take their time looking in the right place. "If you
find him not within this month, you shall nose him as
you go up the stairs into the lobby."

Now, what does this tell us? Is it not as plain as day?

Hamlet has hidden Polonius in a room reserved for the
King which the King rarely frequents, a room to be
found off the stairs. In such a castle as Elsinore, and
indeed in any castle of the sort that would be well
known to Shakespeare, who had visited several such cas-
tles with his troupe of travelling players, that room off
the stairs would be the privy, built on the outward walls
to overhang the moat. Hamlet who has a nasty and
decidedly dirty tongue--consider the way he talks to
Ophelia before the play-within-the-play begins, with
everyone listening!-is hinting that the King does not
often go to the privy, and is indeed constipated.

Was this a deadly insult? Consider the reference the
Prince makes to his uncle-father: he calls him "the bloat
king" and describes his kisses as "reachy" which we
know means rancid. Did the King then suffer from hali-
tosis? Was not Hamlet being inexcusably personal in
thus taunting a man who had the power of life and
death over him?

Can we utterly deny ourselves some speculation as to
what significance such a taunt may have had for
Shakespeare himself? It is often said that it is dangerous
folly to attempt to plumb the depths of an author's mind
by fmding apparently significant hints of personal preoC-
cupation in his work But-we are only human; may we
not seek to find out anything about the Prince of poetS
tha~ he has inadvertently let slip? It is surely worthy of
notice that you may seek a Shakespeare Concordance

from end to end without finding a single reference to
constipation, although a plethora of other human ills are
exploited to comic or tragic effect. Why this silence on a
complaint so common, so vexatious, so sinister in its
effect on the human spirit? Was Shakespeare attributing.
to King Claudius, through these taunts of Hamlet, an
ailment that was his own secret, nagging, unremitting
worry?

Brocky modestly left conclusions to others. He had
not had time, he said, to sift the complete works for ref-
erences which might throw light on this matter. But he
threw it open for discussion by the Curfew Club. Was
Shakespeare constipated? What do you think?