Shakespeare & State
David Thompson, 14 Nov 2007
Like all of us, Shakespeare’s characters reveal worlds about themselves through their particular choices of words. Shakespeare being Shakespeare, his characters have a far wider and more lustrous range of vocabulary and imagery than most of us – and they speak in richly textured and finely detailed verse and prose. In Shakespeare, as in our world, words have immense power. They both reflect and affect how we feel. What we say and how we say it – to others, and especially to ourselves – is one of the essential factors that determine our experience of life.
How we translate our thoughts into words, whether those words are spoken aloud or kept in our heads, has a direct bearing on how we perceive the world, and, in turn, how we are perceived by other people. By looking closely at the way Shakespeare’s characters speak, we gain insights to the inner workings of their minds – and we can better understand our own processes of thought and expression. By speaking specific passages aloud and by experiencing the physical sound, weight and shape of the language, we can also change our own state.
Our ability to change our state as a matter of choice is a fundamental principle of NLP. Of course, Shakespeare recognised and recorded this phenomenon a few hundred years before the practice was codified as such. As he writes in Sonnet 29:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
As Shakespeare describes in the sonnet – and as NLP practitioners consistently remind their clients – we can change our emotional state by changing our point of attention. In other words, what we hold in our minds, what we choose to think about, actively affects our emotions. We can choose at any time to direct our attention to material that brings forth sorrow or releases joy. Neurological science has begun to recognise the truth in Shakespeare’s observations about the power of our thoughts to affect our experience. Our brains process memories and images – at a chemical level – as if they were real experiences, happening in the present. We respond physically and emotionally to internal representations of memories and even of imagined experiences as if they were real, even though we know, at a conscious level, that they are not. We do not simply see memories of happy experiences in our minds, we feel the warmth and giddiness associated with them.
To demonstrate our ability to change our state at will, let’s conduct a brief experiment. Just for a moment, allow yourself to become depressed. Return briefly to a memory that has saddened you in the past. As you go back to that time (and let’s make sure it’s a time of mild sadness, not the great trauma of your life, as this is an exercise here), and see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel those feelings of sadness – you can notice what happens to your body. Hold that posture for a moment, and let yourself become aware of how you are feeling inside. With that, allow that awareness to expand to your spine. How are you holding it? How are you sitting or standing? Does your face feel heavy? Are there any other sensations you’re experiencing?
Good. Now, stand up, look out a window, walk around for a moment and shake that feeling off. That’s better. Before we go on, go ahead and stretch your arms all the way up as high as you can. Stand up, keep the stretch going, and let yourself stand all the way up onto the tips of your toes. Now, spread a gigantic smile across your face, and in your mind you can let yourself repeat the phrase “Hi-diddly ho, Neighbour!” ideally in Ned Flanders’s voice. As you stand there without changing anything physically – so you’re stretched out, smiling broadly and hearing the voice of the most upbeat character from The Simpsons – try to get depressed. Not easy is it? In fact, it’s practically impossible. In conducting this experiment with hundreds of people in coaching and training sessions, I’m yet to meet anyone who can go back to the depressed state without changing the way they hold their bodies.
Now, for an example of how Shakespeare’s language can affect your state, read the following passage aloud, and, as you do so, allow yourself to become aware of the emotional responses you have to the words and phrases. The first time through, speak it slowly. Let yourself savour each of the words, so that you can experience how they feel in your mouth, hear how they sound in your ears and see whatever images they provoke in your mind’s eye.
So farewell to the little good you bear me.
Farewell? A long farewell to all my greatness.
This is the state of man: today he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes: tomorrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me, and now has left me
Weary, and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:
Read it over, aloud, a few times. Take note of any feelings you’re sensing as you speak the verse. I’ve deliberately chosen a less familiar passage so that you can experience the words, sounds and verbal pictures without necessarily placing the character and situation immediately. How does the physical act of speaking these words make you feel? What has happened to this person? How resourceful is this person at the moment? Where do his thoughts take him? Are his thoughts helping him – or are they compounding the problem?
The verse is wonderfully loaded with suggestion here. Just speaking it, even without knowing the details of the situation, provides clear hints to the character’s state of mind. Notice the stately pace of the first few lines. How detached and removed the character is from his pronouncement of the “state of man.” And yet he suggests his own vulnerability and hints at feelings of self-contempt by speaking of the “tender leaves of hope,” and “blushing honours.” You can hear the bitterness in “a killing frost.” As the speech progresses, he moves from third to first person – from talking about “man” to speaking of himself, “And then he falls, as I do.” When he thinks of his many years of good fortune prior to his fall, he almost nostalgically compares himself to “little wanton boys that swim on bladders,” suggesting a state of reckless innocence and freedom – yet hinting at danger with that word “wanton.” He acknowledges that without his “high-blown pride” – a phrase recalling the inflation of the “bladders” mentioned a few lines before – he is left to the mercy of a “rude stream.” Finally, he declares his hatred of the world’s “vain pomp and glory” in curt staccato.
You may recognise the passage as Cardinal Wolsey’s lament following the exposure of his corruption and his fall from favour in Henry VIII (3.2.413-428). Whether or not you know the play, this brief extract gives clear insight to Wolsey’s state through the texture of his words. Speaking it aloud can induce a similar state in us – or at least change our state so that we can better understand and appreciate the situation.
The remainder of the speech is an example of Shakespeare’s ability to reveal a character’s underlying feelings – even when the character ostensibly claims to be feeling something else. By committing fully to each word in the following lines as we speak them aloud, we can hear the shifts in thought, and we can see a person attempting to convince themselves of something that may very well not be true:
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favours?
There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have:
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
(3.2.429-435)
Reading this silently and then reading it aloud produces two very different responses. Reading it silently, you might think that Wolsey has adopted a philosophical approach to his situation, seeing himself as free from the constraints of court. The first line of this section suggests a turning point for Wolsey, followed by a detached assessment of the courtier’s plight. But when you read the text aloud, the sounds and texture of the words elicit a much more personal response. The tone and rhythm of the speech belie Wolsey’s attempt to mask his pain. Though he claims to feel his “heart new opened,” the next sound from his mouth is an open moan in “O.” The remaining lines focus on the “wretched” condition of the courtier. He most decidedly does not consider the possibilities to which his heart can be open now. Notice too how the pace of the speech changes. The verse moves very quickly through Wolsey’s question. The next lines also run swiftly as Wolsey considers the favour and disdain of princes. The speed here suggests that Wolsey is hastily attempting to convince himself that he is better off, when he knows he is not. The verse slows down, however, with the open vowel sounds of “pangs and fears” and the alliteration in “wars and women.” It practically crawls into a dirge as Wolsey compares a courtier’s fall from favour to Lucifer’s fall from heaven. Far from celebrating the possibilities of a heart new opened, Wolsey’s final image is of the ultimate punishment, “Never to hope again.”
Compare the feelings you experienced reading Wolsey aloud with the sensations you discover as you speak the following lines of Berowne’s from Love’s Labour’s Lost. Again, speak them slowly at first, and allow yourself to hear them fully. In reading them a second and even a third time, explore the pace and movement of the speech.
But love, first learnèd in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immurèd in the brain
But with the motion of all elements
Courses as swift as thought in every power
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye:
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.
Loves feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
Loves tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx, as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
(4.3.329-347)
This passage of Berowne’s in so many ways the exact opposite of Wolsey’s. Here we have a young man in the full flourish of love, celebrating the feelings he is discovering in himself. His imagery is rich with sensuality – it is all sight, sound and feeling. Berowne makes his argument more compelling by appealing to his friends’ visual, auditory and kinaesthetic sensibilities. It’s difficult to read this passage aloud without being swept up in it. It’s nearly impossible to experience the kind of emotions Wolsey’s going through when you’re speaking and experiencing Berowne’s verse.
These are just two examples of the possibility to change your state with Shakespeare's verse. There are, of course, thousands of other examples in the plays and sonnets. In future articles, we'll look at how Shakespeare's characters can be employed as helpful metaphors as we address challenges in our lives.
