Pity Like a Newborn Babe and the "Linguistic Swoon"

 

  The complete passage from Macbeth reads: 

And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

 Personally, I envisioned a newborn baby wrapped in cloth, riding a hurricane-like storm fueled by his tears that is being driven by flying angel-horse hybrid creatures whilst crying into a megaphone he has plugged into an amp, "HORRID DEED!"   In a panic (not wanting to let the class down after my previously breathtaking work in "God in his PJ's") I looked up the quote on Google images for inspiration and found this William Blake painting. While his work captures the obviously violent vibe of the wild horse-drawn natural disaster, there is a serenity in the faces of the newborn and the body below that suggests a softer side of regret and vulnerability, leaving you with mixed feelings as to who you should have pity for.  The passage itself creates a very vivid picture with its description of what it would look like if the horrid deed was told with the volume and intensity that Macbeth would have it recalled with.  In just five lines, Shakespeare has created a very clear scene in the reader's mind. 

 

I realize that we will cover Macbeth later, but I'd like to take this opportunity to talk very briefly about the sensual nature of the language in Shakespeare's plays and how they evoke powerful emotion while playing on all of our senses.  Today we talked about Midsummer Night's Dream and how it is one of the most "voluptuous" plays and how it is difficult to read it without falling into a "linguistic swoon." 

Lysander's lines on the risky and fleeting nature of love could just as easily have said something to the effect of "even if two people love each other, a whole bunch of things can go wrong and their time together can go by faster than they thought it would." Instead he says this:

  "Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,

Brief as the lightning in the collied night;

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth,

And ere a man hath power to say “Behold!”

The jaws of darkness do devour it up.

So quick bright things come to confusion."

  As a reader or member of an audience watching the play acted out, we can feel the dread of looming sickness and death, hear the crack of lightning and see as it flashes across the sky and then vanish, and we understand just how fleeting and fragile love can be.  The words spoken in a Shakespeare play are in themselves an experience to be had both in the mind and body of the reader, perhaps giving them their longevity.  These are real people and real situations despite their mythical nature and they are made real by the sensual effect they have on those who come into contact with them.  

While on the subject of Mythology, am I the only one who feels like maybe they are no longer qualified to read Shakespeare after today's discussion of the entire other story that you would have had to have known to understand who the people in MSND even are? I knew that these plays were steeped in myth but it never occurred to me that they would overstep the bounds of archetypal themes into the realm of entire mythological back-stories.