GOING TO SEE A PLAY BY SHAKESPEARE

Time is measured by minutes, hours, days, nights, seasons and years. It can pass too slowly or too quickly. It can also take effect over eons devouring human beings, cultures, buildings and their achievements. There are only a few actions we can take to ensure continued recognition within our lifetimes or that our reputations will survive beyond our lifetimes; those are to reproduce and so ensure the life of our bloodline or to make ourselves remembered by future generations of people who will read about our actions on our gravestones or by writing which will stand as a record of the people and times we have known. These are the ideas about time that Shakespeare considers in his plays and poems. He also personifies time as a greedy devourer or as holding a scythe to sweep us away like a grass cutter cuts grass. Being our master Time brings us into this world and takes us out of it and determines what happens to us in our lifetimes. In Love’s Labour’s Lost and Shakespeare’s sonnets fame is portrayed as an animal or bird of prey that human beings hunt during their lifetimes. Time is depicted as both a greedy, hungry person who devours everything put in front of him and a person wielding a scythe with a sharp edge that can only be blunted by the record of achievement written on courtiers’ brass tombstones. Recording their achievements on their tombstones, will minimize the power of time and death to make human beings forgotten and ensure that they will be remembered after their deaths. Fame brings honor to human beings even though they are inevitably subjected to Time’s scythe which cuts them down, dishonoring them with death. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Moth, Armado’s page, teases his uneducated master, who cannot count, about time. Armado I’ve promised to study with the King for three years. Moth You could do it in an hour, sir. Armado Impossible. Moth How many is ‘one’ said three times? Armado I’m not good at arithmetic. Waiters count. Moth You’re a gentleman and a gambler, sir. Armado I confess to both. They’re both a sign of an accomplished man. Moth Then I’m sure you know how much the sum total of one and two comes to. Armado It adds up to one more than two— Moth —which most people call three. Armado True. Moth Why is this so hard to learn, sir? You’ve just studied three before you’ve blinked three times. How easy it is to add ‘years’ to the word ‘three’ and study ‘three years’ in two words. Morocco, the dancing horse will tell you. Armado A fine piece of rhetoric. Moth (Aside) To prove you’re a nothing. The play ends with the King and the Princess putting a different argument about time. He urges her to make a decision to accept his proposal given that she has so little time but she argues that she cannot make a commitment quickly that would tie her down for a lifetime. Ferdinand At this last minute of the hour accept our proposals. Princess I think the time is too short to make a lifetime bargain in. No. No my Lord you have broken your promises and you are very guilty. So if you will do anything for my love—but there is no reason—you can do this for me. I will not trust your oath but go quickly to some isolated hermitage remote from the world’s pleasures. Stay there for a year. If this austere, unsociable life doesn’t change your impulsive offer—if frosts and fasts, a simple dwelling and light clothing doesn’t nip the colorful bloom of your love but it endures this trial and your love lasts, then at the end of the year come and challenge me. Challenge me with these achievements and I swear by my virginal hand, now holding yours, I will be yours. Till that instant I will shut my sad self in a house of mourning, raining tears of sorrow in memory of my father’s death. If you refuse to do this let’s part our hands with neither of us entitled to each other’s heart.