Shakespeare has an overwhelming affect on some of us. I remember my youthful frustration that one could no longer write Shakespearean blank verse and be taken seriously. (A fact I discovered in the trial, by the way.) But some of us can’t give up that easily.
Years ago I was watching one of the worst and most unintentionally funny movies ever made, John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in something called, I believe, “The Conqueror.” I do hope some of you have seen this thing. Okay, it is funny enough already, the very concept. But what if I tell you that in at least some parts of his dialogue Genghis orates in unmistakable blank verse—as I remember, when they are trying for grandeur. Think of it: not only John Wayne in a bathrobe as Genghis Khan, but delivering his lines in blank verse. Wayne is perfectly unaware of doing so, of course. I suspect some deeply frustrated screenwriter exorcising the ghost of his master Shakespeare, placing the cadences where he is certain nobody will ever notice.
But if you have any ear at all, you cannot mistake the sound of the stuff. Truly. Take a listen.
Then, just recently, I re-read “V for Vendetta,” and lo and behold, Alan Moore has V orating in blank verse. My ear had been sharpened by watching and listening to Branagh’s “Hamlet,” a magnificent and faithful production (I have small patience with those who “modernize” Shakespeare by trampling on the pentameter or ignoring it or deleting it—”Hamlet” is so perfectly written there is not a single scene I can imagine excluding). In case you doubt me, let me quote a few lines from Chapter 2 of “V for Vendetta”: “You see, my rival, though inclined to roam/possessed at home a wife that he adored./He’ll rue his promiscuity, the rogue/Who stole my only love, when he’s informed/how many years it is since first I bedded his.” Okay, the last line is hexameter, but isn’t the regularity of the meter unmistakable? You can find metrical patches like this all through the comic. Inevitably, there is a concomitant antique character to the diction. Moore makes no secret of his admiration for Shakespeare, so I am not surprised to find these imitations.
It takes a mighty prosody to write pentameter as plain as speech, yet keep, as casually as if it cost no effort, the rhythm of a five-beat line. Shakespeare could do it. Alan Moore was wise to turn to other more natural cadences.
I might not have noticed, since I am far from a true scholar of Shakespeare, but he is quite literally the writer who moved me to poetry in the first place. I have learned to read and follow him as naturally as contemporary conversation, and have written pentameter consciously for better than forty years.
Cannot finally resist talking about the most cringe-inducing blank-verse-related moment I have ever experienced. In spite of thinking that Al Pacino is a bombastic, melodramatic, overrated actor—in fact, the very type that Hamlet makes fun of to the first player, a scenery-chewer, bellower, and waver of hands—I decided to rent “LooKING for RICHARD” (get it?), Pacino’s documentary on his attempt to do the Shakespearean play. The thing turns out to be a vanity stunt, an excuse for Pacino to portray himself as the great actor who wants to put on Shakespeare, but finds himself impatient with all that stuffy nonsense. The implication is that Shakespeare, the lesser, has been waiting centuries for such a genius as Pacino, the greater, to transform his scribblings into art.
In his egregious rummaging around, Pacino consults an academic, an expert on Shakespeare. The poor woman, obviously far more learned and intelligent than Pacino, but just as obviously intimidated by his money, power, or fame, says to Pacino, after he fulminates about the meter, something like “Well, it doesn’t matter. You have the blank verse of the heart.” That last sentence is an exact quote.
The blank verse of the heart. Christ Almighty. Pacino, you deserve a few centuries in limbo—shall we say four?—for bringing another human to such an embarrassing moment.
Tags: Al Pacino, blank verse, King Richard, Shakespeare
Incidentally, the slashes indicating line-ends above are mine, not Alan Moore’s.
Oof—I can’t help but feel for the academic who got Pacino’d; I think most of us who study literature have had the experience of trying to explain why we do what we do to someone who only wants to hear platitudes. (These someones are occasionally in charge of our funding.) Part of me hopes that she’s subtly but deliberately putting Pacino down with that line.
I really enjoyed this post; I’m going to have to go back and read V again with an ear for the blank verse—though I’m not sure I have the fortitude for The Conqueror.
I feel you are anticipating this comment. The academic was no doubt thinking, “Buddy, you’ve got blank verse of the head!”
Your description of The Conqueror reminds me of the Wayne from The Greatest Story Ever Told, “Truly, dis man was the son of Gawd.”
Have realized I grouped Alan Moore with two more laughable examples of the use of blank verse, which may imply that I disdain his efforts. I don’t. I admire Moore both for his love of Shakespeare and his excellent attempt at rendering Shakespearean blank verse. He was in his early twenties when he wrote the stuff, and actually I find his blank verse impressive. Shakespeare and his cohorts had a number of metrical strategies available to them that poets today do not have, so if the blank verse sounds at all Shakespearean, it necessarily sounds antiquated, and that is anathema to almost all editors, so I think Moore was wise to drop the effort. But he’s good.
I think even the effort is impressive; like how his work in Promethea,all magick and Qabbalah and and hyperreality, is most emphatically not for me. Yet I respect the brain-flexing, much as I admire his attempts to work in blank verse in V (which is due for a re-read).
I’m worried I’m going to start seeing meter all over the place.
It’s also worth noting that John Wilkes Booth made his stage debut as the Earl of Richmond. That Henry does not appear in LOOKING FOR RICHARD is telling. You see, I’ve long held an odd theory that Pacino may have known this little piece of trivia and intended to assassinate some political figure through the power of Shakespeare. Perhaps he turned his malfunctioning guns on the poor academic instead.