Verse and Rhetoric: 21st Century American Style

Right around the end of last year, I saw this article over at NPR that talks about the somewhat fractious state of poetry in America today. I fully admit that I tend to not think much of most modern poetry, and that was before I spent the last two and a half years consuming the verse of Shakespeare, and his even better contemporaries (i.e. Marlowe, Jonson, and Chapman).

Because it was one of those extremely cheap subscription offers, I subscribed to Poetry late last year, and having made it through two whole issues, I'm having the hardest time finding even a scrap of verse that sounds good to my classically trained ear. Of course, there's the rub: modern poetry is not early modern poetry; it's meant to be seen and not heard (mostly).

If Christopher Marlowe grew up in the age of Hannah Hoch, Francesca Woodman, and Jean-Luc Godard he might have devoted his time to exploring language as a purveyor of contrasting images rather than as a symphony mirroring the order of the cosmos. And maybe that's one of the reasons why modern audiences sometimes struggle with the language of Shakespeare and his contemporaries: we're used to digesting images in fragments, and our linguistic sensibilities have evolved in to accommodate the post-modern vocabulary of fragmentation.

If I admit that modern poets aren't necessarily better or worse than their early modern counterparts, I would also have to admit that modern political rhetoric, reduced to the 30-second-sound-bite, is also no better or worse than the great rhetoricians of years gone by.

Hmm... pause and consider.

Let's take a look at the Apology of Socrates for a minute:

I have a family, yes, and sons. O Athenians, three in number, one of whom is growing up, and the two others are still young; and yet I will not bring any of them hither in order to petition you for an acquittal. And why not? Not from any self-will or disregard of you. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is another question, of which I will not now speak. But my reason simply is that I state.

So there's Socrates telling us that he's not going to bring his family to the court to plead for his life, while simultaneously reminding the jury that he has a family. In my Intro to Public Speaking class, we would call this an appeal to pathos. In case you missed John Huntsman dropping out of the Repblican primary, why don't you take a look now:



You notice how he has his wife at his side (but a step behind!) serving as the set dressing that we're accustomed to political spouses (wives, mostly) playing? My students sure did. So I will put it to you, is there a difference between Socrates' and Hunstman's tactic? I'm less and less sure.

Which, in turn, might imply that there really isn't a great deal of difference between the information that we communicate in the modern theatre than the information the Ancient Greeks communicated with theirs, or the early-modern Londoners did with theirs. If only our media are different, then we've nothing to fear from theatrical forms from other times. We only have to get through the different ways of communicating.

But, really, they're not that different. One of the reasons I showed this clip in my class is because Huntsman indulges in some pretty heightened rhetoric. I dare say it's probably nothing beyond the television audience watching that announcement, at least not generally. That's one of the keys to understanding the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries: they were writing for a broad range of education levels in the audience. Not 100% of the people got 100% of 100% the actors said 100% of the time. As long as most everyone can understand most of what's happening, we're fine.

As Huntsman's speech demonstrates, our modern oratory still contains the same basic DNA as Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It takes a little bit more work on the part of the actors, of course, but that's where grad programs like mine come in. It will also take a keener sense of awareness of how to adapt a language written before the influence of post-modernism. In other words, directors have to be smarter; we have to know what parts of the script we can cut, and what parts we should cut in favor of employing lighting, costume, scenic, or musical effects.

Which brings me full circle to the role of modern poetry in all of this. A director who wants to bring the poetry of the Renaissance to a modern audience needs to be aware of the way in which modern verse, in all its fragmentary forms, works. We need to study it's various forms as a reflection of the modern language of imagery and fragmentation. Only then will we find innovative ways of bringing Shakespeare's words to life beyond his original staging conditions.