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Have we all become a strumpet’s fool?

Have we all become a strumpet’s fool?

Last updated on: May 3, 2016 at 5:13 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Have we all become a strumpet’s fool? 2016-05-03T17:13:26-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Cleopatra_greets_Antony_opt There was a time when a sneer of the elite was about “middle class morality,” but now we have achieved moral unity. Elite, middle class, and poor, we all divorce, watch porn, and follow our hearts. We have mocked the church ladies to the brink of extinction and leveled the cultural playing ground by elevating pop culture and avoiding anything challenging (new or old). The result is a cultural elite that think comic books are Shakespeare and Babbittry is classy.

We are philistines and proud of it. Civilizations have had decadent leaders or decadent masses, but Americans seem determined that the poor, the middle class, and the rich all be democratically decadent. We share our lack of taste and can buy a gilded lily from Amazon to decorate our home ugly.

At the beginning of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, a Roman mourns:

Nay, but this dotage of our general’s
O’erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn, 5
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front: his captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan 10
To cool a gipsy’s lust.
[Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her Ladies,]
the Train, with Eunuchs fanning her] Look, where they come:
Take but good note, and you shall see in him. 15
The triple pillar of the world transform’d
Into a strumpet’s fool: behold and see.

Antony was a slave to his erotic nature. The true strumpet was not Cleopatra, who had better character than Antony, but the, almost, great man, this not-quite-colossus, who could not control his own desires. A mark of a lady or a gentleman has always been the ability to say no to self. . . lest a person become strumpet’s fool. Antony knows he should say good-bye to Cleopatra and rouse himself from pleasure. He knows that important things are being lost daily, but he cannot shake free. He is an addict to pleasure.

Once the possibility of drowning in a sea of amusements was impossible to all, but the super rich, the Marc Antony types. We have been blessed to make certain entertainments so cheap that most of us can amuse ourselves to death. We can all be strumpet’s fools and we are well on our way.

Yet the same tools that make this evil possible provide us a way out. The same search engine that can give us all the decadence a Roman Emperor could consume, places the best books, movies, and art at our command. The last two weeks I have been thinking about Shakespeare to recollect the day he went to God and have been delighted with the tools the Internet has given me. The Perseus Project gives us all a classical library. We could stop using these awesome tools for evil and use them for good.

Millions have and millions more can.

All that is necessary is for me to be willing to say no to my own mental ease. My brilliant opera friends have nudged me to opera . . . and Houston has given me the Ring cycle, one a year. I read, prepare, listen to my friends and learn. It is hard . . . sometimes I would rather sleep or watch a Star Trek rerun, but I go. It is good for my soul. Why? Because Wagner is difficult, great, and hard to understand. I am forced to think, argue with his ideas, and learn. The same technology allows me to consume pop culture outside of my comfort zone. Hip hop was worthwhile some time long before Hamilton gave it a theater twist.

This is another way of saying that, as always, we live in the best of times and the worst of times. If we collectively become strumpet’s fool, then we can be sure that there is a scheming Octavian (paging Mr. Putin) waiting to be our Augustus Caesar. If we shake out of decadence, preserve what is best in the past, and embrace what is good today, then this could become a golden age. Shakespeare again shows us in Antony and Cleopatra what we must do.

We must act and not just have empty regrets.

Antony mourns the death of his noble Roman wife, but cannot shake free of Cleopatra. We must get what help we can find and shake our base natures. For each of us the temptation is different, for me it is overeating.

We must be willing to hear the truth.

Antony and Cleopatra would hear bad news, but retreat from it into sunny optimism. This is like the political campaign that begins to lie to itself with sunny and fake poll numbers or the recruiter who inflates numbers to look good until the crash.

We must be willing to compromise.

Everyone wants to the sole ruler of Rome and end the triumvirate. At some point, men like Antony needed to recognize that they were not fit for such a role. He should have compromised with Octavian while he had something to offer.

We must let go of our vices and become noble or die.

This Republic need not last. We are always a generation from extinction. God help us, but our heritage is so glorious that even if we squander it, history will mourn us. The power will pass to others, we will be dead, but we will be missed.

She shall be buried by her Antony:
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous. High events as these
Strike those that make them; and their story is
No less in pity than his glory which
Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall
In solemn show attend this funeral;
And then to Rome.

The greatest difference between Antony and us? Cleopatra and Antony are tragic due to their personal past greatness. We will be tragic for squandering the past greatness of our parents and grandparents.

God help us.

————————————————–

William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero. Richard II shows us not to presume on the grace of God or rebel against authority too easily. Coriolanus reminds us that our leaders need integrity and humility. Our life can be joyful if we realize that it is, at best, A Comedy of Errors. Hamlet needs to know himself better and talks to himself less. He is stuck with himself so he had better make his peace with God quickly and should stay far away from Ophelia. Shakespeare gets something wrong in Merchant of Venice . . . though not as badly as some in the English Labour Party or in my Twitter feed. Love if blind, but intellectualism is blind and impotent in Love’s Labours Lost. Brutus kills Caesar, but is overshadowed by him in Julius Caesar. We should learn not to make Much Ado about Nothing. We might all be Antony.

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