The title comes from Hamlet, and from an exchange where Hamlet deliberately plays with Polonius sycophancy–the adaptability/malleability of hypocrisy being one of the ideas to which Hamlet (both the character and the play) repeatedly returns. Here is the exchange:
HAMLET.
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
POLONIUS.
By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
HAMLET.
Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS.
It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET.
Or like a whale.
POLONIUS.
Very like a whale. (3.2)
The vast differences in shape between camel, weasel, and whale underscore both the erratic nature of Hamlet’s suggestions (the ‘antic disposition’ that he is wearing to make the court assume that he is off the rails), and the lack of sincerity in Polonius’s continued agreement.
Yet, this plays too on the idea that human nature may be as changeable as human fortune (and should you doubt that, you should spend a few days with a toddler), and neither clouds nor human experience fit readily within a box. Much as we tend to try to pigeon hole various aspects of our experience, just as we seem to grasp something, it becomes a camel, a weasel, and a whale, refusing to fit within any prescribed box, and breaking prescription even as we fashion it.
Shakespeare’s plays touch on the frequently amorphous nature of our existence in a number of ways, for today it will be clouds, because they figure prominently at a pivotal moment in another drama too.
Just as Melville’s Moby Dick looks at the idea of a whale from every angle, providing a kind of cubist perspective on cetaceans, Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra appears to do the same kind of thing with love. A & C is Shakespeare’s Moby Dick of love, a kind of cubist journey through the wide range of possible perspectives on what love may be or mean, in both good senses and bad.
In Antony and Cleopatra,the character of Antony is older than he was at his appearance as the rebellious instigator in Julius Caesar. He has grown more dissipated, pursuing the pleasures of Cleopatra’s lavish court much more than he tends on his administrative responsibilities as one of the powerful Triumvirate (Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus), or on his wife and duties at home in Rome. Finally, of course, he turns against Octavius, and suffers a crushing loss in the battle of Actium after Cleopatra’s forces desert him.
After this loss, and after Cleopatra fakes her own death, Antony has the following exchange with Eros:
MARK ANTONY
Eros, thou yet behold’st me?
EROS
Ay, noble lord.
MARK ANTONY
Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower’d citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen
these signs;
They are black vesper’s pageants.
EROS
Ay, my lord.
MARK ANTONY
That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water.
EROS
It does, my lord.
MARK ANTONY
My good knave Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body: here I am Antony:
Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
I made these wars for Egypt: and the queen,–
Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine;
Which whilst it was mine had annex’d unto’t
A million more, now lost,–she, Eros, has
Pack’d cards with Caesar, and false-play’d my glory
Unto an enemy’s triumph.
Nay, weep not, gentle Eros; there is left us
Ourselves to end ourselves. (4.14)
Of course, Shakespeare remains mindful that our own being, the human condition, in standing against the vagaries of the world, may be as changeable as the clouds. In the next scene, Antony kills himself by falling on his sword.
The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o’ the world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman,–a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish’d. Now my spirit is going;
I can no more. (4.15)
Yet, even after it ends for one, the human struggle remains. Antony and Cleopatra continues for another act after Antony is gone before Cleopatra follows him by ending her own life.
One more turn of clouds deserves a mention, and these clouds are real. Clouds of smoke. Today, wildfires again rage through parts of California, and whole towns are being evacuated. A terrible conflagration has consumed the entire town of Paradise, just north of Chico, and it threatens the larger city as well. A fearsome fire also rages in the south, outside of Ventura, threatening Malibu and Calabasas. Smoke is everywhere, north and south, its billowing clouds looking like fog. Air quality remains so poor that local schools and college campuses are closing their doors, either teaching exclusively indoors or advising students to stay home.
A similar, albeit less immediately palpable fire has also been raging for many in higher education, as the perceived need for scholars and ‘experts’ drops away. After all, what need to take a course in something when the internet supplies all the cursory information we might need at a few keystrokes. Everyone reading this can look up Shakespeare’s plays on Wikipedia, for example. How could anyone in any field need more than the super encyclopedia can tell them? What can some ‘expert’ tell me that I can’t discover-and quickly-for myself?
Naturally, this trend extends to early modernists as well. Even if someone thought that Shakespeare was great in school, of what value is it ‘in the real world’? And, in keeping with the driving, underlying force that seems to move the world, what money can one make with Shakespeare?
Indeed, it is a challenge. Unable to find sustainable work in his own country, the main author of this blog continues to struggle economically, and his family along with him. Remunerative spaces for scholarship in the world seem to be a bit like California rain these days. When they may be found at all, they tend to be Quixotic in attendance, and they may quickly evaporate, often leaving too little behind them to support any life. Clouds continue to shift from shape to shape. Hexagram 9 of the I Ching describes dense clouds approaching from the West, but offering no rain.
Yet, I would assert that Shakespeare, and indeed all of literature, philosophy, and the arts have unfathomable value that the current prevailing attitude puts us gravely in danger of losing. Oh, Shakespeare’s fine (we hear the dry commentary in our mind’s ear). By all means, take a class in that, but major in something related to technology. Go into IT. Do something with software, hardware, AI, and the like. Take a course in Shakespeare, read poetry, take that intro to philosophy class, but don’t major in those!
There are professors enough who wasted their lives on such things. The world doesn’t need more Shakespeareans, more philosophers, or more wanna be painters! The world has starving artists enough! What would you do with such a degree? Who needs it?
What good has it ever done you?
The question brings to mind Scrooge’s nephew, who, when challenged on the value of Christmas, responds that it does him good in innumerable ways. Not that Shakespeare or literature or the arts are necessarily like Christmas, except that these disciplines, and the study of them, do tend to offer us a broader and deeper experience of the world, perhaps one less prescribed by television, bourbon, politics, and the strange and often mundane vagaries of undulating life. Because whilst our activities occupy so much of our lives, our lives really are shaped almost exclusively by our thoughts.
(I hear these protests too.) Oh, that old magical thinking crap! If we could be such and such just by thinking, then I would live in a palace!
Yet, it rings true. When we think of things long enough and hard enough, they tend to appear. Think of a friend you haven’t seen and suddenly the call comes in. Dreams of relatives, of symphonies, of stones. All these things exchanging electrons constantly, abiding in the same streams of existence. Does the cult of logic dictate that synchronicity is not ‘a thing’?
That brings to mind what the clouds might manifest for you. Do you see a camel? An angel? A demon? Question marks or frogs?
We all have only a limited amount of time, and it is ours to spend as we wish. Frankly, I would rather see angels in the smoke than devils. I would rather embrace the whale than be shut inside the box. By all means, watch television and drink whiskey. Life is too short not to do these things and life would be truncated without including some of these experiences as well. But do think as well as medicate. Think ‘higher’ thoughts (which may leave Shakespeare out because those works encompass so much of both celestial language and the earthiest kinds of imagery).
Mercutio might tell us to think not of higher, but of harder thoughts. Perhaps they are really one and the same. In response to the Nurse’s question about whether or not it might be afternoon, Mercutio responds, “‘Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.” (2.4).
On so many levels, this reflects not just the time, but also implies the challenges of time draining away our lives, our awareness, and our potential ecstasy. Resist the temptation to dismiss the world of the mind as convoluted bullshit, because it is not. It is as present and immediate as any light or shadow in our day or night.
But, if you are reading this, it is most likely that you already believe me. That I preach fire to choristers who would readily preach it back at me. Why else read of Shakespeare, fire, clouds, or anything else?