Not from Shakespeare, the above line appears on the arch over Holworthy Gate in Harvard Yard on the Harvard campus. A gift to the University from the class of 1876, the motto was controversial even then, with some believing that it was inappropriately nostalgiac, and that the more favoured perspective encouraged moving on instead of recalling or dwelling upon the past.
With the New Year upon us, this point acquires a double edged quality. So, we may do both. We may pause and look back at what lies behind us before stepping through the gate into whatever unseen destiny may lie beyond it. Such reflection seems timely. If Antonio’s oft cited line from The Tempest has any truth out of context, then “What’s past is prologue” truly.**
But can we make the past a mirror, and in the surface of it discern an imperfect reflection of what might be? Difficult to say. Rife with imperfection, human experience often finds echoes or foreshadows everywhere, in everything. Yet, is the suggestion of a meaning meaning?
The sun’s reflection may share some of its brilliance, but it is not the sun. Or perhaps it is, at least as much as any image, as any thought, essence, or apprehension may be captured by anything in this world.
For the world itself, our world, seems cobbled completely together out of the inexact. It lies with us and against us, heaving and undulating in sound and still. And our experience constantly threatens to take our seeing and our feeling and dash what we perceive to pieces with each breath. Light in science both partical and wave. Love an ocean to us, our own feelings and reactions often incomprehensible, while also instantly recognizable and stunningly immediate. This moment captured by Robert Graves:
She tells her love while half asleep,
“She tells her love while half asleep” by Robert Graves***
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth turns in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.
In love, as in life, elements are seldom as distinct as our tendency to compartmenatlize and define would have them be. Love can be like telling, in “half-words whispered low”, with passion a marvellous kind of visceral indistinction of grass and flowers despite the snow.
Our world, our understanding, seldom lends itself to sharp delineation, maybe more so at the turning of the New Year. Shakespeare’s only mention of New Year’s comes in The Merry Wives of Windsor, after Falstaff has been tricked by Mistress Ford and Mistress Page into hiding himself in a laundry basket to avoid a confrontation with Mistress Ford’s jealous husband. The contents of the basket, along with Falstaff, are subsequently dumped into the river Thames. Aggrieved, he later complains to his friend, Bardolph:
Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow
Merry Wives of Windsor 3.5.4-8
of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames?
Well, if I be served such another trick, I’ll have my
brains ta’en out and buttered, and give them to a
dog for a New Year’s gift.
This is Shakespeare’s only mention of New Year’s, because the Gregorian calendar wasn’t adopted in Britain until 1752, which was long after Shakespeare’s death in 1616. The early modern year (in Shakespeare’s time) changed after Lady Day on March 25th. However, as Ronald Hutton tells us, even the New Year itself was not so cut and dried:
But certain days among the Twelve were more important than others. The first such, after Christmas itself, was 1 January, known as New Year’s Day even though the date of the year did not officially change until 25 March, and had not done since the early Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the older Roman tradition of the turn of the year at the opening of January, still universally persisted in late medieval Europe.
Ronald Hutton****
Frustrated at having been so stupid, Falstaff has gone through a metaphorical gate, a dunking, a washing. His ordeal has not really cleansed him, neither physically (in the dirty Thames) nor spiritually, as he calls for sack wine immediately after making his complaint. Still, being carried in a basket and thrown like meat scraps into the river is a kind of symbolic initiation, involving the washing of unclean flesh, and as many initiations seem to do, this one points up Falstaff’s ignorance, his blind spots.
Although Falstaff believes that he is escaping a jealous husband when he hides in the basket, his real blind spot is underestimating Mistress Ford and Mistress Page in terms of both their intellect and their morality. Falstaff has been foolish enough to believe he might seduce these women for his own ends, and his casual sexism renders him an easy subject for much of the play’s humour. The image of Falstaff being thrown into the Thames, and blindly thrashing in the dark river in a tangle of wet laundry suggests the cold shock of sudden realisation. The idea of Falstaff’s proposed sacrifice, of his buttered brains being offered to dogs in the case of repeated stupidity, seems to smack of Ovidian retribution, as much as it does of either the ‘Great Hunt’ of medieval European tradition or the folk custom of wearing antlers or hides at the New Year.*****
Of course, any sudden realisation arising from his dunking in the third act does not take, and the audience realises that the comic structure of the play will demand a greater comeuppance from Falstaff before the play ends. The proverbial New Year’s gate is not always smooth, and can be especially rocky for those like Falstaff, for whom morality seems to be much more malleable than might be comfortable for most of us.
Often regarded as one of Shakespeare’s weaker plays, The Merry Wives of Windsor remains especially rich in material for those with a ritualistic or folkloric lens, and Falstaff’s immersion in the river bears echoes of Celtic tradition as well. F. Marian McNeill offers this interesting note about the New Year (Hogmanay) in Scotland:
The belief is found throughout the Celtic territories that certain Standing Stones, set in motion by the spirits which animate them, sometimes go to drink in river or lake. In Orkney, one such Stone was said to walk from the Circle to the Loch of Stennis regularly on Hogmanay, dip its head into the Loch, and return to its old position. The story goes that a sailor once seated himself on the Stone some time before midnight in order to test the truth of the legend, and next morning his dead body was found half-way between the Circle and the Loch.
F. Marian McNeill******
McNeill’s example illustrates how serious the ordeal, the New Year dunking, may be. Gazing at our own past while looking to the future may be one thing, but proposing to meddle with stones, or with the very earth itself, may be another thing completely. Mortality, by its very nature, denies even the comparative eternity of stone, and we might do best to look to our own gateways, leaving the spirits to themselves and whatever traditions they might have.
Of course, our human traditions tend to embrace a drink on the New Year as well. Robert Burns’ famous poem, sung at New Year celebrations all over the world, reminds us that the New Year really is a time to look both ways, and to toast to the past even as we plunge into our future. Here is the song, followed by its more contemporary English version:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne*?Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.II
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.Chorus
III
We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin’ auld lang syne.Chorus
IV
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin’ auld lang syne.Chorus
V
Robert Burns, “Auld Lang Syne”, traditional
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak’ a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
Here is the same in a more accessible (for many of us) English:
I
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.II
And surely you’ll buy your pint cup!
and surely I’ll buy mine!
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.Chorus
III
We two have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.Chorus
IV
We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.Chorus
V
And there’s a hand my trusty friend!
And give me a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.
“Auld lang syne” translates most directly as “old long since” or, as some would have it, “long, long ago”. Yet, as this ghost likes to think of it, New Year’s Eve presents a moment where we might pause, as Holworthy Gate might have us do, “In memory of dear old times”. Times change, and so must we. On New Year’s Eve or Day, looking back can be a good thing, helping us to better plot our course in days to come.
I urge you, then, to take a moment and remember. Take a sip of whatever libation you might favour in all the range from tea to whisky. Then step through the gateway of the New Year when you are ready to do so. May we all move forward from this point, and together, heal our ailing world.
Happy New Year to you all! May the coming days bring you all your wishes, all love, and all happiness. May the cup of kindness continue to flow from you and for you for all of your days.
*Some of my readers might recognize the building visible through the gate as Stoughton Hall, one of the Harvard freshman dorms on Harvard Yard.
**Folger digital texts, The Tempest 2.1.289.
***Robert Graves (1895-1985), was a poet, novelist, and critic. A number of his works are still in print, including his famous autobiography, Goodbye to All That, and his work on poetic myth, The White Goddess. He also wrote I Claudius.
****Hutton, Ronald. The Rise and Fall of Merry England: the Ritual Year, 1400-1700. Oxford: OUP, 1996. 15.
*****Among the stories in Ovid is the tale of Actaeon, the hunter who stumbles across Artemis/Diana while she is bathing. As punishment for having seen her naked, the goddess transforms Actaeon into a stag, and he is subsequently torn apart by his own hounds. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is later tricked into disguising himself as Herne the Hunter, a forest spirit who wears “great ragg’d horns” (4.4.32), echoing Actaeon’s change. For the folk customs of wearing antlers at the New Year, see Hutton p. 47 and 62. For additional information on the Great Hunt, see: Lecouteux, Claude. Phantom Armies of the Night: the Wild Hunt and Ghostly Processions of the Undead. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011. A noted Sorbonne historian of the Middle Ages, Lecouteux has written widely on the supernatural in folk tradition, and most of his major works are available in both French and English.
******McNeill, F. Marian. The Silver Bough. Edinburgh: Canongate Classics, 1989. 87.