teenage time in romeo and juliet ellen mackay, r & j 1, 7/19/14

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Teenage Time in

Romeo and Juliet

Ellen MacKay, R & J 1, 7/19/14

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[OED]Loosely, an adolescent. (1941)

1980   Times Lit. Suppl. 15 Aug. 908/1   Teenagers, of course, had not been invented in the 1880s.

[In the print record of 1570 to 1640, “Adolescent” is very seldom used, “youth” very frequently but without any chronometric particularity]

Defining Our Terms

TEENAGER

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The consensus of scholars is that while there were some expressions of solidarity or fraternity that united some types of early modern English youth, especially the male apprentices of London, adolescence went unmarked as a universal condition or stage in life.

Thomas Fleet, “Dick Whittington and his Cat [?],” in a 1770 chapbook from the Boston Public Library.

‘youth culture’ in its apprentice form: • Apprentice Riots, especially the

one that brought down the Phoenix Theatre on Shrove Tuesday in 1617;

• the culture of fraternal fun and license modeled on folklorized figures like Dick Whittington and Simon Eyre, medieval mayors of London.

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Archie Comics originate the same year as the coinage of the term “teenager”: 1941.

JUST TO REPEAT:In Shakespeare’s moment, the adolescent is not a distinct type.

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MALVOLIO: Not yet old enough for a man, nor youngenough for a boy—as a

squash is before ’tis apeascod, or a codling when

’tis almost an apple. ’Tis with him in standing water, between boy and man. He is very well-favored, and he speaks very

shrewishly. One would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him. (1.5.155-160)

OBSERVATION 1:AND YET IT IS A STATE THAT SHAKESPEARE SEEMS TO

NOTICE AND RICHLY DRAMATIZE

Sandro di Mariano Filipepi, known as Botticelli, Portrait of

a Youth, 1483, National Gallery, Washington DC

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TIMEa. A finite extent or stretch of continued existence, as the interval separating two successive events or actions, or the period during which an action, condition, or state continues; a finite portion of time (in its infinite sense: see sense A. 34a); a period.

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STRUCTURES AND FIGURES OF TIME IN

SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS

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FORTUNE’S WHEEL (Cyclical Time)

Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunae. 1523. Courtesy of LUNA.

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ROSENCRANTZ: The cesse of majesty

Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

What's near it with it. It is a massy wheel,

Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,

To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

Are mortis'd and adjoin'd; which when it falls,

Each small annexment, petty consequence,

Attends the boist'rous ruin. (HAMLET 3.3.116-23)

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FAMILY TREE(Successive,

Linear, Genealogical

Time)

John Ferne, The Blazon of Gentrie, 1586, Courtesy of LUNA

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EXETER: He sends you this most memorable line,In every branch truly demonstrative;Willing to overlook this pedigree:And when you find him evenly derivedFrom his most famed of famous ancestors, Edward the Third, he bids you then resignYour crown and kingdom, indirectly heldFrom him the native and true challenger. (HENRY V 2.2.95-

101)

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The Monument(Enduring Time)

Enea Vico, The Lives of the Empresses of Rome, 1557.

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The Monument(Enduring Time)

Enea Vico, The Lives of the Empresses of Rome, 1557.

VIOLA: She sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. (2.5.126-7)

Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, And tongues to be your being shall rehearse When all the breathers of this world are dead

(Sonnet 81)

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The Broken Monument (the End of Earthly Time)

Jeronimus Wierix, “Ruin,” Antwerp, 1577 Courtesy of LUNA.

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PROSPERO These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air;And like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous

palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe

itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant

faded,Leave not a rack behind. (THE

TEMPEST, 4.1.165-173)

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.

(Sonnet 55)

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TIME

THE SEASONS

PERSONIFIED TIME

Philippe Galle print of Martin van Heemskerk’s series of illustrations of Petrarch’s Triomfi, 1565, reissued in 1638.

TIME I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror

Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,

Now take upon me, in the name of Time, To use my wings.

(WINTER’S TALE, 4.CHORUS, 1-4)

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Depicting Timein Shakespeare’s moment:

A BROADER VIEW

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Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, Momento Mori, 1659

Memento Mori(death is the universal future; “the readiness is all”)

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Slide (worn on a ribbon), ca. 1640. Enamel and gold.

English pendant, circa 1540-1550.

Ring with plaited hair and enamel, 17th century.

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Vanitas(the ephemerality of earthly pleasures)

Hans Memling, center front panel from Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, c. 1485, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

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Herman Henstenburgh, Vanitas Still Life, 1670s, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vanitas

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STILL LIFE (time’s hiatus)

Balthasar van der Ast (c. 1593-1657), Basket of Fruits (1622)

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Wenceslas Hollar, from his imprint of Holbein’s Dance of Death, 1651(Death as a fraternity to which we all are pledged)

TEMPORAL FRAMEWORKS

24Rogier van Weyden, outside panels of the Braque family triptych, c. 1452

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Perspective(one temporality in oblique relation to another)

Hans Holbein, “The Ambassadors,” 1553, National Gallery, London.