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A truism obscured
- Kenneth W Heaton (19 October 2007)
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Poesy and real life.
- William G. Pickering (22 October 2007)
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Kenneth W Heaton, Retired Consultant Physician Claverham House, Claverham, N Somerset, BS49 4QD
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Readers who find Shakespeare obscure will, sadly, have had their problem worsened by a typo in the climax of this otherwise excellent article, namely "who" instead of "whose" in the lines where Kent rashly tries to teach Dr Dalrymple's message about emotional incontinence to the irascible King: Nor are those empty-hearted, whose low sounds / Reverb no hollowness. Actually, I would suggest that, for many readers, it would have helped them get the point of Kent’s truism if the poetry had been followed by a paraphrase, such as: Nor are people devoid of feelings who speak softly, their words echoing no insincerity. This said, I am not sure that the diagnosis of emotional incontinence is quite right for Goneril and Regan's protestations of love for their father. Are they, not, rather guilty of falsified emotion or, to use, Shakespeare's own words in another play, "well-painted passion" (Othello 4.1.254)? Competing interests: None declared |
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William G. Pickering, Doctor 7 Moor Place, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. NE3 4AL
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Poesy and real life. In his oddly disconnected piece which invokes Mr Shakespeare and King Lear, Dr Dalrymple concludes that we live in an age of “emotional incontinence.” He disapproves one feels, and adds tacit but wholesome message that we should be more self-reliant and buttoned-up. One notices however that over the centuries emotional incontinence has, in part, probably brought us top-of-the-range novelists and dramatists. Their productive incontinence is life enhancing and restorative for many of us; though admittedly, it is not proof against gathering mediocrity elsewhere, or the whingers, dumb column inches or tawdry media. Regarding King Lear’s mental pathology, many of us know of not dissimilar characters who pass as normal or even eminent. Some – nearly Kings or Queens - work in state services at the taxpayer’s expense. Lear may well have been, all his life, constitutionally potty, which deleteriously influenced one or two of his horrid daughters. But we must not posit ‘the sins of the father …’ lest we end up at the Bible’s door or, as controversially, in the company of the unignorable Philip Larkin. This is the BMJ after all. If Dr Dalrymple is keen to continue testing his diagnostic mettle, he might, instead of patients in print or imagination, re-look at those he himself saw in the flesh whom he could not diagnose, or diagnosed wrongly. As Robert Louis Stevenson put it, ‘writing is alright but it is a bloodless substitute for real life.’ It is amusing that the glitterati, literati and Dr Dalrymple show noisy amazement that Mr Shakespeare’s plays (or the collegiate which wrote under his name) still “speak to our age directly”. Of course they do! As if human nature changes. It’s still the same old story. William G Pickering wgpi@hotmail.com 21.10.07 Competing interests: None declared |
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