Raymond Chandler and Shakespeare

The Big Sleep

I first read The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (Knopf 1939) when I was a teenager, and to be truthful, I didn't like it. I much preferred the whitewashed movie version with Humphrey Bogart (Warner Bros. 1946).
I still like the movie but being much older I can appreciate Chandler's writing.
I was just re-reading The Big Sleep and was struck by a passage from the last chapter when the protagonist, Marlowe speaks of old Gen. Sternwood lying on his deathbed.
'What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.'
These lines reminded me of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2, when Macbeth is speaking how the murdered Duncan is past caring.
'Duncan is in his grave.
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further.'

 

 

 Raymond Chandler obviously knew his Shakespeare. In Farewell, My Lovely, Chandler's iconic detective, Philip Marlowe (Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare's greatest contemporary rival)  references Shakespeare a few times including 'Shakespeare's  Second Murderer in that scene in King Richard III.' In the same novel a character tells Marlowe, "You look like Hamlet's father!"  In The Long Goodbye there is a reference to Ophelia from Hamlet. In Farewell My Lovely, Chandler uses the line, ...who loved not wisely, but too well, from Othello. 

It seems that both Macbeth and Philip Marlowe believe that death is the end of one's life where we do not have to account for anything we have done in this world, and we are safe from any type of consequence. Both of them are quite wrong, of course, and there will be judgement  - The Big Judgement.
 
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Henry V and St. Crispin

Tomorrow is October 25. It is the 600^th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt and it is also St. Crispin’s Day. Both of these events are tied together in William Shakespeare’s Henry V. After invading France and losing one quarter of his men, the young English king Henry finds his path blocked by the French army that outnumber him 5 to 1. In his famous speech to his men before battle Henry eludes to St. Crispin a number of times. 

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

 And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Then call we this the field of Agincourt,
Fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.
　
Of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, we know only that they were twins, possibly only fraternal. They preached the Gospel to the Gauls, supporting themselves by working nights as shoemakers. Around the year 286, the governor Rictius Varus tried to drown them, and when that failed they were beheaded. Crispin and Crispinian are the Christian patron saints of cobblers, curriers, tanners, and leather workers. Their feast day is October 25.

This month of All Saint celebrates holiness not as a spectator sport, like fans cheering the holy souls from the bleachers and then saying, "We won!" Those who only observe from the sidelines the spiritual battles in which our culture is now engaged, would be like those who were not at Agincourt.                                                                         

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Sin in Hamlet

 

The day after we saw Hamlet at the Stratford Festival, my wife Susan and I were walking along the charming streets of Stratford talking about the production. Susan made an astute observation that had somehow eluded me. She said how in the play one sin spreads through the characters like the plague leading to still more sin.

Claudius kills the father of Hamlet who then seeks revenge. In his so-called madness, Hamlet kills Polonius. The murder of her father by her boyfriend leads Ophelia to madness and death. Prompted by Claudius, Laertes seeks Hamlet’s death to revenge his father, and by the end of the play all the main characters are dead. They don’t call it tragedy for nothing.

One of the reasons Hamlet is so relevant today is that the characters ring true. Hamlet knows and admits his sinful nature to Ophelia.

I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all;
Even Claudius has a moment of honesty when he is alone.

O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t, A brother’s murder.
O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Yet Hamlet knows that man, despite his sinful nature, is God’s greatest and special creation.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
When speaking to his mother, Hamlet realizes the wickedness of sin and the redeeming power of forgiveness.

Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;

Hamlet encourages us to get rid of whatever in our lives is sinful. (And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.)

QUEEN GERTRUDE
        O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET
       O, throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half.

Laertes proudly states that he will risk damnation for his revenge. When he leans Hamlet has killed Laertes’ father, Claudius asks:
What would you undertake
To show yourself your father's son in deed
More than in words? Laertes answers, To cut his throat i' th' church.

To which Claudius replies, Revenge should have no bounds.

Murderous revenge, ambitious coveting, and despair are all rife in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Humans are sinful creatures. My wife is right. In Hamlet sin begets more sinning. Hamlet is a great play for the very reason that we can learn from it.



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The Taming of the Shrew at the Stratford Festival

One of the great performances at the Stratford Festival this year is Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. This Battle of the Sexes comedy is performed admirably by the husband and wife team of Deborah Hay and Ben Carlson who I had also seen as Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing. In The Taming of the Shrew, Hay and Carlson have some great interaction, much of it physical. She even gets to slap her husband and spit in his face in every performance.

Practically every character in The Taming of the Shrew has a comedic role and they are well played in this production.

The play itself may draw criticism from some groups who think Petruchio is only trying to break the spirit of Katherina and bend her to his will, but what would these same groups think if it were a play about a woman trying to tame a loud-mouth boorish lout to be a gentleman and husband.

Though some might think that Petruchio is only trying to make Kate obedient, he is actually showing her how churlish and uncouth she is being. He does this by out-shrewing the shrew.

Basically, Kate is a bully, and we all know the public’s attitude regarding bullies. She bullies her family and anyone who comes within reach of her. Kate has boughten into the axiom that one must be strong, overbearing to dominate people to her will. She does not know what love is. Kate does indeed have passion, but it is misdirected.

Only when Kate is broken of all her shrewish passions can she then love. Her speech at the end of the play is magnificent.


 Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks and true obedience; Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord? I am ashamed that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace; Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway, When they are bound to serve, love and obey.

Is there a man alive who wouldn’t cherish such a woman and devote his entire life to her?

To paraphrase Hamlet:

Give me that woman
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear her
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart.

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Hamlet at the Stratford Festival (part one)

My wife and I just returned from a another great season at the Stratford Festival. One of the shows we saw was Hamlet, perhaps the greatest English plays ever written. The title role was well performed by Jonathan Goad. The role is quite demanding since the title character is in practically every scene, and though I believe the play was edited a bit, the total production was about three and one half hours long.

I was expecting a bit more of a melancholy Dane, and found Goad’s Hamlet smiled a bit too much. Goad seemed to lack that seething unrest that lies just beneath the surface even when he is trying to be happy.

Tom Rooney was excellent comic relief as Polonius, while Geraint Wyn Davies and Seana McKenna were good as Claudius and the ghost, and Hamlet’s mother respectively.





The scene that caught my attention and stayed with me most was Adrienne Gould as the mad Ophelia. Her transformation from innocence to madness was poignantly tragic and heart wrenching.

The sets were minimalistic consisting of different size black blocks. The big ones reminded me of the black monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I’ll talk more about Shakespeare’s Hamlet in my next blog.

Stephen Gaspar's books can be found on Amazon

Canada Day with Sherlock Holmes

July 1^st is Canada Day and I cannot think of a better way to celebrate this great nation than to spend it with Sherlock Holmes in Canada.

The Canadian Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of adventures of the world’s greatest consulting detective as he travels across Canada in 1897 with his good friends and associate Dr. John Watson.

In Ottawa the London detective must navigate the rocky shoals of Canadian politics while in the service of Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier, in a case Watson entitles, "The Prime Minister’s Papers."

After solving the Montreal mystery of The McCormick Fortune, Holmes and Watson head west to Sir Henry Baskerville’s Alberta cattle ranch where Holmes and Watson encounter mystery upon mystery and a list of suspicious characters trying to solve the truth behind The Baskerville Curse.

　

In Cold-Hearted Murder, the great detective is drawn into mystery and murder revolving around a trio recently from the Klondike gold fields in the Yukon Territory where they made their fortune. But what had happened in that remote part of the world near the Arctic Circle? What strange occurrence took place in the Canadian wilderness that would plague: Patrick Flynn, the young handsome American, who was strong but too trusting; Charles Westerbrook, the not-overly honest Englishman, bent on making his fortune; Suzanne Bouchard, the beautiful French-Canadian seductress who used her wiles to get what she wanted.

When grotesque murders are committed during one of the hottest summers in London, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are drawn into the investigation. Cold-Hearted Murder is one of the most baffling and bizarre cases Sherlock Holmes has ever investigated. Why are the victims being monstrously mutilated? Why are they being murdered in cold locations? What is the significance of the Golden Triangle?

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Herod Antipas

Herod’s palace in Jerusalem was a grand structure. He always did things in a big way.

His father had been Herod the Great, the infamous Hebrew king, who had wanted a family dynasty and so created his own. Herod the Great had ten wives and at least as many sons. Three of the sons were executed, one disinherited, one banished. It was a scheming, incestuous family who thought nothing of killing one another for love, power, or simply self-preservation. The old patriarch was a cagey, political animal who could juggle allies and enemies, treaties and alliances. He wove a complicated web of intrigue with himself at its centre like a giant spider. But the old man’s blood was poisoned with paranoia, and he died an agonizing, ugly death. He was a vindictive sort, for before he died he commanded well-renown Jews from his kingdom to come to him. They were shut up in the hippodrome with orders that upon his death all of them were to be executed so that no one would be happy on the day of his passing, and thus guarantee the country to be in deepest mourning. As brutal as that seemed, Herod the Great outdid himself. With his dying breath, before raving madness overcame him, he ordered his bodyguards to kill his own son Antipater. This last action prompted Augustus Caesar to comment, ‘It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.’

I was not certain Herod Antipas would even see me. I waited in an outer room for a good part of the day before being granted an audience.

Like the palace, the audience hall was large and ornate, supported by tall, fat columns with intricate carvings. The painted walls resembled marble, and the floor was of polished imported marble with a decorative mosaic in the centre. Bright coloured curtains hung from the walls decoratively, while at the same time concealed passageways.

Herod sat upon his throne on a raised dias. His regal robes were red and white and tied with gold clasps near his left shoulder. His appearance was more Roman or Greek than Hebrew. I had heard that his grandfather was not even Hebrew, but had converted out of convenience. Next to him on an identical throne sat his wife, Herodias, who had been married to one of Herod Antipas’s disinherited stepbrothers. Herodias herself was the daughter of another of her present husband’s stepbrothers. This was one close family. Herodias wore her raven tresses pinned up but allowed some strands to hang down on one side; a style that was popular with younger women. She was a full-bodied, mature woman who, as it appeared to me, was desperately trying to hold on to the beauty of her youth. She was still an attractive woman, but her attempts at recapturing her youthful beauty only made her appearance grotesque. Too much makeup and too much jewellery did more harm than good to enhance her looks. But there was no disguising her ambition. The woman coveted power, and meant to hold on to it.

"Ah, Tribune Maximus, you grace us with your presence," Herod Antipas greeted me nobly. It was not all pretence. The man respected everything Roman, and realized no sign of respect to the Empire went unnoticed. "What do we owe the honour of this all too rare visit?" He was all smiles and good cheer, which gave me cause to be wary. Even as he spoke the smile remained on his lips as if he were not speaking with his mouth, the words somehow escaping through his teeth.

"Noble Herod, I am looking into the missing body of one of your people who was crucified Friday last," I told him, but even as I did, I felt the tetrarch knew exactly why I was here. "Before his sentence the man was brought before you."

Herod stopped smiling long enough to don a thoughtful look. He stroked his beard as if that aided his memory. As he recalled the instance, he smiled again and said: "Yes, I remember him. A Galilean of no importance, though he was what you Romans would call aura popularis– the popular breeze. But as you know, Tribune, breezes subside. He was reputed to be a great healer and miracle worker, but the man turned out to be a colossal disappointment."

"In what way?" I asked.

Herod cast a sidelong glance at his wife and responded: "We hoped the man would provide us with some amusement, some entertainment. We were in hopes that the man would perform one or two of his miracles for us. I had never seen a miracle, and I was so looking forward to it."

"And did he?"

"Did he what?"

"Did he perform a miracle for you?" I asked.

"No," Herod replied flatly, the smile falling from his lips. "The man refused to perform any acts. He would not even speak. We took it as a personal insult and sent him on his way."

I was about to speak when I heard the sound of movement from behind a rather large column to my left. I looked to the column and saw nothing. I looked to Herod who looked back as if he heard nothing, but I suspected he had.

"You sent Jesus back to Pontius Pilate," I said, more of a statement than question.

"Yes. And it was the Governor who condemned the man in the end. Roman justice, Tribune. The man’s death is not on my hands."

"But it was Pilate who sent Jesus to you in the first place," I remarked not entirely certain where I was going with this.

"Yes."

"How is your relationship with the Governor?"

The look on the tetrarch’s face betrayed him. He wondered what I knew, and how much I knew.

"The Governor and I are politically amicable. We have not always seen things the same, but we manage to get along with each other."

"Is there anything you can tell me regarding Jesus, or the circumstances of his arrest?"

At this question Herod’s jaw went slack and he regarded me with a blank stare. He had, it appeared, inherited some of his father’s craft and cunning. He was calculating, in that political mind of his, just how much he should tell me of what he knew. I had come to learn that most people never told me the entire truth. They always held something back for one reason or another. Perhaps they were afraid of incriminating themselves in some way, or that they may accidentally tell someone else’s secret. Not that they always cared about getting someone else into trouble, especially if it took attention away from them.

"What time was Jesus brought here?" I asked.

Herod stroked his beard again. "It was late. I do not recall the exact hour. It was late."

"Did you not think that was peculiar?" I asked. "That a man would be brought to you so late?"

"No," he answered proudly. "The affairs of state cannot always wait for daylight. When I am called, I answer the call."

"Amicus humani generis," I noted with some sarcasm.

Herod smiled, not noting the sarcasm and said: "Let us say a public servant."

"But you were awake when Jesus was brought," I commented.

"Yes. I often keep late hours."

"And he was brought here under guard."

"Yes."

"You intimated others were present during the man’s questioning."

"Yes."

"Who?"

At this question Herod involuntarily glanced at the column to his right, then back to me. This time I was certain I heard something, and so did he. It may have been a soft gasp, and the light step of a sandalled foot upon the floor. I moved stealthily to the column and stepped around to the back of it. No one was there. But there was a trace of scent in the air– nard, imported from India– very expensive.

"Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests were here," Herod blurted out trying to regain my attention– or to draw me away from the column. He knew who had stood behind that column, of that I was certain. I was just as certain he would not say.

I asked Herod: "Is there nothing else you can tell me of the man Jesus?" Herod shook his head, then I said: "Some say the man Jesus was calling himself King of the Jews. Others were beginning to refer to him as such. Did you feel that threatened your position in any way? After all, you are the tetrarch– which is similar to a king– and along came this man who was usurping your title. That must have troubled you greatly."

Herod motioned to answer, but it was his wife, Herodias, who spoke up with no little resentment.

"Tribune, you are obviously referring to the titulus the Governor ordered placed on the dead man's cross. We did petition the Prefect regarding this. We told him that the Nazarene only claimed to be the King of the Jews, not that he was in truth the king. For reasons of his own, and known only to himself, Pontius Pilate refused to change the titulus."

"Yes, but . . . " I began to respond, and Herodius raised her hand in objection.

"Tribune, my husband has already told you everything he knows," she spoke haughtily. "This entire affair is insignificant and concerns us not at all. Your questions hint at improprieties on my husband’s part, in which case we take grievous offence."

"My apologies, madam," I spoke, trying not to be too humble.

I bowed slightly and turned to leave, then reconsidered and turned back to the tetrarch "If I may ask one last question?" Herod nodded his assent. "How is it you find yourself in Jerusalem at this time?"

"We are here for Passover," he remarked. "It is an important time for us, but we shall soon be leaving for Galilee." Herod cocked his head and regarded my physical appearance. "Now, may I ask you a question, Tribune? What happened to you? You look as if you met up with someone who did not agree with you."

"Yes," I said. "Perhaps they did not like it that I ask so many questions."

"It is never good to ask too many questions, Tribune. A man’s personal business is no one’s affair but his own."

"Whatever takes place in Jerusalem is my concern," I stated.

"Then you may find that a very dangerous affair, indeed," remarked Herod ominously. "Good day, Tribune."

Stephen Gaspar's books are available on Amazon