It’s common to want to rush through our reading for many reasons. However, reading for your courses is meant to be more involved.Prepare:Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, read Reading

The Rules 10 5 When Jacob lifts up his voice and weeps, we see one more signpost. Jacob’s tears remind us that his twin brother Esau cried bitterly when he discovered that Jacob, in a scene master- minded by the twins’ incomparably shrewd mother Rebekah, had stolen the blessing that their dying father Isaac intended to give Esau. The parallel between Jacob’s and Esau’s weeping implies that these two twins will swap places: Jacob is not merely a winner; he too knows loss, when the love of his life, R achel, dies. The Zohar, the wondrous compendium of Jewish mystical thought, states that the Messiah will not come until the tears of Esau have been exhausted: so ineradicable is the sorrow of Esau, the excluded one. Esau and Jacob will recon- cile, with an embrace and a kiss that recall those between Jacob and Laban, and Jacob and R achel, in Chapter 29 of Genesis.

But Esau, who will become the father of the Edomites, is still shut out of the covenant, exiled from the children of Israel. The delicate strength of the biblical narrative lies in the way it bal- ances concern for the chosen ones, like Jacob, and the ones left behind, like Esau; for rapturous success (Jacob’s discovery of R achel) and bitter loss (R achel’s death); for victorious deception and deception that fails. Jacob will eventually steal away from Laban in the night, taking with him Laban’s two daughters; and so Jacob becomes the consummate trickster, as he savors his revenge on the deceitful Laban. Through its signposts hinting at parallel episodes, Chapter 29 reaches backwards and forwards in the biblical story, from the creation of Eve to the death of R achel, from Jacob’s strug- gle with Esau (which begins in Rebekah’s womb, as each twin ﬁ ghts the other for the privilege of coming out ﬁ rst) to his long- running contest with Laban. The more one thinks about a sin- gle chapter of Genesis, the more slowly and patiently one muses on its implications, the deeper its connections will seem with what comes before and after. Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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10 6 Slow Reading in a Hurried Age Written many centuries after the Hebrew Bible, Edith Whar- ton’s The House of Mirth relies on the same techniques of sign- posting that the authors of the biblical text used: striking turns of phrase, similes and meta phors that leap out at the reader, dramatic events that echo one another. Wharton’s novel, a run- away success when it was published in 1905, takes place at the dawn of the twentieth century. Wharton portrays the gossipy, backbiting milieu of the nouveau riche who spend weekends in the fashionable towns of the Hudson Valley: a brittle back- ground for a tragic tale. The House of Mirth begins when Lily Bart, Wharton’s troubled and troubling heroine, runs into a friend, Lawrence Selden, at Grand Central Station. The two take a stroll together, through the bustling, kaleidoscopic streets of m idtow n M a n hat ta n. Selden stea ls a g la nce at L i ly’s exqu isite face and artful hair, and reﬂ ect s t hat “she must have cost a g reat deal to make . . . as though a ﬁ ne glaze of beauty and fastidi- ousness had been appl ied to v u lga r clay.” L i ly w i l l i ndeed prove to be v u lga r clay i n t he cou rse of The House of Mirth. Her inter- ests are material ones; she seeks an easy, money- cushioned life rather than an interesting one. Selden’s perception of Lily’s true character, beneath her arti- ﬁ cially beautiful appearance, is ﬂ eeting; a few pages later, when Lily visits him in his apartment, he indulges in a more romantic and mystiﬁ ed vision of her. As Lily studies herself in Selden’s mirror and adjusts her veil, Wharton writes, The attitude revealed the long slope of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild- wood grace to her outline— as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room; and Selden reﬂ ected that it was the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artiﬁ ciality.

Wharton is being rather wily here: she gives us the faulty point of view of her character Selden. Lily is in no sense dryad- Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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The Rules 10 7 like; intent on ease and security, she embodies no “sylvan free- dom.” This is Selden fooling himself, inventing a Lily who doesn’t exist. Wharton has here created a signpost, and a warn- ing one: she has sounded the alarm about Selden, letting us know that his sight has been falsiﬁ ed by the romantic gauze through which he sees Lily. We instinctively turn back a few pages to Selden’s earlier sense of Lily as clay, mere base material with a ﬁ ne ﬁ nish, and we mea sure that more accurate assess- ment against his new infatuation. These two images, the vulgar clay and the captured dryad, are rival signposts, and the reader must decide which one is more accurate. Lily, at this early point in the novel, sparks ambivalence in us; by the time The House of Mirth draws to its grim conclusion, we are ready to think of her as the fool of the Ecclesiastes quotation that W har- ton alludes to in her title (“the heart of fools is in the house of mirth”). The doomed Lily herself delivers the deﬁ nitive judg- ment on her own character and fate, shortly before the end of Wharton’s book. Here Lily is speaking, once again, to Selden, who has largely, but still not completely, overcome his love for her: “I have tried hard— but life is dif ﬁ cult, and I am a useless per- son. I ca n ha rd ly be sa id to have a n i n de pen dent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use any where else. W hat can one do when one ﬁ nds one only ﬁ ts into one hole? One must get back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap— and you don’t know what it’s like in the rubbish heap!” The blunt, brutally simple images in this speech— screw, cog, machine, hole, rubbish heap— mark it as the polar opposite of Selden’s thoughts about Lily as a sylvan dryad, at the opening of The House of Mirth. Here at last is the bare truth, in Lily’s own words. The signposts are there in the crude, matter- of- fact Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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10 8 Slow Reading in a Hurried Age images that Lily uses to sum up her life. These are the two poles of Wharton’s novel: aesthetic connoisseurship and grim natu- ralism. In expert, disturbing fashion, the author shifts gears between hardnosed reality and reﬁ ned pretense. Following Signposts Step- by- Step It’s time for a thorough, step- by- step example of how signposts work: for this exercise, slow, patient reading will be needed.

Like Genesis and The House of Mirth, Shakespeare’s A Midsum- mer Night’s Dream portrays its leading characters by means of signposts: memorable images and turns of phrase. Let’s see how a key signpost image, the moon, works in a wonderfully luxuri- ant passage, the opening lines of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This sparkling early comedy, with its bewildered young lovers and its troupes of fairies, including the irrepressible Puck, en- cha nt s nea rly ever y reader or aud ience member. T he ma ny- sided strength of Shakespeare is inexhaustible; you can read Shake- speare year after year and still ﬁ nd new trea sures on each re- reading. A nd central images, like the moon in Midsummer Night’s Dream, provide your sustaining signposts on your jour- ney through the works of our Top Bard (as W. H. Auden called him), the greatest of all play wrights and poets. A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins with a conversation between Theseus, the legendary found er of Athens, and his Amazon bride Hippolyta, whom he has captured in battle.

Philostrate, present here as well, is a minor character, one of Theseus’s court ofﬁ cials. This much we learn by inspecting the dramatis personae, the list of characters that precedes the play. Now for the opening lines of Midsummer. A s we beg i n, T he- seus and Hippolyta await their wedding: Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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The Rules 10 9 Theseus Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in A nother moon: but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step- dame or a dowager Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

Hippolyta Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; A nd then the moon, like to a silver bow New- bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities.

Theseus Go, Philostrate, Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; Turn melancholy forth to funerals; The pale companion is not for our pomp. What should we notice about these ﬁ rst lines of the play?

Let’s take them slowly, and as we go along, look for the ruling signpost image. We can start with the fact that Shakespeare synchronizes the royal pair’s “nuptial hour” with the coming of the new moon. That moon is already a prominent presence in these ﬁ rst lines; it will be important in the rest of the play, and we should be taking note of its prominence. Though Theseus, the Duke of Athens and conqueror of the A mazons, is a proud and powerful ruler, he must wait for the moon to change in order to marry Hippolyta. He is subject to something beyond his own will, and that something is not a po liti cal force, but a Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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110 Slow Reading in a Hurried Age strange, shadow y goddess: the moon, which presides over the world of dreams. There’s an age- old tendency to link the moon with witchcraft and with madness (lunacy); it seems to have a subtle, ghostly effect on us. Later in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare will associate the moon with magical in- ﬂ uence, and with the desires that sway his characters without their knowledge. Theseus’s po liti cal authority faces off against what really governs this play, the lunar enchantments of Eros. Though Theseus begins by announcing that the hour of marriage “draws on apace” (that is, at the appropriate speed), he reveals his impatience a few lines later: “But O, methinks, how slow / This old moon wanes!” The moon moves at its own lan- guid pace, and Shakespeare expresses its soft and majestic rhythm by slowing down the progress of his poetry. The words “old moon wanes” give us three stressed syllables in a row; all three are monosyllables, as are the three words that precede them. Several stresses in a row slow down a line, as do mono- syllabic words. (A later chapter of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, “Reading Poetry,” explains how to scan verse in order to determine which syllables are stressed and which are not.) Monosyllables— think Hamlet’s “to be or not to be”— offer a more deliberate and steady feel than polysyllabic words, which are swift and dexterous. We can turn to another play, Macbeth, to see an example of what Shakespeare can make polysyllables and monosyllables do when he evokes a signpost image: this time not the moon, but the ocean. At one of the many terriﬁ ed and terrif ying moments in his murderous career, Shakespeare’s Macbeth wishes that the ocean could wash away the blood that stains his hands. He proclaims, No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red. Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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The Rules 111 That second line speeds forward with its two newfangled, many- syllabled words, “multitudinous” and “incarnadine” (to make red or pink). The third line loses the speed; it turns spellbound and lethal with its three single- syllable words. A s with Midsum- mer ’s “slow moon wanes,” there are three deadly paced stresses in “green one red.” In Macbeth’s stricken vision the sea’s green becomes one (all) red— a single, ineffably murderous color. The effect is chilling, hypnotic; it enshrines the baleful image of the ocean at the center of Macbeth’s consciousness, and our own. Back to Midsummer, and to that old moon. The moon is often seen as feminine, perhaps because women were thought to be more cha ngeable t ha n men, wa x i ng a nd wa n i ng i n t hei r mood s.

Theseus says of the moon, “she lingers my desires”: a striking phrase. Usually we use the word “linger” for something subtle, perhaps almost imperceptible: a scent, an impression, a doubt.

Shakespeare relies on the unusual, and now long vanished, use of “linger” as a transitive verb, one with a direct object. Theseus could have said that the moon prevents or obstructs his desire for Hippolyta by refusing to change quickly enough— a tyrant’s objection. Instead, he murmurs that the moon draws out his desires, somehow sharing control of them. He is speaking mag- ically now, not po liti ca l ly. To l i nger i s to rema i n; to l i nger some- thing out means, in Re nais sance En glish, to prolong it, as a trip to the Oxford En glish Dictionary (known as the OED) reveals (see Rule Seven, “Use the Dictionary”). The moon draws out Theseus’s desires, then; but also frus- trates them, like an old woman who, not yet dead, “wither[s] out” the money (revenue) of the young man who waits for her to die so he can inherit. The moon is a tease, both leading The- seus on and threatening to diminish (“wither out”) his erotic impulse. Patient listeners to Shakespeare’s text, we’ve learned so far that Theseus is an eager and anxious lover, and that he senses how the moon sways his desire. Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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112 Slow Reading in a Hurried Age On to Hippolyta. The captive A mazon answers her warrior prince Theseus in strange and sensual fashion: “Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; / Four nights will quickly dream away the time . . .” She is casting a spell, weaving a web of words. Look at the meta phors she uses: steeping (a sensual soaking, gradual and pervasive); dreaming (a reminder of the play’s title, and of the tone of gentle fantasy that enwraps Shake- speare’s delicious comedy). Hippolyta now shows the difference between her imagina- tion and Theseus’s. She matches her bridegroom’s simile of the moon as step- dame or dowager with a much more high- ﬂ own, lyrical image. For her the moon is “like a silver bow / New- bent in heaven.” Hippolyta evokes quite precisely the way the wan- ing moon resembles a bent bow (ﬁ tting words for a woman warrior!). As she expresses it, the slivery remnant of moon is implicitly “new”: it heralds the coming of marriage and the ful- ﬁ lling of desire. Instead of being ready to shoot, though, the moon’s tense, silver bow will “behold” the couple’s “solemni- ties.” A n impression of rapturous stillness possesses the scene t hat H ippoly t a pa i nt s w it h so few, so choice word s. To behold i s not just to see, but to witness: the word has an air of the mo- mentous. “Solemnities” is a sophisticated term for a wedding or other important ceremony, and it is designed to convey the special gravity that Hippolyta attributes to the moon, its au- thority over time and event. Finally, we get to see Theseus display his character in an im- perious gesture. He tells his ofﬁ cer Philostrate to command mirth and “turn melancholy forth to funerals,” as if he could change a mood by giving orders. Expel all sadness, strike up the band; so Theseus decrees. Intent on his nuptials, he wants a party. The “pale companion” he mentions is melancholy, which makes people wan and listless; but it also reminds us of the moon, which Theseus cannot change or banish. There are lim- Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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The Rules 113 its to his power as ruler. He can declare a celebration, but the true inﬂ uence lurks behind the scenes: the moon and all she represents (love, magic, delusion). The truly “pert and nimble spirit” in the play belongs not to the sensible workaday world of Athens that Theseus governs, but to the fairies, who are allied to moon and night. As you go further with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you will learn to contrast the rollicking, quarrelsome marriage of the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, with the tense, reticent relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta; you will trace the abundant symbolism of moon, magic, and night, of vision and desire. You will notice a later passage in which “Cu- pid’s ﬁ ery shaft” is “quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,” and recall Hippolyta’s simile of the moon as a bent bow. Shakespeare’s great play is a whole, and any one of its scenes shines a light on some ot her scene, or character, or beau- tiful fragment of language. The play does this by relying on signpost images like that of the moon: central symbolic pres- ences that tie the action together, making it uniﬁ ed the way that tonic and dominant keys unify a piece of music. If you steep yourself in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you will see more and more of the signposts. More than any other English- language author, Shakespeare loads his work with mo- ments that are not just gorgeous, but that make us think, and that make it worthwhile to pore over his text repeatedly. Each time we do so, we are more astounded by our best poet’s power of invention. Keep your eye on Shakespeare’s signposts, his core images and words, and you will get in tune with the way his plays work, how they create their effects in you. Wr iter s of ly r ic poet r y depend on i mages a s sig npost s: K eat s’s Grecian urn and his nightingale stand squarely in the middle of the odes to which they give their names, and Wallace Stevens recurs often to the sun, the sea, and, in his “The Auroras of Mikics, David. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, Harvard University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ashford-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301335.

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