When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
William Shakespeare - Love's Labours Lost
William Shakespeare – Love’s Labours Lost (LLL V.ii.901)
The poem is near the end of the play, by way of a conclusion, two works are composed for the King of Navarro in praise of the Cuckoo and the Owl, one read by a representation of the Spring and the other, shown above, by ‘Hiems’ the representation of winter.
Is it very Shakespearean? No, not if you are expecting ‘sweet and honeyed words’ but it brings us deep into the heart of cold winter, what with the icicles on the wall, the fouled muddy roads, the cold wind, the nip in the air, and the outbreak of winter colds.
The focus is either from a working-class point of view or from a member of the gentry looking at his servants. Each part of the poem is ended with the owl and Greasy Joan cooking the food; roasted crabs are crab apples which would have been heated in the oven then thrown into a dish of beer where they would hiss. So there is a hint of winter conviviality.
The nail means warming your fingers by blowing on them, alternatively it means twiddling your fingers. Greasy Joan is probably a cook or kitchen maid, and she is cooling the pot by stirring it. But some suggest that ‘Greasy Joan’ might refer to a prostitute. But it doesn’t really fit the poem? Although the spring part of the poem, narrated by Cuckoo refers to cuckolding. Tu-whit, tu-whoo is, in fact, two tawny owls calling to each other, the female calling first and the male answering. John Lyly first used the call in 1595. Some say it could also be read ‘To it, to who?’ In Shakespeare’s day, to go ‘to it’ was a sexual reference, but then he also uses that phrase mostly innocently. The parson’s saw means the parson’s sermon, which cannot be heard because of all the coughing in the cold nave.
SOOTHSAYER: Caesar! CAESAR: Ha! Who calls? CASCA: Bid every noise be still; peace yet again! CAESAR: Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue shriller than all the music Cry ‘ Caesar!’ Speak. Caesar is turned to hear. SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March. CAESAR: What man is that? BRUTUS: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March. CAESAR: Set him before me; let me see his face. CASSIUS: Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar. CAESAR: What sayst thou to me now? Speak once again. SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March. CAESAR: He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
This year there are many vital elections around the world; often involving populists like Julius Caesar. I rank Caesar with Napoleon as one of the Dictators who was, personally, an intelligent, reasonable man, who, in some ways, ruled ‘wisely’ but who was nonetheless willing to sacrifice millions of people for his personal ambition. Today, the world is faced with the more run-of-the-mill populists who are geniuses only in their own, often, deranged minds. I know, we as humans, might think, if only X would drop dead, how much better it would be? Brutus, being an honourable man, took action upon his thought. But, as often is the case, what seemed the ‘right thing’ to do, turned out to be a disaster for the Roman Republic which the plotters were trying to save. So, perhaps, still those assassinary thoughts, read this article in ‘History Today’ about the impact of Julius Caesar’s murder and do everything you can do to use democratic means to defeat egotists to whom truth means nothing.
Now, what the heck are or indeed is the Ides of March?
A Roman month was divided into three, first the Kalends, then the Nones and finally the Ides. These three days were the important days of the year. The Kalends is the 1st of the Month, the Nones the 7th of the Month and the Ides the Fifteenth of the Month. It is said to go back to the early days of Rome and a lunar calendar, The Kalends being the first tiny sliver of a crescent moon a couple of days after the New Moon; the Nones the first quarter of the Moon and the Ides was the full moon. But of course, it doesn’t really make that much sense as the full moon is 28 days after the new Moon not 15, and the three divisions, divide up the first half of the month, and leave the second half undivided.
How did you use it? When talking about a day in the future month you might say I’ll meet you on the 5th day before the Kalends. Debts were supposed to be paid on the Kalends and that is where we get our word calendar from. These public calendars were called Fasti, and this is the name of Ovid’s great Almanac Poem, the Fasti, which I often quote from.
This is a very bad photograph of a drawing by Herbert E Duncan Jr of a 1st Century Calendar
I’ve never really understood this system, despite a few attempts, until I saw this drawing of a Roman Calendar. The first column, on the left, with the letters from D downwards represent the letters A – H which is a recurring cycle of 8 market days, running in tandem with Kalends, Nones etc. The second column begins with the Letter K for Kalends, (reading across then MART for March, then NP which means the Kalends is a day for public festivals). Back to the second column, below the K for Kalends, the days are counted down to the upcoming Nones, so the next one after Kalends is VI, meaning the 6th day before the March Nones. Then V, IIII, III, and PR means the day before Nones. Below and to the right of the PR are the letters NON which is, as you might hope, short for Nones.
In the second column below this is the number VIII which means the next day is the 8th day before the Ides of March. The fragment of stone from which this drawing comes does not continue down to the Ides, unfortunately.
Complicated, huh? It gets worse. The third column has a series of letters in it: F C C C NP NON F C C. We already know that the NON is short for Nones, The F means it’s a fastus, a permissible day when legal action can be taken. The C means Ccomitialis which on fasti days the Roman people could hold assemblies. We have already seen that NP marks days for public festivals. An N would mean days when political and judicial actions were prohibited, although there is not one here. The small unreadable text to the right is information, I believe, about holidays and historic events to be marked in the calendar. This is, in fact, a Roman Stone Almanac.
This confusing system survived Caesar’s major calendrical reforms when he transformed the Roman system, which was rotten at the core, to align it with an almost accurate calculation of the time the Sun takes to circle the earth (or the other way around!) to create the almost correct Julian Calendar.
But the Kalends, Nones, and Ides did not survive because, in the Imperial period, this strange division of time was replaced by the familiar 4 fold division of the month into our 7 days of a week. So, for the first time, you could work 24/7.
I will deal with Julius Caesar’s reforms in great depth on another occasion.
It’s not a ‘new’ portrait as it has been known about for many years, but it is in the news as it is about to be sold. Evidence for it being our main man, include:
In 1608 Shakespeare was 44 (as inscribed on the top of the painting)
He is balding
He has a long nose
He has a fold of the skin to the left of his left eye
The two had convincing connections (people and places) in common
The Peake family printed the Droeshout Portrait used in the First Folio
Testing shows it is not a forgery
However, it doesn’t really look like the two Shakespeare portraits we can trust to be him (the Droeshout and the bust on his memorial in Holy Trinity Stratford where he was buried). But if someone pays £10m maybe we will change our minds?
Robert Peake Portrait of a Man aged 44 in 1608William Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout from the 1st FolioWilliam Shakespeare’s Memorial Stratford-upon-AvonLeft to right, Peake, Droeshout, Memorial
