On this day in 1840, the great novelist Thomas Hardy was born. I can’t help but compare all 19th century novelists to Herman Melville. I love Melville for the perversity of his interests. But the clarity of his writing is terrible. I have him pegged as an introvert. He had a hard time seeing his stories the way that others saw them. Hardy had no such problem, and maybe that is because he was at base a poet. He only wrote novels to pay the bills, and after he had made his money, he stopped writing novels and only wrote poetry. The irony, of course, is that no one is particularly interested in reading his poetry. But the novels live on because of their power and moral decency.

Hardy’s last novel was Jude the Obscure, written a full 33 years before his death. It is typical of his fiction in that it tells the story of admirable people who are torn down by the society. He is very much like Dickens, but without the sentimentality. Jude is one of the greatest characters ever created in literature. It raises a very important question that I think most Americans today refuse to consider. As a young man, Jude studied very hard and was determined to make it to the academy. But he fell in love with a fairly unlovable girl and married her, and his life spun out of control from there. There are two points about this. One is that poor people are never allowed to make a mistake. The other is even if Jude had continued on with his studies (he had taught himself Latin and Greek), it is made clear in the book that he would have needed some kind of Horatio Alger luck to have ever been allowed in the academy.

Our society today is hardly more open or forgiving. But we’ve created this myth that anyone can succeed and as proof we hold up people who are both extraordinary and lucky. The American version of Jude the Obscure is the movie Breaking Away. There is a great scene where Dave tells his father than he did well on his tests and that he has been accepted to the college. His father tells him about working as a stone cutter to help build the college, but how he never felt comfortable on the campus. He tells Dave that he doesn’t want his son to be like him, and that he must take this opportunity. It’s very America. And the sad thing is that the film was made in 1979, basically at the inflection point when our society turned from that kind of post-war period of a thriving middle class to our current one that is much like Hardy’s novel. Now you may go to college, but it doesn’t mean what it used to, you end up owing huge amounts of money, and in the end, you don’t get a better life. If Breaking Away were made today, Dave would take over his father’s used car lot.

In a fundamental sense, I don’t like Hardy’s novels such as Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. I find them crushing. They are harshly realistic. But they are important. And it is edifying to spend periods of time with such fine characters who eventually lose. Because that’s how I see the world. It is no great triumph to be noble when you succeed. Compare Jude who battles his whole tragic life with very little complaint to the hugely successful John Galt of Atlas Shrugged who whines that the people don’t appreciate him enough. Who would you rather spend a dozen hour with?

Happy birthday Thomas Hardy!

In general, Shakespeare’s comedies are dreadful. But well performed, many of them can work. The best is probably A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I highly recommend the 1996 version, that few people have seen.

But my favorite and most despised Shakespeare comedy is Much Ado About Nothing. The problem is that while Benedick and Beatrice are wonderful, Claudio and Hero are the most slappable couple that ever existed.

What’s more, the main plot about the bastard Don John and his nefarious plan to hurt his half-brother Don Pedro via Claudio via Hero is stupid and even more unbelievable than most things in Shakespeare’s comedies.

But there is one line from the play that has long fascinated me. Toward the end of Benedick and Beatrice’s first fight, it is clear that she is winning. She wins every fight. She’s smarter and funnier, even if Benedick is a worthy adversary.

He says to her, “I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer [staying power], but keep your way, a God’s name! I have done.” So Beatrice says to herself, “You always end with a jade’s trick, I know you of old.” Here are Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson doing it as it should be done:

I’ve heard that line for years and never really thought about it. I knew what she was getting at: he was brushing her off because he couldn’t compete. But still, “jade’s trick”? That’s not a phrase known to me, so I went looking.

Meaning of “Jade’s Trick”

A jade is a worn-out or worthless horse, but it is also often applied to an old prostitute, which ought to tell you much about the esteem in which women were held in the late 16th century. I don’t think it is a surprise that Elizabeth I was fondly called “The Virgin Queen.” Men wanted women for sex but once they had them, they were soiled. And the more sex they had, the more worn out they were.

Now the definition of “jade’s trick” is of some debate. One definition is what you find in Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal where Moist von Lipwig polishes up a half dead horse (a jade) and sells it for big money, after which the horse dies. That is sometimes referred to as a jade’s trick.

More commonly, however, the trick applies to the jade itself. In a horse race, it might get halfway down the field and then just stop running. This is obviously the sense in which it is intended in Much Ado About Nothing.

What Experts Say

In The RSC Shakespeare, the notes indicate that a jade is, “overused or worthless horse/whore” and trick is, “knack (of stopping abruptly) sexual act.” Now that’s very interesting because there is something wonderfully sexual about the banter between Benedick and Beatrice. What’s more, Emma Thompson plays it that way — like a woman most unfulfilled; she was just getting going.

The Signet Classics version provides the most unsatisfying note, “trick of a vicious horse (ie, a sudden stop?).” This is probably because these are most commonly used in high school classes, at least here in America. Can’t let the kiddies know of any sexual subtext.

I was very impressed with Tucker Brooke’s 1917 edition of the play, which has wonderful notes generally. But this is the note on “jade’s trick”:

For the casual reader, it explains everything you need to know. But it also puts a new slant on it for me. In this case, it isn’t that Benedick is useless or hostile. He just broke the rules — and got away.

Troilus and Cressida

This is not the only time Shakespeare used the line. In Troilus and Cressida, Thersites is a quick-witted but caustic slave of Ajax. Ajax doesn’t appreciate this and beats him.

This is entirely typical of Shakespeare. In the Iliad, Thersites has no last name, so he is considered a commoner. Shakespeare, man of the people, makes him a slave and deformed!

But in the play, Achilles (who is a cool guy) takes him on and appreciates his humor. Anyway, while still with Ajax, Thersites is putting down both the Trojans and the Greeks. In this way, he reminds me of the 107-year-old Roman man in Catch-22 who sides with whoever is in power, outraging the idealistic Lieutenant Nately.

Anyway, Thersites says to Ajax, “I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain o’ thy jade’s tricks!”

In this case, The RSC Shakespeare comments, “worthless horse’s bad habits/whore’s acts (picks up on strike as ‘copulate’).” The word “murrain” is a general term for diseases that cattle get.

My take is that he’s saying that Ajax may look like royalty, but he’s diseased and he can’t perform sexually. While Achilles is more like Benedick, Ajax is more like Claudio.

All’s Well That Ends Well

The phrase is also used in All’s Well That Ends Well. In fact, the word “jades” is used twice. First, it is used alone. Parolles, who is a coward known for his bluster says, “France is a stable; we that dwell in’t jades; Therefore, to the war!” That’s simple enough. The RSC Shakespeare only comments, “Worn-out horse.”

At the end of the play, Lafew tells the clown that he has tired of him and that the clown should see that Lafew’s horses are tended to. The clown replies, “If I put any tricks upon ’em, sir, they shall be jades’ tricks; which are their own right by the law of nature.” The RSC Shakespeare comments, “Mischief caused by badly behaving horses.”

Apparently, the clown is only saying that if there is any problem, it won’t be because of him.

Summary

So there you have it: far more than you probably ever wanted to know about a phrase you probably didn’t even know you had heard before.

But that is much of the fun of Shakespeare. You can spend days studying this stuff and all its subtleties.

Just the same, if you don’t spend the time, you miss what is most interesting about Shakespeare. It becomes just theatrical broccoli: stuff you consume because you think it is good for you but which you don’t really enjoy.

Skinny Horse by eXtensionHorses. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

I was planning on writing about something else, but this issue came up and I feel I must address it. It’s about writing. It is possible to write really long sentences that are both beautiful and clear. But unless we really know what we are doing, long sentences muddle reader understanding. And I believe this is because long sentences are simulacra of our spoken sentences.

This is a problem because a spoken sentence has a huge amount of extra information in it that allows the listener to understand. And even then, I’ve never found it easy to understand anything but the most simple stuff aurally. This is one reason why I think the lecturing model of teaching is ridiculous. But we’ll leave that for another time.

I found a really good example of what I’m talking about in a blog post by Paul Krugman, Hangups of the Heterodox. Try not to get hung up in the jargon:

That’s 56 words by my count. And that alone doesn’t doom it. But the structure of the sentence is madness: “There is [insert very long ancillary exposition] acceptance of something.” I like Krugman and think he is a good writer. This is just from a blog post, and I put up crap all the time myself. So this isn’t an attack on him. Plus, since people like me look forward to reading his thoughts on matters economic, he can depend upon readers taking the time to parse him.

But his sentence really should be broken down into smaller segments to lead the reader along. I think three sentences ought to do it:

Of course, this could be a single sentence, simply with colons connecting these sentences. And it would be three words longer! But what I’ve done is separate the ideas: (1) people think weird thing; (2) what they think; (3) why they think it. Instead we are left with this structure that gives lots of details without any idea of where we are going.

Consider, “He had what many said was red—but others claimed was purple—and made of the finest wood, and he used it all kinds of cold weather to hit small black, although they were sometimes grey, disks that many called pucks, and the ‘it’ that I referred to that he was using and had was a hockey stick.” Extreme, but not far off. “He had a hockey stick. Many said it was red but others said it was purple. It was made of the finest wood. And oh how he would use it in the coldest of weather to hit black and even grey disks many called pucks.”

Not very artistic, you say? I know! And if this were poetry, you’d have a point. But even in a novel, clarity trumps all. Nonfiction and fiction share a purpose: to tell a story. If the reader gets hung up parsing what you’ve written, you’ve failed. As it is, I didn’t finish Krugman’s article. But I will now!

Having now done the birthday posts for over a year, I have the advantage of being able to go back and look at what I wrote last year. And the amazing thing is how much they evolved over time. By this point last year, they had just become something of a hodgepodge with my flitting from one person to another without rhyme or reason. That is rather typical of me in general, but not very interesting. And it is shocking just how little time I spend with the “winner” of the day. Of course, now I don’t necessarily have a lot to say, but it isn’t so scattered.

On this day in 1778, the writer William Hazlitt was born. He was one of the greatest essayists ever. Yet he isn’t well know, at least not compared to his friends like Coleridge and Wordsworth. But he is greatly loved by real intellectuals and also people like me who would like to be real intellectuals. I think there are a few reasons for this. One is that he is sharp witted. And not at all adverse to being mean, as you can see in the opening sentence of his essay, “On People With One Idea”:

But the essay itself isn’t cruel. He has rather nice things to say about such people. I think his interest is very much my own: I’m fascinated by people who have a singular focus. Now some of them are focused on things I too am interested in. And others are not. But I’m interested in these people as one is interested in a white raven or anything else idiosyncratic. (And yes, I am aware that many people look at me the same way. I just wish they would write an essay about it!)

Another thing about Hazlitt’s writing that impresses people (or at least me) is that it is remarkably dense but clear. Kant’s work is dense, but not at all clear. Orwell is clear—wonderfully so. But he would never write a thousand word paragraph. Here is the second paragraph of “On People With One Idea,” and it is the rule more than the exception in his work:

That’s 870 words! And it includes a reference to Don Quixote![1] And it’s funny! I love the line, “Now it is getting on, now again it is standing still; at one time the Master has promised to pass judgment by a certain day, at another he has put it off again and called for more papers, and both are equally reasons for speaking of it.” I think that Hazlitt suspected, as I do, that Major Cartwright is happier than the rest of us with our many ideas. But whatever pain those many ideas caused him, Hazlitt wrote about them wonderfully for all of our edification.

Happy birthday William Hazlitt!

[1] This is from Chapter 31 of the second book. It took me a while to find the exact translation he used. It is from Tobias Smollett’s 1755 translation. John Ormsby later translated it, “I thought of Dapple here, and I spoke of him here.” Samuel Putnam translated it, “I happened to think of my gray, and so I spoke of him.” Edith Grossman translated it, “Here I remembered about my donkey, and here I talked about him.” The actual Spanish is, “Aqui se me acordo del rucio, y aqui hable del.” Take your pick, although I think Grossman is a bit too literal. Putnam strikes me as a more modern translation, even though his is 50 years older than Grossman’s.