Comparing Texts - Essay Example

? Comparing Texts Though few like to contemplate the issue, it is true that language is simply figurative and symbolic. Authors throughout time have explored and played with the multiple meanings that could be woven into a seemingly simple statement. Shakespeare was a master and the Italian playwright Luigi Piradello made it a major theme running throughout his corpus. The ways in which language is employed to discover its subjective and illusionary nature is different when employed in poetry, plays or novels. Time and intended audience also become factors in how authors choose to explore this element of language. By comparing the use of language in Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author -- both intended for mature, educated audiences -- to the more modern novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling intended for a less mature, less educated audience, it is possible to see how truth is questioned through language. Shakespeare’s tone in Sonnet 18 is playful and ironic as he subtly pokes fun at the Romantic language that was then informing literature. He uses formalized constructions to build up an idealized sense of his female character consistent with the concepts considered important by the Romantics, “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day, / Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (Shakespeare, 1969: 1456/1-2). However, he never actually tells his audience anything about this person. All the audience is permitted to know about her is that she exists, even if only in Shakespeare's mind. This levity within the very formalized, academic poetic world was out of step with his contemporaries. Despite the levity, Shakespeare used a very formalized style, informed by the newly introduced Italian sonnet style but with a twist. Shakespeare sticks to the 14 line structure and the iambic pentameter expected for a sonnet, but he follows his own rhyme scheme that blends more comfortably with the English language (Furniss & Bach, 2007: 579, 581, 593). This scheme follows an abab cdcd efef gg pattern. It gave him greater flexibility in matching the rhyme. Even then, he found it necessary to stretch the rhyme a bit, as in lines 9-12: “But thy eternal summer shall not fade, / Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; / Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, / When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.” Combined with the relaxed approach taken by his tone, the formal structure of the poem makes it difficult for a modern audience to understand the joke. Through his use of language, Shakespeare brings his subject down from Romantic idealism to the everyday world of the common man. While Shakespeare mentions that “Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimmed;” (5-6), giving the scene a sense of beauty, he keeps his subject on the level of the real by adding the twist of providing his readers with a description befitting just about any woman. Through tone, style and poetic devices such as imagery, Shakespeare manages to poke some fun at the traditional academic approach to poetry by bringing in more common language usage. Shakespeare’s woman, because of his tone, style and poetic devices, flashes in our minds as a woman of high quality, substance and perhaps even nobility, but still a living, breathing, human woman. In the same way that Shakespeare uses figurative language to both expose and hide his female subject, Pirandello uses meta-theatre to both expose and hide his characters in Six Characters in Search of an Author. From the beginning, it seems these characters are fully exposed to the audience. There are specific stage directions provided ensuring that the audience is aware there are no theatrical tricks being employed. Directions at the opening of Act I specify the stage should be "half dark, and empty, so that from the beginning the public may have the impression of an impromptu performance." The Characters begin to demonstrate their personalities and relationships as soon as they arrive. Throughout the play, they argue and fight, offering highly detailed scenes of their lives. The conversation as it shifts naturally around the discontented family is so completely convincing that it takes a supreme effort to remember that this, too, is part of the act. The audience comes to believe they are actually seeing all there is to see of these characters. In reality, as in Shakespeare's sonnet, Pirandello never allows the audience to know who these characters are, including never giving them proper names. The truth of the play is most clearly stated by the Father in Act 1 when he tries to explain the situation in the brothel with his daughter. "Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do." In other words, we may be both talking about a vase, but we probably don't have the same image of a vase in our minds as we discuss it. This is completely in keeping with Shepherd and Wallis' description of the unique structure of a play, "a playtext addresses its ultimate audience indirectly; it is a set of instructions designed to be interpreted by theatre makers who will then stage the play before its own audience" (2002: 1). In this way, both Shakespeare and Pirandello constantly give the impression of intimacy while keeping the identity of their characters hidden. Although J.K. Rowling also questions reality and truth in her book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, she doesn't engage in this at such an abstract level and she tries to open up her characters for the audience to understand. The hidden world Rowling introduces exists side by side with the reality most people agree upon, following a kind of Formalist structure (Ryan, 1999). She introduces the same kind of dual levels of meaning that are explored by Shakespeare and Pirandello, but does so on a more material plane. The path to the other plane requires a special kind of knowledge. This is suggested when Harry and Hagrid go shopping for Harry's school supplies. They turn down “an ordinary street full of ordinary people” until they reach “a tiny, grubby-looking pub” that only Harry and Hagrid seemed to notice. “The people hurrying by didn’t glance at it. Their eyes slid from the big book shop on one side to the record shop on the other as if they couldn’t see the Leaky Cauldron at all” (68). Thought is what gives one access to Shakespeare's message and Pirandello's play, but Rowling never allows her story to get too abstract in its revelation of this idea. Rowling also invites her audience to identify with her characters, giving them a chance to experience the concept only referred to in Shakespeare and Pirandello. Harry, for example, knows almost no one outside of the wizarding world. Those people who are aware of him think of him as a juvenile delinquent taken in by his suffering aunt and who attends a special reformatory school. As he enters the magical world, he discovers he is a hero and an international celebrity for nothing he is aware of doing. “Strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too … A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word” (30). The reader, given some access to Harry's thoughts and private moments, realizes that Harry is neither of these two extremes but is instead an intelligent, kind-hearted, generous and courageous individual still struggling to find out just who he thinks he is. All three authors use language to explore the incommunicability of language to reflect the true essence of their characters, yet the way they accomplish this is different. For Shakespeare and Pirandello, both expecting to address a mature audience, the approach is abstract. Shakespeare is very subtle in his teasing way of breaking poetic rules and Pirandello takes pains to spell out his thoughts in an entertaining manner while breaking theatrical rules, but neither allows his audience to truly see his characters. Rowling keeps her story less abstract and focuses on bringing her readers through the abstract experience of being neither this nor that but something uncertain in between. Although the readers still don't know the main character, they accept this because it is clear the main character is only just beginning to figure out who he is as well. References Furniss, Tom & Michael Bath. (2007). Reading Poetry: An Introduction. (2nd Ed.). Great Britain: Pearson Education Ltd. Pirandello, Luigi. (1921). Six Characters in Search of an Author. Edward Storer (Engl. Version). New York: E.P. Dutton, 1922. Rowling, J.K. (1997). Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. New York: Scholastic Books. Ryan, Michael. (1999). Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Shakespeare, William. (1969). “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Ed. Frye, Northrop. New York: Penguin Classics: 1456. Wallis, Mick & Simon Shepherd. (2010). Studying Plays. (3rd Ed.). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Read More