While many nations, and some states in the U.S., have reopened their schoolhouse doors, recognizing that the nasty bug at the heart of the pandemic leaves children almost entirely alone, quite a few U.S. schoolhouses remain closed by order of their state governors. The story of a too-strict schoolmaster would seem to be the province of Dickens, but Shakespeare took on that theme in Love’s Labor’s Lost. Here’s Ferdinand, the King of Navarre, at the start of the play, praising three of his courtiers for joining him in an academic pledge that echoes our schoolmasters’ order that students wear facemasks all day in class (war is used as verb in the second line):
King: “…brave conquerors,—for so you are,
That war against your own affections
And the huge army of the world’s desires,—
Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;
Our court shall be a little Academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.
You three, Biron, Dumain, and Longaville,
Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me
My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes
That are recorded in this schedule here…”
If you want to attend this school, you will need to war against your own affections. With mental health problems and even child suicide rates now at historically high levels, it’s a real question whether the COVID-19 panic isn’t killing more people, and in particular our young people, than the disease itself would have done if we had exempted children from all of these statutes that have enforced their solitude at home.
But back to King Ferdinand in Renaissance France. Apparently his rules don’t stop with social distancing. When the king directs his friends to sign their written oaths, their answers reveal how strict the rules are (pates are foreheads, meaning brains):
King: “Your oaths are pass’d; and now subscribe your names,
That his own hand may strike his honor down
That violates the smallest branch herein:
If you are arm’d to do as sworn to do,
Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.”
Longaville: “I am resolved; ’tis but a three years’ fast:
The mind shall banquet, though the body pine:
Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.”
Dumain: “My loving lord, Dumain is mortified:
The grosser manner of these world’s delights
He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves:
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die;
With all these living in philosophy.”
The impulse to control others seems to be an eternal one, rearing its head even in a culture, like France’s, generally known for cultivating the senses, if not our sensibilities. Speaking for that natural desire is the third courtier, Biron, is a dissident, unwilling to maintain his six feet of social distancing, and place only prepackaged food in his lunchbox:
Biron: “I can but say their protestation over;
So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,
That is, to live and study here three years.
But there are other strict observances;
As, not to see a woman in that term,
Which I hope well is not enrolled there;
And one day in a week to touch no food
And but one meal on every day beside,
The which I hope is not enrolled there;
And then, to sleep but three hours in the night,
And not be seen to wink of all the day—
When I was wont to think no harm all night
And make a dark night too of half the day—
Which I hope well is not enrolled there:
O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,
Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!”
Biron speaks for many of us, very much including our children, in this rule-bound era.
This season’s blog posts reflect the discouraging events now occurring in our public life. But I hope that, especially in times like these, the classics, and Shakespeare chief among them, can keep us connected to the highest and best in Western culture, even as we navigate the remnants of our fallen republic, and gather the strength to reclaim it.
