Shakespearean letters

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:01 am By Peter Leithart

Ward quotes Rosalind’s line, “Say a day, without the ever,” and asks, “Did Shakespeare know he had used all five vowels, and with such symmetrical elegance that the first two, appearing three times each, neatly surround the remaining three in correct order within: a-a-a-i-o-u-e-e-e?” He suspects not, but then observes that “Shakespeare’s suppleness of language arises from practised sensitivity to letter-placement on all levels and deft use of the results . . . . By letter placement ‘at all levels’... Read more

Primal Eldest Curse

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am By Peter Leithart

AL Rowse counted some 25 references to the Cain and Abel story in Shakespeare’s plays. As You Like It has two – Duke Senior and Frederick, Oliver and Orlando. And there’s Hamlet Sr and Claudius, Edgar and Edmund, Prospero and his usurping brother. Not to mention all the brother-like rivalries that dot the plays – Laertes and Hamlet, Hotspur and Hal, Demetrius and Lysander, Valentine and Proteus. Girard may be right: Shakespeare was an Elizabethan Girardian. Read more

Exiled to Eden

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In his introduction to As You Like It , John Powell Ward free associates on the Forest of Arden, to good effect: “Arden, garden, Garden of Eden (and Adam), ardent, Mary Arden, Arden in Warwickshire, the Ardennes in France – there are many leads into what is suggested. Despite the frenchified names and the echo of the argour of love, surely banishment away from political involvement and danger and onward to bliss are the most resonant impressions. Adam and Eve... Read more

Pentecost

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

Citing Deut 16:9-12 and the Gezer Calendar, K. Lawson Younger says in NIV Application commentary on Ruth, “the time period from the beginning of the barley harvest to the end of the wheat harvest was normally seven weeks, concluding at Pentecost.” Presumably, this was the festival that Boaz was celebrating in Ruth 3. Booths begins after the gathering of the wine (Deut 16:13), but Pentecost is the feast of wheat. Pentecost is also the festival of the law, and this... Read more

Fall toward nothingness

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Augustine is sometimes accused of ontologizing the effects of sin. City of God 14.13 seems to support this: “When [Adam] turned toward himself . . . his being became less complete than when he clung to Him Who exists supremely. Thus, to forsake God and to exist in oneself – that is, to be pleased with oneself – is not immediately to lose all being; but it is to come closer to nothingness.” Further, the possibility of the fall is... Read more

Eschatology against the Stoics

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Augustine rebuts Stoic notions of apatheia and eupatheia in Book 14 of the city of God. He says that Christian experience even those emotions that Stoics denounce – distress and pain and desire – and he roots these experiences in the fact that Christians live in the present age “because they are still groaning within themselves, ‘waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies.’” In glory, the saints will be free from pain, though not free from... Read more

Hamlet the hero

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:43 pm By Peter Leithart

A colleague, Jayson Grieser, pointed me to Paul Cantor’s little book on Hamlet a few months ago, but I have only recently been able to look at it. It’s superb. Cantor argues that the play dramatizes a conflict between the classical heroism revived by the Renaissance and the Christian constraints on revenge and violence that all Renaissance humanists continued to affirm. (more…) Read more

Augustine the Marginalist

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

In City of God, 11.16, Augustine observes the reality of marginal utility: “So far as the freedom of judgment is concerned . . . the reason of the thoughtful man is far different from the necessity of one who is in need, or the desire of the pleasure-seeker. For reason considers what value a thing has in itself, as part of the order of nature, whereas necessity considers how to obtain what will meet its need.” Read more

Sermon notes, Third Sunday of Lent

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

INTRODUCTION Jesus gives the Twelve authority to heal, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. He does not give them authority to escape persecutors. Persecution is an inevitable part of the mission of the Crucified. THE TEXT “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues . . .... Read more

Eucharistic exhortation, Second Sunday of Lent

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Matthew 10:10: The worker is worthy of his nourishment. Jesus sent the Twelve out with no means of support – no food, no money to purchase food, no extra clothes. They were to be like Israel, relying on the Lord to maintain them as they went out into the wilderness. For the apostles, this maintenance took the form of finding houses that would show hospitality. Their Father would lead them to houses that were “worthy,” where their peace would stick,... Read more