Many may connect irony with the adage that "sarcasm is the lowest form of irony" and know that it depends on being the opposite of what is expected. It is true that irony is always to do with the defeat of our expectations, as readers and viewers (or listeners), but in literature the implications go further.

It might be helpful to think of irony more as a means of presenting the world in a multi-faceted way. Irony tends to subvert our ideas and show that the world cannot be interpreted by a single vision or single-viewpoint. What might appear as dreadful to some might be seen as funny by others. Humour is often linked to anxieties (death, sex, loss) and tragedy often touches on what is funny (Hamlet and the grave-digger…) Both comedy and tragedy depend on irony in their presentations but why and to what effect? Here is a joke to start us off.

As in many jokes, there is a double irony. We don't expect people to take penguins to a pub and buy them drinks. This is the first irony and is funny at a basic level. The joke then depends on our having our expectations (which have been expanded to allow for penguins going to pubs) defeated by the twist of the man not taking the penguin to the zoo with the object of leaving it there, where it should be, but taking it there for its entertainment AND following it up by planning the cinema as well.

In tackling the concept of irony with classes, I often write up on the blackboard the following: Irony measures the distance between expectations and reality. I then draw a little stick figure walking along a line representing the ground. Just in front of her/him I draw a pit. From the eyes of the stick figure I then draw a dotted line leading up to a bright star. I then explain. “The figure will fall into the pit because it has its eyes on the star above. If it dies (and is a noble figure) it will be tragic. If it survives and is more of a clown figure, we may laugh out loud at this downfall and it will be comic.”

MIND THE GAP!

Totalitarian regimes lack irony. They can see only one reality: theirs. Literature, and particularly irony, on the other hand, breaks down such rigidity of thought and conveys the plurality of the world. In other words, imaginative literature invites us to see the world from different angles and perspectives. It can attack our preconceptions and force us to extend our sympathies or at least realise how our own viewpoint may not be the same as that of others.

A good example of this is the scene in ‘Persuasion’ by Jane Austen, when Louisa Musgrove is “persuaded” by her own vanity that having her own way (and jumping down yet again from the Cobb to be caught by Captain Wentworth) is a virtue, only to fall and be seriously concussed as a result, with her sister, Henrietta, fainting away at the sight. This, in itself, is all ironic enough, but Jane Austen takes it a step further when she then switches her ironic vision to the onlookers, who themselves, have a different view altogether of this “dreadful” occurrence:

Irony, with its ability to undermine our ideas, pervades literature at all levels and in different ways.

Dramatic irony (which is where the audience know something serious that the characters on stage do not know), is well shown in Macbeth when King Duncan arriving at Macbeth's castle to spend the night, discourses on the beauty and the peace of the atmosphere. The audience, however, have just been shown Macbeth and his wife plotting to murder him.

The ironic tricks played on Malvolio in "Twelfth Night" or Beatrice and Benedict in "Much Ado" or Falstaff in "HIV Pt I", all have at their heart, not only the idea of subverting the ideas of the characters concerned, but also at a deeper level, subverting the vision of the audience and unsettling their ideas, in a way that theatre, with its core insistence on disguise and "acting", "seeming" and "pretence", is so ready to resort to.

Shakespeare is one of the supreme ironists, in that his presence as writer/creator is hardly ever felt. There is a sense almost of ironic distance or detachment in his plays, so many of which are so finely balanced in their ultimate viewpoints. With few directions for staging, the texts are "open" and unfixed – in this sense, we could say that Shakespeare offers us a multi-faceted world to explore. Are we on Hamlet's side? Yes… but always? No…. His diatribe against Ophelia is off-putting. His "antic disposition" frequently calls into question the amount of sympathy we can have for him and the balance tips both ways. Both Laertes and Fortinbras seem less inert and more solid as characters, though it is for his imagination that we ultimately side with Hamlet for all his faults. His imagination is heroic and, like the artist he really is, multi-faceted.

In other words, and this has profound implications for staging, Shakespeare leaves us free to settle on one of a multitude of possibilities, each of which is legitimate if the text allows it.

For example, "King Lear" draws to a close with terrible and tragic consequences for Cordelia and Lear. Kent, who has accompanied them in this journey of self-discovery, cruelty, horror in a world where madness is apparently more valid than sanity, asks, "Is this the promised end or image of that horror?" and says "All's deadly, dark and cheerless."

The universe for him is utterly negative and he has finally lost the will to live, "My master calls me, I must not say no." For Albany, on the other hand, the world gives evidence of fairness and justice at the end. "The gods are just and of our present vices Make instruments to plague us." " All friends shall taste The wages of their virtue, and all foes The cup of their deservings." This could not be further, somehow, from the conclusions reached by Kent.

Given this complete dichotomy, at the end, when Edgar takes power and asserts his legitimacy, we might be struck by the brevity and fragility of this ascension, or else we might equally be struck by the rightness of his assumption of power. It is possible to keep in mind BOTH readings and both viewpoints are legitimised by the text.

Or texts, since the Folio changed the ending of the Quarto, which had Albany implicitly taking up the reins of kingship by having the final lines, while the Folio allowed Edgar to have the final lines and assume power in the kingdom.

In Hardy’s very ironic poem “The Ruined Maid”, below, Amelia, the “fallen” woman is revealed to be enjoying a standard of living only to be envied by her “country” friend. To be “ruined” for a woman in the sexual sense, particularly in the nineteenth century, meant to be condemned forever socially; yet, ironically, here the woman is glorying in the material advantages “ruin” can bring.

That is one level of irony.

At a deeper level of irony, perhaps, Hardy is leaving implicit the idea that the girl’s “ruin” is still a desperately "real" ruin, as looks and finery can last only just so long. Is Hardy here making too light of the prostitution, which disgraced women might have had to resort to at the time if they wished to better themselves? "Tess of the D’Urbervilles" presents the other side of the coin, a "ruined maid" for whom this "fall" (as in "fallen woman") is a real tragedy and whose "purity" is defended in the novel's sub-title by the author. Whether the tone of this poem could be criticised as male heartlessness, or whether Hardy's humour is more revealing of a deeper seriousness, is debatable; irony is here, nevertheless, the driving force of this seemingly lighthearted, yet also subversive, poem.

The Ruined Maid

by Thomas Hardy

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?"

"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"

"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

"At home in the barton you said 'thee' and 'thou,'

And 'thik oon,' and 'theäs oon,' and 't'other'; but now

Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!"

"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

"Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak

But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,

And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!"

"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.

"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem

To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!"

"True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.

"I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!"

"My dear - a raw country girl, such as you be,

Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.

A man goes into a pub carrying a penguin. He says to the barman,

“I'll have a pint of beer, please, and a glass of salty water for my friend, here.”

“I'm sorry, but I think you ought to take him to the zoo,” says the barman, rather shocked.

“Oh, all right, I'll do that when we've had our drinks," says the man cheerfully. The barman gets them their drinks and after they have both finished their glasses, the man picks up the penguin and they leave the pub.

The next day, the man returns to the pub, still carrying the penguin.

“Not you again?” says the barman. “I thought I told you to take that penguin to the zoo.”

“Oh, he loved it at the zoo yesterday,” says the man cheerfully. “Today we're going to the cinema.”

The ending of "King Lear" (and many others) leaves us with an aporia. Aporia has been described philosophically as a state of uncertainty. Here, it is something more like a logical impossibililty, which has somehow to be accommodated as such. Aporia, therefore, occupies much the same territory as irony. It takes us along the road set out by irony, but it ends up somewhere beyond it. The world of "King Lear" surely cannot be so dark and "cheerless" and lacking in humanity, or can it? It cannot, either, be such a balanced, equitable world where "the world has come full circle" or "the worst returns to laughter". Such optimism runs counter to what the play has been all about, surely? Going beyond irony, which points out the absurdities of human existence, this aporia suggests that these absurdities have to be accommodated somehow as part of the human condition. We have to learn to live with and accept absurdity, much as the characters in "Waiting for Godot" have to.

The truth is, surely, that irony trains us (think of the Fool's consistent stream of bitter ironies) to see the world more as an aporia, where multiple visions can co-exist, even though they appear to rule each other out.

In "Antony and Cleopatra", for example, it is possible to read the scene where Cleopatra is in discussion with Dolabella in two completely contrasting ways. Her evocations of Antony's greatness are utterly compelling:

His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in 't; an autumn it was

That grew the more by reaping. His delights

Were dolphinlike; they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were

As plates dropped from his pocket.

This is poetry of the highest order and you could read it (as my father certainly did to us, his students) as showing Cleopatra's "cosmic" love for Antony (my father was an unrepentant romantic). Well, yes, but the scene is also highly "strategic"! If we read the passage carefully, we note how all this high-flown rhetoric leads up to the very stark question, "Know you what Caesar means to do with me?" And Dolabella, dazzled by the oratory (he has hardly been able to get a word in edgeways), competely disregards his instructions and lets the cat out of the bag.

CLEOPATRA

He'll lead me, then, in triumph?

DOLABELLA

Madam, he will; I know't.

In other words, it is possible to read the play as a triumphant love story and/or as a game of power politics (which Antony never really understood) where all moves are strategic and love is just one more "game" to be played. Cleopatra loves "games" – billiards, dressing up with Antony's sword, hooking fishes on to Antony's rod or "playing" the jealous mistress, when he asks her permission to return to Italy to sort out the mess left by Fulvia, his wife. Is Cleopatra then a "games" strategist? Does she love? Or does she "play" at love? Or both?

The play is full of irony and appears to have a totally double vision of the world. Egypt from Rome's eyes is debauched and sensual: Rome from Egypt's eyes is coldly political and militaristic. Scenes set either in Rome or Italy are juxtaposed with scenes set in Alexandria. This vision of the play as essentially an aporia, is hinted at in the opening scene with the comment about Antony becoming "the bellows and the fan to cool a gipsy's lust" being immediately followed by Cleopatra's question, "If it be love, tell me how much." To which Antony answers, "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned."

However, there is considerable nuance and subtlety in the working out of this double vision. As we have seen, Cleopatra can match the cool strategy of power politics, though she has very little real power. Enobarbus, on the other hand, the hard-bitten "professional" Roman soldier, is as spellbound by Cleopatra as Antony. It is in his famous description of her at Cydnus that Shakespeare interestingly goes beyond his source, Plutarch, who gave him the idea of rowers keeping "stroke", which he then develops into a highly sexual image of maidens "strok(ing)" silken "tackle"s which then "swell". At the end of the play, Shakespeare returns to this beautifully ironic image by playing on the word "stroke" again with Cleopatra's ambiguous, "The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch that hurts and is desired". It's fascinating here to see Shakespeare's creative mind picking on a single word in order to further promote this multiple vision of life, love and death.

One further irony, which is often left out in performance, when directors are cutting for greater speed, is the scene when Ventidius, one of Antony's generals, could go further and gain real military success for him, but doesn't because he fears that Antony would become jealous of a subordinate's success. It has the effect of further reinforcing the vision that this play is all about power and power politics. It also gives us a sharply personal view of one man making an important judgement (power politics affects people, like Enobarbus also!) and so this little scene, along with scenes with Charmian, Enobarbus, Dolabella, Maenas, Proculeius and other minor characters, shows us how macro politics and "politicians" (in Shakespeare's time this had more of a sense of "schemer") play out their destinies amongst the often cleverer and equally astute subordinates. The play shows us Enobarbus's and Charmian's "tragedy" as well as that of the two major players, and here again, there is a balanced vision at work, presenting classical tragedies and personal tragedies on an egalitarian stage.

And one final aporia: is Caesar's surprisingly generous speech at the end simply a dramatic convention (de mortuis nil nisi bonum)? He has won after all (as well as being thwarted by Cleopatra). Or is it evidence of a more developed sense of humanity, signs of which we saw earlier when he wept saying goodbye to his tedious sister Octavia? The phrase he uses, "toils of grace" (where "grace" has religious connotations involved) makes a fitting oxymoron to describe the utterly ambiguous Cleopatra, hinting again at the aporia which drives this play.

Even more ambiguous is the phrase "their story is No less in pity than his glory which Brought them to be lamented." A first reading might suggest that Caesar's glory measures the distance by which the couple have fallen. However, a closer reading of these words might allow an entirely opposed interpretation: that Caesar's glory is "No less in pity...", in other words, a complete failure! Caesar's cold ruthlessness, which my father deplored, may conceal a far more vulnerable character in the drama.

Ironies and, ultimately aporia, drive the poem "Ulysses" by Tennyson, which is worth showing pupils.

The ironies first: this is a king scornful of the faithful wife who waited for him for so many years "match'd with an aged wife", derogatory about his people "who sleep and feed and know not (him)", ready to administer "unequal laws", whom we are expected to admire as a hero. He addresses his "mariners" in wonderfully rhetorical language to seduce them into taking him on one last adventure; but it is clear the journey may well end in death and disaster for them. The aporia, at the end of several readings, is "How persuaded are we by the poetry and the rhetoric?" Do we admire the resilience of somebody determined "not to rust unburnish'd" – not to boringly plod on through the routine of growing old, but to set off on a magical adventure once more (our society encourages that sort of thinking – think Sir Francis Chichester or the centenarian who climbed up Mount Everest) or do we condemn his macho neglect of his family, his lack of responsibility as king and his potentially poor judgement as a leader of men? The poem (and the voice, for this is a dramatic monologue where we only get a single viewpoint explicitly) simultaneously accepts both readings. We can admire and detest the viewpoint almost equally.

The same, to some extent, is true of that wonderful exercise in close reading demanded of us by "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning. Here is a good place to hone pupils' detective skills, but don't give the game away that a murder has been committed (and openly confessed)! Part of the poem's skill is that, like the envoy of "the Count", we are not told explicitly what has happened. On purpose.

I usually try to get pupils to review their readings of the poem (which is first of all quite dense to follow). When I read it, I pause, dramatically on "This grew; I gave commands; then all smiles stopped. There she stands as if alive…". I also try to make my voice imperious, flattering, aloof, egotistical... psychopathic…! All teachers are actors "manqué", and this is a great opportunity for teachers to revel on the "stage".

It is on a second reading (they should have a turn at reading aloud too) that clever pupils spot what is happening. "He had her murdered!".

And then the review. Why did we all side with him, on the first reading? Because he's clever and we are trusting as readers; we tend to accept what we are told without questioning. Why is the poem so difficult in places? It's because he doesn't want us to understand too much. We, the readers, are in the place of the envoy sent by the prospective "new" bride's father, "the count". We are being given a lesson in what the duke expects from his women. How not to behave. Another wonderful irony here is that the "last" duchess, even in the Duke's own warped explanations, "Even had I skill in speech, which I have not" (Oh, yeah?!), appears as so lovely, riding on her white mule, inspiring men to offer her branches of flowering cherry, even being pleasant to her control-freak of a husband. The final, sinisterly ironic detail of the statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse (in other words himself taming his women) leaves us with the picture of a man with megalomanic and ruthless pride. Again, like, "Ulysses", the poem hides the whole story, here very deliberately, and it is only after applying "detective" skills of reading that the true picture emerges.

Go back to the title now. What irony is there on the word "last"? The aporia here is that we are fascinated, as well as appalled, by this man. He is open AND secretive, powerful AND impotent.

The "moral" of the poem is that language can obfuscate and distort. Nothing should be taken for granted, especially when you are being "sold" a story by what seems like an unimpeachable narrator. BEWARE!!

Let's finish with another "reading" by John Keats. We started with his "reading" of Chapman's Homer; this time the poem before us focuses on a decipherment of a "Grecian Urn". This decipherment or reading is disingenuous (a good word and notion to teach as far as narrative point-of-view is concerned) at one level, because the urn is not a real one, but an imagined artifact. This is a hard poem to work through with pupils (15 years and upwards) but in my experience they enjoy the uncertainties of the text and in presenting the poem, the ambiguities should be brought to the forefront. I tell them that as "art consumers" themselves, their responses are as valid as mine or the next person's. To respond appropriately, however, they are going to need some help in understanding where the poem is taking us.

First of all, the ironies. The urn is essentially a "memento mori", a dark reminder of death and used to keep ashes of the dead. It is, however, here addressed as "thou still unravish'd bride of quietness" introducing an unmistakably live and sexual note, which is picked up later in the "wild ecstasy" of the "mad pursuit" further on. The word "ravish'd" anyway carries highly ambiguous connotations of rape AND pleasure.

The questions in the poem suggest that reading and decipherment are at the heart of this poem (and again it is ironically disingenuous because the urn is an invention of the poet's). There are essentially two distinct visions which are being "read" on the urn. The first shows gods apparently cavorting with maidens (with their ready acquiescence: "What maidens loth?") in a Dionysian orgy. There is ambiguity "what struggle to escape?" but also "ecstasy". The reflection here leads on towards the promise that art holds out – a promise of the capture of a moment, a frozen image of time. This is reassuring, since it thus holds out the promise and happiness of enduring love and pleasure. Compared with art, mere reality only offers a "burning forehead and a parching tongue."

The second vision to be deciphered is completely different; there is a sacrifice to be made, a poor heifer is being led to the "altar". The town is emptied of its "folk" and is thus "desolate", which is a very strong idea of unhappiness. There are mysteries, including who the "mysterious priest" might be. Is there a connection between the two visions? Only loosely, surely, unless the orgy, as part of a religious rite also, stresses another side of religion – wilder, more abandoned and more life-asserting than the priest-led social gathering for the sacrifice of the heifer. There are gods in both. Yet the second vision has a darker tone than the first with the idea of sacrifice. We are left finally with "marble men and maidens overwrought", which also hints at further ambiguities and ironies.

What we can be sure of, however, is the questioning that goes on and which has no real answers.

All "reading" of art is based on the quality of the questioning (to which there may be no final answers). In the end, art appears to be rebuked ("Cold Pastoral!") for its ability to "tease us out of thought". Is this teasing what one does to wool, an unravelling? Or is it teasing as in playing tricks on us? Here is the ambiguity, the aporia, even, which lies at the heart of the poem. Does art unravel things, which are beyond rational thought, or does it play illusory tricks on us that our poor "thought" cannot cope with?

The answer, as given by the urn at the end, is equally ambiguous. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty – That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." The tone is blunt and aloof. The question then could be "what is meant by "beauty" and what by "truth"? If the urn represents the beauty of art, then one could take this abrupt, almost throwaway, line as "take me or leave me – don't ask questions, just enjoy the illusory performance." Or, it could be making greater claims for art – that artistic "beauty" (with all the warts and ambiguities it throws up) represents a higher order of "truth" than mere reality.

If we look at the poem itself as an artifact, an artistic construct, then there is another layer of meaning to be "tease(d)" out. Surely the poem, as an artistic creation, IS the urn and the urn IS the poem. What "beauty" and what "truth" has the poem itself tackled? "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter" takes us into the realms of poetry itself. Does poetry then provide a quick fix, a pleasant fantasy of escape from the realities of love ("high-sorrowful"), or does it cause us to look more deeply into our powers of imagination, with all the ambiguities and inconsistencies that accompany this? Or both?

With pupils, I would encourage them to explore the poem themselves as far as is possible, using questions (just as the poem does) to nudge them along. I would always say something like, "This is a poem which I find problematic because it is about art and art is not simple. I come back to it often and it is a rich poem because it remains tantalisingly obscure in its conclusions. We as art consumers may have to 'live' the poem and live with the poem, to begin to appreciate what it has to tell us about art. So, I'm really interested in how you respond to this first time round…!"

Aporia

Irony (in a universe of multiple viewpoints)

Cobb Portrait of Shakespeare

MY LAST DUCHESS

by Robert Browning

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said

'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not

Her husband's presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps

Frà Pandolf chanced to say, 'Her mantle laps

Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart -- how shall I say? -- too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace -- all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good! but thanked

Somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech -- (which I have not) -- to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark' -- and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

-- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet

The company below then. I repeat,

The Count your master's known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Ode on a Grecian Urn

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape	5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?	10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave	15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!	20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!	25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.	30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,	35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.	40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!	45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'	50

In Macbeth, although quite clearly good is good and bad is bad, we are still in a world of doubt: "nothing is but what is not". Ironies, of course abound, both situationally (Macbeth for example "murders sleep" by "murdering" their own sleep) and linguistically. Just as he plays on the word "stroke" in 'Antony and Cleopatra', so Shakespeare here can play with a word like "stick" – "Our fears in Banquo stick deep" and "But screw your courage to the sticking-place…" developing opposing ideas within a seemingly simple word.

The ultimate aporia in this play, of twos and threes and multiples of both numbers, is that two cannot go into three. I've sometimes wondered whether in this world of doubles (and double-crossing) – suggesting a manichean view of the universe – the threes of the witches ( and the murderers) and the linguistic threesomes that occur everywhere, all suggest a world not of two states, but three. On one level these threes seem to mock the Holy Trinity, but at another level, perhaps, they suggest a binary, manichean world where there is a third way (plus, minus and plus/minus – truth, lies and truth-in-lies - good, bad and good-and-bad). Macbeth has no children, according to Macduff; according to Lady Macbeth she has "given suck". The logic of three might be that he has and he hasn't. Aporia reigns: "nothing is but what is not". Well, it's just an idea!

Ode on a Grecian Urn

“By this time the report of the accident had spread among the workmen and boatmen about the Cobb, and many were collected near them, to be useful if wanted, at any rate, to enjoy the sight of a dead young lady, nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first report.”

Gemma Atherton playing Tess in "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"

CAESAR

"No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous. High events as these
Strike those that make them; and their story is
No less in pity than his glory which

Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall
In solemn show attend this funeral;
And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see
High order in this great solemnity."

Louisa Musgrove's Fall from the Cobb at Lyme Regis

IRONY AND APORIA

To sum up this rather diffuse and digressive section: irony as a mode criticises the world by showing us the limitations of single viewpoints. Aporia goes further along this road and presents us with the incompat-ibilities of this world, leaving us with the freedom and the burden of working out our own position amongst them.

Cleopatra 19th century style

Octavius Caesar

Macbeth and Banquo meeting the witches

PRACTISING CLOSE READING IN CLASS

Giving pupils the reading skills to succeed!

Paddy Salmon MA PGCE

Head of English SIS (Sèvres)

1993-2012

paddysalmon.wix.com/english-courses

Aporia

Irony (in a universe of multiple viewpoints)

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode on a Grecian Urn

IRONY AND APORIA