Something Rich and Strange, A Treasury of Shakespeare’s Verse, Selected by Gina Pollinger, Kingfisher Pounds 12.991 85697 387 5. In this colourfully illustrated anthology, clusters of quotations from Shakespeare are organised under eight thematic headings from “Power to Charm”, and “Youth, I do adore thee!” through to “Our revels now are ended”.
Gina Pollinger obviously has great enthusiasm and love for Shakespeare’s language. But her Treasury raises puzzling questions. First, a minor quibble. She includes prose extracts, and at least 70 of her selections are one or two-line gobbets that look more like aphorisms than poetry. Does “The better part of valour is discretion” belong in a collection of verse? There are more important issues. What is the function of pictures in anthologies? How important is the dramatic context of a quotation? Who buys or reads such a collection? Why?
In any Shakespeare publication there is a danger that pictures may fix interpretation too firmly. Illustrator Emma Chichester Clark draws in a Merrie England style. Some images are starkly literal. “They’ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk” is precisely that: a comfortable moggy at its drinking bowl. A picture of a sail-less galleon accompanies the “tide in the affairs of men”. Other illustrations seem ironic. Below the heading “The Envious Court” a lady bows low to a bemused Shakespeare look-alike. A somewhat shifty Henry V declaims “We happy few, we band of brothers”. Perhaps the ironies are intended, but the engaging yet anodyne style suggests otherwise.
A greater puzzle can be called the John Major syndrome: quoting Shakespeare’s dramatic language with no heed for who said it and in what context. You will find “Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman” in the section “It was a lover and his lass”, and under a page heading “Here comes the lady!” Here comes the lady indeed! The words are uttered by the grief-stricken Lear over the body of the murdered Cordelia, and his next line (not included) is “I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee”.
In similar vein, “Honour” is illustrated by seven lines on “he that filches from me my good name”. The lines are deceitfully spoken by the villainous Iago as he puts the hapless Othello on the rack. What is lost is dramatic irony. You’ll find “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face”, but not that chilling stage direction that shortly follows: Enter Macbeth. Gina Pollinger’s claim that “Shakespeare’s poetry enjoys a life of its own, regardless of dramatic context” has truth, but is by no means the whole story.
Who will buy this anthology? It is addressed to “those who read for pleasure”. Certain features seem to imply a junior audience: the prettified illustrations, the lack of irony, the emasculation of Sonnet 129 (one line only). But I suspect that this is a gift book, bought for its colour, attractive layout, and a generalised feeling that Shakespeare is safe, and good for you.
