She wanted a whole poem, not just a half

John of Gaunt’s dying speech about England in Shakespeare’s Richard II is quoted often by conservatives mourning what has happened to that once great land, and it is quoted in this recent post. But as reader K. points out, the conservatives are missing something.

She writes:

Odd that almost no one ever recites John of Gaunt’s farewell speech to its conclusion where he sighs over the present state of England. It’s so disturbingly appropriate to our own times. Shakespeare saw it all coming, which is why, in an e-mail to you a few days back, I quoted “this dear, dear land,” thinking you would have recognised those lines, as they bring his speech to its haunting close:-

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation throughout the world,
Is now leased out. I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

LA replies:

How about that. You’re right. People so often quote the “ode to England” part of the speech, leaving out the later part which tells the ruin of the sceptred Isle that is described in the first part. And it is such an exact picture of the situation today, of the Island having sold itself out, no longer in possession of itself, with everything good about it having been turned into its bad opposite. It was a sovereign jewel, now it’s leased out like a poor farm. It was bound in with the sea, now it’s bound in with shame. It conquered others, now it willingly turns itself into an object of conquest.

LA continues:

The title of this entry, “She wanted a whole poem, not just a half,” is a play of words on a Dylan line, “She wanted a whole man, not just a half,” from his 1983 song, “Sweetheart Like You” (lyrics and recording). And that song, by the way, can also be seen as expressing the decay of England:

You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you,
She wanted a whole man, not just a half.
She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child,
You kind of remind me of her when you laugh.
In order to deal in this game, got to make the Queen disappear,
It’s done with a flick of the wrist.
What’s a sweetheart like you
Doin’ in a dump like this?

So, several meanings have come together here:

• K. wanted people to read the whole speech of John of Gaunt, not just a half.

• And what does the whole speech tell? The ruin of England.

• K.’s comment made me think of the line from the Dylan song, which at first had no particular meaning here, I just used it for the play on words in the title of the entry. But then, especially because of that line about the “Queen,” the card which is made to disappear, I realized that the song, which in the past I thought was about personal, moral decadence, also expressed the theme of the national ruin of Britain.

• The present England, or rather Britain, the “Sweetheart” being addressed in the Dylan song (as I’m reading it here), reminds the singer of what the sweetheart, Britain, once was, but she has fallen. Once she expected her men to be whole men, but now she wants them to be half men, or less than half. (I’m not excepting other Western nations from this, including the U.S., but everyone agrees Britain is in especially bad shape.)

• And Britain, in order to “deal in this game,” in order to be part of the multicultural, transnational, EU-controlled, Islamized order, “makes the Queen disappear”—sells out her greatness, sovereignty, and identity.

• And so Britain, this once fine woman, is in a “dump like this.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 04, 2008 10:31 PM | Send