I am pleased to announce the most significant update to this website since the addition of the blog in 2007.
I have just completed a project that I’ve been working on for many years. As long-time readers know, I’m part of a group that meets on a monthly basis to do readings of Shakespeare plays. To facilitate these readings, I put together a system for how to divide the plays into parts so that each reader gets a relatively equal-sized part and that nobody’s doing scenes with themselves. It makes everything run so smoothly, and I’ve always wanted to put those play divisions online so that others who wanted to do readings would have access to them. That website is now up. I hope that it will lead to more Shakespeare readings being held in the world, because they are a lot of fun.
Once my website had more than one thing on it (the blog and the reading group page), I thought it was time to create a home page, so I did. And, having a structure in place, I was able to elevate the Plantagenet family trees to have their own page, which is also now up. I also filled the home page with category links of blog features from over the years that I want to highlight.
So welcome to those new and returning! I look forward to our continuing this journey together!
O! but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
They try to disrespect a hero yet.
McCain wants an honorable funeral, with Presidents Bush and Obama there to keynote.
Yet, gee, he did not invite ferret Trump, whether or not he has any grief.
So President Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Andrew McCabe, the acting director of the FBI.
McCabe was set to retire anyway, but the administration chose to fire him so he wouldn’t get his full pension.
The president then crowed about the firing in a tweet.
Ranting and raving about new lows for this administration can get tiring after a while. Maybe that’s the point. Fortunately, I am constitutionally empowered to anagram passages from Shakespeare to express my disapproval, so that’s what I’m going to do.
I chose the speech from Richard III where Hastings laments his capricious treatment by Richard. Richard has sentenced him to death for a transparently minor offense, when the real reason is that Hastings doesn’t support Richard to become king. Hastings notes the dangers faced by others in the circle who may be enjoying his misfortunes thinking they’re safe.
From Richard III:
I prophesy the fearfull’st time to thee
That ever wretched age hath look’d upon.
Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head:
They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
Trump, he hotly tweets: McCabe, he led the FBI. He’ll be fired home.
He’s married to a Democrat, so Trump kept heatedly asking how he voted as a loyalty oath theme.
After months and months of indignant denials, the Trump administration is finally being made to confront hard evidence of their campaign’s collusion with the Russians. To be clear, there’s not any evidence that they colluded in the Russians’ election-tampering, but there was definitely ongoing communication between the Trump people and the Russian government, and about the election.
Donald Trump Jr. was forced to reveal that he met with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 because he wanted campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton. The suspicious nature of the revelation was exacerbated by a string of lies and omissions surrounding this meeting. But the important thing to remember is that he was told in advance that this meeting was part of the Russian efforts to help the Trump campaign. There’s just no way to get around that.
And now we learn that the meetings that Jeff Sessions held with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were about the campaign after all, despite Sessions’ repeated insistence to the contrary, and this only after the secret meetings were revealed in the first place.
We really do need to let Mueller finish his investigation before we jump to any conclusions, but it’s not looking good for the Trump team. I don’t know; what do you think, Shakespeare?
From Henry V:
Their faults are open:
Arrest them to the answer of the law;
And God acquit them of their practises!
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
Where Russian attachés offer to approach little frat squirt Don, and he’s eager to meet with them.
And I have send a special shout out to the brilliant Randy Rainbow, who’s like a modern-day Schoolhouse Rock for grown-ups.
In Macbeth, King Duncan receives a report on the execution of the Thane of Cawdor, who had betrayed him in the war against Norway. Duncan notes his own surprise at the deception:
There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.
No art to find the mind’s construction in the face? Is it really possible that nobody in Shakespeare’s time (or even Macbeth’s time) had thought to study this? And if not, where is Shakespeare getting the idea from? My Arden Macbeth (Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, eds.) says that it is proverbial, but that only raises more questions about what is meant by it. In all honesty, I think it’s time to bring back the Shakespeare Follow-Up.
First of all, the idea that different emotions would register in an observable way has always been as plain as the smile on your face. If anyone wants to doubt that, they need only look at the types of masks used in ancient Greek theatre to represent comedy and tragedy and see if they can tell which is which.
Wait, wait, don’t tell me…
So the idea of finding the mind’s construction in the face was well known in Macbeth’s time. But what about someone who intends to deceive? How could Duncan have uncovered Cawdor’s treachery?
As long as there have been liars, there have been techniques attempting to reveal them, which have had various degrees of accuracy. In ancient China, they used to put dried rice in a suspect’s mouth and ask them to spit it out. If they were lying, their mouths would be too dry to spit out the rice. At least, that’s what they said on The Unit (see 5:30 to 7:10 below):
In the clip, Jonas mentions the witch trials, and indeed, the trial by ordeal was a common method of uncovering deceivers throughout medieval Europe, whether by water, combat, fire, or hot iron. As Europe approached the Renaissance, these beliefs began to slowly evolve, marking a significant gap between the worldviews of Macbeth’s time and Shakespeare’s.
Shakespeare himself seemed intrigued with the idea that one could alter one’s own face to conceal evil intentions. Hamlet has an epiphany that “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” And in Henry VI, Part Three, the future King Richard III actually brags about being such a villain:
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry ‘Content’ to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
Could Shakespeare have been influenced by the writings of French philosopher Michel de Montaigne? In his late 16th-century essay Of Physiognomy, Montaigne muses on this very question, ascribing moral implications to a false aspect:
The face is a weak guarantee; yet it deserves some consideration. And if I had to whip the wicked, I would do so more severely to those who belied and betrayed the promises that nature had implanted on their brows; I would punish malice more harshly when it was hidden under a kindly appearance. It seems as if some faces are lucky, others unlucky. And I think there is some art to distinguishing the kindly faces from the simple, the severe from the rough, the malicious from the gloomy, the disdainful from the melancholy, and other such adjacent qualities. There are beauties not only proud but bitter; others are sweet, and even beyond that, insipid. As for prognosticating future events from them, those are matters that I leave undecided.
Sorry, Duncan.
The 18th-century actor David Garrick turned this vice into a virtue, developing great fame for his repertoire of facial expressions that could be used to convey a wide range of emotions on stage. Charles Darwin, in his 1872 work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, identified a specific set of facial expressions that he believed to be universal to humans as a product of evolution. Today, we know that, while many facial expressions are generally universal, they can be profoundly influenced by culture.
In the 20th century, the rise of the polygraph machine added an extra level of science to lie detection. The machine registers physiological responses the subject exhibits while answering questions. It’s not infallible, and it’s not unbeatable, but it just might have been able to reveal the Thane of Cawdor’s treachery, had it been available to apply.
But as far as finding the mind’s construction in the face, we should turn to the poker community, which has made a small science of identifying expressions, statements, and actions that reveal the strength or weakness of a players hand. When there’s money on the table, every advantage matters. These “tells” are catalogued, studied, observed, and – of course – faked when the opportunity arises. Some poker players, to defend against being read in this way, will conceal their faces with visors, hoodies, or even sunglasses. Interestingly enough, sunglasses were first invented in 12th century China, where they were originally worn by judges to assist them in concealing their emotions during a trial.
But the master of the art of finding the mind’s construction in the face would have to be Dr. Paul Ekman. Ekman is mostly famous for discovering the “micro expression,” a facial tell that sweeps across the face for a fraction of a second, betraying the subject’s true emotional state. They cannot be hidden. They cannot be faked. They also cannot be read without deep training, which Ekman provides.
Ekman and his research became the inspiration for the Fox crime drama Lie to me*. On the show, Tim Roth plays Dr. Cal Lightman, a fictionalized version of Ekman. Each episode shows Lightman and his team using micro expressions and other scientific tells to find out the truth for desperate clients. If you’ve read this essay this far, you might enjoy the show:
So, with all of these clues available, how well does Duncan learn from his experience with the traitorous Thane of Cawdor? He grants the now-available title to Macbeth, and then Macbeth kills him. If there was an art to find the mind’s construction in the face, Duncan was very, very bad at it.
This week, former FBI director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
I’m not here to provide an analysis of that testimony. The current level of discourse is so far beyond facts and logic being relevant that you probably saw exactly what you expected to see. So did I.
But I do think that even those who are willing to suspend logic to support their ideologies should at least have a consistent internal logic to their arguments. That is, your statements should hold up against one another. This was not the standard reached by the Trump administration’s response to Comey’s testimony.
After I’d heard enough, I posted the following to social media on Thursday night:
We are now to understand that Comey’s testimony 1. demonstrated there was nothing wrong with what President Trump did, 2. established that President Trump didn’t do it, 3. was completely false, and 4. constituted an illegal leaking of confidential information. Any questions?
I wanted to make the point that the defense his people were mounting was full of internal contradictions, though I admit I was a bit verbose in doing so. But President Trump himself was kind enough to help me out by tweeting the following on Friday morning:
Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!
Thanks, Mr. President!
The problem is that Comey was under oath at the time. Which means that the president’s claim that Comey made “many false statements” is an explicit accusation of perjury. And this, according to Slate, could land him in a lot of trouble:
If the Trump administration truly believed that Comey had committed perjury, the Justice Department would, at a minimum, consider investigating his alleged crime. (It won’t.) If Trump himself really believed Comey had slandered him before Congress, he could set the record straight by rushing to go under oath as well. On Friday, he said he would agree to rebuke Comey under oath if asked. We’ve seen Trump make and break this kind of promise in the past; for now, it suffices to say that until Trump goes under oath, Comey’s narrative will essentially stand as the official public record.
There’s a lot going on this week, but the story that stands out most for me is Montana Republican Greg Gianforte being elected to the United States House of Representatives a day after witnesses watched him grab a reporter by the neck and throw him to the ground.
From Richard III:
I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
I lay unto the grievous charge of others.
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
The idiot congressman-elect’s sorry for a bad hate wrath.
But if he regrets rough fight violence, what is to be his action?
The hits just keep on coming this week, but I suppose the top story is President Trump leaking classified information to the Russians in a meeting held in the Oval Office.
