This blog is dedicated to my son -
NADAV AVRAHAM YOUNG
whose untimely demise occurred on May 19th.
Nadav aged eleven
Although I wrote in my last blog a few days ago that this one would be about the Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn, fate - "the stars above us [that] govern our conditions"(Lear IV,3) - hath intervened and declared otherwise.
Two nights ago, my son, Nadav, saw that he had forgotten or misplaced the key of his flat in Tel-Aviv late that night. He had returned from where he'd been working at the theatre and decided to try and get into his flat through the outside balcony. Unfortunately he slipped and fell into the garden below. If there's any chink of comfort in this story, it's that he didn't suffer as he died instantly. He was 37 years old, unmarried and a popular and talented musician.
As I said at his funeral, it is against the natural order of things for a father to bury his son, but that is what happened. What is natural for me, that is, was to turn to Shakespeare to see how I could express myself with regard to this tragic situation.
Death appears in many guises in WS's plays. According to several sites on Google, the majority of deaths in the Bard's works are the results of stabbings (e.g. Duncan in Macbeth, Claudius in Hamlet and also in Julius Caesar,) death by sword and/or combat as in Macbeth, Richard II & III. Suicide also occurs as in Romeo and Juliet and Ophelia in Hamlet, as well as death by smothering as that of 'the true and loving, gentle' Desdemona in Othello. Another grim death is that of Cordelia, 'the precious maid.' She dies by being hanged by her enemies at the end of King Lear, a play in which her royal father also dies, but he dies of a broken-heart.
Shakespeare even wrote about a fake death: the 'death' when the spurned Hero in Much Ado pretends to die in order to regain Claudio's love.
Nadav and his sister, Vered
However, these deaths for Shakespeare were vicarious and didn't affect him personally. Apart from the death of his younger eight year old sister, Anne, the one death we know that did influence him was that of his son, Hamnet. This young lad died aged eleven in August 1596. It has since been claimed by many that the following lines said by Constance, the mother of the murdered young Arthur in King John probably reflect Shakespeare's own grief over the death of his young son. These lines were written in 1596-97.
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then I have reason to be fond of grief.
I am now grieving my own son's death. What makes this even harder is that Nadav's death was completely pointless. It did not achieve anything. No-one gained from it but many people including his many friends and family certainly lost by it. As Shakespeare said at the end of Macbeth in that fantastic speech beginning, Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow about life and death, life
'is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.'
Nadav's life was not pointless. His death was.
David, May 22nd. 2016
NADAV AVRAHAM YOUNG
whose untimely demise occurred on May 19th.
Although I wrote in my last blog a few days ago that this one would be about the Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn, fate - "the stars above us [that] govern our conditions"(Lear IV,3) - hath intervened and declared otherwise.
Two nights ago, my son, Nadav, saw that he had forgotten or misplaced the key of his flat in Tel-Aviv late that night. He had returned from where he'd been working at the theatre and decided to try and get into his flat through the outside balcony. Unfortunately he slipped and fell into the garden below. If there's any chink of comfort in this story, it's that he didn't suffer as he died instantly. He was 37 years old, unmarried and a popular and talented musician.
As I said at his funeral, it is against the natural order of things for a father to bury his son, but that is what happened. What is natural for me, that is, was to turn to Shakespeare to see how I could express myself with regard to this tragic situation.
Death appears in many guises in WS's plays. According to several sites on Google, the majority of deaths in the Bard's works are the results of stabbings (e.g. Duncan in Macbeth, Claudius in Hamlet and also in Julius Caesar,) death by sword and/or combat as in Macbeth, Richard II & III. Suicide also occurs as in Romeo and Juliet and Ophelia in Hamlet, as well as death by smothering as that of 'the true and loving, gentle' Desdemona in Othello. Another grim death is that of Cordelia, 'the precious maid.' She dies by being hanged by her enemies at the end of King Lear, a play in which her royal father also dies, but he dies of a broken-heart.
Shakespeare even wrote about a fake death: the 'death' when the spurned Hero in Much Ado pretends to die in order to regain Claudio's love.
However, these deaths for Shakespeare were vicarious and didn't affect him personally. Apart from the death of his younger eight year old sister, Anne, the one death we know that did influence him was that of his son, Hamnet. This young lad died aged eleven in August 1596. It has since been claimed by many that the following lines said by Constance, the mother of the murdered young Arthur in King John probably reflect Shakespeare's own grief over the death of his young son. These lines were written in 1596-97.
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then I have reason to be fond of grief.
I am now grieving my own son's death. What makes this even harder is that Nadav's death was completely pointless. It did not achieve anything. No-one gained from it but many people including his many friends and family certainly lost by it. As Shakespeare said at the end of Macbeth in that fantastic speech beginning, Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow about life and death, life
'is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.'
Nadav's life was not pointless. His death was.
David, May 22nd. 2016
My dear old friend, I can't begin to imagine your grief. There is nothing I can do, but know that you are in my thoughts.
ReplyDeletePatrick