Such a want-wit sadness makes of me

In sooth I know not why I am so sad,
It wearies me, you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn:
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself...  

                     The Merchant of Venice  
                     Act 1, Scene 1 

Shakespeare knew.

These are the opening lines of The Merchant of Venice, in which that very merchant, Antonio, describes his condition to his friend, Salerio. It is a perceptive description of a certain kind of depression, with which you feel a thing like sadness but which isn't actual sadness - you have nothing in particular to be sad about. (Although this condition often causes you to mine thoughts and memories that increase your sadness, it tempts you to inflate things or deflate things as necessary, to see the bad as worse and the worst in everything.) As Antonio says, the feeling wearies you; you are sure it wears on your friends and family, your co-workers and your neighbors. Certainly it wears you down physically and emotionally, but you cannot trace its origins in any very satisfactory way. Whatever it is and wherever it came from, it clogs and slows your mind, robs you of whatever spirit and wit you might formerly have possessed, and just makes you feel generally dumber than you used to feel. 

Shakespeare being Shakespeare, surely he was capable of describing this condition perfectly without ever having experienced it. However, it's what ensues that makes me think the author may well have suffered himself from depression. As the scene progresses, Antonio's friends try to cheer him up, despite his suggestions to them that it's futile, that "I hold the world...a stage, where every man must play a part,/ and mine a sad one." Still, they keep trying. "Let me play the fool," says Gratanio, "with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." 

Again, Shakespeare might have understood or imagined, accurately, that this is what happened with certain sad people who cannot be roused from their condition. But it has for me the feeling of lived experience. Because it is what happens. Loved ones and other kind people see you in what looks like sadness and try to help you. They want you to feel better and so they do for you the things that for them would lift them out of a bad mood or a melancholy day. But it doesn't work the way they had hoped it would.

Antonio's friends try to show understanding, try to help him make sense of what he is feeling. They suggest to the importing-exporting merchant from Venice that he is worried about his ships at sea, laden with his goods. But he tells them he is not worried. Only Salerio, inadvertently, says something that rings true. "Your mind," he tells Antonio, "is tossing on the ocean." Salerio means that Antonio is imagining his ships in peril. He's wrong, but as a description of Antonio's state of mind, probably he is not far off the mark. One way or another, Shakespeare knew.

Shakespeare and the possible life of his wife, Ann

Of course, all Shakespeare biography involves guessing and much speculation. I read it anyway, alert for what seems most plausible. In Shakespeare's Wife, Germaine Greer's 2007 rehabilitation of Ann Hathaway, Greer points out with sometimes devastating effect the occasionally implausible, over-imaginative, often overly confident speculations of some Bard biographers over the centuries. She ruined a couple of once-loved biographies for me in the process, even as she herself made a few rather gymnastic leaps. The book is not just a fascinating argument for Ann's possible life, but a broad examination of town life in Tudor England. Ultimately, though, it is a statement to writers of lives that when you take the kinds of liberties Shakespeare biographers must take, you ought constantly to be checking your own prejudices and those of your times. This paragraph comes at the end of the book:

The Shakespeare wallahs have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women, and have then vilified the one woman who remained true to him all his life, in order to exonerate him. There can be no doubt that Shakespeare neglected his wife, embarrassed her and even humiliated her, but attempting to justify his behavior by vilifying her is puerile. The defenders of Ann Hathaway are usually derided as sentimental when they are trying simply to be fair. It is a more insidious variety of sentimentality that wants to believe that women who are ill treated must have brought it upon themselves. The creator of Hero, Desdemona, Imogen and Hermione, knew better.

All these Pale Fires...

Reading Shakespeare last night, came to the passage from which Nabokov chose the title for my favorite novel, Pale Fire. Then, this morning, there the term was again in a Flannery O'Connor short story, so here they all are together, along with some Nabokov Pale Fire paraphernalia....

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea. The moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun...
                                           - Shakespeare
                                             Timon of Athens
                                             Act 4, Scene 3

Tarwater lurched into the middle of the stream bed and crouched on his hands and knees. The moon was reflected like pale fire in the few spots of water in the sand... 
                                                                     - Flannery O'Connor
                                                                       "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead"

Nabokov's endlessly great novel:                                                 His fictional poet's poem:

                                     Also Shades' famous index cards: 

Shade stuff from the beautiful Gingko Press edition, Berkeley 2011.