In addition to the Roman plays, Shakespeare also wrote a couple of Greek tragedies. Of them, Timon of Athens was an early play, and will not really repay discussion, though it is worth noting that the character of the misanthropic Timon displays understanding of monomania that is rare in a writer who was generally conscious of the fluidity of human motivation.

The other Greek tragedy, Troilus and Cressida, in one of Shakespeare’s most interesting plays, though it does not have the dramatic appeal of the greater tragedies. In one sense it defies analysis since, though its outcome is tragic, with the romance across racial barriers, Greek and Trojan, doomed to failure, it also covers a lot of other ground in its depiction of the relations between the various Greeks who have gathered at Troy. And the manner in which Cressida accepts her fate, when Troilus is placed beyond her reach, is perhaps a more realistic assessment of the way human nature reacts to disappointment, rather than the morbid despair of a Romeo and a Juliet.

Though the strength of the play lies in the volatility of the various exchanges, there are a few memorable lines, in particular Ulysses’ account of the transience of human success

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter’d tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time. Continue reading →

Shiva was related to no one. But he had been with Indra at Cambridge and it is conceivable that his last thoughts, as the petrol flared up about him or, we hope, substantially earlier, were of a punt on the Cam in those heady days and a graceful swan floating past. On the other hand it is also conceivable that his last thoughts were of the placid beaches of his own country, and the sun and the sand and the reverberating sea beyond. At Cambridge he would have said that he was happier there than ever before. Yet later, back at home, his senses sated in his snug retreat by the sea—and indeed elsewhere— he would feel that he had felt all this before, that he had returned to a security registered long before in the dim reaches of the subconscious, and constantly desired since.

This may not have been entirely fanciful. He had been taken away soon after he was born to ancestral palm-decked lands by an immaculate beach on the then almost virgin Eastern Coast. The birth had been a difficult one and his father, whose heart had fluttered, had decided then to endure no more stress. He was an old man, having married late in life when he had already achieved distinction in the Colonial Service, the first Tamil from the relatively neglected East to be knighted. It had been difficult for him to put up with the snide remarks of the Tamils of the North who had resented the conquest of one of their brighter stars by someone they considered an outsider. He was convinced that Lady Lily loved him, and perhaps because of that he had felt obliged to stay on and endure, not to take her away immediately to a place where there would only be himself to divert her. But once the baby was born and there was a threat to her health, he grasped eagerly at the opportunity to retire to the rural retreat he now felt he had dreamed of from the very moment he began to work.

So Shiva spent his earliest years in a dry land where the sun struck warm and the sand lay smooth beneath and the deep blue water rolled luxuriantly over the flesh. He was never lonely for all the children of all the retainers who had clung ever more closely limpet-like to the family through several generations always surrounded him, ministering to his every whim but also, for they were all young and generally uninhibited, suggesting separate consciousnesses that constantly impinged. His father was wholly content and Lady Lily was never unhappy, and her refusal to send her little son to school for long after he should have gone accorded entirely with the wishes of both the father and the son. Continue reading →

Love is of course the dominant theme of Antony and Cleopatra, though we are also always conscious of the struggle for power that lies behind the passion of the main characters. The running commentary as it were that is provided by Enobarbus, one of the most significant of Shakespeare’s minor characters, helps us keep the whole dramatic love affair in perspective, given indeed that what was going on was a struggle for the soul of Europe. Had Antony won out, I suspect Christianity would not have spread so readily, and a less structured system of government might have provided greater space for Middle Eastern cults rather than monotheism.

But while the background is important, and the powerful last words of the future Augustus Caesar make clear what was at stake

Take up her bed;
And bear her women from the monument:
She shall be buried by her Antony:
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous. High events as these
Strike those that make them; and their story is
No less in pity than his glory which
Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall
In solemn show attend this funeral;
And then to Rome.

the power of the play lies in its depiction of love in a warm climate. The language exudes sensuality but also expressed devotion of a sort that governed perceptions of what romantic love means for future generations. One has only to set the earlier statements of passion

Nay, pray you, seek no colour for your going,
But bid farewell, and go: when you sued staying,
Then was the time for words: no going then;
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor,
But was a race of heaven: they are so still,
Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,
Art turn’d the greatest liar.

against Cleopatra’s final lament to understand how love can grow and take the place of all else

I dream’d there was an Emperor Antony:
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man!…….

His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course,
and lighted
The little O, the earth….

His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear’d arm
Crested the world: his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in’t; an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like; they show’d his back above
The element they lived in: in his livery
Walk’d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp’d from his pocket…

It may be as well at this point to describe some relationships, which will give a foretaste of the incestuous nature of the society and the plot we are unfolding. Indra is the son of Dick by his first wife Dulice, his only legitimate wife as she insists. Dulcie is the cousin of Tom’s wife Geraldine, called Gerry for short. Dulcie and Gerry are also cousins of Phyllis, who will have rather an important part to play in our story when she comes charging down from her wonderful hills.

Gerry and Dulcie and Phyllis were the daughters of three brothers who, during the first world war and thereafter, made vast quantities of money through ship chartering and arrack renting and newspaper publishing and plumbago mining and even insurance broking. Gerry was an only child, the daughter of the eldest brother who had not made as much money as the other two; it was widely rumoured that she had spurred Tom on energetically throughout his political career so that she could make up for this initial deficiency. Unfortunately for the couple, their dynasty would die with them for their only child, a daughter, had been both a mongol and had, mercifully for else she would certainly have been overwhelmed with offers of marriage after Tom’s elevation to the Presidency, expired some years later. Tom, it was said, had been so upset by this that he had stopped sleeping with his wife. It was also said, though this was by no means intended as a reflection upon Tom, that his resolution had come as an immense relief to her.

Being a rational woman, she had no objections to his seeking solace elsewhere but she had insisted that he be sterilized beforehand. This was an operation he had found embarrassing to begin with, but he now numbered it amongst his many firsts. In his immediate family circle it was considered a blessing that the scar was too small to be exhibited in public. Tom certainly believed that the fact of the operation had enhanced his popularity, extravagantly fond as he was of claiming that, unlike his predecessors in power, he had no plans to establish a dynasty. In exhibiting at public meetings his battle scars in the cause of freedom, one obtained when he was in the cadet corps at school during the first world war, another added many years later during a peaceful demonstration that the then government had ruthlessly attacked, he never failed to mention his most vital scar, one obtained in the cause of higher freedoms, from hunger and over-population and excessive expenditure on subsidies and all the other dreadful things from which the International Monetary Fund was assisting him to wean the nation. Despite the magnificence of his other achievements, he would proudly proclaim he was proudest of all of his sterility. Continue reading →

The Past is Another Country is a series of interviews with individuals distinguished for their contributions to culture and to society. In addition to discussing their individual contributions, the programmes explore the context in which each of them functioned. The interviews, by Rajiva Wijesinha, cover a range of developments in post-independence Sri Lanka, and present a panoramic view of social change in the latter half of the 20th century.

Ismeth Raheem is an architect who worked with Geoffrey Bawa for many years, and was then responsible for a number of interesting buildings hotels combining traditional Sri Lankan concepts with modern developments. He is also a polymath, who has studied and written about the manner in which Sri Lanka has been seen and presented in pictures and photographs and writings during the colonial period. His knowledge of ancient irrigations systems is also perhaps unrivalled.