´óÏó´«Ã½

O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Wasn't Mark Anthony being ironic portwyne?

Augustine

Mark Anthony's speech, as I see it, is a model of finely modulated rhetoric. Its aim is to persuade: to change the mood and the perceptions of the audience. It begins by disarming the opposition with Anthony dissembling and inverting his true purpose in the address. When he first speaks of Brutus the audience are lulled into a false sense of security and could take his words at face value. As the speech progresses he uses irony very heavily indeed: the context of each repetition of "honourable man" subtly modifies our understanding of the character of Brutus and, by contrast, emphasises what was good about Caesar. By the end of the speech Anthony is confident enough that he has swayed the crowd that he can speak straight without irony or dissimulation. His final words mean just what they say - irony has served his purpose - he now seeks to waken the sympathy of the crowd for the great man who lies dead before them and, of-course, to strike at those who brought him down.

I would read the words I quoted as being without irony. I certainly used them without any! I don't imagine there's any doubt by who I was thinking of in terms of 'brutish beasts'.

I wonder if Brian has any variant perspective from the point of view of the Shakespeare mastermind committee.

He was the usual anti-Catholic bigot, with far less intelligence than he thought.

May God have mercy on him.

Excellent, Smashy. Hopefully some day someone will be kind enough to say the same about you.

PW, lovely discussion!

-H

Some great comments so far and then...Smashy comes along...

Great discussion, Portwyne and Augustine.

Portwyne:

I have no quarrel with your take on the speech.

Your reference to the 'Shakespeare mastermind committee' does require comment, though. I think there were many pens, but one mastermind, who was Bacon (only he qualifies). He often (not always, but often) took plays written by the playwrights of the day and dressed them up. Even orthodox scholars generally concede this point about the orthodox claimant: there are simply too many words for one man.

As to referring to Conor Cruise O'Brien as 'Caesar', he was more of an iconoclast than a political leader. Indeed, although by inward calling he was 'fitter to hold a book than to play a part' (as Bacon put it), he, like Bacon nevertheless led his life in civil causes. And, like all intellectuals in politics, he was vilified for it. An Irish Times poll asked which person in the Republic they would least like to run the country, and he topped it.

What he did in his Irish political career, above all, was to chip away relentlessly at the 'sacral nationalism' of most Irish Catholics. He made them (and I suppose the IRA) realise eventually that you cannot bomb or shoot a million Protestants (or non-Catholics) into a united Ireland against their will.

There cannot be a united Ireland without their consent. In other words, they exist (they are not faceless prison officers, as portrayed in the film 'Hunger', a guilt-trip filthfest) and they have rights. There is no alternative to persuasion.

If that made him an anti-Catholic bigot, in Smasher's terminology, then all the better for it. Nevertheless, Smasher, should you wish to go along, his funeral mass will be in the Church of the Assumption, Howth, at 11 30 am tomorrow (Monday).

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Last week, Caitriona Ruane told pupils at St Colm's High School, Twinbrook, that they should be thankful that Bobby Sands paved the way for a better future.

This is an example of the sacral nationalism that the Cruiser attacked. Sands didn't do any such thing. In fact, the better future came about when the IRA abandoned the armed struggle which Sands died for.

In the overwrought and grossly overrated film 'Hunger', the director approaches hagiography in depicting a male nurse, with 'UDA' tattooed on his fingers, carrying Sands’s emaciated body to his bed in a manner suggestive of Michelangelo's 'Pieta'. This kind of sado-masochistic glorification of pain and suffering pushes 'Hunger' in the direction of a torture porn movie. The inevitable comparison is with Mel Gibson's 'The Passion'.

This is especially apposite when we know what Sands wrote. In 'Passion and Cunning', the Cruiser writes that, like Pearse, Sands saw himself as one of a line of martyrs for the Republic, whose sacrifice repeats the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. On receiving a fourteen-year sentence for possession of arms with intent to endanger life, Sands wrote the lines:

"The beady eyes they peered at me
The time had come to be,
To walk the lonely road
Like that of Calvary.
And take up the cross of Irishmen
Who’ve carried liberty".

On his last birthday, Sands "was thrilled to get a picture of Our Lady from a priest in Kerry who had encouraged him to take arms for his oppressed people".

In other words, Sands believed, like many republicans, that he was fighting a Holy War and he clearly received support from priests, both north and south - not all of them, or even the majority, but enough to give him confidence in the legitimacy of his cause. And of course, there were all the sneaking regarders, as the Cruiser called them, who said one thing but secretly thought another.

So, Smasher, when you say that the vast majority of priests had no time for the IRA, you are, strictly speaking, correct. But there were exceptions. In the film, the priest agrees with Sands that the Brits are the problem; they only quarrel over the means of removing them. And the Catholic Church did not excommunicate a single IRA man throughout the Troubles. Why not?

It is ironic that you attack the Cruiser for anti-Catholic bigotry, when he, a Catholic, spent much of his life, Christ-like, castigating his fellow religionists for their tendency to anti-Protestant bigotry. Motes and beams, Smasher, motes and beams.

Well done William - another great advance for freedom of expression at the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

Brian - thanks for acknowledging that I was "strictly speaking correct" in stating that most priests were not pro-IRA as alleged by O'Brien.

Ruane is hardly representative of Catholics or their priests - just a pity she was invited in the first place.

Brian - would you have liked the Church to have had excommunicated them? I didn't think you would support that sort of thing. I know your answer will be "no of course not but..".

People who commit mortal sins may not receive the sacraments until they repent and confess their sins - this is true whether they are murderers or thieves, adulterers or apostates.

I know we enjoy these debates in which smasher is presented as the crazy right wing Catholic and I'm happy to play that role most of the time - but in this instance I really think you guys should step back and remember the abuse Bishops Cahal Daly and Edward Daly got for their opposition to the IRA. It's untrue and unfair and more than a matter of being "strictly speaking correct".

Smasher:

What I would have wished to see was a clear expression of moral disapproval of organisations involved in vicious killings. If that implied members of Sinn Fein/IRA being excommunicated, then it should have happened. You seem to agree. Why, then, did it not happen? You haven't answered the question.

I notice that you didn't mention Cardinal O'Fiaich, who referred to the need for British withdrawal and to 'our boys in Long Kesh', which was worse than the 'sewer pipes of Calcutta'.

Don't read too much into 'strictly speaking correct', Smasher. There were a number of priests who sympathised with the IRA cause, some of them working in Catholic areas of NI.

The Cruiser pointed it out several times and was right to do so. Yet all you can think of doing is to hurl abuse at the man.

Brian - your post # 8

Shakespeare only wrote about 885,000 words - a far from prodigious output and well within the capability of an author of his period. It is by no means a scientific argument but, if I look at my copies of the collected works of Milton or Dryden, they both seem to bulk considerably larger than those of Shakespeare. It really doesn't matter to me who wrote the plays it is just that I think it important society should recognise that the greatest genius England has yet produced was an ordinary man, of at best middling education, working at a trade he knew to provide for himself and his family - it was his genius not his social position or his learning which made of his output a mirror of the human soul and a distillation of sublime beauty.

When I used the quotation the point I most wanted to make was the contrast between this man of intellect and vision and the gibbering simians who inhabit the political arena in our beloved province today.

I agree with you and him about the sacral character of elements within the Republican tradition - something that has often been overlooked. It is easy to see the input of Protestant fundamentalism into militant Unionism - the similar, if more subtle, influence of Roman Catholicism on extreme Nationalism tends not to receive comment.

Well strictly speaking O'Brien was a nut, but of course since strictly speaking doesn't seem to mean anything it's hardly worth saying.

I mentioned the two Daly's because they got the most abuse from IRA supporters, particularly over the funeral issue, but Cardinal O fiach was no IRA supporter. He was definitely more republican than some other bishops but no way did he support the IRA, and supporting better conditions for prisoners doesn't make you a provo, it makes you a Christian.

If you can't remember the Catholic Church's clear expressions of disapproval of the IRA you must be very young or have a very bad memory.

Portwyne:

It's the number of different words that is far beyond anything before or since: 15,000.

I don't think the Shakespeare mastermind was 'an ordinary man, of at best middling education'. On the contrary, he was a literary colossus and someone who knew the machinations of court life intimately. I think the idea of the bard as a 'country bumpkin' is an English myth, which is refuted by the depth and range of learning in the works themselves.

Smasher:

I have lived throughout the Troubles and I am sure that the Catholic Church's attitude was far from being unequivocal.

The 'sewer' reference by O'Fiaich
was totally inappropriate since most of the filth was of their own making.

As opposed to what other type of sewage? Do secular humanists not make their own?

Smasher:

We don't normally daub excrement on walls or piss on floors.

I don't think there is much doubt that Cardinal O'Fiaich was sympathetic to militant republicanism. A number of southern politicians, apart from the Cruiser, said so (Garret FitzGerald, for example).

When hunger striker Rayond McCreesh died, he said:
"Raymond McCreesh was captured bearing arms at the age of 19 and sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. I have no doubt that he would have never seen the inside of a jail but for the abnormal political situation. Who is entitled to label him a murderer or a suicide?"

And he was not alone. According to Sean O'Callaghan (´óÏó´«Ã½ interview), several Catholic priests were involved in republican violence:

"When I was in the provisional IRA in 1974 in Co Tyrone I had a lot of dealings with one particular parish priest in Co Tyrone and the IRA and I used his parochial house, the parochial house, both for meetings, planning operations and indeed leaving from there to take part in operations and coming back to there after operations".

Some of these priests lived in America. Mentioning specific names in all cases is difficult for obvious reasons.

None of which equates with O'Briens assertion that priests (not some priests, or a few, or a minority or a majority) supported the IRA.

Smasher:

"Priests supported the IRA" doesn't mean all priests. It means what it says: priests in the plural (more than one). Thus I might say: "paedophile priests got away with abuse for thirty years". This doesn't mean either that "all paedophile priests got away with abuse for thirty years", or that "all priests are paedophiles".

The fact that some priests were sympathetic to the IRA undoubtedly gave a moral legitimacy to their cause in their own eyes. A bit like the Nazi Concordat with the Vatican in 1933, which of course was more 'from the top'. The difference in Ireland was that, while the hierarchy generally condemned the IRA, the rank-and-file had a more mixed attitude.

You have to ask where did the IRA receive its moral conviction to continue killing people over 30 thirty years? Partly, they believed that 'history' vindicated them. Partly also they received support from the more 'discerning' members of the political and moral elite, and that definitely included priests, north and south and abroad.

You should also reflect on the fact that your opinion of the Cruiser is probably very similar to that of most of the IRA.

Brian

His phrase was actually "the Catholic clergy in Belfast" which does mean, well all of them.

And as for your use of the term "paedophile priests" really does betray your liberal bigotry - do you ever use the term with any job or office - paedophile teachers.

and then your usual anti-Catholic rants - how many times can you try and drag the 1933 concordat into a debate and then to top it all you try and link my views to the IRA.

Really, you can take the secular humanist out of the Shankill Road, but you can't ..

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