W;t

So i've been in Denial. It's a really cool place, at first glance, with lots of interesting nooks and crannies for people to wander around and get lost in. And it's only after you've hung around there for a while that you realise how you've really spent much more time there than you should have. And that's when the regret starts setting in.

Ah well.

i've just re-read W;t by Margaret Edson. Well, not really 're-read', because this is the first time i've read the play. My last encounter with it was in a production by Action Theatre way back in 2000, with the lead role played triumphantly by Sandy Philips. So perhaps the best word is 're-encountered'. And the re-encounter has not disappointed.

i remember loving the play when i first watched it. Fresh back from the UK, bristling porcupine-like at anything and everything Singaporean (and at that time, 'Singaporean' meant cheesy, un-sophisticated, un-ironic, maudlin), i found that the play's account of the final moments of cancer-stricken English professor Vivian Bearing resonated, cut close to the bone. The play's tough-minded protagonist, with her love for the written word, her proud, testy personality, and her fear of vulnerability and intimacy, felt familiar in the way possible futures can seem familiar. This was, i felt, someone i could so easily become (minus the diamond-hard intelligence), and for that reason, the play served as a sharp personal reminder of our common humanity and the value of compassion, at a time when i was becoming dangerously and snobbishly enamoured (in fact, worshipful) of the intellect, at the expense of almost everything else.

For a first-time playwright to produce anything even half-decent is an achievement worth lauding. For a first-time playwright to produce a Pulitzer Prize-winning play is nothing short of miraculous. Margaret Edson's virgin effort manages to tread that fine balance between sparkling, scintillating wit, and maudlin sentimentality. Watching it 5 years ago, and reading it just yesterday, I found myself dabbing away surreptitious tears even as i shook with silent laughter at each insidious human irony, each pernicious literary pun.

i've always been a sucker for stuff that touches both head and heart.

The play takes its title from a turning point in Vivian Bearing's life, when she was an undergraduate student of literary powerhouse, Professor E.M Ashford:

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Vivian:
I know all about life and death. I am, after all, a scholar of Donne's Holy Sonnets, which explore mortality in greater depth than any other body of work in the English language.And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn from a challenge. That is why I chose, while a student of the great E.M. Ashford, to study Donne.

(Professor E.M. Ashford, fifty-two, enters..... The scene is twenty-eight years ago. Vivian suddenly turns twenty-two, eager and intimidated.)

Vivian:
Professor Ashford?

E.M:
Do it again.

Vivian: (To audience)
It was something of a shock. I had to sit down. (She plops down.)

E.M:
Please sit down. Your essay on Holy Sonnet Six, Miss Bearing, is a melodrama, with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you - to say nothing of Donne. Do it again.

Vivian:
I, ah...

E.M:
You must begin with a text, Miss Bearing, not with a feeling.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe.

You have entirely missed the point of the poem, because, I must tell you, you have used an edition of the text that is inauthentically punctuated. In the Gardner edition -

Vivian:
That edition was checked out of the library -

E.M:
Miss Bearing!

Vivian:
Sorry.

E.M:
You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is Metaphysical Poetry, not The Modern Novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail?
The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death, calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the insuperable barriers separating life, death, and eternal life.
In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation:

And Death - capital D - shall be no more - semicolon!
Death - capital D - comma - thou shalt die - exclamation point!

If you go in for this sort of thing, I suggest you take up Shakespeare.
Gardner's edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 - not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:

And death shall be no more, comma, Death thou shalt die.

(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture at the comma.)

Nothing but a breath - a comma - separates life from life everlasting. It is very simple really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something to act out on a stage, with exclamation points. It's a comma, a pause.This way, the uncompromising way, one learns something from this poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death. Soul, God. Past, present. Not insuperable barriers, not semicolons, just a comma.

Vivian:
Life, death.... I see. (Standing) It's a metaphysical conceit. It's wit! I'll go back to the library and rewrite the paper...

E.M: (Standing, emphatically)
It is not wit, Miss Bearing. It is truth. (Walking around the desk to her.) The paper's not the point.

Vivian:
It isn't?

E.M: (Tenderly)
Vivian. You're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library. Go out. Enjoy yourself with your friends. Hmm?

(Vivian walks away. E.M. slides off.)

Vivian: (As she gradually returns to the hospital)
I, ah, went outside. The sun was very bright. I, ah, walked around, past the... There were students on the lawn, talking about nothing, laughing. The insuperable barrier between one thing and another is.... just a comma? Simple human truth, uncompromising scholarly standards? They're connected? I just couldn't...
I went back to the library.

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That near-worship of the intellect is a trap i think i've managed to avoid. Of course, considering i'm not exactly Einstein or Shakespeare, this is the easy part, i think. What's more difficult, though, is coming to grips with the meeting point between uncompromising standards, and simple human truth. In the play, Professor Ashford represents the fine balance between two. i'm not sure if i've met anyone in real life who's met the standards set by this fictional character. My current boss, perhaps, comes close. But even to hold anyone to such uncompromising standards would be, perhaps, a violation of simple human truth.

I don't know. Pontius Pilate asked Christ, What is truth? and was answered with silence. Who are we to claim any real knowledge or wisdom in this matter? Perhaps this is one of those 'more things', Horatio? Hmm?
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