LLT 180 Lecture 25 1 Serious Stuff. "The Love Potion." Trying to Get
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LLT 180 Lecture 25 1 Serious stuff. "The Love Potion." Trying to get through this someday. We're really doing really well. I hope you're keeping up. I know these are longer pages with a fair number of words on 'em, and it can kind of get bizarre once in awhile so you can lose your focus. It's like you stop reading. All of a sudden you're daydreaming about your date for last weekend, and you say, "Oh, wait. Where am I?" The love potion is a central device, and so it's important whether to view it as something real or simply something symbolic representing their change of attitude toward one another. Isolde's basic feeling at this particular point is that she hates Tristan. Tristan is taking her away from the world she loves. It's all her fault. And the Queen is concerned -- you know, when we think back to Arthur's -- to White's book on Arthur, we have these made marriages or whatever, and they aren't good. So she wants to have love between her daughter and Mark, and so she makes this love potion. And she entrusts it to Isolde the younger's cousin, the Queen's niece, who is going to be our wise female. As we talked about last time, our source of wisdom in the book. She's gonna start off advising Isolde and then she's gonna end up advising Isolde and Tristan. We're told specifically what's supposed to happen. Nobody is supposed to drink this, only Mark and Isolde. We're told, on page 192, just the second page into that chapter -- kind of helps having chapter headings, Take care that nobody drinks any! When Isolde and Mark have been united in love, make it your strict concern to pour out this liquor as wine for them, and see that they drink it all between them. LLT 180 Lecture 25 2 And nobody else is to share it or we're gonna have a lot of people in love. Tristan, even though Isolde hates him, he's really nice. He goes in, tries to console her consistently, and she kind of consistently hates him. The women are not used to being on a ship and so they start wimping out on 'em. And so they put into shore and everybody goes ashore, and so Tristan and Isolde are left with some novice ladies-in-waiting. As we read on the bottom of 194, Now, apart from the Queen, there was nobody in the cabin but some very young ladies-in-waiting. "Look," said one of them, "here is some wine in this little bottle." No, it held no wine, much as it resembled it. It was their lasting sorrow, their never-ending anguish, of which at last they died! So we keep being told that this work's gonna have a tragic outcome. Tristan and Isolde are going to die. They drink of the bottle and the immediate effect is Isolde's hatred is gone, and they both start off fighting their attraction for each other. But then slowly, as we move toward the end of the chapter on "The Love Potion," they start to yield to their feelings for each other. The avowal -- this is Tristan and Isolde's commitment to one another. We're not getting to Mark yet. And they start talking to each other, kind of chillin' out toward each other. And we have this silliest part here, and obviously playing with the language here, that Isolde complains about lameir, love. And it's unclear to Tristan whether she's talking about love or bitter or the sea, and so they get into this extended conversation until they straighten it out. LLT 180 Lecture 25 3 They finally -- you know, how many pages did it take? Well, finally, on page 200, so three pages into this chapter, they kiss: "He kissed her and she kissed him" [it works well that way], lovingly and tenderly." So sweet. They are so, so caught up in each other. It's just sickening. It's just "Days of our Lives," "The Hot and the Horny" or -- oh, no -- "The Young and the Restless." I mean, you know, gee. "They were so lost in thought that they neglected all nourishment" [yeah, they're dying of love]. Her cousin is sympathetic toward their plight, maybe because she screwed up by leaving the love potion, and so she wants to help them out. So they start being together. They are gonna remedy each other's pining. And the author says, over on 202, toward the end of this chapter, that, you know, it's all right to talk a little bit, to have a discourse on love, as long as it doesn't get too long-winded. Once it gets too long- winded, it's boring. But if people are interested in this stuff, a short conversation is enough. I think it was plenty long as we got toward the end of that chapter. And it talks about fidelity. It says, on the bottom of 203, "I mean heartfelt Fidelity, lies beneath our feet in misery all the time. In vain does she address us--we look the other way and without a thought tread the sweet thing underfoot." That's toward the end of the chapter. Actually, it's kind of interesting -- and we might've mentioned this before, but in some recent surveys they said what's most important in marriages and stuff in the United States, and those surveys -- you know, they surprised me, but fidelity was number one. And they had like a very high percentage rating, like 90 percent, thought that was, you know, essential for a long-term relationship. LLT 180 Lecture 25 4 Whenever they have a chance to be alone, whenever Tristan and Isolde have a chance to be alone from now on, they're gonna be in ecstasy, they're gonna be in extreme pleasure as they are now for the remainder of the voyage, because they're being helped out. They're being helped out by the cousin. They, however, have a problem. Actually, they have two problems. When they get to shore, when they get to Cornwall -- remember, Isolde the fair maiden -- ha, ha, ha; no longer -- is supposed to marry Mark. And if she's not a maiden, she's in, as former President Bush would say, deep doo-doo. I have to be good and not say anything. "I mean" -- paragraph about 15 lines from the end of that chapter, I mean that fair Isolde was to be given to one to whom she did not wish to be given. And another cause for sorrow tormented them--Isolde's lost virginity. They were deeply troubled about this [well, evidently not too deeply troubled] and it made them very wretched. Yet such cares were easily borne, for they freely had their will together many, many [many, many, many, many, many] times. No, not that many. Just wanted to see if you were listening. I'm trying to make it good for TV. So they're nearing Cornwall. So Isolde has an idea. What's her idea? Sacrifice virginal cousin. She's good looking, you know, and Mark's an idiot. He won't notice in the dark. To Mark -- Mark is non-discerning. One woman is just like any other woman to him. And so we read at the beginning of the next chapter, Let us not make a long story of it. Young though she was, Isolde devised the LLT 180 Lecture 25 5 best ruse that she could at this juncture, namely that they should simply [Simply? You simply ask somebody to do this?] ask Brangane to lie at Mark's side during the first night in perfect silence and keep him company. He could be denied his due in no better way, since Brangane was beautiful and a virgin. She reluctantly says, "Okay. I'll do that. It's my fault that we're all in this mess, so I guess I owe this to you." She now tells them the whole story. They didn't know about the love potion, and she now tells them about the love potion, and Tristan sends a report. So the wedding's to take place. The wedding does take place and Brangane suffers her ordeal, is the term they use, in standing in for Isolde. And this all went just fine and they trade places. We read at the bottom of page 207, three pages into this chapter -- it says, When she had done duty for Isolde and her debt had been discharged [the debt she incurred by leaving the love potion available, I guess], she quitted the bed. Isolde was ready waiting there, and went and sat by the bed as if she were the same person. They then have, by custom, wine is brought. They drink the wine. And then just to show how easily duped Mark is, about 10 lines on further on page 208, they get back in bed and he resumes his pleasures. "To him one woman was as another: he soon found Isolde, too, to be of good deportment." However, this is not the end of Tristan and Isolde being together. In the meantime, about a couple of paragraphs on, Meanwhile Isolde and her lover [middle of 208] passed the time in varied LLT 180 Lecture 25 6 pleasures. They had their joy morning and night, for nobody had any suspicion.