Philosopher Colin McGinn wrote a wonderful book several years ago entitled “Shakespeare’s Philosophy” that, among other things, pointed out many scenes in Shakespeare’s plays that were clearly influenced by Miguel de Montaigne (who Shakespeare had read.) Most were in “Hamlet” or “The Tempest” (which I mentioned in a previous essay), but one play McGinn did not cite was “Romeo and Juliet.”
I think the influence is obvious (perhaps even to where Montague is the Italian equivalent of Montaigne), but judge for yourself:
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part.
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose.
By Any Other Name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d.
Retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee take all myself.
Here is a good opportunity to bring in the original English translation of Montaigne, by Iohn Florio, which is the version Shakespeare had in his library. Here is Montaigne writing about names in an Elizabethan voice:
Who letteth my horse boy to call himselfe Pompey the Great? But after all, what meanes, what devices, are there that annex unto my horse-keeper deceased, or to that other who had his head cut of in Egypt, or that joyne unto them this glorified and far-removed word, and these pen-dashes so much honoured that they may thereby advantage themselves?
Superficial as it may seem, “Romeo and Juliet” would have no drama except for the matter of names. In the 1962 U.S. Senate special election in Massachusetts, Edward J. McCormack, Jr., the state Attorney General, said that if his opponent’s name were Edward Moore, not Edward Moore Kennedy, his candidacy “would be a joke.” Crossing to the other side of the political aisle, can anyone imagine a mediocre Texas Governor named George Walker winning the Presidency in 2000?
And speaking of politicians’ names, how many has the person now known as J.D. Vance had in his lifetime? Four? I fully expect him to run for President four years from now on a fifth.
Montaigne delves into the question of legacy in this essay, and he also pokes more fun at false nobility. Montaigne says that anyone who achieves a level of success immediately attaches himself to some form of nobility (and I’m returning now to the contemporary Screech translation:)
“I know nobody in my own time who has had the good fortune to be elevated to some extraordinarily high rank who has not been immediately endowed with new genealogical styles of which his father knew nothing, or failed to be grafted on to some illustrious stock. Luckily it is the obscurer families which best lend themselves to such falsifications. How many mere gentlemen are there in France who are of royal stock… by their own reckoning! More I think than of any other rank.”
I am not so fortunate to have come from a noble or wealthy name, but there is (possibly) some notoriety in my lineage. My grandfather insisted we were direct descendants of John Billington, a Mayflower passenger who was the first Englishman hanged in the New World. While my grandfather’s mother was Lida Billington, tracing the Billington line is incredibly difficult.
But I see no reason to back away from my grandfather’s claim — being of notorious New England lineage would put me in the same class as Tyrone Slothrop, the anti-hero of Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” one of the original American preterite. Pynchon endowed the preterites with mystical powers that allow them to see through the conspiracies of the elite.
Alas, we Conleys lack the ability to unravel elite conspiracies. The best I can do — thanks to my ex-wife’s idea to leave girl’s names to her and boys to me … then giving birth to three boys — is to pass on ones I find interesting and memorable. So, Finnegan, Cormac, and Quinn, your names have no genealogical meaning. But with some luck, your names will pass Montaigne’s test:
“They say that it is a good thing to have a good name (meaning renown and reputation); but it is also a real advantage to have a fine one which is easy to pronounce and to remember, since kings and the great can then recognize us more easily and less wilfully forget us.”
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