LANGUAGE CORNER
Somewhere, the Bard Weeps
Headline about a no-longer-prominent athlete: “O Denis, Denis! Wherefore art thou Denis?”
Comment on the fickle pop music world: “Local DJ trends come and go (wherefore art thou, acid jazz?)”
Whimsy amid wicked weather: “Wherefore art thou, Romeo? Home with his feet up by the fire, if the poor lad had any luck at all.”
All those allusions to Shakespeare are fatally flawed, as “wherefore art” cuteness almost always is.
Juliet’s plaintive “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” had nothing to do with her lover’s location. “Wherefore” means “why” (in both senses — “how come?” and “for that reason.”) Juliet was asking why the fates had made Romeo part of the Montague family, with which her Capulets were locked in a virulent feud. “ ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,” she sighs; if his name had been the Veronese equivalent of Joe Smith, the two of them could have lived happily ever after.
By and large, “wherefore” survives today only in fancy proclamations and petitions, in some legal documents, and in the expression “the whys and wherefores.” Also in stagings of H.M.S. Pinafore (“Never Mind the Why and Wherefore”) and, painfully often, in misaimed Shakespearean allusions.
— CJR, May/June 2003
