It’s not zeugema. It’s not even syllepsis. I’m still searching for the rhetorical term that describes an author’s artful shift of meaning through repetition.
It’s definitely wordplay of sorts, but unlike a pun (“He kneads me,” Dot says of her new lover, Louis the baker, in Sunday in the Park with George after claiming earlier to love the “size” of artist Georges Seurat), the play I’m talking about is dynamic. It’s not two meanings implicit in one word; it’s two meanings generated from the same word or phrase when sung in two different contexts.
I’ll discuss three examples from two musicals, Sweeney Todd and Gypsy, but it’s not as if I’m choosing from a wealth of possibilities as I have in earlier posts. The infrequency of this construction is so dependent on character and context that I have to conclude that it’s pretty hard to pull off. What I like about these three is examples is that, though they share a common technique of shifting meaning through repetition, they’re all extremely different, varying both in terms of how they’re constructed and what they reveal about character or contribute to meaning of the work.
The opening scene-proper of the Sweeney Todd is a duet of sorts between Antony, an idealistic sailor, and the horrifically wronged Sweeney Todd. As they enter the port of London aboard a ship (Sweeney Todd is returning illegally from imprisonment abroad on a “trumped up charge”), Antony delights at the sight of the city:
I have sailed the world, beheld its wonders
From the Dardanells, to the mountains of Peru
But there’s no place like London!
And soon, in a move more sophisticated than mere verbal irony (“Even after the party, I feel great today.” ”Ugh, yeah, I’m really feeling great, too.”), Todd joins Antony in a repetition of the line “There’s no place like London,” continuting thusly:
You are young. Life has been kind to you.
You will learn.
He goes on to offer his perspective on the “hole in the world like a great black pit” known as London, giving sincere emotional potency to his jaded (and perhaps more accurate) view that nowhere else in the world can compare, in terms of cruelty and inhumanity, to the city at the mouth of the Thames.
Sweeney Todd offers another example of meaning that shifts through repetition at the end of the first act, an example just as dark as the first, but also extremely funny. I like this example quite a bit because it captures the spirit of the musical so well. It’s dark and it’s tragic, but it’s also witty and over-the-top. It comes at the end of the song “A Little Priest,” in which Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney engage in a blinding array of puns and jokes about that various professional folk they will serve up in meat pies now that Mr. Todd has cut the throat of his first victim.
They conclude:
Todd Have charity towards the world, my pet! Lovett Yes, yes, I know, my love! Todd We’ll take the customers that we can get! Lovett High-born and low, my love! Todd We’ll not discriminate great from small! No, we’ll serve anyone, Meaning anyone, Both And to anyone At all!
Surely, the word to has been used to no greater effect than in shifting the meaning of the repeated anyone in relation to the slippery transitive and intransitve verb serve, especially when humans, er, serve as both direct and indirect objects. (Hey, I think I’ve convinced myself this is, in fact, an example of syllepsis after all.)
Labels aside, Sondheim’s most powerful lyrical shift through repetition has to be the moment in “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy in which Rose briefly reprises “Everything’s Coming up Roses” (double meaning as plural and possessive intentional, of course) before launching into her final tirade against her daughters (and herself).
The reprise is marked by a calming shift in the music, and a comforting return to a familiar song after the jarring burlesque nature of the opening of “Rose’s Turn. ” Rose sings:
I had a dream.
I dreamed it for you, June.
Indicating to her long- and still-absent daughter that her goals of show business success were somehow selflessly motivated by the desire for June’s good, it’s as if she hears the echo of Herbie’s criticism as she continues:
It wasn’t for me, Herbie.
And if it wasn’t for me
then where would you be,
Miss Gypsy Rose Lee?
The dual meanings of “it wasn’t for me”–in addition to clarifying the need for the subjunctive mood in English–get to the core of Rose’s character. She didn’t do what she did out of the selfish need for attention and validation of worth; nor did she do it purely for the good of her daughters. She did it for both. And when she realizes she may come up empty on both fronts, you’ve got the makings of a pretty devastating moment.
For me, anyway.
# 6: Guest blog on Assassins
# 5: Guest blog on Gypsy
# 4: Density and Intensity
# 3: Lyrics as conversation and dialogue
# 2: Lyrics as expression of character and dramatic theme
# 1: Lyrics as expression of complexity
