By Hook or By Crook: Part One

We begin with our first set of five plays, including a comedy, a "problem play," and a historical trilogy. Keen-eyed readers will notice that Troilus and Cressida is included here horribly outside of chronological order; this is for the simple reason that it was referenced in a book I was reading and thus got shuffled to the top of the queue. Let's just think of it as a preview of what's to come (or rather, let's hope it is not.)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The play begins with two gentlemen of Verona discussing what I assume will be a favourite topic in this series: love. Proteus is in love, while Valentine (somewhat ironically) thinks love has made Proteus stupid. Valentine then heads off to Milan, where love immediately makes him stupid, in the form of a lady named Silvia. Proteus follows, because his dad is sick of him laying about, leaving behind his love, Julia. Once he reaches Milan, Proteus also falls in love with Silvia; meanwhile, Julia disguises herself as a boy to go find him.

This leads to a bizarre series of misadventures, in which Proteus turns villain, bringing about Valentine’s banishment and even attempting to rape Silvia. Valentine becomes the leader of a band of merry outlaws, and everyone ends up together in a forest, where they decide to all be in love again in their proper pairings (Valentine-Silvia; Proteus-Julia), despite Proteus’ nefarious acts, which Valentine brushes aside with the lines,

“Who by repentance is not satisfied
Is nor of heaven, nor earth
For these are pleased:
By penitence th’Eternal’s wrath’s appeased.”

Frankly, it’s best not to dwell too much on the endings to such things, as it makes up about 30 seconds of the play and was clearly an afterthought.

Overall, the story is simple and kind of dumb, but well-executed and entertaining for what it is. I particularly liked the fool character Launce, who mishears words and owns a dog. He falls in love with a milk-maid because of her two most remarkable qualities: “she can fetch and carry,” and “she can milk.” Without Launce, I’m sure my impressions of the play would be much less favourable.

If we are to consider this Shakespeare’s first play, which I suppose we might as well, it’s not a terrible start. We’ve got a solid collection of tropes cobbled together into a (mostly) coherent plot, a few choice lines, and some legitimate humour. All the characters feel fairly distinct, and it doesn’t take long for them to start doing the things you’d expect them to do. That being said, if I wasn’t writing this all down, it’s likely I’d forget I even read the thing within a few months.

Troilus and Cressida

This play is an attempt to mash up the story of Achilles from The Iliad, with the medieval romance of Troilus and Cressida. The end result is a messy work where neither of the two plots have time to cohere into anything meaningful.

We find ourselves several years into the Trojan War, during the events of The Iliad. Achilles refuses to fight under Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks, for a variety of reasons that in this play boil down to simple pride. At the same time, Troilus, a prince of Troy, falls in love with a Trojan woman named Cressida, whose father has defected to the Greeks. Agamemnon, with the help of Ulysses, Nestor, et al attempt to “trick” Achilles into fighting; meanwhile Cressida is hostage-exchanged to be with her father (who immediately disappears from the play), thus separating her from her lover Troilus.

If we were to focus on Troilus and Cressida, taking a clue from the play’s title, we’d be left severely disappointed, as they share about three scenes total. In the first, Cressida doesn’t seem interested in Troilus; in the second, Troilus and Cressida confess their love and get psuedo-married; and in the third, Cressida has been sent to the Greeks and taken a new lover, Diomedes, while Troilus watches on in distress and anger.

The attempts to blend the two plots generally takes the form of visits from Trojan princes to the Greek camp, where everybody seems to get along surprisingly well. But there is still a distinct separation between the stories; the only shared character of any significance is Ulysses, but even his only contribution in the Cressida plot-line is to stand next to Troilus while he experiences the above-mentioned distress and anger.

On top of this, any attempt at a dramatic scene is undercut by this play’s clown (I am reserving the word ‘fool’ for more distinguished persons), Thersites, whose only jokes are raunchy insults, most of which involve calling someone a whore or a son of a whore. The play is definitely not a comedy in the traditional sense, due to the lack of resolution, but it does end up feeling like a parody, since no characters are safe from Thersites’ barbs. Even more significantly, Thersites is given the play’s last words.

If I were to guess at what’s being parodied, it would be the Elizabethan obsession with Greek valour, in the form of The Iliad’s newfound popularity. But Thersites’ jokes don’t have enough depth to actually call any of this into question; he’s just calling everyone stupid.

You might be able to stretch and argue a parallel between Troilus and Achilles, since it seems like, at the beginning, Troilus doesn’t have much interest in fighting, but Troilus is never developed enough to make this parallel come to fruition, and neither is Achilles, for that matter. And of course, there’s the fact that neither plot line meaningfully resolves.

On top of all this, the poetry of the whole thing is fairly lacklustre; there are no memorable speeches, and the dialogue is fairly mediocre — none of which is helped by Thersites’ incessant contributions. Overall, a disappointing work.

Henry VI, Part 1

I hope that you like Kings of England named Henry, because they are going to be a common theme in this series right up until the very end.

Henry VI Part 1 (sometimes styled in Biblical fashion as 1 Henry VI) is a historical play that covers the end of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, and the various political machinations underfoot within the English court. We have not only the rivalry between the English and French army, as emblemized in John Talbot and Joan of Arc; but also the internecine struggles between the Duke of Gloucester and the Bishop of Winchester on one hand; and the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of York on the other, which will later blossom into the War of the Roses.

Much of 1 Henry VI is setup, introducing us to the conflicts that will explode in Part 2. But it also contains complete stories in itself, most notable those of Talbot and Joan of Arc. This structure makes the play work not only as a prologue, but as a standalone work in itself.

The play is largely bereft of Shakespeare-isms: there is no romance, no fool, no dramatic irony, and no last-minute twists. So it’s perhaps a sorry omen that it’s by far my favourite play of his I’ve read to date. Since we’re dealing with the nobility almost exclusively, basically all the dialogue is in blank verse, which I find a much smoother read than when common folk are constantly barging in with their unversified vernacular talk.

On this note, there is also no fool to undercut dramatic moments. The characterization of Joan of Arc as a manipulative witch who speaks with demons is hilarious enough in itself, as well as the over-the-top heroism of John Talbot and his son. The bickering between Gloucester and Winchester, and between York and Somerset, is dignified and subtle, without resort to name-calling. Even Suffolk’s romantic machinations (in the service of his King, or so he would have us believe…) are handled far more tastefully than I’ve come to expect from the Bard.

I don’t know if Shakespeare felt compelled to a certain level of decorum when dealing with the history of his great nation, or if the scholars are right, and he was collaborating with someone who might not have tolerated all his silliness — there is no telling, but as arguably one of the least Shakespearian plays on this list, I can not help but place it atop the heap…

Henry VI, Part 2

A direct continuation, as you might expect, of 1 Henry VI. With France out of the picture, the action focuses on the disorder within the court of England. We see the resolution of the feud between the Bishop (now a Cardinal) of Winchester and the Duke of Gloucester, as well as Suffolk’s machinations. And near the end, York and Somerset’s rivalry reaches the point of civil war, thus precipitating the famed War of the Roses.

While 1 Henry VI felt like a series of interconnected narratives all moving forward at a similar pace, with only the segments related to the Hundred Years’ War actually coming to a narrative conclusion, 2 Henry VI instead feels like a series of episodic narratives all occurring one after another. We begin with Gloucester’s wife engaging in necromancy, which leads to Gloucester’s downfall and Suffolk’s banishment; then we spend the middle section dealing with the Kentish rebellion of John Cade, which is eventually put to a halt somewhat anti-climatically; and finally, we have the return of the Duke of York from Ireland with an army ready to seize the crown, which brings about the decisive split during the play’s final act.

All of this disorder is, of course, caused by the loss of France; after suffering such an ignominious defeat and suing for an insufficient peace, it’s no wonder that political turmoil would ensue. Henry VI himself ends up as an interesting figure, because he’s fairly impotent throughout the play. Everyone pays him lip service, which leaves him totally bewildered when their plots are revealed and they eventually turn on him. His wife, the French lady Margaret, is much more shrewd than he, trying to coax him into actually allying with one side or another in any of these conflicts, while he instead tries in vain to keep everyone on good terms. He is not depicted as hopelessly naive to the point of ridicule, but only a little naive, perhaps due to being placed on the throne at the tender age of 9 months old. He is used to coasting on the respect fostered by his father, Henry V “The Conqueror”, and not well-suited to such troublesome times. But it’s hard to say whether he actually could have done anything differently to help the situation.

The middle section, focused on the rebellion of John Cade, is by far the weakest. Cade is a ridiculous figure, promising equality while declaring himself Lord, and executing anyone who can speak French or Latin, or even read English. He is working in the service of York, making the whole rebellion a farce anyway, so the whole thing doesn’t have any teeth, and is treated as something of a joke. Interestingly, it’s a fairly common theme in this series of plays for grievances from the common people to be treated as a joke or brushed aside fairly easily, and they only seem capable of revolt when prompted by disgruntled nobles. It’s not an uncommon depiction of the masses, by any means, but still interesting to note.

Henry VI, Part 3

The War of the Roses is in full effect as York storms the throne and demands Henry recognize him as King. Henry settles for a half-measure, declaring York and his sons as his heirs while retaining the throne during his lifetime, a decision that satisfies no one.

Revenge is on the menu, as Clifford (who didn’t really show up until now) takes his revenge on York, thus causing York’s sons to want to take their revenge on him, in the classic tradition of revenge begetting revenge. This is exactly why post-war marriage alliances exist, and also why cultures across the world developed money- or gift-exchanging rituals as recompense for murder. Blood feuds get out of hand real quick.

At the end of Act II, Henry VI sits down atop a hill and decides that he’s sick of all this nonsense. No one is fighting for or against him in particular; York wants the crown for his family, and Queen Margaret wants the crown for her son. He figures he would have been much better off being born a shepherd. Atop this hill, he witnesses two quite literal depictions of England tearing itself apart in civil war, as a son unwittingly kills his own father, and then an entirely different father unwittingly kills his son. I suppose the reason we have both is that to only include the son killing the father would have led the audience to see it as a symbol of York’s usurpation of the throne, as a sort of parricide; whereas showing both broadens the symbol to represent a more general moral disorder of the English, as they murder their own kin. It’s a potentially moving scene that is, to be frank, rendered in a completely ridiculous fashion.

It is interesting to see how Henry is transformed in this play from a passive non-entity into a man actively trying not to be an entity. In Acts 2 and 3, he displays far more of his personal philosophy than he was allowed previously, as he’s finally left alone with his thoughts. These scenes turn him into my favourite character from the play; unfortunately he is soon imprisoned and basically disappears for a while.

This play twists and turns like no other, condensing twenty years of crown-swapping into five delirious acts. Allegiances come and go in a way that’s totally absurd, in any sort of realistic sense, but works well dramatically. The best example is Warwick’s conversion; I audibly gasped in my armchair.

By the end of it all, the very idea of a King starts to feel absurd, as all these arguments about succession and lineage boil down to a game of musical chairs, literally coming down to how long you can sit on the seat before someone comes and pulls you off. The idea of ruling England (or France, which English kings in this era considered a rightful part of their dominion) takes a backseat to the simple idea of having a crown atop your head, a throne beneath your bottom, and a sceptre in your hand. Everyone changes their mind so much that it becomes clear that there are no principles behind any of their actions whatsoever; besides Henry VI, whose principles ironically seem set against the idea of being King altogether.

Technically, the quadrology continues in Richard III, whose events are heavily alluded to in the final acts of this play, as Richard, King Edward (Duke of York)’s brother, privately soliloquizes about his own personal desire for the crown… But more on that in the next episode.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

I’ve been deliberately not reading critical appraisals of each play until I’ve finished it, so it was very funny that after immensely enjoying 1 Henry VI, I looked online to find that it’s generally considered Shakespeare’s weakest play. I have no idea why this would be; it sometimes feels like Shakespeare scholars are operating within a set of criteria that is entirely alien to all other forms of literary criticism. It’s almost as if they have turned their brains to mush by just reading Shakespeare non-stop over and over, with their only criterion for quality being how Shakespearean a work is.

1 Henry VI, in fact, is considered so bad and so un-Shakespearean that many scholars don’t believe he wrote much of it at all; obviously I don’t know anywhere near enough to judge the veracity of these claims, but it does correspond with what I wrote above about how my favourite aspects of the play were how little it reminded me of other Shakespeare plays.

These same people (just throwing every Shakespeare scholar together as a group, because life’s easier that way) seem to think that 2 Henry VI is the only worthwhile part, which I, of course, consider the weakest of the three. This is all very funny because the reason I am avoiding critical appraisals is to avoid activating my inborn contrarianism, but it seems not to be working, as I guess I have a natural sense for what Speare-heads are going to think.

The Henry VI trilogy is actually the first of Shakespeare’s historical plays I’ve read, as most people tend to focus on the comedies and tragedies. I get the impression that the histories are going to be my favourite; I just find it interesting how he is able to adapt long historical periods into a five-act dramatic structure. The comedies will likely come out somewhere in the middle, because they’re generally fairly light and, honestly, not worth taking too seriously. The tragedies are where the true success or failure of this project will lie, because I have deep, underlying problems with several of them that we will have to get into as we go.

It remains to be seen whether this experiment will successfully challenge any of these notions of mine, since technically I have not read a tragedy yet. Troilus and Cressida is the closest we've come, but technically fails to be a tragedy due to its total lack of anything resembling a conclusion, and is generally categorized as a “problem play” for this reason. To be honest, I felt pretty miserable after finishing it and realizing that I still had something like 35 plays left to read. I deliberately skipped Taming of the Shrew (this will be the first play I cover next time), since I did not feel confident in its ability to turn my mood around. I’m actually quite grateful to Henry VI for getting this whole thing back on track again. Five plays in, I feel plum-committed enough that I’m pretty sure I will actually complete this whole endeavour.