By Hook or By Crook: Part Three

Our next batch consists of three comedies, one history (that may as well be a tragedy), and one tragedy (that may as well be a farce).

The Taming of The Shrew

This play begins with a frame story, or rather, half of a frame story, because it serves only as an introduction and then neglects to reappear at the conclusion. In this story, a drunk tinkerer is carried into a Lord’s home and tricked into believing that his life of poverty was merely a dream, and that he has been a rich noble this whole time. As part of his new life, he is offered the entertainment of a play, which is this play, The Taming of the Shrew. It appears that near the middle of this play, our tinkerer dozes off, never to be heard of again.

Thus, The Taming of the Shrew is a play-within-a-play, and we will perhaps try to deduce a reason for this later. First, I will introduce the plot: a man named Baptista has two daughters, and he has vowed not to marry off the younger until he has married off the elder. The younger, Bianca, is a beautiful, meek, and fair maid, while the eldest, Katherina, is ill-tempered and disagreeable. She doesn’t even, at least to my view, fit the normal stereotype of an “ill-tempered woman;” instead, she’s just kind of a jerk in the way anyone could be a jerk, and for no apparent reason at that.

A new man named Lucentio comes to town, and, happening upon this situation, vows to marry Bianca. She already has a few suitors, so he has to come up with an ingenious way to compete, which, wouldn’t you know, has to do with wearing a disguise. Another suitor has a similar idea, and as is generally the case, we end up with a whole mess of disguises and mistaken identities that I won’t even get into.

At the same time, a suitable suitor is found for Katherina in the form of Petruchio, who in the early sections is by far the funniest character in the play, and I’m not just saying that because my brother once played him in a high-school production where ran circles around his fellow teenage thespians. Petruchio is an absurd man who chooses to marry Katherina for her riches, and doesn’t give a damn about the consequences.

The two plots then play out fairly independently, with the Bianca plot playing out about the way you’d expect, and the Katherina plot descending into complete madness. Petruchio’s plan to “tame” his “shrew” essentially amounts to psychological and physical torture, denying her food and drink, and forcing her to play along with random lies and falsehoods he invents. The whole thing is played with such a light-hearted tone that it only starts feeling uncomfortable when you write it in plain prose, like I’m doing right now.

The play ends with an incredibly controversial scene in which the male heroes, now all happily married (there’s three of them now, but it’s not worth getting into) place a wager on which of their new wives is the most obedient, which of course Katherina wins, and then gives a whole speech about how the husband is the lord of the house and etc etc.

Much ink has been spilled trying to prove that this speech is ironical, and I can see how if you wanted to present the play in a modern context you would almost have to convince yourself of this to make the production palatable. But there are also those who simply can not believe that Shakespeare himself would write something so misogynistic, or frankly, stupid. I, on the other hand, find this very easy to believe, based on my experiences thus far.

Taming, as a whole, is a farcical and absurd play, and the endings of both plots rely on the immediate forgiveness of deception and misdeeds, much like we saw in Two Gentleman of Verona. That’s kind of how you have to end a comedy, and thus the play can’t end until Katherina’s plot is resolved via her acceptance of her new marriage. This being the case, it seems that Shakespeare decided that, since the ending of this comedy is going to be stupid (as they always are), he may as well have it end in the most extreme and absurd way possible.

As I feel will be the case with every comedy I cover in this series, my final conclusion is that the play is perfectly competent and mostly funny, and not worth much further thought. I was going to try to deduce a reason for the frame story, but I just can’t be bothered. I don’t know why it’s there. Perhaps he figured that Taming was too silly to be even be called a play, and could only possibly be justified as a play-within-a-play.

Richard III

The Tragedie of Richard III starts off with one of Shakespeare’s iconic lines, “Thus ends the winter of our discontent,” which sets the tone for a truly masterful work that picks its theme and revels in it. Richard III is the ultimate culmination of the discord that matured throughout the Henry VI trilogy: a man who will quite literally murder everyone in his path on the way to becoming king, most of whom are his family members, and several of whom are children. Of course, we saw the seeds of such a man shown in the preceding plays, where the precedent was set for all of Richard’s actions — although not all combined in one man.

The plot does not need much description aside from that; Richard III is son of Richard, Duke of York, from the prior plays, and his brother starts off this play as King Edward IV. Richard III doesn’t like that very much, and essentially carries out a systematic scheme of assassinations until everybody else in the royal line is dead. As soon as he takes the crown, everyone instantly revolts against him because he has set himself up for a million revenges, and on the day before his ultimate battle, he is visited by many ghosts in a row who all tell him to “despair and die,” which of course, he does.

Richard III is the first truly iconic Shakespeare character we’ve met so far; his villainy and deception are unmatched, and he manages to carry every scene he’s in. This is capstoned by his reaction to his final dream, which is one of the great individual moments in Shakespeare.

Another notable scene is the tripartite lamentation competition between Queen Margaret (Henry VI’s widow, if you can’t recall), the Duchess of York (Richard III’s wife), and Queen Elizabeth (no, not that Queen Elizabeth, but the widow of King Edward IV, Richard’s elder brother), who have all been pretty well wronged throughout this whole thing, which then leads to a great stand-off between Queen Elizabeth and Richard III when he decides he wants to marry Elizabeth’s daughter, Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth, but also not that Queen Elizabeth.) And no, there is no way to make this paragraph less confusing.

The play works perfectly as the final act of the Henry VI Tetralogy, but can also stand on its own, as Richard’s machinations pretty quickly make clear the unstable nature of the English court, and perfectly justify the later actions taken against him. This is the peak of Shakespeare as we’ve seen him thus far, manipulating his sources into a work full of character, poetry, and dramatic emotion.

Titus Andronicus

Act I of this play had so much promise. It is a showcase of Shakespeare’s ability to elegantly set up a plot: he introduces a fairly large number of major characters, makes clear their relationships and their goals, and then throughout the events of the first scene sets up all the motivations that will guide them throughout the rest of the play. At least, that is how it appears, until we find out that all the action of the play is going to be caused by a cartoon-ish villain motivated by an insatiable lust for mischief.

In brief: Titus Andronicus is a Roman general who is returning from a triumphant war against the Goths, bringing with him prisoners of war which include the Queen of the Goths and her two idiot sons. The senate, led by Titus’ brother Marcus, wants to name him Emperor, but this is contested by the former Emperor’s two idiot sons, Saturninus and Bassianus. Titus says that Saturninus should be Emperor, and even gives him his daughter to marry, but she is snatched away by Bassianus, after which Saturninus immediately decides to marry the Queen of the Goths.

So, everyone’s left a little disgruntled by the whole thing, but Titus thinks he can make everyone happy by inviting them all on a hunting trip. This is where Aaron, a Moorish minister of the Queen of the Goths, whose black skin is very important and constantly mentioned, begins his scheming. Aaron’s schemes are not particularly clever, crafty, nor entertaining. He is engaged in an adulterous relationship with the Queen, and along with her two sons, these four villains are depicted as needlessly cruel, insatiably lustful, and generally antithetical to anything we would consider moral value. We are essentially dealing with demons here. Their first act, which involves the rape of Titus’ daughter and the murder of her husband, is frankly quite disturbing, and sets the tone for a graphically violent and sadistic play.

The play almost works as a perfect foil to Richard III, failing in many of the ways that that play succeeds. Aaron and Richard are both unrepentant and murderous villains, but their effects are entirely opposite. Richard, being the play’s protagonist, has a depth that Aaron can never attain as a side character. While Richard performs speeches and participates in arguments that showcase his charisma and duplicitiousness, Aaron will merely lay a confused scheme before running off to cackle in the corner.

Richard also feels like he emerged from something; we saw the ground laid for his character in the chaos of the Henry VI trilogy. Aaron’s maliciousness and lust for power is justified primarily by the fact that he is black, and that’s not subtext but something Aaron himself explicitly says multiple times.

The other major difference is the level of violence. Richard III is not sadistic, and it follows the classical tradition of having most of the murders occur off-stage. Titus Andronicus goes beyond the normal [stabs him], with multiple dismemberments and a drawn-out prelude to a sexual assault, which is handled without anything resembling tact.

I won’t knock the play merely for being incredibly violent; like any theme, violence can be handled well and have a meaningful place in a story. The main problem with Titus Andronicus is that it is incredibly stupid. The schemes rely on a remarkable amount of idiocy on the part of their marks, and the final reversal by Titus in the final act relies on an even greater stupidity on the part of the schemers themselves. Titus’ real or faked insanity is boring, and the whole thing just becomes way too ridiculous way too quickly to evoke any sort of pathos.

I’ve been mulling over Harold Bloom’s argument that this work is some sort of parody. I’m skeptical of the notion, if only because it seems to be Bloom’s excuse any time Shakespeare writes something bad, but there is certainly a level of ridiculousness to the violence that might suggest parody. There are several “jokes” at the expense of the multiple characters who have their hands chopped off, and the final scene where Titus bakes the Queen’s sons into a pie is just wild.

This wouldn’t necessarily change my opinion of the play, however. I’m not a huge fan of parody, and I wouldn’t say the play is a particularly effective or entertaining one, at that. The idea of parodying the wild violence on display in Elizabethan revenge plays seems a bit senseless, as the entire genre serves as a parody of itself.

The Comedy of Errors

A pair of identical twins are separated at a young age during a shipwreck that perfectly splits their boat in twain, each accompanied by one half of another pair of identical twins who act as their servants. Neither knows of the other’s existence, but many years later, one brother visits the other brother’s city, and what follows can only be described as a comedy of errors.

I should note that the two brothers also share the same name, as do the two servants, which obviously doesn’t make any sense but is vital for the functioning of the whole thing.

With two identical masters and two identical servants, the fun begins immediately and continues to compound on itself right up to the conclusion. Each time a master sends away his servant, he immediately happens upon the servant’s twin, carrying back what his master sent for; thus, each twin always has exactly what the other twin needs, which is always exactly what will get him into the most trouble with the next townsperson he comes into contact with, which, delightfully, also includes one of the twins’ wife.

The short play (perhaps Shakespeare’s shortest) milks this premise for all its worth, setting forth such a chaos that the whole neighbourhood is in an uproar, and both twins are driven almost to madness. Eventually, the duke gets involved and everything is resolved, which happily enough includes the twins being reunited with their long-lost parents as well.

For those keeping track at home, this play, like Jonson’s The Alchemist, follows Aristotle’s theory of “classical unities,” which, to Aristotle’s credit, has proven to be a great formula for creating the most hectic and frenetic comedies ever penned. A light comedy, for sure, but well worth the hour or two it might take to peruse it.

To quote those two old Muppet guys:

It was stupid! It was obvious! It was… short. I liked it!

Love’s Labour’s Lost

The King of Navarre decides to have a three year guys-only sleepover with his best mates and it is strictly No Girls Allowed. He goes as far as to make them sign a contract in which they pledge to devote themselves to study: vowing to sleep only three hours a day, eat only one meal a day; and most importantly, not to think about, talk to, or even look at a woman during all these three years. As part of this fun event, the King declares that any woman who comes near the castle will have her hair pulled out or something.

He is immediately reminded that the King of France has sent his daughter as part of a delegation, and the King bends the rules such that he is allowed to meet her as long as he does so outside the castle, meaning that the Princess has to sleep in a tent, which is pretty rude. Of course, when the King and his friends go to meet the Princess and her ladies, they all immediately fall in love, break their pledge, and make it their mission to woo them.

Somehow, this premise takes almost four entire acts to set up; I got to Act V with the feeling that absolutely nothing had happened yet. Weirdly enough, the length of the acts in this play vary wildly; IV and V combined are twice as long as I, II, and III combined.

Probably the reason it feels like nothing happens in this play is because nothing really happens. The play is padded out with a middling secondary plot about a man who falls in love with his milk-maid or something — he sends a clown to deliver his letter (bad move) and it gets mixed up with a letter from the above plot, but not to any real effect. This side of the story also involves a few pedants who show up to make stupid jokes.

Almost the entire play consists of long, laboured witty dialogues that, to a modern reader, are sometimes comprehensible and sometimes not. I make a point to not look up the meaning of jokes, because it’s simply not worth it; it’s not like I’m going to retroactively laugh at the thing. If I possess the knowledge of Elizabethan vernacular required to get the joke, I count myself a lucky man, and if not, I move on with my life. Humour, of course, changes with the seasons, and even comedies from ten years ago can be unwatchable, so I’m not going to hold it against Shakespeare if all his witty dialogue doesn’t land. But obviously, something like The Comedy of Errors is going to work better for a modern reader, since the humour is derived from absurd situations rather than convoluted puns.

The wooing in question doesn’t go as planned; as usual, the wooers decide the best course of action is to wear a disguise, which the ladies see through and counter with a ruse that involves trading the gifts (mostly jewellery) the men have given them amongst themselves. The men woo the gift, not the lady, and end up wooing the wrong person, for which they’re severely chastised, before the above-mentioned pedants and clown put on a play for some reason, and then everything comes to a halt because the Princess finds out her dad died. Instead of a traditional comic ending, the play ends with the women telling the men to hold onto their loves for an entire year to prove their loyalty — notably, only about a third as long as they were initially planning not to talk to any women.

I will generously give this play the designation “hasn’t aged well,” not in any moral/cultural sense but just in terms of the language and the humour. Shakespeare is usually not too bad to decipher if you’re paying attention, but this one can lose you pretty quick. However, I can’t feel like I’m missing too much because I don’t find Shakespeare that funny even when I do know what he’s talking about.

Also, that second apostrophe in the title is killing me. It looks insane. I feel like “Love’s Labours Lost,” where the labours are plural, makes a lot more sense. Seems like it changed back and forth during the first few publications, probably because an editor got excited about the new apostrophe key on his printing press.

I would be remiss not to mention the play’s lost sequel, ironically titled Love’s Labour’s Won, which we know nothing about except that it is featured on two contemporary lists of Shakespeare plays. One can only imagine what wonders would have awaited us when the King of Navarre and the Princess of France were finally reunited… alas, it is a tale lost to time.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:

Some real peaks and valleys here. Richard III is by far the best play I’ve read so far, and Titus Andronicus is probably the worst. I did talk to a few people who find Titus entertaining in its bombast, which is fair enough, but the graphic violence and the juxtaposition with Richard III lost it a lot of points in my book.

As for the comedies, Taming of the Shrew had some great moments but I don’t feel like the balancing of the double plots was handled that well; I don’t love when it feels like there are two separate things going on that have nothing to do with each other. The Comedy of Errors was a well-contained farce that I found extremely entertaining; I would rate it the best comedy so far just in terms of entertainment value. Love’s Labour’s Lost was frankly pretty boring, but you can’t win ‘em all.

I am starting to become impressed by the amount of variety on display in terms of style and content. All the plays I’ve read so far feel unique, including the ways in which they succeed and fail. Obviously, there are common elements in all of them, but each time I start a play I feel like I’m delving into something new, which is helpful for such a project.

It does feel like I’m getting a bit of whiplash from the constant alternating between good play and bad play. That being said, the good plays are steadily getting better, and the bad plays are generally a wild swing of some sort that falls flat on its face. You can definitely tell that some plays were just given more care than others, which is fair enough because this guy was just dashing these out at quite a furious rate. It’s very possible that the ten plays we’ve covered so far were all written and performed within three years.

The next part will finally feature some plays that I’ve read before, although it’s been over 15 years in both cases. My memory of these works are incredibly vague, so I’ll be interested to see what new details might stick out to me.

Next: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King John, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II