The Comedy of Errors

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Albeit, my wrongs might make one wiser mad

     Shakespeare went back to the basics with “The Comedy of Errors.”  He returned to a source from his school days, Plautus’s Menaechmi, adding a pair of identical servants to double the chances for misidentity.  He tightened the story by sticking to a unified story that, start to finish, takes place in less than six hours.  He also cobbled ideas from St Paul, borrowing an incident from the Acts for the play’s location, and from the Letters to the Ephesians and Corinthians to sneak in a theme and lend some depth to otherwise stock characters. 

     What he came up with is a brilliantly funny farce and a perfect example of Situation Comedy.  Typical of Shakespeare, many of the characters are those he pulled out of the stock drawer, but the ones he’s interested in (Antipholus of Syracuse and Lucetta) get more attention and are more fully developed.

     As a farce, “The Comedy of Errors” doesn’t strain for gags from the start.  Rather, the play opens with a long chunk of backstory, a function classically left to a Chorus.  But by giving Egeon the job of setting up the story, Shakespeare compels the audience to feel empathy for the father.  The tale of how the twins were separated not only explains the set up but also gets the audience involved and creates tension.  

     Tension is just as important in Comedy as it is in Tragedy.  (Comedy might be considered a lesser form, but the requirements remain the same.)  Comedy is all about tension and release.  Jokes don’t get any simpler than a Knock-Knock, but tension is what gives the punch line its impact.  

     Knock, knock.
     Who’s there?
     Nana.
     Nana who?
     Nana your business.

     Shakespeare builds the tension and the story with a typically leisurely pace.  Like “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” all the major players don’t arrive until Act III.  Unlike “Two Gentlemen,” Shakespeare gets us there more quickly by limiting the first two Acts to two scenes apiece.  (“Two Gentlemen” takes ten scenes to get to Act III.)  Yet, by the time Antipholus of Ephesus arrives, we know a great deal about him: his tragic infancy, his troubled marriage, and his obsession with work.  The tension surrounding him is already built into the story.  His reaction throughout the play is a series of escalating explosions; his release is through anger and his anger creates more tension for everybody else in the play.  

     Most of the play’s humor is derived from situations (or “Errors”) of misidentification.  There is still some word play and bawdy humor.  Nell’s “When, can you tell?” taunt at Dromio of Ephesus in Act III Scene 1 is a small penis joke, for instance.  But all of the major characters get to play with a rhetorical device called Commoratio, descriptive repetition to make a single point. Shakespeare uses this technique for various effects throughout the play.

     At the end of Act I, Antipholus of Syracuse establishes Ephesus’ magical reputation with:

They say this town is full of cozenage,
As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like liberties of sin...

      Lucetta admonishes Dromio of Antipholus with a short burst:

Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!

     Adriana bitterly (shrewishly?) rails against her husband:

He is deformed, crooked, old and sere,
Ill-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind;
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.

   

     Dromio of Syracuse excitedly takes his time to explain his master’s arrest:

No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell.
A devil in an everlasting garment hath him;
One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel;
A fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough;
A wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff;
A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that
countermands
The passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands;
A hound that runs counter and yet draws dryfoot well;
One that before the judgement carries poor souls to hell.

     The technique culminates with Antipholus of Ephesus’ description of Dr. Pinch:

They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man.

     Shakespeare introduces the technique with wariness toward superstition; puts confusion, heartbreak and disaster in the middle; and ends it with contempt for an alleged exorcist.  Thus, this technique, one with its own theme, runs parallel to the play.

     Department of Nitpicking: If they’re twins are so alike “as could not be distinguished but by names,” why are they both named Antipholus?  Plautus got around this by saying the surviving twin was rechristened after the one presumed dead.  The source story, a standard to those educated in the English school system, would have been familiar enough to Elizabethan audiences.

     Department of Nitpicking II:  How come the Abbess, living in Epheseus, hasn’t figured out that Antipholus of Ephesues is her son?  Well,...  because she does. The audience, Elizabethan and since, has experienced the entire play with comparatively omniscient knowledge of the goings on.  The Abbess is the ace up Shakespeare’s sleeve.  When the authorities come to her, she has the answers.  The Abbess wants the same thing Egeon and Antipholus of Syracuse have been searching for; the very thing Adrianna and Lucetta  long for: the reunification of the family.  The angry, self-absorbed merchant, Antipholus of Ephesueis the only one who needs to have things explained to him.  She engineers that reunification. It’s one of the more subtle themes in the play.  She’s an Abbess, presumed virginal.  She’s Queen Elizabeth I. 

Learning Points

The Comedy Stylings of St Paul: Nil, basically.  But Shakespeare drew inspiration from the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul’s Letters to the Ephesians and to the Corinthians that play a significant role in this play.  From the Acts, he borrowed the notion that Ephesus was people by conjurers and wizards.  That idea explains Anipholus and Dromio of Syracuse’s reaction to the events that happen to them.  From the Letter to the Ephesians, he explores St Paul’s counsel on the relationship between husbands and wives, between master and slaves.  The Dromios seem naturally inclined to fidelity to their masters and Antipholus of Ephesus certainly sees himself as master over his wife.  Yet, Antipholus of Syracuse submits himself to Lucetta’s wisdom.  In the Letter to the Corinthians, Paul discusses the differences of opinion in that part of the Church, particularly with the distracting pagan worship of idols, ie money.  Shakespeare didn’t use his knowledge of the Bible to preach, but to explore its teachings, finding new ideas and rounding the edges of his otherwise stock characters.  Regardless of one’s religious leanings, the Bible remains a highly valuable and thought provoking reference.  

Big Ideas in Small Places: Shakespeare seldom met an idea that didn’t lead him off on various tangents.  In “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” he was overwhelmed with ideas, and it got him into trouble.  He couldn’t figure out how to incorporate his idea into the story.  In  “The Comedy of Errors,” he subordinates the big ideas to the story.  He’s smart enough to know that the big ideas aren’t appropriate to the piece he’s working on.  He saves the big ideas for later.

Luciana’s DNA: Even in the land of stock characters, Shakespeare liked to rework  those from previous plays. Luciana’s name and function is similar to Lucetta’s in “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”  She acts as a sounding board for Adriana, but her back story is Julia’s.  Luciana’s advice to Antipholus of Syracuse in Act III, Scene 2 echoes exactly what Julia experienced from Proteus’ behavior in “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”   

Knit one, Comedy too: Shakespeare does a much better job of knitting comic set pieces into the fabric of the story.  He foreshadows his intentions early, in Act I Scene 2, by having Antipholus of Syracuse confide to the Merchant:

A trusty villain, sir, that very oft,

When I am dull with care and melancholy,

Lightens my humour with his merry jests.

Thus, the audience more readily accepts the set piece exchanges between the Syracusians, (ie, their discussion of the merits of balding, and Nell the kitchen wench as a hefty geography project.)  Antipholus of Syracuse is never the dupe of Dromio’s antics, the way Speed played Valentine and Proteus in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”    

They are as tied together in Ephesus as they were to the mast in the storm.

Next: Titus Andronicus*

*The Reduce Shakespeare Company says of this play, "Shakespeare as a young writer seems to have gone through a brief Quentin Tarantino phase."  It should be read as an over the top spoof of highly stylized tragedy.

Links of Note:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Lq771TVm4  (An example of 20th Century Commoratio begins at 2:20.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/the-words-that-remade-america/308801/

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

“Write until your ink is dry”  Act III, Scene 2

     Shakespeare’s first comedy is a messy, scattershot parody of romantic love.  As in the early history plays, it features themes and motifs he will develop more fully in his later works.  He also encounters problems that afflict almost all new humor writers, opting for gags over story development and types over characters.  Its theme of inconstancy is at the core of the play’s undoing and its most notable element is a notoriously awful fifth act.

     Shakespeare lets the audience in on the parody by giving most of the characters names that telegraph their natures: Proteus (a name Henry hurls as an insult at Richard at the end of Henry VI Part 3) is a shape-shifting lout, his heart changing direction on the winds of whim.  Valentine’s name is obvious, as Valentine’s Day had been around for at least 200 years and was mentioned in a poem by Chaucer.  Julia, of Latin origin, means the daughter of Jove, the divine witness to oaths; and Sylvia is the woods.  Speed is named for his wit and Launce is suspiciously similar to Launcelot, with his “a lot” cut off.   Lucetta is a diminutive form of Lucia, which means light.  She is the Patron Saint of the blind. Even Eglamour, portrayed as a coward in the forrest, is named after the title character from “Sir Eglamour of Artois,” a 14th Century poem known in Shakespeare’s time (SPOILER ALERT: the poem is about two lovers separated by a father who disapproves of the union.)  

     The source of the play is “Diana Enamorada,” a prose poem by Jorge deMontamayor, the style of dialog from John Lyly, but the spirit of the play is from Ovid’s “Art of Love,” a bawdy How-To guide, which includes the following pertinent bit of advice:

“Ah me, it’s not safe to praise your love to a friend:

if he believes your praise, he’ll steal her himself.”

     Valentine and Proteus are best friends forced to separate when Valentine is sent to the emperor's court in Milan to be educated in the ways of a gentlemen.  Proteus stays behind because he wants to be near his true love, Julia.  They talk about love, but taken little action and when they do take action it fails.  Proteus sends his love letter via Speed, but it goes to Lucetta instead.  Valentine’s plan to elope with Sylvia is ruined by Proteus. Julia’s plan to reunite with Proteus ends in heartbreak. Everything Proteus does to woo Sylvia, she slaps away with increasing vigor.

     Once established, Shakespeare shades his characters according to the needs of the scene instead of the other way around.  Consequently, the audience has no reason to care about the two male leads.  Proteus is especially unlikable.  He claims to be in love with Julia and writes a love letter to her. Yet, before he receives a reply, he gets his uncle to ask his father about sending him to be with Valentine at the emperor's court.  Having betrayed Julia, he then betrays Valentine, Thurio, and ultimately love itself when he attempts to rape Sylvia.  He’s a busy guy. 

     You can always tell what interests Shakespeare and, right now, it’s words.  As exacting a discipline as mastering Latin was, playing with English words and their multiple meanings must have been a giddy liberation for him.  Puns and homonyms tumble and swirl throughout the play,  Consonance and assonance multiply to create musical elements to the lines. It’s funny and entertaining, but does nothing to advance the plot or inform the audience about the characters.

     And that’s the problem.  Shakespeare spends too much time stocking the scenes with laughs and too little trying to develop character.  The early scenes with Julia and Lucetta are charming, but then bog down with elongated gags about music and cod pieces.  Speed’s wit and Launce’s monologues are genuinely funny, but both could be edited out of the play without interrupting the story.  Romantic love always has been and always will be ripe for parody.   Bt at this point in his career, Shakespeare doesn’t know how to handle it.  HIs ideas, while worthy, are unfocussed and unfinished.  Proteus doesn't know the difference between love and lust, an affliction common to men of all ages.  Shakespeare doesn’t yet know how to convey it.   

     Proteus’ “conversion” at the end of the plot is so totally unsatisfactory because Shakespeare can’t make his conversion believable.  There’s no depth of character for him, or the audience, to fall back on. Given his behavior throughout the play, we can understandably wonder if Proteus spends part of the wedding feast checking out the waitresses.  But, then, Shakespeare has done this before.  He has a habit, toward the end of his early plays, of abrupt and unexplained changes in his characters (Joan Purcelle in Act V of Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard’s dream scene in Richard III.)  He has an idea of where they need to go, but can’t deliver them safely.

Learning Points

Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard: What’s the difference between parody and satire? You can blame satire for the jokes that don’t work.  Humor writing is an extraordinarily delicate and difficult operation.  It’s one thing to get laughs among friends, quite another to commit yourself on paper to strangers.  An old rule states that the first idea for a joke is one that anyone can come up with.  The second idea is one that somebody else already came up with.  The third idea is yours.  Go with the third idea.

All’s Well That Ends... Huh? What?! Scholars have wrestled and lost with the ending of “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” for centuries.  They offer excuses from “some one else wrote it,” to “modern audiences don’t get it.” Harold Bloom suggests that Sylvia “ought to whack Valentine with the nearest chunk of wood.” But Proteus’ conversion and Valentine’s Christian act of forgiveness aren’t the only problems at the end of the play.  Thurio claims her, then gives her back.  This outrages the Emperor, who hands her over to Valentine.   In a single scene, Sylvia is an object of lust, of property, and ultimately of love.  Ah romance!  (Shhhh!  That’s one of the points Shakespeare fails to make clear.)  A bad ending ruins everything that precedes it.  If you find yourself stuck at the end of a piece, the solution often can be found by properly editing a previous section.  If that means eliminating a line or a scene you’re proud of, too bad.  Think of the audience, not yourself.

Sometimes, the Best Ideas Are the Ones You Can’t Handle Yet:  “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is Shakespeare’s weakest play, but there are ideas that -- like the History Plays--he will return to and develop to greater effect.  For instance, Launce’s list of his maid’s virtues and vices are funny.  A couple of years later, when he writes Sonnet 130, Shakespeare lifts the idea to art. Never discard an idea.  Keep them in a file and visit them from time to time. If it’s good enough for Shakespeare (and Mark Twain and John Lennon) it’s good enough for you.

Links:

http://www.listsofnote.com/2012/03/thurbers-rules.html

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1550/the-art-of-humor-no-1-woody-allen

Richard III

“Why dost thou run so many mile about, When thou mayst tell thy tale a nearer way?”

     Shakespeare’s writing skills takes a noticeable step forward in RIchard III.  With three plays under his belt, lines end more naturally, events rely more on imagination than history, and the title character is vividly drawn. Ambitious, intelligent, and blissfully detached from any moral sense, Richard has bamboozled four centuries worth of actors, audiences, and historians.  But it’s a needlessly long play.  Shakespeare still has the habit of giving all the good lines to the characters he’s interested in and treating the others as hollow sounding boards.

     The opening soliloquy of Richard III is so well know that people often neglect to notice where the play begins: London. A street.   He’s so anxious to set things into motion that he’s started without us.  Waiting near the Tower of London to confirm Clarence’s arrest and the release of Hastings, he takes us into confidence, explaining his schemes and inductions. He confides in us, offering witty asides to amuse us and inspire sympathy for his cause. By the end of the second scene, the audience has a decision to make:  Do we buy into his seduction of Lady Anne?  If so, then we are on his side and will continue to enjoy the benefit of being among his inner circle.  If not,... well, we’d best be heading to France to wait things out with Richmond.  But what would be the fun of that?  

     This play is as much about the seductive power of language as it is about the power of evil and Richard’s first victim is the audience. It’s a straight forward play and Richard is so large a character, that there is no room for subplots.    Richard himself explains the first half of the of the story, his rise to the crown.  Margaret gleefully foreshadows the second half of the play with her curses. Yet, despite all the prophecies by Margaret, the warnings of dreams, and calls for devine retribution, each character is doomed by their own actions.

     Shakespeare’s use of language starts to bloom in this play and he sometimes shows off as much as his lead character.  Previously, he was incapable of such lines as: 

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber

to the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

     It’s a wonderfully musical line, yet a bitter and condescending assessment of his brother and the efffeminizing effects of peace.  

Yet he still has Margaret and Duchess of York stiffly recite the formalized:

Tell o'er your woes again by viewing mine:

I had an Edward, till a Richard kill'd him;

I had a Harry, till a Richard kill'd him:

Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill'd him;...

I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;

I had a Rutland too, thou holp'st to kill him.

   Richard uses many voices to achieve his ends: he bullies, flatters, provokes, cajoles, repents, and makes promises in order to manipulate those around him.  In a way, Richard’s versatility is Shakespeare learning to move away from the formalities of rhetoric and to use words and tone to establish individual voices. Unfortunately, only Richard enjoys the benefits of these new skills.  Had Shakespeare manage to invest such word power to other characters, there were be greater natural tension within the scenes.  Instead,  only the young Prince York (“Mini-Richard”) gets the better of of him (Act III, Scene 1.)

     Shakespeare’s portrayal of children improves with the introduction of the young princes.  In Henry VI part 2, Rutland speaks like an adult imitating a child.  The same is true of Clarence’s children when they suspect his demise.  But the Young princes sound more like precocious kids and young York, in particular, is very much like his uncle.  It’s almost understandable why Richard wants them dead:  Edward is the true heir and York the true threat.

     By this time, one of Shakespeare’s favorite techniques is parallel scenes, similar in design, but different in effect. For instance, Richard woos two women in the play, first Lady Anne, and later Queen Elizabeth. These scenes sum up his progress toward taking, and losing, the crown. Richard probes both women for weak spots, as they engage in tennis-like rallies of word play.  With Anne he is confident and in control of the conversation.  “I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long,” he says, unwittingly making a prophecy of his own time on the throne. By the time he tries to convince the Queen that he must marry her daughter, he no longer controls the situation.  Richard dismisses her with: “Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman.”  He does not suspect the changes to come. What once was affirmation, ends in self delusion.  

      In another set of scenes, Clarence’s dream is evocative and surreal.  It works because Clarence relates the terrifying experience second hand to his guard.  It’s a rare example of when “telling” is more effective than “showing.”  The audience witnesses the second dream sequence, shared by Richmond and Richard.  Here, Shakespeare reverts to a morality play sequence. The ghost parade onto the stage in the order they were killed.  Typically repetitive and heavy-handed, they curse Richard and wish Richmond well.  Richard then awakens and delivers a 40 line soliloquy, caught between dream and reality.   The first line, “Give me another horse!  Bind up my wounds!”  sounds like Richard, but everything that follows does not.  The problem with the speech isn’t that the lines are short and choppy.  Nor that it seems a little late for his conscience to be making a cameo appearance.  It’s bad poetry expressed in a voice beneath what both Richard and Shakespeare have achieved to this point.  It’s a great idea, poorly executed.

Learning Points:

Oppa Genre Style: Is Richard III a history play?  A tragedy?  A darkly comic character study?  Though reared on Latin Classics, Elizabethan playwrights operated in an atmosphere similar to America’s Wild West. Or the Sixties.  Or Wall Street in the early 21st Century.  There were rules, and then there weren’t rules. A cardinal rule of any period is this:  Thou Shalt Experiment.  Every discipline, from poetry to technical writing has its own peculiar guidelines and each can be adapted to another.  A writer’s reading habits should be as wide and diverse as possible.  Reading only what one agrees with or is interested in limits one’s understanding and access to possibilities.  The more rules you know, the more rules you can break.

Marlowe’s Ghost: Marlowe’s influence still haunts Shakespeare’s work.  Richard’s over-the-top character and his opening soliloquy are very similar to Tamburlaine and Barabas, from Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta.”  But Richard is much more human than those two. He speaks to the audience as an equal, shows fallibility, and his assumed superiority is at the root of his demise. In Richard, Shakespeare’s character portrayal moves further away from representing a sculpted idea (a god, a myth, a hero, a type) and closer to representing an actual human being.

History Repeats Itself:  Shakespeare didn’t invent the idea of Richard’s physical deformities as a clue to his character.  He borrowed it from that man of all seasons, Sir Thomas More.  But in reading More, Holinshed, Hall, and others, he found  themes that he would revisit and re-examine throughout the later plays.  Chaos in society, the family, and the individual: ambition, revenge, and justice; the nature of love and the nature of evil; the role of dreams and prophecy; even to act or not to act.  The early history plays not only provided Shakespeare with the opportunity to grow as a writer, but as a thinker as well. 

Next: Two Gentlemen of Verona

Henry VI, Part 1

  “Speak on, but be not over-tedious.”

     Henry Vi, Part 1 is a noisy, overt celebration of English patriotism and their moral superiority over the French.  It was a huge hit, but like most box office blockbusters it has not aged well. 

     All three parts of the Henry VI plays were written in the space of a year.  As in Parts 2 and 3, Shakespeare used the same history sources and familiar characters in this prequel.  He also worked on structural techniques, created “historical” events, and continued to experiment with character development.  He even borrowed from his own earlier plays.  

      Henry VI, Part 1 is not a good play.  Most of the dialogue reverts to the declamations of Part 2 and most of the characters are as static as they were in Parts 2 and 3. If it didn’t have Shakespeare’s name attached to it, the play would be the kind of thing graduate students have to slog through on their way to something more interesting.  But in charting Shakespeare’s early career, it remains worth studying.

     By the time he starting writing the chronicle plays, Shakespeare possessed a keen understanding of story telling in the five act format:  Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Denouement.  In the first two scenes of Henry VI, Part 1, he introduces an interesting symmetrical pattern. 

     Act I, Scene i opens at the funeral of Henry V.  There are three noble, three generals, and three messengers.   Bedford speaks first, followed by Gloucester, Exeter, and Winchester.  After three messages of loss, revolt, and Talbot’s capture, the scene ends with the four men speaking and exiting in the opposite order.   An admirably balanced piece of writing, it succeeds in establishing the problems facing the English, but fails in establishing characters or motivation.  It’s like watching carved figures circling the works of an intricate clock.

      Towards the end of Scene ii, Shakespeare repeats the device, but on a smaller scale and with French characters. Facing losses of his own, the Dauphin speaks, followed by Reinier and Alanson. The Bastard of Orleans arrives with a message: the French have an answer to Talbot and her name is Joan Pucelle.  The scene ends with remarks from Alanson, Reinier, and the Dauphin.   Again, the French dilemma is made clear and the solution made clearer by the introduction of Joan.  

     Joan Pucelle and Lord Talbot are the central characters in the play and it’s significant that neither is noble by birth.  In John Talbot, Shakespeare tries to create a hero for the common Englishman.  A gentleman by birth, but noble in thought and action, Talbot’s name alone is enough to chase the enemy away.  He is old school chivalrous, a fierce warrior with a clear sense of right and wrong.  As demonstrated when he meets the Countess of Auvergne, he possesses the humility to credit his army and the good manners not to take advantage of the scheming Countess.  Unlike the nobles, he is a man of action who puts his country before himself.

     His decline is the decline of England’s honor and Shakespeare dedicates most of the fourth act to showing that English and French treachery are responsible.  Abandoned by York and Somerset, betrayed by Burgundy and trapped by the Dauphin, Talbot faces his doom.

     Remember the Father/Son-Son/Father scene from Henry VI, Part 3?  Shakespeare tries to re-enact the emotional impact of that scene by having Talbot and his son die together as heroes

“Come, come, and lay him in his father’s arms;

My spirit can no longer bear these harms.

Soldiers, adieu!  I have what I would have,

Now my old arms are young John Talbot’s grave.”

     This death scene was enormously popular in 1592, but it was pure pathos then and pure pathos now, tugging at the heartstrings with one hand, while straight-arming the brain with the other.  Firstly, for all of his heroic qualities, Lord Talbot is not fully enough formed as a character to  merit the kind of emotional involvement need to make the scene work. Secondly, John Talbot arrives so late in the play that no involvement is possible (it doesn’t help that we quickly learn that young John refused to fight the woman who gave his father all he could handle.)  Thirdly, it lacks context.  Directly contrasted against Henry’s pastoral dream, the scene in Part 3 brings home the horrors of war.  In Part 1, the audience saw this coming four scenes ago.  Lastly, it’s not very well written.  At this point of his career, Shakespeare’s command of structure far exceeds his command of language.

     Joan Pucelle’s fate is even more disappointing.  So much so, some scholars believe some one else wrote her final scenes.  The most interesting character in the play, she deserves better.  Heaven sent to the French, condemned to Hell by the English, Shakespeare crafts her character with solid earthiness.  If Talbot is old school chivalry, Joan is new school mischief.  A mere shepherdess, chosen by the Virgin Mary to push the English out of France, she does so with as much wit as witchcraft.  Men don’t fool her.  She conquers them with her sword, her tactics, and her skills as an orator.  That she can persuade Burgundy to abandon his allegiance to Talbot and immediately react with the aside:

“Done like a Frenchman: turn and turn again!”

makes her more compelling and believable than most of the men and all of the women in any of Shakespeare first three plays.  Even after being captured, she remains feisty, insulting York and sarcastically asking permission to curse some more.

     So why does Joan’s character fall apart so miserably at the end?  There are reasons:

  The historical events of Joan’s trial didn’t fit with the aims of this play.

It was Act V and, however knotty, loose ends had to be tied. 

She was French.

     Whatever his reasons, he failed Joan as a character and the audience.  It feels like a rush job.

Learning Points:

Invented Scenes:  Eventually, Shakespeare must have felt handcuffed by history.  By inventing scenes such as the meeting between Talbot and the Countess and the plucking of roses among the supporters of York and Somerset, Shakespeare moves from exposition to demonstration, from what to who and why.  Facts and data can be interesting but static.  They don’t move the story, they don’t move the characters, and they don’t engage the audience.  The stringing together of episodes is coming to an end. Soon, events in one scene will cause the events of the next. 

Imagery: There’s much less reliance on religion, myths, and the animal kingdom.  Instead, Shakespeare creates images that are more reality based  and more accessible.  When the English fight, “(t)heir arms are set, like clocks, still to strike on.”  Talbot’s “thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel.”  Note, too, that Shakespeare chose “whirled,” instead of “spun.”  The requirements of iambic pentameter forced Shakespeare to search beyond the first verb that came to mind.  The same should apply to prose writing as well.  As Mark Twain said, “the difference between the almost right word & the right word is... the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”  And verbs are your most important words.

Dialogue: While declaiming among the nobles continues, Shakespeare starts to pare things down.  When Suffolk falls for Margaret, his befuddled asides are believable and funny.  Shakespeare possibly witnessed such a scene in a local tavern.  The same befuddled conversation probably takes in a bar or tavern every night of the week to this day. Likewise, the rhyming couplets between Lord Talbot and his son convey an intimacy between them.  At first.  Dragging the conversation through the battle scene over-plays the point.  Like gratuitous violence, gratuitous pathos is bad for everybody.

Next: Richard III

Henry VI, Part 3

“Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.”

     In Henry VI Part 3, Shakespeare continues to develop characters from the previous play and uses their development to create dramatic set pieces.  He also experiments with imagery and scene placement to emphasize his theme of social chaos and its effect on the human condition.  Most importantly, not only does the country dissolve into chaos, but the individuals do as well.

     The story begins exactly where Henry VI, Part 2 leaves off.  The bickering among nobles is now the negotiations between would-be and won’t-be Kings.  But ambition and revenge sever the deal.  Many want power, but do not know how to use it.  Some want peace, but cannot find it.  Most want vengeance, but are never satisfied.  Loyalty to crown, to country, to family and to friends no longer exists. As society shatters, it’s every man-- and woman-- for himself. It is a graphically violent play, from RIchard’s display of Somerset’s head in Act I Scene 1, to Henry’s murder in the next to last scene of the play.

     The first set piece takes place at the end of Act I.  York, wounded and captured, is confronted by Margaret.  It is an explosion of twin madnesses.  Facing execution, he hurls insults at Margaret, attacking her parentage, her looks, and her femininity. He’s not only describing Margaret, but also searching for one last weakness to exploit.  It isn’t until he exhausts every last ounce of venom that he allows himself to grieve for his murdered son.  Margaret, on the other hand, relishes his humiliation, his pain,and his death.  She baptizes him in a profane storm of religious imagery: places him on a molehill (Golgotha), begs him to wipe his tears with a cloth stained with his son’s blood (Veronica’s veil), and mimics his ambition with a paper crown (the crown of thorns.) It’s as if she has two suits of armor: one for the battlefield, the other for her heart.  The language here is alive and visceral. When Margaret demands 

“Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance.”

you can hear the horrible music of her voice. 

     In Act II Scene v, Henry’s soft voice gives the audience a clearer picture of his character.  Throughout the play, Henry is removed further and further from the throne.  Banished from the battlefield (and soon to be sent out of the country), he observes the fight from a molehill of his own.  Incapable of tending to his kingdom, Henry rhapsodizes about living the life of a shepherd.  It’s a peaceful, dreamy soliloquy, simple words from a simple man.  But the Son/Father-Father/Son scene blasts that fantasy, reminding him (and the audience) that Henry’s lack of political strength is responsible for all this carnage.  On its own, the soliloquy is effective.  The Son/Father-Father/Son part would be at home in a pageant.  By putting the two together in the same scene adds depth to Henry as a character and underlines the horrors of civil war.

     Shakespeare uses the same technique in the third set piece.  Henry failed as a King because of his piousness.  Edward fails because of his penisness.  And out of this chaos rises Richard.  In his soliloquy, taking place after Edward’s clumsy wooing of Lady Grey, Richard is so self-aware and so self admiring, it’s as if he were wooing himself over to the dark side.  His dream is very different from Henry’s and many obstacles stand between him and the crown.   Richard responds by feeling “flatter(ed)... with impossibilities.”  Nature may have cursed him from the womb, but he takes delicious inventory of his strengths:

Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,

And cry 'Content' to that which grieves my heart,

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

And frame my face to all occasions.

I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;

I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;

I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,

Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,

And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.

I can add colours to the chameleon,

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

And set the murderous Machiavel to school.

Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?

Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.

     The scene that began with a comic treatment of the royal libido ends with the revelation of a charming villain.  

     In the final set piece, Richard meets Henry in the Tower of London.  The play began with York negotiating with Henry for the crown and peace.  Here, Richard arrives to do what, in his mind, his father should have done.  But Henry is a wiser man now.  He sees Richard for what he is, what he intends to do, and what havoc he will wreck in the future.  He offers a prophecy that all of England will rue the day Richard was born, then recalls the hideous details associated with his birth.  Enraged, Richard stabs Henry.  Typically, Henry’s last words are to ask forgiveness for himself and Richard.  Richard responds with  blasphemy, wondering why the saintly King hasn’t resurrected. He then confirms that the rumors concerning his birth were not exaggerated.  With the House of Lancaster in ruins, he turns his attention and his ambitions toward his brothers.  The War of the Roses will continue in the House of York.

Learning Points:

Character Development

     Because the characters are based on historic figures, Shakespeare was limited to what he could do with them.   Henry couldn’t come to his royal senses any more than Margaret could choose to dedicate her energies to world literacy.   And even though the sources he consulted tilted acutely toward the Tudor version of history, Shakespeare takes a decidedly neutral approach to the story and its characters.  He could have exaggerated the contemporary impressions of Henry, of Margaret, of York. Instead, he shows remarkable patience with these characters.  He makes a point of allowing room for their emotions, and patience enough to let them grow.  For instance, York has a arguable claim to the throne.  But Shakespeare shows him willing to wait to ascend.  He lets his sons influence him to act beyond his patience, and then is made to pay for it.  By using his imagination, he give context to the historical facts.  And in doing so, he learns to create characters.  His patience, his willingness to to understand various possible angles for his character’s motivations, without settling on a single cause, allows his characters and the audience to infer for themselves, and within themselves, what the motivation is.   The key to Shakespeare’s character development is the room he gives them and the audience.  In Henry Vi Part 3, this technique is in its infancy, but it is the key to to everything he does for the next twenty years.  

Richard’s DNA

In Henry VI Part 2, York has his share of ambitions, but possesses the political smarts to hold his tongue while developing a plan.  This is the beginning of RIchard’s character. York is more than Richard’s father; he is the template on which Shakespeare develops his first great character.  But Shakespeare adds to that by incorporating traits from other major characters in Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3.  He inherits Margaret’s fierceness, the vanity of Suffolk, Warwick’s sense of loyalty, and the blood lust of Clifford.  But it’s his self-awareness and self analysis that bring all these ingredients to a boil.  The end result, two plays from now, is mighty tasty.

20% is Appropriately Gratuitous

     The play has been criticized, as it was when it was written, for being excessively violent.  Many believed than as now, that such unpleasantness belongs off-stage.  Bloody heads?  Murdering children?  At what point does the honest portrayal of violence become gratuitous?  For Shakespeare, the brutal horrors of war and civil chaos justified brutal honesty.  If it has a point, it’s ok.  If it is the point, it crosses the line.

Petty Complaints:

The Rest of the Play

The poetry remans uneven throughout the play.  The set pieces are wonderful, but the rest remains episodic and often flat. It seems as if Shakespeare worked harder on the parts that interested him and spent the rest of the play writing lackluster battle recreations.  But this is part of the growing process.  One’s best writing reflects one’s greatest interest.

Imagery

     All of creation drops by to tip its hat to the audience. From religious, to mythic, to the animal images suggesting the sinking of men to the level of beasts. The imagery in this play rushes by like subway cars. If a member of the audience misses one image, not to worry: another, more familiar one will come by shortly.

Next: Henry VI, Part 1

Henry VI, Part 2

“Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds where it should guard.” 

     Holinshed and Hall provided Shakespeare with an enormous amount of raw material to work with, but it’s how he put the stories together that make the plays worth studying. He is as much an editor of history as playwright at this early point in his career.

     Shakespeare knew a good story when he found it and he didn’t let timelines or certain facts get in the way.  When Shakespeare wrote Henry VI, Part 2, the War of the Roses was barely a century gone by.  The events, the principals, the slaughter, and resulting social chaos remained firmly in the consciousness of the English people.  But enough time had passed to take chances with the story as long as he didn’t play too loosely with the facts. 

     So, for the sake of drama, he did.  Years of rivalry and scheming among the nobles are compressed to a single scene.  Gloucester was arrested, but not murdered.  The affair between Suffolk and Queen Margaret was speculative at best. Eleanor’s dabbling with the witches really did happen, but some seven years before Margaret’s arrival as Queen.  Jack Cade did lead a failed rebellion against Henry, but he didn’t advocate illiteracy and he didn’t get nearly the laughs as he does in the play.

     With Henry blindly smitten with his new Queen, Shakespeare quickly sets events in motion.  The devastating loss of valuable and hard won lands in France arrives on line 52, and conspiracies ignite 100 lines later.  The wordplay, and possibly Shakespeare’s first pun, makes its debut at Line 122  (“For Suffolk’s duke, may he be suffocate.”)

     The plot proceeds, but does not develop.  One episode follows another, with little cause in one scene leading to an effect in the next.  The scenes illustrate the characters involved, but neither develop the characters nor explain their actions. Yet, the story progresses forward because because an entire nation is at risk.  Onstage and on the page, social chaos makes for compelling drama.   

     Henry isn’t a bad man, just a bad King; a pious, but ineffective leader because he relies on God to do all the ruling, to take care of his and the states’ fortunes.  (Margaret’s comment that Henry would make a better Pope than King is a bit of a joke; Popes of the 14th and 15 Centuries did not lack for regal arrogance in politics, war or other shenanigans.)  But God’s will often requires human action to get things done.  Ambition requires the individual to play God. Henry’s lack of action leads to lesser nobles to act beyond their reach.

    The Queen, Suffolk, and Cardinal Beaufort all want the power, but all seem as ill-equipped as Henry.  Margaret is rash, petty and vain; Suffolk holds the common people in contempt; Beaufort is a blustering coward. 

     Only York has a claim to the throne and the patience of a successful usurper. And he feels compelled to bit his tongue and bide his time in order for his plan to work.

     If there is a hero in this play it is Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.  He holds the King’s well-being (and, therefore the welfare of the State) as his first priority.  He is wise, loyal and genuinely cares about the people.  The feeling is mutual.  If anybody in this play should be King it’s him.  It is his reputation and popularity that stands in the way of the conspirators.

     Shakespeare develops tension in the story by juxtaposing characters and actions.  While Henry waits on God to determine the country’s future, Eleanor conjures up a demon to predict hers.  Peter Thump and Thomas Horner fight a duel that foreshadows the coming civil war.  Like the King, Alexander Iden enjoys the peace of contemplation. Unlike the king, when confronted, he doesn’t wait to defend himself.  And when he learns that it’s Cade the Traitor he’s fighting, he kills him straight away.  If only Henry had the common sense of this common man, the civil war might have been avoided. Prophecies and dreams come true, but they are not the result of God’s Will, or demon’s curses, or even the stars.  They are the result of bad decisions, not the fulfillment of fate.

     Marlowe’s influence on Shakespeare’s early writing is enormous. Members of the Royal Court speak as if they were Tamburlaine impersonators, as stiff and exaggerated as Gloucester’s corpse. They don’t talk to one another, they exchange speeches.  The rhetoric flows, the similes wander, and metaphors waft like tapestries amid all the hot air.  It’s only when speaking in asides that they feel or sound like humans.  Like a novice magician, Shakespeare knows how the tricks work, but lacks the subtlety to make the illusion seem real.

     Jack Cade is Marlovian as well, and the personification of social chaos. He complains about the loss of France, just as the nobles do.  His disdain for law and learning equals Suffolk’s and Beaufort’s disdain for Gloucester.  Cade’s serpentine genealogy echoes York’s concise claim as the legitimate heir.  He mocks Henry's Christian priorities by promising to provide the poor with food and drink (the good stuff, too.) But he is the Marlovian hero writ small, stripped of poetry, pulled off the staged and set in the real world among commoners who get what he says, but see him for what he is.  In Cade, Shakespeare takes Marlowe’s hero and humanizes him.  As a result, Cade is the most fully drawn character in the play. Cartoonish, but human.

Learning Points:

Organize the material into a narrative

     Whether it’s an epic novel or an analysis of how the Marketing Department screwed up the introduction of a company’s newest line of products, get the audience involved early by getting to the point early.  Keep them engaged by providing context that advances the theme.  And if strict chronological order doesn’t do the job, then play with it.

Double Clutch When Shifting Gears

     Without comic relief, the story in Henry VI Part 2 would be unbearably tragic.  But the comedy here is not gratuitous. Each scene either advances or comments of the plot.  Some critics think the Simpcox Miracle of St. Alban’s (Act II, Scene i) is unnecessary.  But it demonstrates more that Gloucester’s judgement and sense of the law.  It shows that Henry’s piousness and naivete are so well known that even the commoners feel they can take advantage of it.  And the next time he visits St. Alban’s, it’s Henry who gets spanked and forced to flee.

Jack Cade as Character Development

     Since many of the main characters are historical figures, their actions and reputations were well known through folklore or the chronicles.  HIstory had decided their characters.  Shakespeare admits as much when Gloucester bemoans:

“And shall these labours and these honours die?

Shall Henry's conquest, Bedford's vigilance,

Your deeds of war and all our counsel die?

O peers of England, shameful is this league!

Fatal this marriage, cancelling your fame,

Blotting your names from books of memory,

Razing the characters of your renown,

Defacing monuments of conquer'd France,

Undoing all, as all had never been!”

     Besides, they were nobles and had to be treated with the respect due them (and to the Master of Revels whose approval was required before a play could be produced.) 

     Jack Cade’s reputation was not an official matter.  To some, Cade was a patriot and reformer.  To others, he was a trouble-making rebel.  In either case he was certainly a commoner, which gave Shakespeare more flexibility in portraying him.  Taking into consideration both views of Cade gives the character more depth.  That his rebellion succeeds (historical fact) raises him above mere comic relief.  Throughout the play, Shakespeare draws parallels, compares and contrasts events in order to develop the plot.  By focussing the same technique on Cade, he begins to learn how to develop a character.

Next: Henry VI, Part 3