King John

"O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!  Then with a passion would I shake the world..."

 Shakespeare returns to history plays with “King John,” a minor work which offers major insight into Shakespeare’s growth as a writer.  As usual, he tinkers with form and structure, arranging time and events to fit his story.  But while earlier history

plays concerned themselves with the cost of social chaos, here he explores the cause and cost of personal chaos.  The grey areas of politics and personal responsibility provide the action of the play. There are no subplots to offer contrast or counterpoint to his theme.  Instead, he makes one major point and, along the way, creates his first original character.

In contemporary terms, “Commodity” refers to goods and service bought and sold for personal gain.  The commodities bought and sold here are Honor, Loyalty and the Law. None, not royally purple or Cardinal red, stand immune to commodity. King John pillages the Church to fund his campaigns, and, then submits to it in order to keep the crown. Pandolf incites war (just as John incites Hubert to murder Arthur), but can’t control Lewis once he is shown his path to the English throne. Lords see what they want before they know what is.  When Pembroke and Salisbury discover Arthur’s dead body, they quickly conclude that Hubert murdered him at John’s behest. Elinor and Constance, the powers behind those who would be king, each have self-interest at heart in arguing the point of legitimacy, though Constance probably fails to realize the reason the French are willing to support her claim. Observation needs proof, but “commodity” determines how they see things. 

Seemingly absent in the play is the presence of commoners in minor roles, a technique often used for comic effect.  But Shakespeare has made a point throughout the early works of taking minor characters from one play and adding layers to create more fully developed roles in later plays.  In “King John,” he promotes them to major characters in the roles of the Bastard and Hubert.  

Partially royal by blood, raised in the gentry (but a bastard nonetheless) Richard Falconbridge straddles all ranks.  Fiercely loyal, quick with both wit and sword, he possesses enough self-awareness to observe and learn.  His education is not only how his character develops, but also the plays message: watch and learn.

Most importantly, his language is the language of the common Englishman, acting and commenting on the action.  Richard I addressed the audience, but did so as royalty.  To the audience, the Bastard is one of them.  Anyone who’s ever daydreamed can relate to the Bastard’s reaction to being knighted (“Well, I can make any Joan a lady”), how he imagines he will be treated, and how he will treat others.  

As anxious as the Bastard often is to pick or provoke a fight, Hubert prefers to avoid them.  He can admire and appreciate battlefield exploits, but withholds his loyalty until events force him to make a choice.  Once he does commit to King John, he is forced to choose between supporting a cause and committing murder for it.   

Between them, the Bastard and Hubert represent two sides of the English citizenry, those who stand to gain little but lose so much in the event of civil war.  The Bastard defends John without question, urging him to act like a King, lead like a King, and fight like a King. He is determined to control events.  Hubert lacks any political commitments. He is loyal to whoever wears the crown.  Because of his lack of commitment, events control him and his spends and he spends the latter part of the play defending his own personal honor and much as his country.  Shakespeare, as always, doesn’t take sides between to two paths chosen.  But he makes a point of giving the Bastard the last word.

Learning Notes:

Sometimes, the most important notes are the ones you don’t play:

One of Shakespeare’s most effective pieces of writing in the play comes at the end of Act III, Scene 2.  King John take Hubert aside to thank him for his loyalty.  But in that, “Thank You,” there is a hidden request.  “I had a thing to say, but let it go,” he says.  Is there a better way to get a person’s attention that to hold off telling him something?  To lure the listener into parsing the speaker’s words for clues?  John sprinkles them throughout the speech, candy colored hints, only to offer again, “I had a thing to say, but I will fit it for with some better time.”  Leading Hubert to John’s true wishes, Shakespeare takes a single line of verse, stretching a taut over five lines of dialog:

King John: Death.

Hubert:                     My lord.

King John:                                A Grave.

Hubert:                                                        He shall not live.

All of the conflict is expressed in silence.  There is enough space there, whether on the page or on the stage, to let the reader/audience see what in the minds and hearts of John and Hubert.  And in their own, as well.

Women and Children Second:

For the most part, most Shakespeare scholars believe that Constance’s character has her roots in Margaret (from the Henry VI plays) due her rantings and hysterics.  They believe this, for the most part, because most Shakespeare scholars are men.  In fact, like Margaret, it is Elinor who is a warrior.  It is Elinor, like Margaret, who manipulates her King. And it is Elinor who is referred to as an “Ait.”  Constance may not always be in control of her emotions, but at least she has them.  Her pain is real, and in learning how to express that pain, Shakespeare is getting closer to portraying women as more than  objects in the duller minds of men.  

He also does a better job of portraying children.  Arthur is an innocent pawn in this play, who like Henry VI, would prefer to be a shepherd. His reaction to his position is both understandable and believable, as are his entreaties to Hubert and his fatal attempt to escape the prison.   Arthur is still as precocious as one might expect from royal bloodlines, but gone is the Latin spouting of young Rutland.

Marlowe’s Ghost:

Christopher Marlowe didn’t invent blank verse, but he did raise it to a state of grand vigor.  Characters, such as Tamberlaine, Faust, and Barabas dominate his most famous plays with bombast; they are humans portrayed as mythic heroes who have every intention of raising their status to deity.  To be fair, his later plays show Marlowe was quite capable of developing more nuanced characters.  He died in 1593;  "King John" was written about two years later.

Still under Marlowe’s influence, vigorous declamations by the nobles are contrasted by the Bastard’s observations and Constance’s emotional fluctuations. Marlowe grandly announces each players cards.  Shakespeare shows how each player plans to play them.

Yet there is something else of Marlowe that lingers in this play.  The feistiness and wit of the Bastard (why that name, one wonders) is typical of what we know about Christopher Marlowe. Like Falconbridge he was raised in the gentry, hob-nobbed with royalty, and was generally thought to be quite the bastard.  The politics of personal interest Falconbridge observes is exactly the kind of shenanigans Marlowe would have witnessed first hand in his service to the Queen.  And the repeated taunts “And hang a calfskin on those recreant limbs” is exactly the kind of insult one should avoid repeating once too often at, say, a reckoning.

Next: Richard II

Love's Labour Lost

Ovidius Naso was the man.

In late 1592, the plague coughed and wafted it way across London, killing thousands and closing the theaters.  Shakespeare used this unplanned break from play writing to work on his lyric poetry, specifically “Venus and Adonis” and some early sonnets.  The experience clearly liberated his approach to dialogue and it runs havoc throughout his next play, “Love’s Labour Lost.”

It is an eruption of language and ideas. The language varies from prose to proverbs,  couplets, sonnets and songs, and more puns and word play than most critics can tolerate. The story is about language as a disguise, presented with the precise choreography of a dance recital. He explores the depth of meaning of words and how they are used; the reality of love vs the romance of falling in love; and the differences between how men and women think. He even sneaks in a sly plug (and joke) for “The Taming of the Shrew ,” ( “... praise we may afford to any lady that subdues a lord.”)

To see how far Shakespeare has come in terms of language and lyricism, consider these two similar speeches:

“Marry, by these special marks: first, you have
 learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms,
 like a malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a
 robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had
 the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had
 lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had
 buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes
 diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to
 speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were
 wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you
 walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you
 fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you
 looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you
 are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look
 on you, I can hardly think you my master.”

--Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II Scene 1

“No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at
the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour
it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and
sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you
swallowed love with singing love, sometime through
the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling
love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of
your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly
doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in
your pocket like a man after the old painting; and
keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.
These are complements, these are humours; these
betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without
these; and make them men of note—do you note
me?—that most are affected to these.”

--Love’s Labour Lost, Act III scene 1

Both passages describe men in love.  But the speech from “Two Gentlemen,” while funny, merely lists a series of observations.  One can easily imagine the actor milking laughs from the audience with exaggerated poses and preening.  The second passage, though prose, contains a good deal of interior rhymes and alliteration. Moth’s speech paints a single, complete portrait. 

So great is the explosion of language and ideas that it leaves little room for plot. In Navarre, the King and his posse seek eternal life through fame, while their hormones argue for keeping the species alive. The idea of monastic isolation as a means of achievement are still with us, whether it’s boys night out, a football teams training away from home, or the male dominated corporate retreat.  But all stand directly opposed to human nature and are therefor doomed to failure. 

Most of the action in the play takes place in the woods, in the natural world, away from the courts and many differing voices contribute to the rise and fall of action.  The difference in tone and quality of language creates a musical fabric, and the movement of the players, pairing off and separating, complete the delicate dance.

So what is it about certain men that makes unrequited love so attractive?  Mostly, it’s the absence of commitment, the actual doing of things.  Initially, they talk about scholarly pursuits, but never get past making plans.  In love matters, they take the same tack.  They flirt, they fail.  They write charming but artificial sonnets designed to impress themselves.  They hide behind gifts and masks.  The take games way too seriously.  Not much has changed in 400 years.

The women see such games for what they are, a well intended illusion not to be mistaken for matters of genuine concern.  For all the verbal pyrotechnics, when Marcade announces that the Princess’s father is dead, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Death lurks in the shadows of this play from the very beginning. The King of Navarre and his posse plot to cheat death through fame.  The King of France is acknowledged sick and bedridden.  Katherine’s sister reportedly dies from melancholy. It was always there, so they never saw it coming.

The beautiful songs of Spring and Winter bring the play to an end on the sober realization that neither love nor life is a game, and both too fleeting to be treated lightly.

Learning Points

While many of the characters are based on stock figures from Commedia dell'Arte, Shakespeare takes great care (and delight) in giving most of them particular manners of speech.  And each pattern offers clues on how not to write.

The King of Nevarre loves language, but is limited by the formality and diplomatic vagueness required by his office.  Likewise, hiding behind a voice of assumed authority only builds electrified barriers between ideas and the people who need to hear them. Writing in templates and shop talk dances around the specifics needed to make a point.   

Birowne is quick-witted and agile of mind, but only in the shallowest way possible.   He goes for the easy joke instead of making a valid point. Even his self depreciation is backlit by vanity. Richard III turned others’ words equally well, but did so with a purpose.  Birowne’s wit is aimed primarily at entertaining himself first, making himself look good second, and if others aren’t impressed what’s the matter with them third.

Armando uses language the way Justin Bieber drives a Ferrari, reveling in and careening through a cacophony he can’t control.  The point of developing a large vocabulary is to have the precise word at hand when you need it.  But you can’t build a solid foundation by laying capstones next to bricks, or have statues supporting turrets.  That would be writing in baroquen syntax.

Holofernes is a technical writer so precise, he’s incomprehensible.  Obsessed with rules and word roots, he represents the temptation to get so lost in accurate and proper word choice that he has nothing original to say.  He is the enemy of the kind of innovation that keeps a language alive.

Parallels: Shakespeare intricately weaves together the relationships among characters in “Love’s Labour Lost.”  The King and the Princess and their respective courts pair off nicely, but it’s the parallels among secondary characters that provide Shakespeare with enough room to explore his themes and ideas from a variety of directions. Armando and Holofernes each love language too well, but in opposite directions. Moth and Nathaniel the Curate are both subservient to their masters, but in very different ways.  And Boyet, the aging flirt, is very much the man Berowne is doomed to become if he doesn’t learn his lesson.

Character Development, in absentia:  The audience forms an image of Armando long before he reaches the stage. First, they hear the King, Berowne and the others talk about him. Then they get a taste of his written style.  By the time he arrives, expectations are high and Armando in person exceeds those expectations.

Be Kind to Pendants and Braggarts Day:  Even when he pokes fun at a character, Shakespeare usually does so with  a padded stick.  It’s easy to treat characters such as Holofernes and Armando with ridicule. A generation before Shakespeare, it was traditional.  But by allowing them a sense of dignity at the end of the play, he gives them a reprieve of humanity which the other male characters never fully achieve. 

Linkage

What Makes Fiction Good? It's Mostly Voice
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/06/what-makes-fiction-good-its-mostly-the-voice/276742/

There's No Such Thing as Good Writing
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-good-writing-craig-novas-radical-revising-process/276754/

 Movie Alert: Much Ado About Nothing
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2013/06/joss_whedon_s_much_ado_about_nothing_reviewed.html

Next: King John

The Taming of the Shrew

   “It is a kind of history.” 

Were it a better written play, “The Taming of the Shrew” might qualify as Shakespeare’s most controversial.  Even today, no one seems quite sure what to make of it.  W.H. Auden called the play “a failure.” George Bernard Shaw found it “embarrassing.”  Others scholars see it as a sly parody of  the social mores and patriarchy of Elizabethan England. This feminist/anti-feminist debate is not new. In 1611, John Fletcher, who collaborated with Shakespeare on “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” wrote a reply of sorts called “The Woman’s Prize, or the Tamer Tamed,” in which a widowed Petruchio remarries and has the training tables turned on him by his new wife. Every generation, it seems, get the “Shrew” it deserves.

But, aside from obligatory Tudor history, Shakespeare doesn’t take sides.  He observes human behavior and ask questions, but he doesn’t preach or force answers on the reader.  Instead he shows how people act, how they think, and lets the reader come to his own conclusions. “The Taming of the Shrew” is where he starts to more fully develop this idea.

Here, he wants us to view things from a distance. First, he sets the play-within-a-play in Italy. (Nope, no commentary on English social values here. Move along, move along.) Secondly, by way of the Induction, centering on a drunken commoner named Christopher Sly.  The Induction contains some of the best writing in the play.  It also introduces the major theme of the play: how people perceive themselves and are perceived by others.  But it also creates perspective. By the time Sly makes his final appearance at the end of Act I, Scene 1, the reader/audience is watching Sly watch Luncento and Tranio, who are watching Baptista and company explain the gist of the play. That three subtle steps back from where the play began.

Notice, too, that almost every character in the play pretends to be some one else in order to attain his/her goals. Petruchio plays tamer to peal away Kate’s shrewish exterior. Lucentio and Hortensio pretend to be teachers to gain access to Bianca, who acts the ideal sweet young thing. Senor Baptista is more deal-maker than father. Even a total stranger joins in to impersonate Lucentio’s father.

One of the under-mentioned sources for “The Taming of the Shrew” is Shakespeare’s own “The Comedy of Errors.”  Petruchio and Kate are very much a younger, more passionate version of Antipholus of Ephesus and his wife, Adriana.  The comedy of misidentification in “Errors” (Act III, Scene 1 and Act V, Scene 1) are re-written as comedy of assumed identity in “Shrew” (Act V, Scene 1.)

As for Kate’s notorious monologue, consider this from Luciana in “The Comedy of Errors:”

“If you did wed my sister for her wealth,

Then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness:

Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;

Muffle your false love with some show of blindness:

Let not my sister read it in your eye;

Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator;

Look sweet, be fair, become disloyalty;

Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger;

Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;

Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;

Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted?”

Compare that to Kate’s:

“Such duty as the subject owes the prince

Even such a woman oweth to her husband;

And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel

And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

I am ashamed that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace;

Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,

When they are bound to serve, love and obey.

Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions and our hearts

Should well agree with our external parts?”

Luciana’s advice calls for blatant, if harmless, deceit. Kate’s is subtly the same, because she’s now in on the joke. Having married for courtly love and/or money, the others are in for taming sessions of their own.  In “The Taming of the Shrew,” Shakespeare’s view of the battle between the sexes involves far more espionage than open warfare.

Learning Points

Character Development: When Sly buys into being a Lord and begins to speak in verse, his language remains in character.  He might wonder if he’s dreaming, but he still wants a small pot of ale and refers to his wife as “madam lady.” The role of Sly would have been played by the company “clown,” who, typically, played a stock comic persona and expanded his part with bawdy ad libs.  Yet, Sly is skillfully drawn and demonstrates Shakespeare’s continuing development of secondary  characters.

As Petruchio can be seen as a reworking of Antipholus of Ephesus, Lucentio is a reworking of Valentine from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” Like Valentine, Lucentio is freshly arrived to better his mind and manners. Like Valentine, he quickly falls in love and hatches a plan to elope with his beloved.  Unlike Valentine, he discovers that courtly love has consequences beyond the wedding vows.  While Valentine-- a lead role in that play-- is a sketchily drawn, well-intentioned dope, Lucentio is given much more to do in “Shrew.”  We get to see him woo and win Bianca. His sparring with Hortensio is better played than Valentine’s exchange of insults with Thurio.  And his final comeuppance, after raising the bet from 20 to 100 crowns, show that Petruchio’s methods trump both courtly love and marrying for money.

Details, Details:  “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” was also set in Italy and is notable for being as authentically Italian as a basket of Fish and Chips.  In “The Taming of the Shrew,” Shakespeare gets his geography straight and adds authentic details such as when Gremio describes the appointments of his house (Act II, Scene 1, 366-376.)  How Shakespeare got the particulars of “Turkey cushions bossed with pearls” is irrelevant. What matters is that, even in this farce, Shakespeare wanted the setting to more closely resemble reality.  The action of the the play is farcical, but Shakespeare’s interest in the unity of character and setting  are moving more and more toward the real world.

Linkage: How one reacts to “The Taming of the Shrew” depends on how one reads it. Here are links to three very different versions of Petruchio wooing Katerina in Act II, Scene 1. The go from dark, to comic, to just plain silly.

The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZDzDoR4ICs

American Conservatory Theater, 1976

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwXBmA-kzzE

Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepard (Yep, Moonlighting.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV9hg-TGO0E&list=PLQSOvhGnkM5XrcyIIHPLv-OtEPas-zjqp

Next: Love's Labor Lost

Titus Andronicus

“Now is a time to storm. Why art thou still?”  Act III, Scene 1

     Sex and violence as entertainment was as popular in the 1590’s as they are today. So when the English theaters re-opened after plague swept though London in 1593, it made proper business sense to offer whatever would bring in the largest crowds possible. Many companies responded by providing revenge plays , old and new, for as long as the public would buy tickets for them. 

     They bought a lot of tickets.

     Thus, Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s contribution and comment on the genre. The Reduced Shakespeare Company refers to “Titus” as “Shakespeare’s brief Tarentino period.”   The result was one of the most popular plays of the 1590’s, one that consistently drew large crowds for two decades and was the first of Shakespeare’s play to be published.

     So why do scholars and critics revile this play?  Because reading “Titus Andronicus”  as a serious tragedy misses the point. It’s not a hard rule, but tragedies seldom include giant vaginas swallowing men to their doom in the second act.  And lines such as:

A goodly lady, trust me; of the hue

That I would choose, were I to choose anew.

can’t be taken seriously because they weren’t intended to be taken seriously.

     Titus Andronicus is a throw away, a sort of Gruesome’s Greatest Hits; it’s a parody of the revenge plays and the people who wrote them.  The reference to Tarentino may get a contemporary laugh, but the more accurate comparison is to the  “Scary Movie” series.  Red flags scream sources, from Aesop and the Bible; from Seneca to Titus Livius (Livy), and Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.”  Also cited are Plutarch, Chaucher, George Peele, Marlowe’s “Jew of Malta” and Kyd’s “Spanish Tragedy,”  along with various myths, anecdotes and wive’s tales.  Not to mention references to “Henry VI, Part 3” “Richard III,” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

      But these are not sources, so much as reference points, points that audiences of the 1590’s readily recognize and appreciated.  It’s Shakespeare being playful and experimenting with language, stagecraft, and genre. It succeeds as parody by exaggerating what audiences were already familiar with, and fails because parody, by its nature, does not age well.

     Compared to his earlier attempt at parody (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)  “Titus” is better organized, more accessible and much more effective.  It’s not a great play, but it’s better than scholars give it credit for.   

     “Honor,” “Virtue,” and “Justice” are mentioned repeatedly throughout the play-- “honor” is mentioned 34 times in the first act alone-- and Shakespeare devotes the first three acts to explore how these honorable virtues are perverted in order to justify revenge.

     Act One explores the justification of revenge in the name of honor and, for all the formal declamations, the answer is hypocrisy. One minute, Titus bids his latest departed son to join his dead brothers and:

 “There greet in silence as the dead are wont,

And sleep in peace,...”

And the very next Lucious demands that Tamora’s son be sacrificed to appease the silent souls of his brothers. It’s revenge justified by religion. When Titus kills Mutius, another of his sons, it’s in the name of Roman law. Titus won’t allow Mutius to be entombed with his other, more nobly slain sons, because he died in a brawl.  By his own hand.  He eventually relents, but adds:

“Well, Bury him, and bury me the next.”

Titus is no only a hypocrite, but a bit of a Jewish mom.

     In Act Two,  human “Virtue” is reduced to lust.  From Aaron’s wonton desires of the flesh and mischief, to the rape of Lavinia by Demetrius and Chiron, and several references to cuckoldry Shakespeare shows men at their penis-driven worst.  Lavinia is never really a character, but an object, prey for the hunters who speak of her in terms of love, but view her as sport. Can one blame the man-eating vagina?

     Justice, in the form of Judges and Senators, takes the stage at the beginning of Act Three and quickly, silently leaves. It is as blind, deaf, and mute as the gods.  After dedicating his life to the defense of Rome, and losing twenty-one sons to that cause, Titus is left to plead to stones for justice.  Traditionally, the third act culminates in the first climax of the play.  When Aaron tricks him into cutting off his hand to save his sons, Titus readily believes that taking revenge on himself will result in justice.  When he discovers the truth, Titus spends the rest of the play in feigned madness.  He will plead to the gods, conspire against Rome, seek closure through pie making, and slay his daughter. But the delusion that revenge achieves justice is his true madness.

Learning Points:

Turning Point: In traditional tragedy, the hero is a victim of his actions, yet Shakespeare  makes Titus a victim of his own rationale.  He’s a victim not of a character flaw, but a flaw of irrational thinking.  His rhetoric-- the argument that justifies his acton-- denies his humanity.  Titus Andronicus marks a huge change in Shakespeare’s understanding of drama.  He’s no longer interested in the demands of morality plays nor the traditions of tragedy.  From this point on, his interest is in the hows and whys of personal action and thought.    

Character Development: That characters don’t change is a common complaint about “Titus Andronicus”, but possibly a point as well.  Only Young Lucious changes and it’s to learn revenge from his elders.  Had Aaron lived to raise his son, God knows how that child would have turned out. Revenge perverts justice, it’s man playing God.

180 Degrees of Separation: Whatever’s popular, run away from it.  Conventional wisdom is 100% conventional and 0% wisdom.  Your best bet is to explore the opposite direction.

Next: The Taming of the Shrew