Shakesblogging: Henry V

What I love about this play: I hardly know where to begin. I guess I’ll start by saying that it exemplifies a lot of the stuff I love about Shakespeare, especially in the complicated balance between the sordid and glorious faces of war, and between Henry’s admirable and reprehensible qualities. It’s a play that presents multiple viewpoints persuasively and makes room for multiple perceptions of the same event. Most readers, myself included, aren’t really up for dealing with that level of negative capability. Frankly, I always have to struggle to give Henry his props, since my own sympathies are with Pistol and Bardolph, and especially with Michael Williams, my favorite bit-part character in Shakespeare. But he is very, very good at what he does, and I think he honestly believes in justice – “the quittance of desert and merit / According to the weight and worthiness” – and tries to see it done. Also, I defy anyone not to get the shivers at the St. Crispin’s Day speech, and I think it’s heartfelt.

That said, I always get even more shivery at Michael Williams’s challenge to Henry’s entire ethos: “But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, ‘We died at such and such a place’; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.” How do you answer that? The king doesn’t, really – Williams gets a glove full of gold and a pardon for speaking his mind, but the bigger questions linger.

Also, Pistol’s exit at the beginning of Act 5 breaks my heart: the disaffected former soldier who has lost everything that anchors him to society and is still trying to make a go of survival – by cheating, stealing, any way he can.

Favorite moment: Falstaff’s impromptu wake, which is also the last moment the tavern characters are together. You’ve probably gathered by now that I have a soft spot for all of them, but especially for Bardolph (“Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is, either in heaven or in hell”) and Mistress Quickly (“Nay, surely, he’s not in hell, he’s in Arthur’s bosom if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom.”) It’s such a poignant scene, and all the more so because the best way they know how to memorialize Falstaff is by retelling his jests. It’s also the last time they’ll ever see each other.

Shakesblogging: Henry IV, Part 2

What I love about this play: Most people don’t rate Part 2 as high as Part 1, and I have to admit that the first two acts sag a little – although they do have my favorite Prince Hal moment, that conversation with Poins in which he almost owns up to grieving for his father’s sickness, and Poins misses the gravity of what he’s trying to say. The last three are like setting off a string of firecrackers. There’s the “uneasy lies the head” speech, and our first glimpse of the ordinary country folk, and dirty tricks at Gaultree Forest, and Henry’s death scene (during which he drops not one, but two bombshells about that crusade he’s been planning for the last three plays; first, that it is a calculated move to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.” And then, when we’ve scarcely absorbed this seemingly Machiavellian counsel, he reveals that he has always believed he’ll die there, and has been voicing this death wish all along without any of the other characters recognizing it for what it is). And then “I know thee not, old man” – a punch to the gut, no matter how many times I read it or watch it.

This is kind of a diffuse, decentered play – it’s named after a king that we don’t even see until Act 3, and who promptly dies in Act 4. If there’s a hero, I think it has to be Falstaff. I love the way that, after all of his shenanigans in Part 1, he turns out to have his own brand of courage – the courage to jest in the face of aging and sickness and death.

I really like the little interlude between Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, observed by Hal and Poins, who see the absurdity of the relationship but miss its poignancy – “Do not speak like a death’s head, Doll; do not bid me remember mine end.” (Poor Doll. She’s dying of syphilis, which is a horrible way to go despite all the uneasy jokes that the characters make about it, and she sincerely loves Falstaff. I love the way even the bit parts get infused with humanity.)

Favorite moment: The scenes at Justice Shallow’s, with everyone having wine and pippins in the orchard, and Silence getting drunk, and all those glimpses of everyday life – bills to pay, conversation about the price of cattle, reminiscences about old friends. It’s a moment of warmth in an increasingly chilly and impersonal play, and it’s sweet and low-key and a bit tragic, because you know what’s coming, at least for Falstaff. Above all, it’s stable; in spite of all these convulsions in the state, things have not, after all, changed so much for the majority of the English.

Shakesblogging: Henry IV, Part 1

What I love about this play: This installment begins more or less where the previous one left off, with Henry’s resolution “to chase these pagans in those holy fields / Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet / Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d / For our advantage on the bitter cross.” It never happens. Shaky alliances break down and civil war intervenes. Meanwhile, the story opens out: from the slightly claustrophobic world of the nobility we move into the Boar’s Head tavern, where Falstaff does impressions of the king with a pillow on his head, Mistress Quickly gets drafted to act the part of his “tristful queen,” and Hal deposes him unceremoniously.

I think that scene pushes every last one of my Shakespeare buttons: metatheater, kingship as performance, reversals between high and low, the sudden shift in tone from high hilarity to Falstaff’s recognition that he’s pleading for his life and Hal’s chilly “I do, I will.” And then there’s a knock on the door, and Falstaff protests, “Play out the play: I have much to say in the behalf of that Falstaff,” but he never gets the chance. I love that scene so much; there’s the cold edge of foreshadowing, but also so much warmth and wine and laughter in the moment, and it’s a rare glimpse of what these kings must look like to their subjects.

Also, the byplay between the rebels is delicious: Glendower sincerely believes he’s got magical superpowers; Hotspur, who has no patience for this sort of thing, relentlessly undercuts him; Mortimer, the man who would be king, is stuck running interference between the two. (“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.” “Why so can I, or so can any man / But will they come when you do call for them?”) And then Lady Percy and Lady Mortimer come out – two young women, neither of whom is going to keep her husband very long – and Lady Mortimer sings a song in Welsh, which is the only language she knows, and it all turns strangely melancholy and haunting.

Favorite one-liner: (I’m too tired tonight to think of anything except one-liners.)

Worcester: ... I do protest
I have not sought the day of this dislike.
King: You have not sought it! How comes it, then?
Falstaff: Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.

Rebellion is always lying in people’s way in the history plays. Funny how that happens...

Shakesblogging: Richard II

What I love about this play: It opens so many conversations and sets so many threads in motion: what is kingship? Who gets to decide who will be king? What drives history – Providence, human agency, happenstance? What is history good for, anyway? Is there any room for women and commoners in all of this?

The play starts with an abortive trial by combat – which only makes sense, as a means of determining justice, if you believe that Providence takes a direct hand in human affairs. (It’s not clear that either of the combatants actually believes this, although I think King Richard does. I also don’t think the play leaves the slightest ambiguity about whether Richard bears any guilt in Woodstock’s murder. Of course he’s guilty. He wouldn’t be so dead set on stopping the combat if he weren’t.) The king’s word is, for the moment, absolute, save for the one crucial limitation that John of Gaunt voices: “Shorten my days thou canst ... but not lend a morrow.”

So by the end of the play, Richard, a lawful and anointed king, has been deposed and murdered; Henry Bolingbroke is king; and nothing is absolute. The world seems to be completely changed – thrown into chaos, if you read it one way; opened up to new and exciting possibilities, if you’re inclined to believe that kingship should be determined by ability rather than birthright. Except, not. In a lot of bitterly ironic ways, we’re back where we started – a king suffering from blood-guilt, a banishment, a lot of tense alliances that we know are about to fall apart. And Henry’s desire to “make a voyage to the Holy Land / To wash this blood off from my guilty hand” suggests that he is, after all, afraid that Providence will have retribution. (It also suggests a bunch of other stuff as well, of course, if you know everything about Henry’s motives, but he won’t be revealing them for another two plays.)

Favorite moment(s): Richard’s description of Bolingbroke’s “courtship to the common people ... What reverence he did throw away on slaves, / Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles ... Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench.” Even while Richard affects to find this absurd, he’s also implicitly acknowledging that political power is a craft like any other skilled trade and not merely a birthright; I think this is the moment when he realizes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he’s screwed.

I also really like the bit with Aumerle and the Duchess of York in Act 5. It’s a nice little comedic subplot in a play that is otherwise relentlessly tragic, and it offers an alternative set of values to the power politics that shape most of the action: “I pardon him as God shall pardon me.” (This is perhaps the last time mercy and forgiveness will carry the day in the histories, except in isolated corners of the kingdom like Justice Shallow’s Gloucestershire. It’s nice that it works out.)

Shakesblogging: Richard III

What I love about this play: First off, that verbal fencing scene with Lady Anne? Hothothot, if it’s done right. Oh yes, she should know better, but I can’t blame her for yielding in the slightest, because the Richard of Act I is almost impossible to resist. He’s not, as yet, noticeably worse than the rest of the nobles; indeed, he’s got his finger on the pulse of all of their vices, and makes them fodder for his abundant wit. (“Naught to do with Mistress Shore! ... / He that doth naught with her, excepting one / Were best he do it secretly, alone.” “Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so, / That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven, / If heaven will take the present at our hands.”)

And there’s that barbed edge of self-pity that makes me want to make excuses for him, even though I know better: “Upon my life, she finds, though I cannot, / Myself to be a marvelous proper man.”

All in all, it’s a hell of a sexy combination:


Anne: He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come.
Richard: Let him thank me, that holp to send him thither;
For he was fitter for that place than earth.
Anne: And thou unfit for any place but hell.
Richard: Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.
Anne: Some dungeon.
Richard: Your bedchamber.

Much later in the play, Richard matches wits with another woman, in a scene that closely balances this one. By then, of course, most of the audience is no longer rooting for him (and I think that Queen Elizabeth does come off the victor in this exchange; he’s pretty clearly on the verbal defensive as she twists his words and uses them against him, whereas he’s on the offensive with Lady Anne).

And, finally, there’s the wonderful “The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight” speech, in which four plays’ worth of civil wars culminate in Richard’s internal monologue, as all that violence turns inward:

What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain: yet I lie, I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter...

Favorite memory: Falling in love with Richard – dizzyingly, violently, against my better judgment, and in precisely the way Richard wants you to fall in love with him – when I first read the play as a freshman in college. As an older, more dispassionate reader, I can see all the ways he’s playing the audience. He induces us to fall into the same trap as Lady Anne, dazzling us with his wit and apparent candor, playing up his disability and self-loathing when it suits him to make us pity him, making us feel that we understand him when the rest of his world does not. But I kind of miss coming to this play as a naive reader, unable to see him pulling the strings.

Shakesblogging: Henry VI, Part 3

What I love about this play: Part 3 is dark, violent, and chilling; first the Lancastrians, then the Yorkists, kill the head of the opposing family and one of its children. Revenge piles upon revenge; both sides make claims on the audience’s sympathies and then lose them; in a lot of ways, it’s a more morally complex world than the sequel, Richard III, although the two plays are clearly of one piece, and there are lots of touches of foreshadowing. (Particularly of note is Richard of Gloucester’s verdict on Margaret: “Why should she live, to fill the world with words?”) It’s also an increasingly claustrophobic world, as the focus grows narrower and narrower. We don’t see much of the commons in this one, apart from the scene where poor King Henry encounters two of his subjects who emblematize the kingdom as a whole: a father who has unwittingly killed his son, and a son who has killed his father.

This is very much Queen Margaret’s play. I’m not sure she really coheres as a character across all four parts of the tetralogy – she seems more like a collection of feminine archetypes: ingenue, dangerous French adulteress, queen, mother tiger, witch. But she’s a great, tragic character in this installment. She leads armies. She fights for the kingdom her husband has abandoned. She takes bitter, cruel revenge on her enemies, and they butcher her son in front of her in return. She pleads for death, and those pleas are denied, so she curses, and those curses take root.

I also like the fact that the hapless Henry VI – alone of all the characters who surround Richard – calls him on his essential falseness: “What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?” (Pretty nearly everyone will accuse Richard of being a monster by the end of R3; but it is only Henry, in that sharp moment of clarity before his death, who accuses him of being an actor.)

Favorite moment: I’m running out of Henry VI-associated memories, so it’ll have to be a favorite moment: the end of 3.2., when Richard of Gloucester comes into his own. There have been little character touches, lines that are clearly intended to play up the contrast between Richard and his brothers, from the middle of Part 2 onward, but in this 70-line soliloquy he bursts into life – confessing his ambitions, taking the audience into his confidence, promising to put on the performance of a lifetime: “I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor / Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could ... 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?” This is the speech where Richard becomes Richard, and it’s awesome.

Shakesblogging: Henry VI, Part 2

What I love about this play: Pirates! Witches! Popular rebellion! More severed heads than any other play in Shakespeare, including Titus! What’s not to love?

This is probably the cheeriest installment of the first tetralogy, although that isn’t necessarily saying much; Shakespeare’s first cycle of history plays is a story about a world spiraling farther and farther into chaos, and conflicts that are growing more and more insular. The international war of Part 1 has been replaced by feuding factions of English nobles; later, the focus will narrow to a single family torn apart by treason and violence; and finally, at the very end of Richard III, to Richard’s inward war with himself. The bitterest moments are in the future, though; there’s trouble enough in Part 2, but there’s also time, as yet, for the carnival mood of the Jack Cade scenes, and a few moments of slapstick as Gloucester exposes the con man Simpcox, and the combat between Peter and Horner, in which there is lots of drinking and a victorious underdog. (This is also the one installment of the first tetralogy in which the commoners play a major role; like Shakespeare’s later histories, it feels like it’s about England instead of about the nobility.)

And then there’s Suffolk and the pirates! This is the first appearance in Shakespeare of the Plot Device Pirates – that convenient band of buccaneers that shows up whenever the playwright has written himself into a corner. (See also Hamlet and Pericles.) Poor Suffolk just can’t get over the fact that he’s about to “die by vile bezonians,” although in fact the pirates are surprisingly erudite, and socially conscious enough to blame the ambitious nobleman for most of the kingdom’s ills.

Favorite memory: Seeing this live in Stratford, Ontario. They did all three parts (condensed into two plays, but I’m counting it as three on my life list). What I remember most about that production are the Cade scenes – all that riot and energy, and rebels tossing loaves of bread at each other, and you get that the rebellion is a holiday for people who haven’t had many chances at liberty in their lives.

Shakesblogging: Henry VI, Part 1

I must admit that I found it hard to come up with stuff to say about this play, even though I wrote large chunks of my master’s thesis about it. I think it’s essential for setting up the rest of the tetralogy, so I didn’t want to skip it, but it doesn’t grab me as much as the three sequels, in large part because Talbot just doesn’t interest me all that much. That said:

What I love about this play Evil Joan of Arc! Kicking ass and taking names! Yes, she is the villian – and either a cynical manipulator or totally deluded, or possibly both – but she’s strangely compelling. Also, she feeds fiends with her own blood (for this version of Joan is basically a witch), and there’s this gloriously creepy scene when they abandon her and refuse to do her bidding. In desperation, she offers one of her limbs, her body, and finally her soul in exchange for one last French victory. The stage directions tell a grim story in a few words: They walk and speak not ... They hang their heads ... They shake their heads ... They depart.

Immediately after this moment, we also meet Margaret of Anjou, Joan’s spiritual successor. As yet, she’s a minor character and a wide-eyed young pawn in the men’s political games, but there are a few hints of the formidable figure she will become: “To be a queen in bondage is more vile / Than is a slave in base servility.” The ambitious Suffolk falls in love with Margaret and, weirdly, determines to marry her off to the king and seduce the king through her: “Solicit Henry with her wondrous praise ... That when thou comest to kneel at Henry’s feet / Thou mayst bereave him of his wits with wonder.” The play closes with Suffolk’s final, ominous lines: “Margaret shall now be queen and rule the king; / But I will rule both her, the king, and realm.”

On a somewhat random note, I also like the awesomely assonant line: “Why ring not out the bells aloud throughout the town?”

Favorite memory: Um. Finally getting done with my MA thesis?

Courseblogging: random bullets o' catching up

I'm still not dead. Just busy. Did I really intend to write a blog entry for everything we read in the Shakespeare class? Oh well.

-- The Merchant of Venice remains my favorite play to teach, though Titus was threatening to elbow it out of the way for a while. It's just so thorny and knotty, and students always want to argue about it, and the elaborate game of bluffing and entrapment that Antonio and Shylock are playing in 1.3. is so much fun to walk students through. (This is the scene that I used for my teaching demo at Misnomer U. -- it has plenty of drama and tension and gamesmanship to make it immediately compelling, but also lots of subtler language stuff that students don't get until it's pointed out to them, like the significance of the moment when Antonio shifts from "you" to "thou" and the extended wordplay on "kind." And then there are all the broader questions about money and identity and whether Shakespeare means for us to notice that Shylock is a moneylender because Christian Venice has forced the role upon him, or whether he's deliberately erasing that fact. Man, I love that scene.)

-- Conversely, the Henry IV plays are among my favorite bits of Shakespeare to write about, but I don't think I've found my way to a good teaching rhythm yet. We skipped Richard II, which I think was a mistake, and we will not have time to finish off with Merry Wives either. I liked it better in the spring when we read the whole pentalogy, but that takes up half of the semester, and there simply isn't time when you feel obligated to cover tragedy as well. But at least the students in this class really get Falstaff, and think he's hilarious, whereas my students at New SLAC seemed to want to throw him in a river long before Mistress Ford's servants did the job for them.

-- I always feel like I'm tipping my hand too much with the history plays. I do not like Hal. I am aware that I might feel quite differently about Hal if the two major influences on my scholarly life were not Freshman Shakespeare Prof, who has been known to call him a prick, and Graduate Advisor, who is a much gentler and more even-handed sort of person but still a Hal-skeptic. If your first contact with a play is a professor you greatly admire saying, "Hey, get a load of that duck over there!" it's always a wrench to make yourself see a rabbit instead, especially if you are temperamentally inclined toward ducks and don't particularly want to see a rabbit. I keep trying not to tell my students which one to see, but I can't resist pointing out the little hypocrisies, and before I know it, I have pretty much told them what I want them to see. (It doesn't help that I've spent a lot of time pondering small moments in these plays, and I can never help mentioning the results of these ponderings, even though I know objectively that Justice Shallow's servant Davy is not in any way an important character, and it would probably be just as well if I never mentioned him at all.)

-- I look forward to the Obama administration for many reasons, but mostly because it will once again be possible to teach Henry V without anybody comparing the title character to Bush. (N.B.: I have never tried to encourage this comparison. They come to it on their own.)

-- Whoever put Chimes at Midnight up on YouTube in its entirety is AWESOME. I want to marry this person, despite not having a clue about his / her gender.

Woo hoo!

One of the students in my Shakespeare class wants to write her Honors thesis on Henry V! I am soooo excited!

I would, of course, be even happier and more excited if I were going to be around to direct the thesis, but still, it's a good feeling. Made better by the fact that the student in question is very bright, very conservative and Catholic, and, at the beginning of the semester, struck me as a bit of a black-and-white thinker. And a big part of what I'm trying to teach, when I teach Shakespeare in general and the history plays in particular, is the joy of embracing shades of grey.

And she is getting it. The final paper that started off as an attempt to prove that Prince Hal Is Really A Great Guy And An Ideal Monarch-To-Be is turning into a much subtler exploration of the ambiguities in the text, the things that pull for and against that reading, and the reasons why Shakespeare might have wanted to have it both ways. I admit that I did nudge her in this direction, and gave her a copy of the classic Norman Rabkin article on the topic, but I didn't push. She came to it on her own.

And it looks like I will be getting a whole slew of papers about The Merchant of Venice from the other students in the class, and again, I'm really pleased -- it makes me happy that they're seeking out the thorny, knotty, and uncomfortable texts. I wish I hadn't dropped Measure for Measure from my original reading list, because I think some of them would have done a fabulous job with it. Ah well. There will, I hope, be other Shakespeare classes -- at least, I have to trust that there will.

Happy Approximate 444th Birthday to Mr. William Shakespeare

In celebration, I post the most 4-filled passage of Shakespeare I could find:

PRINCE HENRY
Speak, sirs; how was it?

GADSHILL
We four set upon some dozen--

FALSTAFF
Sixteen at least, my lord.

GADSHILL
And bound them.

PETO
No, no, they were not bound.

FALSTAFF
You rogue, they were bound, every man of them; or I am a Jew else, an Ebrew Jew.

GADSHILL
As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men set upon us--

FALSTAFF
And unbound the rest, and then come in the other.

PRINCE HENRY
What, fought you with them all?

FALSTAFF
All! I know not what you call all; but if I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish: if there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature.

PRINCE HENRY
Pray God you have not murdered some of them.

FALSTAFF
Nay, that's past praying for: I have peppered two of them; two I am sure I have paid, two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse. Thou knowest my old ward; here I lay and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me--

PRINCE HENRY
What, four? thou saidst but two even now.

FALSTAFF
Four, Hal; I told thee four.

POINS
Ay, ay, he said four.

FALSTAFF
These four came all a-front, and mainly thrust at me. I made me no more ado but took all their seven points in my target, thus.

PRINCE HENRY
Seven? why, there were but four even now.

FALSTAFF
In buckram?

POINS
Ay, four, in buckram suits.

FALSTAFF
Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.

PRINCE HENRY
Prithee, let him alone; we shall have more anon.

FALSTAFF
Dost thou hear me, Hal?

PRINCE HENRY
Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.

FALSTAFF
Do so, for it is worth the listening to. These nine in buckram that I told thee of--

PRINCE HENRY
So, two more already.

FALSTAFF
Their points being broken,--

POINS
Down fell their hose.

FALSTAFF
Began to give me ground: but I followed me close, came in foot and hand; and with a thought seven of the eleven I paid.

PRINCE HENRY
O monstrous! eleven buckram men grown out of two!

FALSTAFF
But, as the devil would have it, three misbegotten knaves in Kendal green came at my back and let drive at me; for it was so dark, Hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand.

PRINCE HENRY
These lies are like their father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson, obscene, grease tallow-catch,--

FALSTAFF
What, art thou mad? art thou mad? is not the truth the truth?

PRINCE HENRY
Why, how couldst thou know these men in Kendal green, when it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? come, tell us your reason: what sayest thou to this?

POINS
Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.

FALSTAFF
What, upon compulsion? 'Zounds, an I were at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.

PRINCE HENRY
I'll be no longer guilty of this sin; this sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh,--

FALSTAFF
'Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat's tongue, you bull's pizzle, you stock-fish! O for breath to utter what is like thee! you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bowcase; you vile standing-tuck,--

PRINCE HENRY
Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again: and when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this.

POINS
Mark, Jack.

PRINCE HENRY
We two saw you four set on four and bound them, and were masters of their wealth. Mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down. Then did we two set on you four; and, with a word, out-faced you from your prize, and have it; yea, and can show it you here in the house: and, Falstaff, you carried your guts away as nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roared for mercy and still run and roared, as ever I heard bull-calf. What a slave art thou, to hack thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in fight! What trick, what device, what starting-hole, canst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?

POINS
Come, let's hear, Jack; what trick hast thou now?

FALSTAFF
By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear you, my masters: was it for me to kill the heir-apparent? should I turn upon the true prince? why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules: but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter; I was now a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself and thee during my life; I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by the Lord, lads, I am glad you have the money. Hostess, clap to the doors: watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you! What, shall we be merry? shall we have a play extempore?

PRINCE HENRY
Content; and the argument shall be thy running away.

FALSTAFF
Ah, no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me!

post o' random opinions

1) Two-hour freshman comp classes are the worst idea ever. I completely suck at teaching them, but even if I didn't, they would still be a lousy idea. I don't think I have an attention span that long, at least not for freshman comp.

2) Phone interviews after four hours of teaching two-hour freshman comp classes are also a bad idea. And I really wanted that job, too. :(

3) It is April. There should be leaves on the trees already. I COMMAND YOU TO LEAF, DAMMIT.

4) Going to see a Shakespeare play with your students = awesome. Traveling six hours to see a Shakespeare play and assorted other Big City Things with your students = completely exhausting. Grading papers while away for the weekend with your students = SO not happening.

5) It is a really, really good thing that I can teach Henry V from memory. It is also good that I have lots of beer in the house. I think I may start drinking before class by the end of this week. I wish you could get Duck-Rabbit beer in this part of the country, because that would be completely appropriate.

6) If you type "appropirate" by mistake, you have probably already had too much to drink. And an unhealthy fixation on pirates in Renaissance drama.

7) If a student refers to a character named "Mistress Dollhouse" in the proposal for the final Shakespeare paper, or proposes to compare Shakespeare to soap operas, this cannot end well.

on teaching the history plays, and teaching uncertainty

So, I've finally got an opportunity to indulge my Great Scholarly Passion in the classroom and teach a whole tetralogy. (Pentalogy, really, since in my world The Merry Wives of Windsor is an inseparable counterpoint to the others.) It probably goes without saying that my students do not completely share the said Great Scholarly Passion, although some of them are at least willing to play along.

In an attempt to find out why the others were so silent, I asked them all to write down a question (or questions) that they wanted to talk about. Most of the ones that I got from more than one person were the ones I expected: how is everyone related to each other, how historically accurate are the history plays, why is Hotspur such a jerk? One trend kind of threw me. With varying degrees of critical sophistication, students asked: "How do you know who is the bad guy?" "Essentially: Who are the good and who are the bad guys in this play? I really don't like any of them." "Who are we, the audience supposed to sympathize with? At times it appears that Henry IV is the 'bad guy' because he deserted those who helped him to power. At other times, though, it seems like Hotspur is the 'bad guy' merely using the present situation as an excuse to rebel. Who is supposed to be the 'bad guy' here, or are we even meant to draw distinct lines between the 'good' and the 'bad' guys?"

To which my first instinct, of course, was to say "Dudes, this is Shakespeare! Mr. Negative Capability himself! The whole point is that there isn't a bad guy!" I think I ended up saying something less abrasive, to the effect that Shakespeare isn't going to tell you: this is a group of plays that grabs you by the throat and asks you what your values are.

And that happens to be why I love the histories; though I can, of course, see why students who were raised on high-stakes testing and trained to look for certainties find this sort of thing frustrating. Another student claimed not to have any questions, but asked for "a more lecture based class, maybe with powerpoints ... I think that would show more what is expected of us to be known." And yeah, I wanted to say, "Dude, this is Shakespeare!" to that, too, but I think I do owe it to her to take her frustration seriously, even if all I can do is explain why I don't think it is appropriate to teach literature via PowerPoint, and why I'm expecting them to learn skills rather than a specific body of facts. And one of those skills -- one that comes hard, I think, for most undergraduates -- is learning to embrace ambiguity and nuance.

I'm not sure how one teaches this, save by modeling, and I wish I knew how to be the sort of model my grad advisor was. I found my way to Advisor in my second year of grad school, not because I was particularly interested in his sub-sub-field (I'm not) or because his name had cachet (I didn't realize that it did until quite late in the game, when we were at a conference together and I suddenly discovered that he had groupies), but because he taught a terrific seminar on the history plays. I realized halfway through a class that I'd only taken because it filled a gap in my Shakespeare knowledge that I loved this stuff -- it was twisty and complicated and subtle, and Advisor is the sort of person who knows instinctively when not to push an interpretation, when to stand back and let his students tease out the subtleties for themselves. But at the same time, he was damned good at asking the right questions at just the right moment, pointing out the nuances the students might not have noticed. I don't have those instincts yet. Maybe I never will; one has to be, I think, a great listener as well as a great scholar. But I think I want to try.

September 19th

Ahem. :: clears throat ::

Pool! Sir Pool! lord!
Ay, kennel, puddle, sink; whose filth and dirt
Troubles the silver spring where England drinks.
Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth
For swallowing the treasure of the realm:
Thy lips that kiss'd the queen shall sweep the ground;
And thou that smiledst at good Duke Humphrey's death,
Against the senseless winds shalt grin in vain,
Who in contempt shall hiss at thee again:
And wedded be thou to the hags of hell,
For daring to affy a mighty lord
Unto the daughter of a worthless king,
Having neither subject, wealth, nor diadem.
By devilish policy art thou grown great,
And, like ambitious Sylla, overgorged
With gobbets of thy mother's bleeding heart.
By thee Anjou and Maine were sold to France,
The false revolting Normans thorough thee
Disdain to call us lord, and Picardy
Hath slain their governors, surprised our forts,
And sent the ragged soldiers wounded home.
The princely Warwick, and the Nevils all,
Whose dreadful swords were never drawn in vain,
As hating thee, are rising up in arms:
And now the house of York, thrust from the crown
By shameful murder of a guiltless king
And lofty proud encroaching tyranny,
Burns with revenging fire; whose hopeful colours
Advance our half-faced sun, striving to shine,
Under the which is writ 'Invitis nubibus.'
The commons here in Kent are up in arms:
And, to conclude, reproach and beggary
Is crept into the palace of our king.
And all by thee. Away! convey him hence.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, y'all!

Summer reading: The Downfall and The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, by Anthony Munday

First in a series of posts about Stuff I'm Reading. This is mostly for me, so I have a place to store my notes that won't be lost if my laptop crashes, but feel free to read along if you have any interest in oddball plays about Robin Hood and King John.

These are very weird plays, even by Ren drama standards, which is saying a lot (it always blows my mind that we've gotten so used to Hamlet that we think it's in any way normal), and unfortunately, they aren't very good plays either. (Even the editor, John Carney Meagher, can't resist being snarky at Munday's expense in his intro and notes. This was probably the most enjoyable aspect of reading the plays, and I want to have a drink with Meagher. But anyway.)

Plot summary for The Downfall: Robert, earl of Huntington, is betrayed by his steward Warman to his evil uncle the Prior of York. Robert is in love with a girl named Marian, whose name mysteriously changes to Matilda fairly early on, then back to Marian, then back to Matilda, since Munday is conflating a couple of different traditions. Prince John, who is usurping the kingdom while his brother is off on crusade, also lusts after Marian / Matilda, and his mother, Queen Eleanor, lusts after Robert. The upshot of all this is that Warman becomes Sheriff of Nottingham and Robert becomes an outlaw, and starts calling himself Robin Hood. Marian / Matilda plans to run off with him; the queen pretends to help her, and suggests that they change clothes. Secretly, the queen plans that Robin will take her for Marian / Matilda and run away with her instead. (N.B. Historically, Eleanor of Aquitaine would have been getting on for seventy, but we're pretending that the only way to tell the difference between a young woman and an old woman is by the clothes.) Robin and Marian / Matilda foil this plot and hang out in the greenwood, where they are joined by Much the miller's son, Little John, Scarlet and Scathlocke, a girl named Jinny, and, eventually, Friar Tuck (who starts off as a bad guy, and is, bizarrely, played by John Skelton. Well, not literally played by John Skelton, since he was long dead by 1597, but played by an actor playing John Skelton playing Friar Tuck. As a consequence, Friar Tuck keeps falling out of character and breaking into skeltonics because he just can't help himself -- "Master, in briefe, there is a theefe, that seekes your griefe, God send reliefe, to you in neede: for a foule deede, if not with speede, you take good heede, there is decreede") Friar Tuck goes into the greenwood to betray Robin Hood and becomes a good guy; Warman loses his job as sheriff and goes into the greenwood to hang himself and becomes a good guy. Prince John hears that his brother is soon to return and that he killed a lion in Austria by plunging his hand down its throat and pulling its heart out, and wisely concludes that if Richard is that much of a badass he needs to stop usurping the throne, like, right now. John flees into the greenwood and becomes a good guy, but unfortunately it doesn't take. Richard returns to England and restores Robin to his lands.

Plot summary for The Death: Richard and John and the former outlaws go hunting. The evil Prior and Sir Doncaster plot to kill Robin; they try to tempt Warman to play along, but he refuses to play along, so they stab him and make it look like a suicide. The Prior gives Robin a drink that turns out to be poison; he dies after 300+ lines of making peace among former enemies, disposing of his property, etc. In an extended dumbshow, King Richard dies, Prince John becomes king and dispatches his nephew Arthur, and woos Marian / Matilda, who is having none of it. Matilda's father, Fitzwater, calls upon his relatives, who all seem to be named Bruse, to defend her. (Meagher devotes an extended, and hilarious, footnote to working out whether there are actually two or three Bruses in this scene.) Civil war ensues. The king takes Lady Bruse and her young son captive and starves them to death. Hughbert, in the meantime, has smuggled Matilda away to Dunmow Abbey, where a monk and the abbess try to persuade her to sleep with the king. When she refuses, the king's assassin, Brand, steps forward and tells her he's come to poison her. (This is perhaps not the most effective way to go about it if you actually want to poison somebody, but Matilda wants to die anyway, so she drinks the poison willingly.) Brand climbs a tree to hang himself, but falls to his death before he can complete the deed. In a gloriously disgusting scene, Young Bruse displays the bodies of his mother and young brother for all to see, explaining that Lady Bruse's teeth and chin are bloody from chewing her own flesh out, her hands are bloody from offering it to her child to eat, but the child's teeth are not bloody "Which is an argument the boy would not / Once stir his lips, to touch that bloudy foode ... But as it seem'd (for see, his prettie / Palme is bloody too) he cast it on the ground." Matilda's body is brought out on a bier, and King John views it and repents of his crimes. There is some talk about whether the lords should follow King Lewis of France, who is about to invade, since John hasn't worked out so well, but the Queen points out that Lewis might turn out to be even worse, so Bruse and the others make their peace with John. There is a brief epilogue: "Thus is Matildaes story showne in act / And rough heawen out by an uncunning hand: / Being of the most materiall points compackt / That with the certainst state of truth doe stand." (Meagher's note on the final line: "!")

My thoughts: Probably the most interesting parts are the metatheatrical bits -- the induction with Skelton, and a later scene where Skelton and Sir John Eltam talk about how the play defeats the audience's expectations for a story about Robin Hood ("Me thinks I see no jeasts of Robin Hoode / No merry Morices of Friar Tuck, / No pleasant skippings up and downe the wodde / No hunting songs, no coursing of the Bucke.") Skelton argues that "merry jeasts ... have bene showne before" and the time is ripe for a more tragic take on the same material. The other conspicuously absent feature, at least to my mind, is actual outlawry -- there's none of this robbing-from-the-rich business here. (I suspect this may be part of why I'm frustrated with these plays -- it feels like there are lots of places where Munday could be grappling head-on with all kinds of interesting questions about law and justice and disobedience, but he always seems to skirt them -- as at the end of the second play, when the upshot is "Well, we don't know King Lewis, and he might be worse, and besides, he's French.")

Lots of stuff about temptation in the second play, with Warman and later Matilda -- the scenes parallel each other, and there are some definite morality-play echoes in both. Matilda does seem to be wavering a little at one point; as Meagher notes, she speaks of her potential loss of chastity in the future rather than the conditional. Matilda's scene with Brand is easily one of the better bits; she pulls it off with dignity and a touch of humor. ("Farewell goodfellowe, now thy medicine works / And with the labour, I am forc't to rest") Webster seems to have been echoing this scene, at least subconsciously, in The Duchess of Malfi. ("Thou art the last poore alms-man I shall see. / Come, come, dispatch: what weapon death weare, / When he assailes mee? Is it knife or sworde? / A strangling cord, or sodaine flaming fire?")