Friday 26 September 2014

Women: can't live with 'em, can't terrorise them into submissi-- oh, wait.

Welcome to The Taming of the Shrew, or, Vintage Sexism Is So Hot Right Now.

This play is unusual in that it starts with an induction, or an introductory framing narrative that in this case doesn't resolve at the end of the play - perhaps, a play within a pl-. Christopher Sly, notorious drunkard, gets kicked out of a pub and passes out on a street, where he is discovered, lying in his own piss and puke, by a really rich guy. Let's play a joke! says the really rich guy. When the pisshead wakes up, everyone pretend he is actually a lord who is emerging from a period of amnesia. GREAT IDEA says everyone WE GOT THIS.



Sly wakes up, hungover and disgruntled, and at first is confused as to why servants are suddenly offering him music, fancy beer, a posh couch to shag on, hawks to hawk with, nudie pics, poncy food and the like. Sly changes his tune when he realises he has a wife! (Wife is actually another guy in drag.) Enlivened by the prospect of getting frisky after an all-you-can-eat buffet, Sly is dead keen when the really rich guy - disguised as an attendant - invites him to watch a play... the very play we are about to see. Welcome to the Matrix.

This certainly sets up some of the key themes of the play - social mobility as raucous situational comedy, the issue of marriage, impersonation and fun with disguises, the things one will put up with to get laid - but it's not really carried through the rest of the play and flops around like an extra limb.

So, to the actual thing - and for your benefit I have offered you a bit of latitude in how you read this [hilarious comedy / sexist farce], for The Taming of the Shrew is a contentious play for the modern reader and there have been many attempts to modernise (and rehabilitate) it. Make up your own mind!



This play, like a good number of Shakespeare's oeuvre, opens with some unrequited boy-->girl action: Lucentio, a [really cool guy / dudebro], is trying to [woo / bone] some poor unsuspecting chick.  In this case the chick is Bianca, who has done nothing to deserve this attention - and the attention of some other [really cool guys / dudebros] - but be quiet, mild-mannered, moderately pretty and alive. His clever servant, Tranio, totally approves.

Roadblock: while Bianca would hypothetically like to get married one day, her older sister, Katherine, is a [total bitch / headstrong clever frustrated woman who despairs of all the idiots around her and is in no way okay with being married off to the nearest tool just to suit everyone else], and their father Baptista has decreed that Bianca can't get hitched until Katherine has been [wedded / offloaded, most likely against her will, but hey - comedy!]. One of the first jokes of the play is the difference between courting Katherine and carting her, that is, publicly humiliating her for her womanly transgressions by being wheeled through town in an open cart. Says Tranio, "that wench is stark mad or wonderful froward!"

In keeping with an ongoing pattern of having dudes make decisions about ladies, two of Bianca's other suitors decide to find Katherine a husband (who, they decide, must be someone naturally a bit bonkers). Lucentio, watching all of this and already desperately in [love / lust] with a woman he's seen for all of three minutes, decides to jump the queue. The plan is this: Lucentio will pretend to be a tutor, so that he can [get some alone time with / properly perve at] Bianca, and Trantio will pretend to be Lucentio so that they can fulfil their obligations to something something whatever topsy turvy people swap clothes who cares.

There's other intrigue and such too but none of that matters because all of this business with Bianca being [passionately wooed by a bunch of really cool guys / lusted after by a bunch of manipulative horndogs, most of whom are pretending to be other people] is just a way of setting up the key conflict in the play and here comes Petruchio!



Petruchio is a total blowhard and refreshingly frank about his motivation: he is in town looking for a wife, and he doesn't care what sort of a person she is so long as she is super rich.  And so it is decreed: Petruchio will [take one for the team / go about badgering a wealthy reluctant woman into marrying him] so that Bianca may be [made available to wed / freed up so that the rest of the horny rabble can have a good go] - and all the expenses he incurs in this endeavour will be paid by some of Bianca's [motivated / desperate] suitors. Here Petruchio's servant makes a sidelong comment that his master might in fact be a bit mad and prone to dirty tricks - total red flag, ladies.

Baptista, quite reasonably, tells Petruchio that if he wants to marry Katherine then she must love him, so Petruchio goes about [wooing / terrorising] Kate in a series of increasingly [hilarious / unpleasant] encounters. Things start off with a bunch of witty, feisty wordplay:

KATHERINE: Asses are made to bear, and so are you.
PETRUCHIO: Women are made to bear, and so are you.

but seeing as this isn't really getting him anywhere, Petruchio tells her that (with her father's consent) she's getting married whether she likes it or not. From here he moves to DEFCON [FUN / SCUM]:
  • every time she does something, such as curse or refuse to talk, he will respond as if she has done the opposite 
  • he tells everyone that Kate really loves him, but that they've decided to pretend otherwise in public 
  • he turns up to the wedding looking like he's dressed himself in filthy rags found at the bottom of a skip, riding a half-dead, diseased riddled horse
  • he abuses the priest and derails the marriage ceremony
  • he turns the post-wedding trip to his house into a filthy, injurious debacle that wouldn't be out of place in your worst ever game of Oregon Trail
  • he doesn't let Kate eat, sleep, or wear any of the nice clothes he's had made for her
...and so on. The whole fiasco is extraordinarily [thigh-slappingly funny / harrowing], and Kate totally [deserves every minute of it / should file for a restraining order].
Kate is made of pretty stern stuff but eventually cracks and goes along with all of Petruchio's nonsense. Finally in a fit of [wry, knowing, wink-wink-nudge-nudge faux-humility / Stockholm Syndrome], upon seeing her sister Bianca acting a bit snippy with whichever loser-in-disguise it is she's finally decided to hook up with, Kate delivers the most famous speech from the play:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labor both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience—
Too little payment for so great a debt.
[...]
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.
(in fairness, Muscleman and Starla really do love each other)


PERHAPS they come to some sort of unspoken understanding during their [lively, comic meeting of the minds / bitter psychological warfare]. 

PERHAPS it really is the case that [if you treat 'em mean you keep 'em keen / even the strongest of minds will give way under relentless torture].

PERHAPS Kate really comes to love Petruchio because [she recognises in him a passionate man and an intellectual equal / she has been completely broken down and even as a wealthy woman she has very little agency].

PERHAPS Kate will [actually be an obedient wife, or even an equal participant in her marriage / one day kill him in his sleep].

PERHAPS I'm just being very rude about a play that is often very clever and that features some of the best insults and witty reparte in all of Shakespeare-dom. But context is important, and this play is the most famous in a tradition of plays and stories in which socially transgressive women are 'tamed' by their husbands, by everything ranging from comic banter to beatings and sexual assault, because it was against the law to be a stroppy lady. Every time I'd get carried away with the farce I'd be brought painfully back to earth by things like the end of Act IV scene 1. Sure, fine, Petruchio barely raises a hand to her over the course of the play, but prior to any declarations of love and remorse he also announces that the best way to tame a shrew is to do what falconers do with new, unruly birds - starve them and deprive them of sleep - and that if the audience can think of any better tactics then hit him up. Hey-oh!

My advice is to read this excellent version of the play from the wonderful and very funny website Myths Retold, and then go watch 10 Things I Hate About You while downing a stiff drink.

STOP PRESS actually wait no watch this. I just found this combo of the play and some burlesque-y striptease and holy moly, why am I bothering to actually read all the plays when I can just watch these?



Verdict: #teamkatherine. Also, if I ever open a pub it's going to be called The Scold's Bridle and women will only pay 70c on the dollar until parity is achieved! Girlpower.

Saturday 13 September 2014

Henry VI Part 3: Alarums Ad Nauseum

This one's kinda long, sorry, and I've even skipped out almost all of acts IV and V.

The previous two plays have started with high stakes drama :
(i) an incredibly depressing funeral (RIP Henry V, you were swell), and
(ii) the wedding between Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, followed by the Duke of York addressing the audience and regaling them with his best Mr Burns impression while he explains how he is going to make himself king. 
This one starts with York (Team White Rose) busting into the throne room with some of his cronies, claiming it for his own, then (and we're still on page one here) waving a severed head around - "the bloody stump really brings out the carmine in the tapestries" etc. Great start!

Henry VI turns up with his cronies (Team Red Rose), is understandably miffed that someone's stolen his seat, and then there is a 'my dad is more awesomer than your dad' conversation in which York and Henry each try to prove that they have the better claim to the throne. I think I firmly established in my write up of part II that Henry isn't really a bloodthirsty, eye-of-the-tiger kinda guy, so his really soft-bellied compromise is that he be allowed to live out his life as king, and then York and his descendants can have the throne (or have it back, depending on whether you believe the Yorkists or the Lancastrians are cooler). This also means that Henry's son, Prince Edward, who has magically been born and grown up a bit between parts II and III, is disinherited. Stink buzz. Most of Henry's supporters leave in disgust.

Reaction from Interchangeable Lord 1: 
Farewell, faint hearted and degenerate king / in whose cold blood no spark of honour bides
Reaction from Interchangeable Lord 2: 
Be thou a prey unto the house of York / and die in bands for this unmanly deed

Incidentally, I didn't bother keeping track of which of the myriad lords were on whose side because I figured most of them would be dead soon enough anyway. (I was right.)

Enter Queen Margaret, who is straight up the best thing about this stupid play. In part I she's a coquettish French maiden, flirting with the Earl of Suffolk, who arranges the royal marriage and becomes her lover. In part II she is scheming and devious, and generally fed up with Henry's uselessness. Through the magic of character development, in part III (and now a mother), she is a wrathful fury:



It is hard to paraphrase her speech in colloquial terms without resorting to a litany of bad swears; suffice it to say she tells Henry that he is a bad king, a bad husband, a bad tactician, a bad judge of character, a bad father, and all up a complete and utter waste of space. She leaves and takes her son with her and FORMS AN ARMY, because if she has to live in shitty England with all these shitty people then at the very least her lovely English son should have his royal birthright.

Extreme ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS for a couple of acts during multiple battles in which the Yorkists and the Lancastrians push to and fro. There are three key scenes that define the conflict, two of which employ a sense of poetry that's largely missing in these earlier plays.

The first is when Margaret, in full vengeful harpy mode,



apprehends York with the help of some of her supporters. She is exceedingly cruel: she taunts him with the deaths (actual and threatened) of his sons, and she offers him a hanky soaked in the blood of his youngest to wipe away his tears. She places a paper crown upon his head and mocks his regal ambitions. Margaret's invective is as much aimed at the general, treacherous awfulness and instability of the ongoing York-Lancaster conflict and its broader effects as it is a condemnation of York's own specific actions against the King and realm, but her callousness speaks more generally to the poison flowing throughout the country. After a period of venomous back-and-forths, she and her noble minions kill him and chop off his head so that it may look out across the city of York from a choice spot on the battlements. (I have, by this stage, lost count of all the severed heads.)


(Game of Thrones themed severed head cake pops recipe here)

The second key moment is equal parts poignant and heavy-handed. Henry, who has been instructed to keep the fuck out of the way, looks out across the fighting and bemoans his birthright. He thinks about how he would have preferred to have been born a simple shepherd, spending his days tending his flock and whittling and drinking curds, finding more beauty in his flock's fleeces than in royal tapestries and golden chalices. As he watches his subjects mow each other down he sees one man dragging a corpse with him, hoping to plunder it, before realising that it is his own father; likewise another man, bearing another corpse, discovers that he has killed his own son in the grime of battle because each were called to war by different factions. Henry cries out:
Woe above woe! grief more than common grief!
O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!
O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!
The red rose and the white are on his face,
The fatal colours of our striving houses:
The one his purple blood right well resembles;
The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth:
Wither one rose, and let the other flourish;
If you contend, a thousand lives must wither.
The irony, really, is that if he hadn't been such a weak-willed numpty of a monarch, none of this would have happened in the first place.

The third (much less poetic) moment comes when Clifford, supporter of Henry and scourge of the Yorks, snuffs it in the field, and York's sons come and boot his body around like a football, shouting "helloooo? anyone still in there? Can't believe he died without letting us say goodbye."

So after more alarums and excursions the Yorks win, Henry is banished to Scotland, and Edward, dead York's eldest son, is king (although his brother Richard the hunchback gives a rousing speech as to his own plans to one day be king - you can look forward to for Richard III for more of his special antics and a lot of mwa-ha-ha-ing). Unfortunately Edward IV (whose reign is to be a bit patchy) thinks with his penis, marries the wrong person, fucks up an important alliance, and loses some key supporters. Once more its time for WAR, this time with France (again), who are allied with Team Red Rose.

War, war, politics, defections, war, "I'm king!", "no, I'm king!", fighting, politics, war.

Intermission!



Fast-forward to the end, because this is getting tiring and tedious and while I'm well aware of the didactic nature of the play - the way that it explores the abject destruction of a few generations due to political infighting and civil strife, and the ongoing political and civic ramifications -  I don't really care for any of the characters except Margaret (who gives a rousing battle speech at the beginning of V.iv). (P.S. Bring back Talbot!)

Here is where it finishes:

  • Edward IV is king and Team White Rose prevails
  • Henry's son Prince Edward is stabbed to death in front of ex-Queen Margaret by Edward IV and his brothers, Clarence and Richard 
  • Henry is murdered in the Tower of London by Richard after FINALLY growing a pair and cussing out Richard to his face
  • Margaret is imprisoned (boo)
  • Richard repeatedly shouts to the audience I AM A DEFORMED POWER-HUNGRY SOCIOPATH AND EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE, STARTING WITH MY DUMBASS BROTHER CLARENCE! STAY TUNED!

The end (for now).

Verdict: (i) Margaret is a badass and the first great female character in the canon, and (ii) multiple battles are surprisingly boring (paging Peter Jackson).

Monday 8 September 2014

Henry VI Part 2: All Treason, All The Time

Previously on Henry VI:
  • the war in France is over (for now)! 
  • the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Winchester hate one another! 
  • people who wear red roses (the Lancasters) and people who wear white roses (the Yorks) also hate one another!
  • and the pious, gentle Henry's going to marry foxy Frenchwoman Margaret of Anjou, who is having an affair with the sneaky Earl of Suffolk, who wants to control the kingdom via her influence (while also banging her).
Part I was a total slog but Part II cracks along, probably because the action doesn't keep jumping from France to England and back again. Also, I've figured out who's who and so long as I pretend that I'm watching a second tier television costume drama where everyone is too pretty by half I can just sit back and enjoy the insults. If I had realised that all the histories were were a bunch of devious, ambitious, increasingly desperate people being extremely rude to one another while wearing flash clothes then I probably would have started in on them years ago.

So - the war is over and Henry just isn't a political animal, so he glides around happily, remarking upon the beauty and wonderment of God's creation. Meanwhile, everyone else is trying to find a way to leverage the most amount of power while the king is busy picking flowers, talking to bluebirds, and generally being a pushover. I imagine King Henry to be a lot like lovely, gentle Pops from Regular Show:




to the point where all the brawling between nobles in the royal court ends up a bit like:



Things get exciting in the middle and it's treason-central:
  • Mrs Gloucester, who would totally love to be queen one day, is punished and exiled for consorting with witches and conjurers. (Hint: while she might be a bit of a twit, it's a political stitch-up.) 
  • Gloucester - honourable Lord Protector, Henry fanboy, and just about the only one not plotting a coup of some type - is accused of treason by Winchester, Queen Margaret, et al. and imprisoned. Most of the evidence seems to rest on the fact that Gloucester is a grump and his wife is dodgy (see above). 
  • For fear of Gloucester being found innocent of all charges (because he is innocent of all charges), Winchester and Suffolk have Gloucester murdered in his bed. There's even a forensic speech on cause of death! CSI: Bury St Edmunds. 
  • The king finally shows a bit of emotional depth and is stricken with grief, but that's okay, because Suffolk is banished then captured and beheaded by pirates, and Winchester comes over all funny (guilt-stroke?) and dies as well. 
The bit players get a good go of it too: two commoners are forced to have a fight to the death over whether or not one of them made an offhanded treasonous comment, and the drunk-but-actually-innocent one loses, thereby proving his guilt in the eyes of God. Justice for all!

In the meantime, villainous York - father of the guy who will eventually become Richard III (coming this summer) - is gurning to the audience as he soliloquises about all the treacherous ways he's going to become king. He is also given an army with which to quash an Irish rebellion. Top tip: don't give a treasonous nutcase an army.

So, basically, everyone wants someone other than Henry to be king, except for Henry, who is as oblivious as this dumb looking rock:



In fairness, Henry knows he's pretty crap at the job. He gets it right when he says Come, wife, let's in and learn to govern better / For yet may England curse my wretched reign.

Time for another uprising, this time led by an anti-intellectual ruffian called John Cade who wants to turn England into a socialist paradise and crown himself ruler. This is the best stage direction of the play: Drum. Enter Cade, Dick the butcher, Smith the weaver, a Sawyer, with INFINITE NUMBERS, all with staves. Apart from the need for infinity extras, these scenes are great - satirical, ironic and funny, unlike anything involving the king.

Things get very fighty, bloody and smashy for a while as Cade invades London, and everything reads like a violent Mel Brooks movie. Two noblemen are beheaded and their severed heads made to kiss. Comedy gold! Eventually Cade runs away and, half-starving, is killed trying to pinch food from someone's garden. He even dies obnoxiously, proclaiming that he only lost the fight because he was too hungry, so ha ha.

Act V: More uprisings! More treason! More intrigue! &c &c. York announces his claim to the throne. Everybody fights!



York and Team White Rose roundly beat King Henry's men at the Battle of St Albans. The Yorkists chase after Henry, who scarpers to London after Queen Margaret shouts at him to get a fucking move on or he'll be killed.

The End.

Verdict: I understand why people don't stage these plays any more. They are exhausting, densely populated and hard to keep up with. This is a pity, because they also have pirates, beheadings, ample parts for comedy troupes and some top notch snark!

Saturday 6 September 2014

Henry VI Part 1: The Francophone Menace

I had been dreading reading this as I find the histories to be pretty hard going, and this is considered by all and sundry to be one of the worst of the Shakespearean canon and in all likelihood written by a whole bunch of people. Also, everything I know about English history I have gleaned from Blackadder and torrid costume dramas and I don't think that they are very reliable sources. However! Turns out that having read George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books has put me in a pretty good place to get my head around a confusing cast of characters who keep running off to kill one another.



The beginning: it's never a good sign when a play about a king's reign begins with a bunch of royals saying that the king who has only just now died (Henry V, or Dad-Henry) was the greatest of ALL TIME and that there is no possible way to top his awesome French-thrashing greatness, especially when the new king (Henry VI) is in reality just a teeny tiny infant (although in this play old enough to be married?). After some wailing and cosmic fist-shaking, a bunch of bad-news-bearers crash the funeral and here is what they say:

  1. The English are being caned in France and morale is shit. The soldiers aren't dummies and they are understandably irate that their noble commanders are so at odds with one another that they couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery let alone manage a full scale war.
  2. France is kicking back: Charles the Dauphin has been named king (and he has a posse; see below re: Joan la Pucelle)
  3. Lord Talbot, the awesome English military commander, was outnumbered four-to-one by the smelly treacherous frogs and has been injured and captured (although he put up a good fight because he is a paragon of English patriotism and bravery and shoutiness).
  4. Everything is generally terrible.
To make matters worse, internal rivalry is about to make everything at home untenable too: Uncle Gloucester (Lord Protector) and Great Uncle Exeter are about to be stabbed in the back by devious Great Uncle Bishop-then-Cardinal Winchester the evil scheming Catholic, who plans on pinching the new infant king and being a Church-backed boss man. Gloucester and Winchester swear at each other a lot and make their men fight each other, because clearly there's not more pressing issues to attend to.

MEANWHILE IN FRANCE: witchy devil whore Joan la Pucelle (i.e. of Arc) turns up, kicks ass, takes names, and beats the newly ransomed Lord Talbot in hand to hand combat like a boss before leading the French to victory. Boo the French.

FYI this is how Talbot is portrayed throughout the play:



so Joan la Pucelle schooling him is a pretty big deal.

That is what happens in Act I. Action packed. It took me quite a long time to get that far because I was annotating family trees so that I could keep track.

From here this play - by which I mean this interconnected series of scenes that don't really cohere into a story - feels like a combination of the Wars of the Roses Greatest Hits: The Early Years, The French Say the Dastardliest Things! and some pretty frothy Talbot vs. the world fanfic. Talbot kills French people against enormous odds! Talbot roars like an animal and scares his captors! Talbot berates idiot nobles who are getting in the way of a solid English victory! Talbot tries to tell his son to go home and not die in a vicious war because he is noble and also loving but his son is brave just like him and he refuses so they fight together cheek by jowl and then Talbot rescues his son from peril and they fight some more!

... until they are totally overrun by the French, in part because bickering between Team White Rose and Team Red Rose has held up reinforcements, and  Talbot's son dies:

And in that sea of blood my boy did drench 
His over-mounting spirit; and there died
My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.

and then Talbot cradles his dead son and dies of his own injuries and Barber's Adagio for Strings plays in the background while everyone cries at the death of old fashioned English noble warriordom.


Right afterwards, though, is an unintentionally comical bit where Sir William Lucy (for the English) turns up to casually chat to Charles the Dauphin - "helloooo, anyone around?" - to figure out who won and who has what prisoners. I imagine two columns of soldiers spitting and shaking hands saying "good game good game good game" as they step over the "stinking and flyblown".

Act V summation:
  • Joan la Pucelle,who up until this point has been been portrayed really beautifully, is now literally consorting with demons (not just figuratively, like in the pretty sexually pointed taunts of the English), and she is captured and burned at the stake. Boo. (Interpretation of these scenes varies.)
  • Charles (who has reclaimed half of France) submits and there is an uneasy truce.
  • Nice, conciliatory King Henry, who has been conspicuous by his absence, is now nearly a grown up. While negotiating a peace he is convinced to marry superbabe Margaret of Anjou, who was captured by and is now having an affair with the sneaky Earl of Suffolk, who wants to control the kingdom via her - i.e. scandal! (Spoiler: in later plays she will prove herself to be one of the top female badasses in all of Shakespeariana.)
...the end.


Verdict: This took me ages to read. I quite liked bits of it, there are two more parts to come (plus Richard III, to make a Wars of the Roses tetralogy) and Wikipedia was the winner on the day.