Richard the Third is a four letter word

Oh the procrastination! I have to admit that I'm finding rereading plays that I'm more than passing familiar with to be a bit like homework, especially if I didn't regard them with much affection in the first place. For this reason I put Tricky Dicky off for quite a long while, and instead read this and this and this and this and also this, which was great (thanks for the rec, Karen). Merry Christmas everyone!

I haven't read or seen a production of Richard III for maybe twelve years, though, so here are the bits that I forgot about / liked better this time round, all brought to you through the magic of EXTENSIVE SWEARING.

The problem with Richard, Duke of Gloucester and later King Richard III - apart from the fact that he's a total prick -  is that he's the cleverest guy in the room and he knows it.  In the famous opening monologue, hunchbacked supervillain Richard announces to the audience that he plans on going about fucking up everyone's shit without them knowing what shit he's fucking! Grab your popcorn.

(Richard seems to have forgotten that one day it will be helpful to have people who will trust you and who you can trust back)(maybe he should have had one redeeming feature, like liking kittens or something?)(baddies 4 lyf).

So Richard fucks up some shit, then gloats about it, before unveiling his plan for more extensive shit up-fucking, all with the intention of becoming king shit of turd mountain (i.e. England, so wracked by war and infighting since the time of Richard II that it's little more than a sad brown smear in the North Atlantic).

Richard fucks up everyone so bad that he manages to a) have his brother murdered, b) convince a woman who hates him to marry him, c) turn half the court against one another d) imprison the other half and e) get a couple of kids slaughtered for what, at this point, seems like shits and giggles.

Oh Richard.

From there it's half sadistic wish fulfilment (Richard eventually gets the crown through dissembling, violence and general cuntishness) and half schadenfreude (everything turns to shit, Richard isn't that clever after all, battle battle battle, Richard wants a horse, Richard is dispatched by the Earl of Richmond who becomes Henry VII, the Wars of the Roses are doneburger, England is well again, we can all go home).

What I am enjoying, apart from set pieces involving bumbling assassins (Act I, Scene 4), are the near infinite ways of saying the world is a cruel place, like when Queen Elizabeth hears that her husband, King Edward IV, is dead, and cries out against the loneliness and awfulness of grief:

Why grow the branches when the root is gone?
Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?
If you will live, lament. If die, be brief,
That our swift-winged souls may catch the King's
Or, like obedient subjects, follow him
To his new kingdom of ne'er changing night. (II.2.42-47)

... or like when the aging witchy-poo Queen Margaret curses pretty much everyone for being singularly awful, and then has a go at Richard:

If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!
Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins! (I.3.681-696)

... or like when the ghosts of all the murdered appear at the end to curse Richard and lay their blessings on his foe Richmond:

 Despair and die! (x100)

WHAT'S GOING ON?

More sad / grim / violent bits, please. It's like a small coffee table book of affirmations: 1000 Ways To Say I Hate You, the World's Awful, and Please Fuck Off and Die, by W Shakespeare.

Verdict: meh - although this is no reflection on the play itself, more my general indifference to revisiting something I didn't much like in the first place. I'm sure you'll love it!

Wait wait - edited to add: Okay I have been a bit unfair, and have let a very poor experience of a particularly fragmented student production of this play get in the way of me being even vaguely even handed. I am sorry Richard! This is a very good play.

Apart from the fact that my comprehension in terms of Shakespearean form is improving substantially as I keep reading, my biggest take-away so far is the need for a good copy of the script, which should come with big red letters across the front stating not to fuck too much with the intentions and characters. The Folgers versions of the scripts (long may they continue to feature detailed glossaries and helpful synopses and pretty pictures) also include implied stage directions, including directional cues such as who is talking to whom, and who is talking to the audience or themselves.  This helps with clarity and spatial understanding a lot, especially when there are multiple people or groups on stage. One scene that I recall having a really hard time getting my head around re: voice and intention, made much more sense when I realised, while reading, that I should have been speaking secretly to the audience in certain parts, and not just going BLAH BLAH BLAH CURSE CURSE CURSE in the direction of the other actors.

Recommendation: supersize your Wars of the Roses happy meal by reading Henry VI parts 1-3 and Richard III all in a row and make a weekend of it. And don't be a grinch.

Titus Andronicus, or, Rome is but a wilderness of assholes #brutal #twracism #pie #smdh

I've mostly recovered from the end of the academic year, so am once more capable of reading Early Modern prose and verse. Also it's Halloween, and while this doesn't have ghosts it does have lots of body parts. Hooray.

Titus Andronicus, an early tragedy and Roman play, is not the best loved of Shakespeare's output. It's crudely written in places, it's ultraviolent, and it's a problem play if problem means 'how are we supposed to get all that blood out of the costumes before tomorrow's matinee?' HOWEVER I think it's equal parts ace and totally underrated and here I plan to sell you on its vices and virtues. Certainly, it's hardly got the nuance or poetry of Hamlet or King Lear, both of which are also violent and revenge-y, but that's like saying you shouldn't watch Bad Taste or Meet the Feebles just because The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won a bunch of Oscars. I see the play as the American Horror Story of the Shakespearean canon: a gory, blackly funny, kinda queer exercise in 'throw it all at the wall and see what sticks' (sometimes literally), which is nonetheless underpinned by some serious pathos and a healthy serving of meaty family drama (oh see what I did there)(you will see if you don't know)(oh ha ha ha)(I am a very funny person).

We are in Rome and the Emperor has died. His two sons are vying for his spot - younger brother Bassianus, square-jawed good guy, and elder brother Saturninus, slimy creep - but the people want war hero and model Roman citizen Titus Andronicus to rule. Enter Titus, his four remaining sons, and some captured Goths - Tamora, the Queen, her lover Aaron the Moor (stay tuned for some vintage racism) and her sons Alarbus, Chiron and Demetrius.

"We need an offering to appease the spirits of my 21 sons who died in battle!" says Titus, noted horndog. "Sacrifice Tamora's eldest."

"Be merciful- you're a parent too!" cries Tamora. "Don't slaughter my son for shits and giggles!"

"Mmmmm nope hard luck" says Titus and Tamora's eldest gets the chop.

ATROCITY 1: Alarbus the Goth - limbs lopped off and entrails chucked in the sacrificial fire.

... and Titus's stone cold inability to show mercy - his view that to be noble is to be rigid, not empathetic - is where all the bad business starts, for in this first section Titus loses just about everything. His hard-on for playing things completely by the book leads to a few more fuck ups, and it's worth laying out the extensive machinations of the first act:

A succession: Titus's brother, Marcus, implores Titus to become emperor - but no, that's not the rules, so Titus says I'm a bit old and soldiery for that and Saturninus should take his father's place. Mistake #2, because Saturninus is seven kinds of awful.

A wedding?: Saturninus insists that Lavinia, Titus's lovely daughter, marry him. Titus says yes sure thing Emperor.

An elopement / abduction: Problem is, Bassianus and Lavinia are betrothed. Titus's family, who are looking at Titus increasingly like the mad uncle who no one wants to sit next to at Christmas, help the two love birds run away. (NB: much has been made of the fact that Lavinia doesn't seem to have a say in anything, and that rape also means the violent seizure and abduction of a woman: foreshadowing!) Titus is furious and kills one of his own sons for being so dishonourable, then disowns the rest.

ATROCITY 2: Mutius Andronicus - stabbed by his dad for being disobedient #jeezdad

A wedding!: Saturninus gives a big "fuck you!" to Titus, by rescinding all honour and telling him to disappear with the rest of his traitorous family, then a bigger "fuck you!" to Rome, by asking the captive Tamora to be his empress.

An interment: Titus's family comes back and convinces him to let Mutius be buried in the family tomb. "Thou art a Roman: be not barbarous" says Marcus, words that are written in neon and surrounded with flashing lights. Titus continues to struggle with the whole 'doing right by Rome' vs 'doing right by actual human beings' thing.

A set-up: Tamora comes across all pious and even-minded and asks Saturninus to show mercy and forgive Titus et al. for their misdemeanours... only to tell him in a great villainous aside that she plans on staging a violent revenge: "I'll find a day to massacre them all!" Saturninus and Tamora invite all their nice new friends on a hunt, because nothing ever goes wrong when vindictive people are stumbling round the woods with weapons. <<End of Act I>>

From here it's safe to say that everything turns to shit.

Over the course of the play Titus's world crumbles around him as Saturninus and Tamora's grip on the capitol increases, and he goes mad, or feigns madness, or rolls around in a sloppy combination of the two. Tamora's evil scheming is massively amplified by the machinations of her lover, Aaron the Moor. He is as villanous a character as you are likely to find and has just about zero redeeming qualities - see his lurid description of his hobbies in Act V Scene 1 - because, as he frequently tells us, his soul is as black as his skin #racism #reallyracist #itsquiteracist.

RACIST.

(In fairness, he makes a pointed comment later about the nature of institutional racism, but by then the evil black horse has bolted.)

The most terrible thing he does is encourage Chiron (dumb) and Demitrius (dumber) to rape Lavinia during the aformentioned hunt - something that Tamora goads on too. This draws from the story of Philomela from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Lavinia's hands and tongue are cut out so that she can't communicate the names of her attackers, but she eventually writes their names in the dirt by dragging a big stick around with her mouth #suggestive #literary.

That's getting ahead of things though - time to catch up, in order:

ATROCITY 3: Bassianus is stabbed and thrown in a pit
ATROCITY 4: Lavinia is raped and mutilated
ATROCITY 5: Titus cuts of his hand in ransom for his sons, wrongly imprisoned for Bassianus's murder...
ATROCITIES 6 & 7: ...but ha ha, Quintius and Martius Andronicus are executed anyway, and their heads and hands are delivered to their father #sickburn
ATROCITY 8: A nurse is stabbed because she knows Aaron is Tamora's baby daddy
ENTERTAINING DIVERSION: Aaron outlines all the violent, horrid and batshit crazy things he does for fun, such as dig dead people up and leave them by their loved ones' doors #punkd
ATROCITY 9: Titus takes Chiron and Demetrius, who are dressed up as Rape and Murder, and cuts their throats
ATROCITY 10: Chiron and Demetrius are baked into a pie and fed to all and sundry, including their mother! #mykitchenrules
ATROCITIES 11+: Half the remaining top billed cast are killed, Aaron is buried up to his chest and left to die, and no one has second helpings

So lots of terrible things happen and loads of critics say that this play is a bit pants. However, if the court will hear me out, the thing I like about this play is that, at the rotten stinking heart of it, it's all about family, the limits of honour and the need to connect with and protect one's own. Titus's myriad sorrows and their often affecting expression are placed centre stage for much of the piece in a manner that moves beyond two hours of 'why me?' Titus Andronicus plays domestic trauma and tragedy out on a much broader, more audacious stage and charts an equivalence between civic and domestic corruption that culminates in a big serving of (humble) people pie. The play is very blunt in showing that there's not a lot of difference, ultimately, between Tamora and Titus's ruthlessness, cruelty and bloodthirsty devotion to what they think is right; if anything, Tamora's foreignness only serves to heighten the audience's appreciation for the sort of awfulness that Titus has been up to out in the field by demonstrating that brutality knows no borders.

Also, the special effects people use up loads of chocolate sauce and that pie scene is pretty ace.

Verdict: Roman Grand Guignol is a dish best served piping hot. #tasty

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.

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).

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!

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.

The Two Jack-offs of Some Indeterminate Italian City

First up is The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is a great place to start for the following reasons:

• it's a very early play
• it's a comedy
• it's not really that sophisticated
• it features a few things that are going to become recurring themes: cross-dressing, thwarted love, funny clowns, people absconding from the city (place of frustration, rules and cobblestones) to the forest (place of irrationality, nature and general topsy turvy business)
• it arrived in the mail first
• it has one of the best double acts in all of Shakespeare-dom (more on that later)

The set up is this: gullible well-meaning dimwit Valentine heads off to Verona (or is it Padua? or is it Milan? the script is surprisingly hazy on that one), and tells his best bud, callous self-serving asshole Proteus that it would be sweet if he could come along - only Proteus is smitten with Julia, a girl who is so faithful it's pretty much pathological.  Stuff happens and Proteus ends up in Generic Italian City (after making lots of vows to Julia that he's about to break into tiny pieces), where he promptly falls in love with Sylvia, Valentine's new and very switched-on girlfriend who also happens to be the daughter of the Duke (or is it the Emperor? the script is surprisingly hazy on that one too).

Proteus, being an awesome A+++ friend, quickly takes it upon himself to win Sylvia for himself, even if it means fucking over his BEST BRO IN THE WORLD and the girl he's sworn himself to, and even if it means dobbing Valentine in to the Duke so he gets banished for having the temerity to like the Duke's daughter, and even if it means pretending to help another jerk who also likes her. Hat tip to Sylvia: she sees through his rubbish. Poor Julia bears much of the brunt of this: she dresses up as a page called Sebastian and follows Proteus, because crossdressing incognito travelling is where it's at, and sees him dick her over again and again but still loves him because she's a total fucking masochist.

Let's ignore them - they are all boring, although the women are easily the nicest of the lot. The heroes of this piece are Speed, Valentine's quick-witted servant, and Lance (or Launce), Proteus's lovable, kind-hearted and soft-headed servant. La(u)nce has a dog called Crab, the outright (and invisible) star of the show, whose hobbies include whining, stealing chicken legs from ladies' tables, pissing on things, and being generally unremorseful. La(u)nce loves his foul-natured dog so much that he takes all of Crab's beatings because is just an all-round good dude.

La(u)nce is also secretly (i.e. not so secretly) in love with a pretty sweet sounding lady: "yet I am in love; but a team of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor who 'tis I love; and yet 'tis a woman; but what woman, I will not tell myself; and yet 'tis a milkmaid; yet 'tis not a maid, for she hath had gossips; yet 'tis a maid, for she is her master's maid, and serves for wages...." La(u)nce gives Speed a letter that he's written cataloging her various virtues and vices in what is one of the play's funniest scenes (III.1).

SPEED: 'Here follow her vices.'
LAUNCE: Close at the heels of her virtues.
SPEED: 'Item: She is not to be kissed fasting in respect of her breath.'
LAUNCE: Well, that fault may be mended with a breakfast. Read on.
SPEED: 'Item: She hath a sweet mouth.'
LAUNCE: That makes amends for her sour breath.
SPEED: 'Item: She doth talk in her sleep.'
LAUNCE: It's no matter for that, so she sleep not in her talk.
SPEED: 'Item: She is slow in words.'
LAUNCE: O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue: I pray thee, out with't, and place it for her chief virtue.
SPEED: 'Item: She is proud.'
LAUNCE: Out with that too; it was Eve's legacy, and cannot be ta'en from her.
SPEED: 'Item: She hath no teeth.'
LANCE: I care not for that neither, because I love crusts.
SPEED: 'Item: She is curst.'
LANCE: Well, the best is, she hath no teeth to bite.

... and so on. It's great.

Anyway, stuff happens, blah blah, and here is the fucked up way in which all of this ends. Everyone is in the forest. Valentine, who has been banished by Sylvia's dad, has remarkably become king of the outlaws. Proteus is still madly pursuing Sylvia, Sylvia is having none of it, Valentine is just out of earshot, Julia is hovering about dressed as Sebastian the punching bag, and the outlaws are being outlaws and hopefully getting all Lost Boys on it and singing some sort of sweet forest pirate song (RU-FI-OOOOO!).

After all his inconstancy (i.e. waving his dick about the place), Proteus turns out to be a Nice Guy (TM): "O, 'tis the curse in love, and still approved, / When women cannot love where they're beloved", and when Sylvia says (once more) 'fuck no, weirdo' he responds by TRYING TO RAPE HER. No no no no no.

From here everything goes as horribly expected:

VALENTINE: oh no you don't!
PROTEUS: BUSTED sorry sorry my bad
SYLVIA: aaaaaa
VALENTINE: it's ok bro I know you're honorable and that
SYLVIA: I'm ok with everything now Valentine you're my guy
JULIA-SEBASTIAN: <<swoons>>
ALL: oh hey she's not a dude at all
JULIA: I love you anyway Proteus
PROTEUS: of course you do! sorry lady. I just remembered you're really the prettiest and the best. Kissy kiss?
EVERYONE ELSE: all other plot points are resolved hurrah! Back to the city for ale and celebration.

And everyone is happy and gets married / pardoned / otherwise entertained, and hopefully Crab the dog pisses on them all. The end.

Verdict: hrmmm.

Hello (brave new) world (that has such people in't)

I have decided to read all of Shakespeare's published plays, in roughly chronological order*, and then write something about each as I go along. The goal is to get through them in under a year, and as of early August 2014 this seems like a great idea! I'm moderately-to-very familiar a bit over half the plays and pretty hazy about the rest, but by the end I hope to be able to tsk knowingly when people** get that one bit in Henry VI part 2 mixed up with that one bit in Henry VI part 3 because, ha ha, really.

There are a few reasons for doing this:

1) I like Shakespeare

2) I like that feeling you get when you've collected the whole set of something, even if that includes the really crappy broken pieces that no one likes much anyway 

3) I like having something procrastinatory to do

and most importantly

4) I will be an asset to any pub quiz team, presuming that that particular pub quiz has detailed and esoteric questions about Shakespeare's back catalogue

This will be fun, I hope! And if I can make it through the history plays without weeping in confused frustration then I will reward myself with something nice. 

EDIT: I am almost entirely relying on the editions of the plays put out by the wonderful Folger Shakespeare Library. They are fully annotated, they sometimes have pictures, they have critical essays on the plays and their social and historical context, and they are super cheap - on average, NZ$7-8 per paperback.

* People smarter than me have long-winded debates about what was written and performed when. I am mostly following this order, but to be honest it might come down to whether or not I feel up to reading another history play.

** I don't know who these people are but I will seek them out for smug tut-tutting purposes.