Where Evadne Has a Point. And Stabs the King With It.

The Maid's Tragedy by Francis Beaumont
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Set in a Medieval version of Rhodes that seems more like England or Western Europe, this is the story of disappointed lovers and a king taking advantage of his power. I liked it and I didn't, but I'm going with 4 stars after a lot of internal debate. :)

To cover for secretly taking beautiful young Evadne as his mistress, the king makes her marry a young man, Amintor, who the king supposes (somewhat accurately) he can push around. The couple are married just ahead of the action of the play. Amintor was in love with Aspatia and she was in love with him, but he went along with the marriage to Evadne because the king wanted it. He didn't hate Evadne, though, so he was sorta okay with it. This act of unfaithfulness creates tension between the families of the two women, breaking Aspatia's heart and nearly leading to fighting, but the real tension is between the newlyweds when Evadne makes it clear on their wedding night that theirs is a sham marriage and she will never sleep with her new husband.

Ouch.

Amintor is furious and embarrassed and ashamed, but vows to tell no one and do nothing, because again, it's what the king wants, besides the fact that he doesn't want his shame to be broadcast to the world. Eventually, though, his brother-in-law (and old friend) sees he's not as happy as he's pretending and forces the truth out of him. This leads to a series of actions that are pretty predictable if you know this is a tragedy and not a comedy. Lots of stabbing.

That's the part I don't care for. I really enjoyed reading the play, and found it much more readable than most drama out of that era--just overlapping with Shakespeare--but I pretty much hate tragedy. I hate a sad ending. I understand bad things happen in real life, but I don't understand wanting to see a play that shows it to you. I don't want to dwell on misery and sadness and misfortune. It just doesn't work for my brain. (So why do I read such things? Kind of a curiosity or literary FOMO, I guess.) Anyway, I wish it had ended with bad guys down and good guys up, but that's not the story. I still liked it, mostly. A surprising amount.

Just not the end.

I'm still giving it a 4. Well written, interesting, entertaining, and fun--right until it wasn't. And since I'm reading it out of this a very cool little edition from (probably) 1887, a beautiful book with cool old-fashioned wingdings between scenes and acts, I enjoyed the reading experience way more than if I'd read it online.

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Where Lyndaraxa is Very Bad

Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada by John Dryden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[This is a review of the second play, The Conquest of Granada, Part II. I already rated and reviewed the first part. Goodreads lumps both parts together, unfortunately.]

I'm enjoying Dryden more than I expected, and I liked this play more than the first. More closure, more drama that I care about, more movement. Like so many old plays, I feel like I'd do better to study the background and try it again, but life is short, and there are a lot of things still to read for the first time...

I'm not generally a fan of rhyme in poetry, let alone drama, and Dryden's plays are made up entirely of rhyming couplets, or heroic couplets. I didn't expect to be okay with that choice, though I think it works. He's more recent than Shakespeare of Marlowe or some others who moved away from rhyme, which makes these plays feel older than they are, but perhaps the reason it feels appropriate is that the setting for this pair of plays is 15th century Spain, over 500 before present and about 180 years before they were written (~1670). They should seem old, then, and old-fashioned.

The first play is mostly about the civil war between two Granada families or clans, all of them Muslim Moors. The second continues that to some degree, but under threat from Ferdinand and Isabella trying to oust the last remaining Moorish rulers from the peninsula. In Dryden's version, the civic disunity, personal ambitions of certain individuals, and straight-up treason of one character lead to the downfall of the small state.

The real villain of the story is beautiful Lyndaraxa, the sister of the leader of the Zegry family, who entices one man after another to try for the throne with the promise of marriage, a promise that she withdraws when their plans fall short. She wants to be queen, and will ally herself with whoever can bring it about, regardless of the crimes they need to commit to achieve it. Her lies and tricks are as shocking and effective as Iago's lies in Othello. In the end--spoiler--she joins with the invading Spaniards, opening the way to Granada with the promise of being queen. Further spoiler--she gets her way for about 5 seconds. Her death, after so many lies and tricks leading straight to war and the deaths of many, is one of the most satisfying in drama.

Another entertaining revelation comes right at the end, when we discover that the hero Almanzor is the long-lost son of a Spanish duke who he once did a service for (in part I). Additionally, the beautiful but principled Almahide is widowed when her jealous husband the king dies. She was loyal to him, but really loved Almanzor, and will marry him after her grieving is through. These take some of the sting out of the tragedy.

I thought it was pretty fun. I'm curious how it would sound on the stage, if it would sound natural or sing-songy with so much rhyme. For reading, though, I found meter worked quite well--much to my surprise.

Recommended for curious readers--though it might be nice to do the reading with more resources than I took advantage of. Maybe team-read. Or--just jump on in. See what you think.

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Where Agnes Grey Makes the Best of It

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very straightforward story, and I enjoyed it. It's probably something under 80,000 words, which is pleasantly brief for a classic novel, and has an imperfect but likable main character.

Is it a spoiler to indicate it has a happy ending? If it is, I won't mention it.

Agnes finds herself in the position, as an educated young woman, of needing to earn some money for herself, and save her parents the expense of taking care of her. She's a bit genteel, so she's coming down in the world, but the people she works for see her only as a servant.

The first people she works for are horrible. (She won't let the small boy torture baby birds, and the mom is mad about it.) The second family, where she stays quite a bit longer, is better, but still obnoxious. The main idea of the whole family (focusing on the marriage-eligible daughters) is this: I've got money, and I want to still have money later, so I will never improve myself, and I will never worry about anyone else, and I will make terrible decisions all to preserve my access to money, and then... I will sure be sad about it.

But Agnes is different. She tries really hard to do the right thing, and never answer back, and have respect for people who don't deserve it, and do her duty all of the time, all without hoping for anything to work out any better than her crappy present--although, secretly, she does hope. And maybe it does work out... And some say she's just too good, but I don't see it that way. She's a bit of a doormat (though she was *sort of* expected to be) and never explains anything and never fights back and never says what she actually wants to anyone, so much so that she almost blows it. She's such a good girl, so moral, so humble, that she is almost invisible. The guy she loves talks to her, demonstrating interest, and she responds with such dull, disinterested nothings that one would think that she was trying to get rid of him. Smile, girl! Say you're happy to see him! Sheesh! Elinor Dashwood looks like a flirt compared to you...

But he's a good guy, her secret love, and he sees through it all. Good thing, too.

I connected most near the beginning when she is trying to get badly behaved little kids to do what she wants, but the parents do not give her any authority or means to manage them, no punishments or rewards, and all she has is the force of her personality--which the kids don't care about at all. She could reason with them, plead, shout, grow angry, get upset, whatever, and they don't care.

Every teacher ever feels this.

The novel says a lot about the lives of women in England (and many other countries) at that time and since. Make the best of it, the novel says. Do your duty. Hope for the best--but don't hope too much. Still, who knows what might happen? And if, as is most likely, nothing good ever happens--still make the best of it. You'll be rewarded, I guess? (She's pretty churchy.)

I feel like we can do better for people. Nobody should feel like they have to keep their eyes down and their mouth permanently shut.

Anyway, it works out. (Spoiler! Dang it.) Enjoyable novel. Not as much angst as other Brontë novels, but maybe that's a good thing. I recommend it.

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Where Only Brainworm Was Any Fun

Every Man in His Humour by Ben Jonson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was the hardest slog I've ever had reading old plays. Wow.

I'll admit, I just didn't get it. Broadly, sure--different people represent different "humours," or personality types, like those prone to anger or jealousy, and we see how that works out for them. But scene by scene? I didn't know what anybody was on about. I googled it and could hardly believe everything that had gone whoosh past me... So much cultural subtext that I thought reading Shakespeare had prepared me for. It didn't.

It was like I was watching a Monty Python sketch where everybody is talking gibberish but then start fighting. With swords. Or sticks. What is happening? Is this Punch and Judy? What are they even talking about?

The very last scene with the justice sorting out what was going on with everybody, especially what Brainworm had been up to with a whole bunch of disguises, was sort of okay. A tiny little payoff for a deep slog of a play.

I would have said much worse about the play, a full-on rant, except I looked to find a version of the play on youtube and found a couple very nice old gentlemen discussing the play with such deep interest and pleasure--for like 90 minutes--that I couldn't bring myself to hate it as much as I had to that point. I guess it makes sense to some folks. Bless 'em.

Anyway, unless I find some highly annotated version of this play, I'm never gonna give it another look. I wish there was a "No Fear Ben Jonson" series like there is one for Shakespeare...

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