Where Edward III Has Some Folks to Fight

King Edward III by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hey, this was a good read. (No pun intended.) Elizabethan plays can be tough, but this was not that bad, and very entertaining. I liked it. 5 stars.

It's one of those "Did Shakespeare write this?" plays that has more recently been a "How much of this did Shakespeare write?" play. Something like half, maybe. Hard to tell at this point. But in my head, and according to educated critics who have used a lot of methods to analyze the language and style, this is essentially a Shakespeare play. With assistants.

Being a history, the play is pretty episodic. It starts with Edward putting down a rebellion on the Scottish border, where he pressures a beautiful countess to sleep with him until she shames him enough he apologizes. Then, we pass to France, where he is pushing his claim to the throne. There are a couple battles--Crécy and Poitiers--where his son the prince survives and succeeds against great odds a couple times. He takes Calais [historical spoilers!], where he really wants to commit some atrocities but gets talked out of it. The captured French king is brought to him as they enter the city.

I found it fun to read and imagine it would be pretty great to watch. It's too bad it mocks Scottish people in the beginning, because that made it unpopular when James I became king a few years after it was written and first performed.

As history, this has flaws. Events are moved around and historical figures invented. Some of it's true, but it isn't very accurate. And some critics say it isn't up to Shakespeare's standards (for reasons that don't trouble me). But it is a play meant for spectacle, for patriotic fervor, for emotional reveals (like when the prince survives one more tough spot, even though the people already know he survives) and that would make it a high-energy play to see. It's very dramatic.

Seriously--go to school or read a history book for history. Go to the theater for drama. And this is good drama--IMO, always.

Recommended.

Oh--the notes and helps in the front and back of the Melchiori edition from Cambridge are very good. That's a bonus.

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Where Coriolanus Sabotages Himself

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a tragedy (spoiler right out of the gate!) and I really don't like tragedies. Whatever sympathetic magic it is that works on some people, giving them a dose of catharsis or some pleasing schadenfreude, it just doesn't work for me. Teaching Othello to my students year after year, period after period, was a kind of torture--he made the same stupid mistake every time we read it, and the sweet Desdemona died every. single. time. Brutal. Depressing. Discouraging. I hate that story.

(That experience will probably be my villain origin story. I'm gonna go around rewriting the ends of all the Shakespearian tragedies, giving each one an implausible happy ending, thereby incurring the wrath of literature lovers everywhere and making my name a hiss and a byword.)

Anyway, the point is that I actually liked this play. Or I should say, probably, that I liked this story. I didn't expect to. I expected to hate it and curse it like I do the other tragedies. (Still hated the end, of course. But if I squint I can pretend the last page is missing and everything turned out great.) I'm still sorting out why.

The intro discusses the fact that this is seldom performed, being staged far less often than many of his other plays, and one reason is that there is almost no one to root for. The characters aren't very sympathetic, especially the MC. Coriolanus is selfish and proud and eventually turns traitor; his mother is a hardcore stage mom (I picture a tough-talking Diana Rigg in this role); the common folk are ungrateful; the patrician leaders are all self-serving; and the enemies are... well, not Roman. And while that's all kinda true, I still feel like they're all interesting and well-drawn.

One of the most interesting themes in this play addresses the question asking what political leaders and the people owe one another. I kinda side with the people here, not trusting Coriolanus to protect their rights, but I get it that they aren't crediting his heroism that saved them from death and slavery. At the same time, Coriolanus and the other leaders are proud of what they do for the city, but then treat the people--the overwhelming majority of Rome--like they're nobody and unimportant. Coriolanus is the worst about this. My dude, they support you. They do all the work. They are Rome. What a jerk.

But my favorite part is where he's questioning the utility or necessity of the tradition where a hero standing for public office must go out to the people, acting humble, showing off his scars earned in their defense, begging for their support, and he just doesn't want to do it. He wonders to himself if respecting old norms and customs without thinking about whether they should still have a place in modern life risks filling their culture up with meaningless or even harmful traditions:

Why in this wolfish toga should I stand here,
To beg of Hob and Dick that does appear
Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to't.
What custom wills, in all things should we do't
The dust on antique time would lie unswept
And mountainous error be too highly heaped
For truth to overpeer.

In a culture (I mean English culture, but it could just as fittingly apply to Roman culture) that has such reverence for custom, it's refreshing to see someone questioning the continuation of some random old tradition. It's unfortunate it's in Coriolanus's mouth, though; he's not a good spokesman for mixing things up.

Coriolanus is a hero; nevertheless, he's exiled because he refuses to satisfy the people that, once in office, he won't take away their rights; he defects to Rome's main enemy, who happily put him in front of troops to go fight Rome; he defeats his own homeland for them; but then he concludes a peace treaty (at the request of his family); this infuriates the Volsces people, who kill him.

Tragedy.

Aufidius, who plays Hector to Coriolanus's Achilles, Salieri to Coriolanus's Mozart, is an interesting character, and I wish he got a little more attention, a little more time on stage. Ultimately, after the events here, his people get swallowed up by Rome, but in the course of this story, he's probably the most honorable character. He never stopped fighting for his people, and he sure was able to think outside the box. I'd like to see his story.

In any case, it's an entertaining play, despite my misgivings about sad endings. Or maybe I just liked it because the introduction said I wouldn't. Maybe.

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Where Falstaff Gets Dunked On

The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of my least favorite plays by Shakespeare.

The last act is kind of entertaining, but I don't love the rest. Falstaff is portrayed here as just a fat fool to be mocked, and that's not too fun. He wants to seduce a couple of married women, really just to get some money from them, and he goes about it in the rudest, clumsiest way. But the rest of the story is how they lead him on just to trick him and let him embarrass himself. To escape an angry husband, he gets carried out in a basket and then tossed in the Thames with laundry. To escape a second time, he dresses as a woman--a well known witch, in fact--and gets beaten on the way out. And the last episode has him dressed like Herne the Hunter, with stag horns, going out to a haunted wood at midnight, where a bunch of actors and local people dress up like fairies and the like. They have prepared a song that they scare him with as they pinch him black and blue.

I'm thinking: people sure had a lot of time on their hands to go to so much trouble to embarrass a guy like they did here.

The good part was a subplot with a young woman who wants to marry one guy but her mom wants someone else and her dad wants a third man. They're all part of the midnight pageant, and the mom and dad's picks are told to come find her dressed in white or in green and steal her away to get married. She tricks them both, having other people dress in white and in green, so that she can leave with the man she loves. Yay! a happy ending. I would have liked it better if the play was mostly about her, not Falstaff.

Maybe it's funny on stage. I thought it was mostly mean-spirited and didn't love it. YMMV

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Where I Still Don't Know What the Second Apostrophe Is For

Love's Labor's Lost by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Yeah, I didn't love it.

I'm usually (recently, as an old man, I mean) pretty psyched for a Shakespeare comedy. I usually find them clever and fun, with lots to pay attention to. My intuition is, with further study, maybe with the help of an updated version to refer to, I might come around on this one. But right now, this ain't it.

I like the silly premise. The king and some men in his court agree that they will focus on study and self-improvement (for 3 years, was it? I forget) and keep themselves apart from women entirely. They'll barely sleep. They make the vow, then immediately see the difficulties when an embassy arrives that includes important women. When they are forced to keep the women outside, living in tents, it's obvious that this is a bad plan. It become more obvious when all four men fall in love.

Nice. Should be fun. But the fifth act, which is about 60% of the whole play, is all about playing games and messing around. The women join together to mock the men, and I'd be okay if it was good-natured, but it isn't. It's just page after page, scene after scene, of low-key arguing and playing tricks. Even that would be sort of okay, since they're all privileged men and women who should be able to take a joke, but when some regular folks try to entertain them with a pageant portraying "nine worthies," like Hercules and Pompey and other famous men from myth and history, the nobles interrupt them and confuse them and laugh at them and make them forget their lines. Rich people amusing themselves by mocking poor people just doesn't ever play well, IMO.

In the end, the women promise to consider the men's suits if they spend a year in various ways, mostly in service and in thought. I suppose we're meant to believe it works out after that year. I'd rather have seen that happen, though, rather than leave the play hanging.

The plot fizzles out. The characters disappoint. The humor is mean, much of it punching down. I didn't love it. It's clever, for sure; that's still true. Lots of Shakespearean wordplay. But I didn't like it the play. Not much, anyway. Maybe sometime, on second read, I'll have some brilliant insights that make it work for me. Probably nah.

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Where Helen Gets Her Man

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've never seen this performed, but it seems pretty entertaining, pretty fast-moving. Should be fun to see.

I knew the story from the Decameron, and it's a pretty typical plot for that collection of stories--a husband or wife tricking the other one to get their way is a common motif. It's hard to have any feeling for the main characters, though. I kinda like Helen, who proves her worth by her medical knowledge and ability, but making the king force a guy to marry her is pretty wrong. And then for that guy to abandon his wife is also pretty wrong. I'm not on either one's side.

But letting it be a kind of farce, one clearly based more on literary models than on real life, it is clever and amusing. Bertram has promised never to be a real husband to Helen until she has his ring (which he'll never give her) and presents him with his child (though he'll never sleep with her), so it looks like it's impossible. But Helen finds a way. She manages to substitute herself in for a young woman near Florence that her husband wants to sleep with, after the girl first demands the ring that she needs so badly. Apparently, in a dark room, he'd have no idea who he was really with. It works, she gets pregnant, and she gets the ring from the girl to take back to court in France to win her husband back.

There's more to it than that, because she needs additional proofs, but it all comes out in the final scene. I don't know how they can possibly live happily ever after, but we're given the impression that everyone is reconciled, and I'm just going with it.

I appreciate the theme dealing with true merit. Bertram doesn't see any value in low-born Helen, but she proves herself to be someone who deserves respect because of her wit and achievements. Others, like the coward Parolles, deserve scorn despite being born to a higher class. It's disappointing that this argument ever needed to be made, but I'm glad it makes the case here.

Overall, this play is pretty intelligible and easy to follow, IMO, for a modern audience. Whether we could be made to warm up to the main characters in a production of this or not, I'm not sure. I think probably. Anyway, it's worth reading.

Recommended.

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Where They All Are Horrible People

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I find this so tedious. Probably my least favorite Shakespeare play.

There's just no one to like in this story. Cleopatra is horrible, the most spoiled, narcissistic, useless character since Iago. Antony is an unsympathetic, selfish fool. Lepidus is useless. Caesar is no better than the rest. I literally don't care who wins and who survives in this story.

My Roman Empire is how stories set in the Roman Empire are dry as dirt.

Everyone here is fighting for a huge empire, for riches, all while holding on to their honor and reputations, and then when they have a bunch of power and money and honors they... just spend their time sitting around, eating, arguing, being obnoxious. If they aren't fighting, they're out of ideas. Some of the richest people in the history of the world and their lives look unbearably crappy.

So I don't care about them and I don't like them and I'm glad when I get to the end.

Wait--I actually like Caesar's sister who marries Antony. Octavia. She's a good character. She didn't deserve the stuff that happened to her, and Antony's death was probably a good thing in her life.

I'd like to see a play about Octavia. Maybe she took up painting miniatures and had a happy life with her second husband, a kind man who managed an import-export business and taught their kids how to fly kites.

Anyway.

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Where Caesar Had It Coming

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Catching up on all the Shakespeare I never read, I was a little surprised to realize I never read or studied Julius Caesar in any college class or on my own to teach in high school. I kinda thought I had, but nope--this was definitely the first time through the whole thing, despite so many lines being familiar.

And just because I want to, I'm reviewing this as if it's a random play come to hand by an unknown author. Seen that way--I give this 4/5 stars.

A modern reader can dip into this play pretty well, IMO, understanding it well enough to follow the story without maybe keeping all the characters straight. And it's reasonably entertaining that way. Seeing men of renown trying to decide if it's better to commit murder than let a populist undermine their republican institutions and destroy generations of custom and tradition to become a tyrant is brilliant. You think, if you don't know the actual history, that maybe it will work out. The people will see that they are defenders of the Law even if they break the small "l" law to uphold it, since no one else was going to save them. Not the courts, amirite?

The murder comes surprisingly early in the narrative. We get the public reaction in the middle, and then we turn to the resulting war in the end. I miss seeing the part where Brutus and Cassius end up in Greece with their own armies--how'd they do that? Suddenly, without benefit of that explanation, we're somewhere near Philippi, and four armies are ready to face off. Cassius and Brutus are angry and then they're not, which I didn't understand and I haven't researched to have it explained, and they're facing Antony and Octavius, who aren't exactly seeing eye to eye either.

I'd like to see the fighting scenes on the stage, see how it works, because it doesn't sound very satisfying. A natural effect of producing such stories on a literal stage is that you can't get an actual army together (like you can in a movie) so most of the important stuff must happen offstage, with somebody narrating what they're seeing or what has just passed. It feels less immediate, but you can see why it must be that way.

Shakespeare has Cassius commit suicide when he mistakenly believes his friend has been captured, and then his friend follows him. I kinda hate that. Cassius really did commit suicide, though, however it happened, which makes it pretty anticlimactic when Brutus does the same thing. In real life, apparently, Cassius and Brutus each killed themselves after different battles near Philippi, and all Shakespeare did was bring them closer in time. Either way, it's not great drama to have the main characters just tap out at the end. Real life sucks.

I kinda wonder if Elizabethan audiences thought their own government was closer to the Roman Republic of old or the Roman Empire that came after. Did they see the parliament of that day as a sort of modern senate with republican pretensions? Or did they view their sovereign as a tyrant who ruled without much public pressure to counterbalance their power?

Which team were they rooting for? That's what I wonder.

Mostly fun to read. Not too long. Some memorable lines, even if you're not reading for that purpose. Antony's speech is very clever; it took a good writer to make that work the way it did. The ending disappoints a bit, kinda petering out, but overall it's still entertaining after all these years.

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Where Proteus Causes All the Trouble

The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I should have read this one years ago. It's another very intelligible play (from a 21st century perspective, I mean, especially as compared to more difficult plays) with plot, characters, language, and themes that still readily make sense.

Now I recognize the lines Gwyneth Paltrow's character used to audition in Shakespeare in Love, and I understand some of the plot and setting of Benet Brandreth's Shakespearian historical mystery, The Assassin of Verona. I didn't love that novel, but now I see some of the stuff that didn't work for me comes straight from this play, so I can absolve the author a little...

In this story, a couple of best friends (Proteus, who is changeable, and Valentine, who is a true lover) part a little unhappy with each other because Proteus had fallen in love, and his friend thought that was a betrayal of their friendship. Shortly after Valentine goes to the Duke's court in Milan, Proteus follows, parting sadly with Julia. When he gets there, he joins the service of the beautiful daughter of the duke, Silvia, who is Valentine's love. (Yes, Valentine immediately fell in love, even though he had just chided his friend for that.) Proteus falls in love with her too, betraying both Julia and his best friend. In fact, he reveals the relationship to the duke, getting Valentine exiled so that he can swoop in. Before long, Julia shows up, in disguise, and sees how Proteus has failed her.

Valentine ends up with some nice brigands in the woods, and by the end everybody is out there, getting their heads straight. The conclusion comes very quick--lots of apologies, easy forgiveness, pardons for criminals, and making up all around. It's a happy ending, which I never fault, though I would have liked Proteus to earn it a little more.

But it's fun (ish) to read, and some of the wooing and sarcastic asides that read sort of funny are doubtless improved in a live performance, which I'd like to see sometime.

There's a whole list of continuity errors and naming mistakes throughout (saying Padua when they mean Milan; calling the duke emperor at times; sailing from one land-locked city to another; stuff like that) which could be its own topic. This definitely needed an editor before it went to print, but this is how we got it, and I think it's humanizing. Shakespeare's rough draft errors. LOL.

Good play. It could be a good movie. Maybe it is. As always, I'll go check now. Fingers crossed.

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Where the King Loses It (But Gets Some of It Back)

Shakespeare's Play a Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorite Shakespeare plays, now. I knew nothing at all about this play until very recently, and am surprised to learn it's as popular as it is. Never was taught in any classes I took...

But it should be. It's more fun than most of his plays, and reasonably comprehensible without much assistance--more than many.

Somewhere between romance and myth, we a king who, like Othello, doesn't believe in his wife's faithfulness (though she is absolutely faithful), and everyone suffers, especially his wife and son, but much of the harm is undone by the end, including an Ovid-like metamorphosis that repairs the worst of it. (The son and everyone on the ship remain dead, unfortunately.) Some of it is like tragedy, and fairly realistic, but the statue of his wife returning to life is pure fantasy or myth, and that's cool. It would have been fun to see performed.

The common trope of this time (from Shakespeare to Austen and almost to our time) that a noble young man in love with a beautiful girl--peasant, servant, or, as in this case, a shepherdess--is absolutely NOT to think about marrying her; but if that girl turns out to be a lost princess (which, of course, she must be, or she wouldn't be beautiful, right?) then all is well. Marry away! Nobody is bothered by the fact that nothing actually changed about the girl--if she was worth marrying as a princess, she should have been worth marrying as a shepherdess, because she was the same either way. But I can't change the minds of people long dead.

Anyway, I like a happy ending, and this one will do. If we had seen a bit more of Perdita being amazing and sweet in the middle, someone worth infuriating a king for, in act III or act IV, I would have liked it a bit better. She doesn't get enough time on stage to suit me. Still, 4 stars for the first couple acts and the last one. Good fun.

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Where Will Shakespeare Is a Spy

The Assassin of Verona by Benet Brandreth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For me, this is a "liked it a little" book. That's a 3 to me.

I could give it a 4 for the last chapter, which was pretty good; but I could give it a 2 for a very disappointing plot. Let me explain.

The premise is fun: Shakespeare, as a younger man, before he wrote all his plays, ends up with a couple friends impersonating delegates from England, becoming actual spies in the process. They reach Venice in book 1. This is book 2, where he and Hemmings and Oldcastle are trying to return to England with important intelligence. And for about 80% of the book, nothing of note happens.

They're separated, and end up in the forests around Verona. Will, depressed by a severe loss, hangs out with bandits in the woods. Does nothing. Says little. His friends are stuck at the local Duke's court, playing new roles to avoid the pope's men. But they don't come up with any plans or attempt to do anything intelligent.

None of them do.

If the duke's daughter didn't drive the action, nothing would happen.

I'll grant that a lot of Shakespeare plays also have very loose plots--think The Tempest or A Midsummer Night's Dream--where stuff happens but nobody achieves anything much. So maybe he's going for that here. But imagine having Shakespeare as a character while not having him do anything or say anything interesting for most of the book.

Disappointing. The last chapter or so sees a bit of action, but then ends on a horribly sour note that definitely does not make me want to read any more like this. Just a bummer.

Anyway, it's written well, as far as prose I mean, with some fun allusions to language from the plays, and has a few good scenes. Overall: thumbs-up, but without much conviction.

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