Where Edmund Takes on Canute

Edmund Ironside by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really liked it. The handful of other readers on goodreads didn't like it. Huh.

I'm probably right. ;)

Though officially anonymous, some people say this is an early play by Shakespeare. [which people? citation needed] [JK--it was E. B. Everitt, Eric Sams, and Peter Ackroyd. They point to language, mostly.] And I wouldn't be surprised if they were right. It's got nicely regular iambic pentameter; unrhymed except for the odd couplet at the end of a scene or the last time we see a character; the comic relief servant speaks in regular prose; many nicely dramatic scenes with a very Iago-like villain... Sure, all those things are Elizabethan, but to my terribly untrained eye it seems like it could be an early work.

Besides, it's very fun. Good action, both offstage and on. Memorable characters. This is when the crown of England was passing back from Danes to native-born Englishmen (then back, then back again) a generation or so before the Normans arrived. It makes good use of the best sources of history at the time, even to using the language of the sources (Holingshead and Grafton).

I've read a few dull plays recently and tried to like them; this one I liked without effort. Should be fun to see on stage. So--recommended. Whether it's Shakespeare or Mr. Anonymous.

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Taming of a Shrew. Not That One.

The Old Taming of a Shrew: Upon Which Shakespeare Founded His Comedy; Reprinted from the Edition of 1594, and Collated with the Subsequent Editions of 1596 and 1607 by Anonymous
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I haven't read Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew yet, but I found this one, which might be based on his or might be the source he worked from or might be connected in some other way, pretty fun and entirely problematic.

The play feels like a rough draft with none of the plot holes worked out, and there are a few complications thrown in for no particular reason, lies told when the truth would serve. Supposedly, it was gonna be impossible to find a man who would marry the notorious shrew, which was an impediment to the father allowing men to court his other daughters, but that was solved about five minutes into the play.

None of it matters, though, as it's just meant to be a bit of fun. Most amusing is the framing device, where a rich man takes a drunk into his house and makes his servants treat him like their lord when he wakes up. The play is performed for his amusement, and when he passes out again they take him back to the street where they found him.

Kinda mean, too, if you think about it.

Of course, the main plot is pretty awful. A guy marries a belligerent woman, and to tame her he takes everything away from her and restricts her food and makes her say the sun is the moon before he lets her do anything, like see her family. She finally gives in and becomes the perfect wife. It looks like lessons for men to be happy, but it's more like lessons on emotional abuse and gaslighting.

Experts don't agree on which came first, this or Shakespeare's similar story, but many agree that it likely was Marlowe who wrote it as a parody of his own plays, as it uses odd lines from Tamburlaine and other works. So, that's kinda cool. I still wonder why the plot is so rough...

As they say on the Elizabethan Drama website, this one is pretty easy to read, so it's not a bad choice for people wanting to sample old plays by writers other than Shakespeare.

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