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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17th Century Mexican Nun Poet Patriarchy Smasher

Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings by Juana Inés de la Cruz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz--the "sor" part meaning that she was, later in life, a nun--was born Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, and was a poet of the late 1600s in Mexico. Her story is amazing; the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish officer, she managed to get an education that was usually denied young women in colonial Mexico, and after reading everything she could find, became fluent in Latin and mastered Greek rhetoric. As a young teen, she ended up a lady-in-waiting in the viceroy's court, and became famous both for her learning and her poetry, astonishing the learned men who came to test her. She turned down many marriage proposals and eventually retired to a monastery with her books where she continued to write. Throughout her life, she faced obstacles to her writing and study, especially from the church, and had to fight to be allowed what intellectual freedom she had. The more scrutiny she faced, the more concessions she had to make, until the archbishop of Mexico condemned her, forcing her to stop writing. Much of what she did write is now lost.

This book is a bilingual version of a part of what remains, and what it contains is terribly impressive. The poet was brilliant, with an amazing command of history, literature, and scripture. The first work translated here, a long letter to Sor Filotea, offering arguments for educating women, is just so smart, filled with examples of educated women from antiquity and church history, all presented with flawless rhetoric. Reading it now, one wants to shake the foolish men (always men) who worked so hard to shut her up and stifle her for no reason other than patriarchy. Her patience and composure alone are impressive.

Besides a short play at the end, the rest of this volume is poetry. Some of it is very accessible and some is damn near impenetrable. (Speaking for myself.) Here are the first few lines of the 25-or-so-page poem called either "First I Dream" or "First Dream," depending on how you translate it (copied from a public domain version):

Pyramidal
death-born shadow of earth
aimed at Heaven
a proud point of vain obelisks pretending to scale the Stars;
but these lovely lights
–free always, always shining–
so easily evaded
the obscure war,
(whose black breath announced
the dreadful, unfettered shade)
the darkened brow
could not even reach the convex Orb of the thrice-blessed Goddess
who shows three shining faces,
but remained
in profound imperial silence,
lord only of the air
sullied with the dense breath
it exhaled
–admitting only
submissive cries of nocturnal birds, so deep and plangent,
the silence was not broken.

It's lyrical and surprising and impressive and so far beyond me... The translation in this book is a little different than the above, and it's very nice, but I would have liked a couple things:

• A literal translation rather than a poetic one, to make the Spanish easier for those of us attempting it, and/or
• Extensive notes making sense of the deeply obscure references and difficult language.

I suppose some of that exists online, so I'll take a look.

Fortunately, the other poems--sonnets and satires--are more accessible. I still would have liked literal translations rather than poetic approximations, but I suppose translators can't please everyone no matter what they do.

I definitely recommend looking into Sor Juana's life and poetry, and this book in particular is a nice introduction.

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Where I Happily Get Embroiled In One More Holmes Series

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoy all kinds of Holmes retellings and embellishments, and when Netflix adapted Enola Holmes as a movie I really liked it--hadn't heard of the series before--but that meant it was time to read the original.

I liked this well enough. It was cute, a fast story, and I enjoyed reading it, though somewhat less than I hoped. TBH, it seems a little thin, with much less happening than I expected. (The movie tricked me a little.) I can't knock it for having YA pacing, but I was sorry that Enola doesn't display the confidence and competence I thought she would. I suspect that's coming; it looks like the series follows a long arc, which will give her character time to develop. But much of the fun in Sherlock Holmes stories is when the character makes leaps of deduction or displays an amazing breadth of knowledge. Enola has one such moment, and I hoped for more.

Anyway, it's cleverly written, the character is likable, and there's lots of room for sequels. It leans toward cozy mystery, but there is still a decent amount of action, so I suspect the future novels will have a similar balance. I'm looking forward to testing that theory.

Recommended for Sherlock Holmes fans with wide tastes and for YA readers in general.

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