Where the Duke Fixes What He Broke

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorites.

I always prefer a happy ending. (Still planning my unauthorized happy-ending version of Othello, which no one is asking for but I really want.) And this is a comedy where things work out. (Sorry for the spoilers. But you've had 400 years.) But I like it for the themes as well, the ideas behind the story, because they're a little subversive in the best kind of way.

Angelo, left in charge while the duke is away, really intends to be morally upright. He thinks he is justified in having Claudio put to death for sex outside marriage, for sleeping with Juliet (not that one). But before the end of the play, he is plotting to sleep with Claudio's pretty sister. Not just that, he's willing to extort her, promising to save her brother, even while planning to kill Claudio anyway. This is one of those mote-in-my-eye-a-beam-in-yours situations, where "justice" is only visited on the powerless.

In the backstory, Angelo has broken off an engagement with a good woman because her family lost their money. He's not condemned for this, because even though it's pretty bad it's not illegal. He's a letter-of-the-law guy. He wants justice, not mercy, though in the end it's mercy that saves him.

Angelo gets forgiven in the end a bit too easily, IMO, but that's a convention in these kinds of plays, and it's also modeling the idea that everyone's a sinner, a screwup, and deserves some mercy. He marries the woman he left, who still wants him, somehow, and isn't put to death for all the stuff he did. (Mercy can also be a bit chaotic and unreliable. Not sure if that's meant to be a theme, but it's in there.) But from all this we can learn that it doesn't pay to try to crack down too hard on private sexual morality; that's doomed to fail. Not just that--the play suggests that outside forces (church and state both, perhaps?) imposing morality in a legalistic way is wrong from the start.

We also see the duke showing bad judgment throughout the play, and it allows the reader or viewer to question the supposed wisdom of our rulers. He trusts unreliable people like Angelo, putting the people of his realm at risk, and his switch from lenient to severe does no one any good. He helps orchestrate a happy ending, yes, but a lot is in disarray, people are harmed by it, and the fault is his. He is very angry with Lucio for slandering him, making that seem bigger than Angelo's extortion of sexual favors, showing how those in power exaggerate harm done to them and minimize harms done to regular people, even when they're supposedly good guys like this duke. Did he even think about why he'd had a guy like Barnardine in jail for so long? Pretty casual, Duke. Do better.

I read this somewhat recently, but this time I read it out of the No Fear edition. As always, the play is more comprehensible and more enjoyable as a result. (I end up reading almost all of it twice, but that's okay.) The play is well worth reading (and seeing), and if you do read it, definitely get the No Fear version.

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Where Jack and Algy Are, at Last, Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest Annotated by The Importance of Being Earnest Annotated Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oscar Wilde is a clever, funny writer, and this is as good as anything he's written. Might be my favorite. (I also enjoyed "An Ideal Husband," "A woman of No Importance," and "Lady Windermere's Fan." Lots of similarities.) His characters are comic rather than realistic, always slightly askew, which could be a turnoff for some. But if you hear them as if they're always being tongue-in-cheek and only partly sincere (which is not too far off), as if they are always in on the joke, like a character in an SNL sketch, and always about a second from bursting out into laughter, it makes a lot of sense. People get angry here, but they're always performatively angry. They give and take offense, but forgive it immediately. They behave badly but but feel shame and embarrassment for about one line--and then they're over it.

It works for me.

Jack, who calls himself Ernest while in London, pretends when he leaves his home in the country that he's going to London to visit his *brother* Ernest (who doesn't exit), a poor young man who's always supposed to be in some kind of trouble, and he wants to marry Gwendolyn, his friend Algernon's cousin. Algernon, who leaves London occasionally to visit his imaginary sick friend Bunbury, finds out Jack has a young female ward who he wants to meet. He tracks down Jack's home, finds Cecily, pretends to be the poor brother Ernest, falls in love with her, and convinces her to marry him. Jack, returning home in mourning pretending Ernest is dead, is horrified to find Algernon pretending to be the fake brother Earnest in excellent health.

Then, the hijinks. Really, though, it's the ironic dialogue that's funniest. Here's Jack when he's caught in a lie and forced to confess:

Jack: Gwendolen--Cecily--it is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind...

And here's Algernon explaining to his aunt that his friend Bunbury is dead:

Algernon: My dear Aunt Augusta... The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live... so Bunbury died.
Lady Bracknell: He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice.

A mystery gets solved, problems are cleared up, and everybody gets a very nice happily ever after.

It's a very funny play, light and silly, and I recommended it.

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Where Figaro Gets His Start

The Barber of Seville by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is somewhat entertaining; I suspect it would be a little more entertaining in the actual theater, performed instead of read. That's what pushed a 3.5 or so in my head to a 4. I'm sure this is funny in person.

The Benjamin Franklin series, where he meets with Beaumarchais in Paris, got me interested in reading this. I only have a vague idea of Figaro, mostly informed by Bugs Bunny cartoons, and assumed they were only operas. I didn't know that Beaumarchais was such a renaissance man, and I didn't know he wrote these plays (and got himself in trouble for them).

Part of my misapprehension, corrected by reading this first one, was that these were highbrow tales. I mean, opera, right? LOL. Nope.

So, as far as plotting and dialogue, this whole play is just Figaro helping Count Almaviva get access to Rosine, a beautiful young woman who is going to be forced to marry her guardian, Bartholo. (First of all--wtf? Who does this. Second--I recall an older Spanish play that is almost the exact thing, with the same opening sequence in the street outside the window...) Bartholo is a jerk taking advantage of a helpless young woman, so he's the villain, but literally everyone else spends most of the play lying or scheming to lie. Or accepting bribes.

The dishonesty strikes me as odd, and not very honorable in main characters. It's acceptable, maybe, to defeat the villain, but it's weird. I've had the same thought reading Dumas, where characters lie to each other and aren't even embarrassed when caught in the lies since, apparently, everyone else would do the same thing. I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, a cultural thing, or if it's a convention of French literature, but it's surprising to me. I'm trying to think of a non-villain in English literature of a similar era who lies like these guys do. Not Darcy or Edmund, for example. But I guess Tom Jones gets away with lies and bad behavior. Hmm. Maybe it's the era.....

So here, Figaro, kind of a trickster, is working to get all the servants sick or sleeping and get Bartholo out of the house so the count can sneak in and marry the girl. The comedy is in the lying and the goofy songs they are singing extemporaneously and, especially, the moments when the count (in disguise as a music teacher) is trying to whisper with Rosine, while the jealous and suspicious Bartholo keeps intervening.

It's a romp is what I'm saying. It's just young good guys outwitting an old jerk, tricking him and making up quick lies to win the girl away from him. That's fun.

The second play, The Marriage of Figaro, is supposed to be more subversive, more of a commentary on society and nobility, and it's the one that got Beaumarchais in trouble. I'm eager to see if it feels meatier. But sometimes something light and silly is just fine.

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Where the Rake Is the Hero

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is, IMO, a great play. I've enjoyed the movie many times--Rupert Everett, Minnie Driver, Kate Blanchett, Jeremy Northam--and considered the themes a bit, but the ideas cut deeper when reading it, and I agree with a lot of it. (Not all, certainly.) While enjoying dozens of comic lines, we still get to think about the impossibility of perfection and the ramifications of accepting that, whether we should forgive ourselves and others or if we should withdraw from society and hide our faces.

We learn quite early that Sir Robert Chiltern, a rising star in parliament, owes his wealth to selling a big secret when he was very young, and Lady Chevely has arrived to used that information against him, to make him support a "scheme" (as they called it then) that was really a scam but would make her money. Sir Robert agrees to do what she asks, though he had been about to deliver a strong speech saying the opposite. He is as afraid of losing his wife's love if she found out what he had done as he was of any scandal, but he's stuck, because she knows he considers the scheme a fraud; there's no way he can address parliament supporting it without her learning that something is wrong. He fails either way.

Slacker Lord Goring, brilliantly played by Rupert Everett in the movie and in my head, turns out to be the voice of reason and morality both in the play, the one most responsible for leading the story to a happy conclusion. Everybody thinks he's just a degenerate playboy, including his father, but he's the one who intercepts Lady Chevely, gives both Sir Robert and Lady Gertrude good advice, and models forgiveness, or more accurately a judgment-free friendship, that spreads to the others.

The funniest lines are those delivered between Lord Goring and the woman he (almost secretly) loves, Sir Robert's sister. (Minnie Driver in the movie.) Their amused ironic banter keeps the play light when it could seem dark. Lord Goring's interactions with his father are also very fun.

Lord Cavendish: Why don't you propose to that pretty Miss Chiltern?
Lord Goring: I am of a very nervous disposition, especially in the morning.
Lord Cavendish: I don't suppose there is the smallest chance of her accepting you.
Lord Goring: I don't know how the betting stands today.

There's a lot of amusing fluff in a Wilde play, but lots of musings on the classes in England at that time, on what good government means (if anything), on morality, and a preoccupation with those trying to be perfect. It would be wonderful to talk to him about what he was thinking when he wrote about such topics.

Anyway, it's a good story with lots of humor and the right amount of ironic detachment to make the satire bite. Highly recommended.

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Where Wilde Hits a Few Targets

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a pretty entertaining play with a couple nuggets of truth well worth finding out, and it's filled with sayings that amuse but probably distract from what's at the heart of the play more than they add to it. IMO. But the play is more successful than not, especially if one is inclined to like Wilde, as I am, and would like to see it performed.

But it seems like Wilde let loose with the aphorisms that look like they mean something but probably don't. I got tired of that. Lots of "women do this and men do that," including the famous bit about women becoming like their mothers being their tragedy and men not becoming like their fathers being theirs. That's the best one. Among the rest, some draw blood; others are too by-the-numbers to feel like they truly say anything. Probably got laughs, I suppose.

It takes a while to figure out who the play is about and what's happening with them. The story of Mrs. Arbuthnot and her adult son, who's being offered an amazing position with Lord Illingworth, emerges from a lot of random dialogue in the first act, where a number of guests at Hunstanton Chase are talking about nothing in particular. Much of it tends toward the behavior of men and women, but all with a jaded, insincere, ironic tone. Lady Hunstanton, explaining why a particular young lady didn't receive an offer of marriage from Lord Illingworth: "But I believe he said her family was too large. Or was it her feet? I forget which." That's funny, and shows how ridiculous marriage had become among the upper classes of England, but it's also pointless conversation. Later: "Poor Lord Belton died three days [after eloping] of joy or gout. I forget which."

It's all just fodder for endless, pointless conversations, where the details hardly mattered. That's a critique of the institution, but the reader also begins to feel that nothing means anything; nothing they say is worth attending to. When asked about uneducated people voting, Lord Illingworth says he thinks they are the only people who should. Then he cautions against taking sides, because that "is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore." Later he says that he adores simple pleasures, adding "they are the last refuge of the complex." Maybe that means something. I can imagine something deep there, but I got the feeling that even Wilde was just tossing out jokes, hoping they sounded significant. The whole conversation seems to be just setups for clever bon mots that don't really mean much, and I started to wonder if anything would happen in the story.

But we find out that there are secrets and connections and a history between people, and the story does get interesting. It's all about how women get squashed by society for sexual impropriety, but men never have any consequences. It's disappointing that religion and strict morality are taken for granted here, and the prevailing perspective, as a result, is that men should suffer as much as women do, not that women should not. That feels like a missed opportunity, even considering the time of publication. However, you can read the ending as supporting that notion, of treating "sinners" (if you must) charitably, with forgiveness, especially since the least judgmental person in the play is the religious American woman who is often referred to as "the Puritan," and she refuses at the end of the story to hold a woman's past against her.

So maybe I should let that perspective get the final word on the topic.

For too long, I thought we were supposed to see Illingworth as the lovable cad, like Rupert Everett's Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband. (I haven't read that play yet--it's just the movie for me so far.) Turns out--spoiler--Illingworth's just a cad. His wordplay is self-serving, not self-deprecating, and his apparent immorality is who he actually is. TBH, it all makes a lot more sense when you read the beginning the second time, supplied with backstories and true natures. I wonder if people went multiple times to the play back in the day...

My favorite character, in the end, is the earnest and mocked young American woman. I don't know how she would have been received by Wilde's contemporaries, but she's just alright with me. Direct. Sincere. Forgiving. Good stuff.

Lots of it is funny, and I like the story. Wilde can absolutely do "clever." Just a bit more heart early on and it would have really worked for me. Still, 4 stars--it comes close.

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Where Lady Windermere Has Many Protectors

Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this thoroughly enjoyable. Emotional. Witty. Funny. Clever.

What's not to like?

It's in this play that we find the quip, "I can resist everything except temptation." There are so many effective, witty quips in the play, you could probably write a book about them. Maybe there is one.

Lady Windermere has never had reason to suspect her husband, but another gentleman, Lord Darlington, reveals some actions which call his faithfulness into question. The facts are confirmed. Then her husband insists she invite the woman named in the gossip to the ball at their home. The setup is complete when, certain of her husband's shockingly open infidelity, Lord Darlington offers to take her away to live in true love.

In a fit of pique, she writes a letter to her husband and goes to meet her admirer. But Lady Erlynne reads the letter and chases her down...

There are many parallels with An Ideal Husband, but that doesn't detract from the charm of this rather cozy comedy. One can admire virtually every character here in one way or another (which reinforces the theme that no one is wholly good or bad, making such categorical distinctions among people foolish and harmful). I like Lady Windermere; I like her husband; I like Lady Erlynne, who still has a great deal of good in her despite her shocking career; and I like simple old Lord Augustus, who is willing to believe everything she tells him so that they can marry. I'm not too keen on Lord Darlington, but I can hardly blame him.

I'm surprised that there isn't a fun movie adaptation from this generation. (There is one poorly-received modern version, but I'm not eager to try that one.) It is very straightforward and rather brief; it would need a bit of fleshing out to be a 100 minute movie. But I'd go see it, for sure, if someone made it happen. (I'm manifesting another movie. It hasn't worked so far.)

I love Wilde's comic style, though it may not suit everyone. If you tend to like it, you should read or go see this. I thought it was great.

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Where He Called Dibs On the Princess

The Two Noble Kinsmen: William Shakespeare (Drama, Plays, Comedy) [Annotated] by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Attributed to--and correctly so, as far as I know--Shakespeare and John Fletcher.

I found this pretty entertaining. It's more straightforward than some Shakespeare plays, having just one main plot and a minor secondary plot. Well, sorta two, I guess. This makes it more comprehensible on the first read than many of his plays. Besides, the original story comes from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, so there's a good chance you already kind of know the plot.

Set in Thebes and Athens, if Thebes and Athens were in East Anglia or something, it's the story of a pair or noble cousins who fall in love with the same woman who they just happened to see at a distance at almost the same moment, and it comes between them. There are a lot of hurdles between them and Emilia, as they are stuck in jail and she's the daughter of the king. But yadda yadda yadda they both end up free and, at the command of Athens' king, must do battle, with the loser dying and the winner marrying his daughter. The sweet young woman likes them both and wants nothing to do with a duel, but she has no say.

In many ways, this is a sad story, with many tragic elements. It starts with a war against a cruel king who would not allow widowed queens to bury their husbands, and it ends with a life-and-death battle between good friends. Lots of death and grief and separation. But it ends happily enough, which is a saving grace for me.

I think this would be fun to see. I'm curious about the parts with the jailer's daughter who goes crazy for love of Palamon but is cured by sleeping with her lover playing at being him. This could be poignant and touching or it could be played for laughs; I'm not sure how it would come off.

Supposedly, the easier sections were written by Fletcher, and the parts with denser language were Shakespeare's. I dunno. It all seemed like one thing to me. I liked it fine.

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Where Whoever Wins Last Is King

King Henry VI, Part 3 by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Man, there's a lot of plays about kings named Henry.

At least they're entertaining. This one was. I suspect I'd like it better as a movie than a play (so that you can see all the stuff that Shakespeare has take place offstage, like the fighting) but no matter how you consume it you need a book of who's who. A thousand given names to choose from and yet everybody's either Henry or Edward.

Sheesh.

If this were a novel, I'd say the author should have streamlined the plot. Too much back and forth, up and down. No one would ever believe it. He's on the throne, he's off the throne, he's on the throne, he's back off...

A lot of the message is muddied, I feel, by the randomness of the outcomes. It feels like every moral lesson is contradicted by the next act. Nobody is right; everybody is wrong. Might makes right? No. Power is transitory? Maybe. Treason is punished? Sometimes. But one sure thing: the people suffer no matter what the mighty do. One of my favorite scenes in this is in the third act, when Henry has been deposed and is in disguise in the north of England. A pair of gamekeepers recognize him and go to arrest him. The king wonders about their loyalty, since he had once been king and they had sworn allegiance to him.

King Henry: I was anointed king at nine months old;
my father and my grandfather were kings,
And you were sworn true subjects not me:
And tell me, then, have you not broke your oaths?

First keeper: No; for we were subjects but while you were king.

King Henry: Why, am I dead? Do I not breathe a man?...

First Keeper: We are true subjects to the king, King Edward.

It's clear that the opinion of the people, who they favor and who seems to have true authority over them, matters in the story; it's part of the political calculation that the schemers take into account. But just a part. Other factors can still outweigh their collective power. And individually, the people are nothing. In the end, whoever can get the power is king, and the common folk--powerless nobodies--can only be loyal to the power. That's their only choice. Anything else is too great a risk for them. So, if there's a new king, Hurrah! Long live the new king!

And it looks like the winners get fancy meals. That's what the crown will buy you.

King Edward: And now what rests but that we spend the time
With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows,
Such as befits the pleasure of the court?
Sound drums and trumpets! Farewell sour annoy!
For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.

I'm not sure it's worth all the scheming and fighting in the rain and murdering of old men and kids only to get feasts that you probably could have had as a duke or earl anyway. But that's just me.

I read this without the benefit of the side-by-side retelling you find in No Fear Shakespeare, and I felt the lack of it. But I don't have a test to take or an essay to write, so just reading it for general comprehension is good enough for me. I liked it and I may take another look at it in the future, maybe straighten out a few more of those Edwards and Henrys.

Now on to Richard III.

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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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Where the Bad Guy Wins. I Hate It

The Borderers by William Wordsworth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this out of a very old Collected Works of Wordsworth volume, one sufficiently large that many of the pages are still connected at the edge and have to be cut apart. It's most fun to read old stuff that way, I think, and I kinda enjoyed reading this, Wordsworth's only play. But I didn't love it. Especially the end.

The language, unsurprisingly, is wonderful and very readable. Both poetic and comprehensible even on first read, it's a pleasure to peruse leisurely. There's some nice stuff there, if one has a mind to delve into it.

Unfortunately, I don't like the story. Forgive the spoilers (or don't), but this is a depressing tragedy that leaves us with nothing beautiful or hopeful to hold on to, like taking a beating for no good reason. Oswaldo, a cruel Iago-type trickster, a man whose conscience was blasted by things he did in war, wants to ruin the heroic Marmaduke in the same way; he wants him to commit a crime he can never recover from, and lies and tricks him, coercing false witnesses to complete the deception. With a whole collection of proofs, Oswaldo makes the hero believe that a certain kind old man he knew--Herbert, a blind, dispossessed old noble with a sweet daughter that Marmaduke is in love with--is actually a kidnapper, stealing the girl from her mother in her infancy. All invented. The hero believes it in the end, and when the old man is in his hands he allows him to be lost in the wasteland near the Scottish border. (He meant to kill him with his own hands, but couldn't go that far.) The hero learns the truth too late, repents in anguish, and attempts to rescue the weak old man from the brutal wilderness where he left him. It is too late, though, and Herbert has died. All this happens just as his lands were about to be restored to him and sweet, doting Idonea at last made happy.

The conclusion? Marmaduke renounces all happiness, resolving to wander the land with only the ghost of the murdered man as company:

No human ear shall ever hear me speak;
No human dwelling ever give me food,
Or sleep, or rest: but, over waste and wild,
In search of nothing, that this earth can give,
But expiation, will I wander on—
A Man by pain and thought compelled to live,
Yet loathing life—till anger is appeased
In Heaven, and Mercy gives me leave to die.

I hate sad, tragic, dismal endings like this and will not make room for them in my heart. (Othello kills the faithful and sweet Desdemona? Iago wins? Jesus, Grandpa! What did you read me this thing for?) Honestly, though, with a happy ending, I woulda given this 4 or 5 stars. And I might have read it again.

Not much recommended. A little.

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Thoughts on Marlowe's Dido and Uninformed Western Literature. Lite Version

The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage by Christopher Marlowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sorta fun. Kinda.

This play isn't very long, and reads pretty easy, especially if you get an annotated version. The mythological references would fly over my head without help, and probably most people--they aren't the easy ones, I mean--but the action is straightforward and comprehensible. Some of the joy is checking off another bit of classical literature that I was pretty sure I would never get to. Proved ya wrong.

Reading blank verse doesn't make an impression on me the way it should; it doesn't really sound like anything in my head, though I do suspect I'd enjoy it more performed, as intended. And yet I always find Marlowe's language sparkling and inventive, whether spoken aloud or read silently, and I recommend his writing at least for that reason.

Not for verisimilitude. Not much of that around here. To be fair, I didn't see it staged 400 years ago; the sets and props and costumes might have been awesome. I doubt it, though.

Like pretty much all British literature of the Renaissance and afterwards (plays and operas in particular, I mean), every nation on earth looks like England; every fighting man is a knight in armor; every court reads like Henry VIII's or Elizabeth I's; every love story is western. All culture is flattened to Elizabethan culture, as if nothing ever changes, language isn't a thing, and distance makes no difference.

It's a little like Star Trek TOS--they speak English everywhere, on every planet, and everything looks pretty familiar.

Imagine, though, if this play had been written by a Punic-speaking Carthaginian. Imagine how different the setting would have appeared. Instead of an Englishman's conception of a Roman's conception of a Phoenician colony, we would see the actual place; we'd hear the voices of the people; we'd experience their actual culture and norms; we'd experience 8th Century BCE Carthage. Or even if, say, a 3rd Century BCE Carthaginian could write about these events that made up his or her heritage from 500 years before we would still be miles better than what we have here.

Virgil got (just about) everything wrong in the Aeneid, and Marlowe didn't make the slightest effort (as far as I can see) to give any historical accuracy to his account. Carthage seems like Sussex, not North Africa. But, of course, it's a play, for fun, and it's written for an English audience that knew less than Marlowe about an ancient city called Carthage. They wouldn't have cared about historical accuracy. Or if they did care, they couldn't do anything about it. *Just watch the play, man! We can argue about his cultural appropriation at the pub! Watch. Scantily clad women. Poetry. Pageantry. Shhh!

So, here's the thing: for them to have any account of Carthage at all, it had to come from Marlowe, as ill-equipped as he was. Nobody else was gonna do it.

In fact, generally speaking, for an English audience of that time to enjoy a story taking place almost anywhere in the world, it needed another Englishman to write it, whether or not the author knew what he was talking about. Yes, a reader could get other European literature in the original, and some in translation, but almost nothing from anywhere else. Asia? Africa? The New World? Some religious literature, and a fair amount of literature (history, philosophy, science) from the Arab world, but little of any of that was popularly available. (I'm making sweeping generalizations to make a point. Hang with me.)

It is no longer that way. We don't have to have an uninformed Westerner's version of stories set in exotic locales. We live in a time when we can read literature from all over the world. You want an idea of life in North Africa now? There are novels in English and French and Arabic and other languages that will give you an excellent idea. Not my idea, or Marlowe's, or Virgil's. These are novels coming straight from someone who has lived there or grew up in that tradition.

English language fantasy set in Ancient China or India or West Africa? There are bunches of fantasy writers from those nations, and from the diaspora of those nations, writing in English (and other languages, of course) who can supply satisfying stories with much greater accuracy, stories that make an effort to capture the true flavor of a place. We learn about the people and culture and norms and quirks and fascinating details from writers who have lived in those societies, writers who grew up learning about those traditions, from sources who can write with authority about settings and cultures that a Western audience can only guess at or acquire through loooong study.

I'm not talking about the ethical or moral implications of writing in a culture not your own; I'm not judging or excluding or making a case one way or another. Different conversation, one I'm not good at. I'm just saying that we're lucky to have a chance in this century to enjoy the charm and the beauty of well written stories taking place in settings all over the world, written by people who know about those places. People who can do the things that Renaissance writers were really bad at. (Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors takes in the Greek city of Ephesus in Turkey. If you read or watch that play, do you feel like you've learned anything about historical Ephesus at all? I doubt it. It's just meant to be a funny play. Set it in Vancouver--same story.)

In 2019, Marlowe is no longer the right person to write about the queen of a North African city founded by a Semitic people. Not only is he not good at it, he would offend a bunch of people. In the 16th Century, he was the only choice. He was as good as it was going to get.

We're fortunate to have better options.

*Would Marlowe be amused by my anachronisms? Would he see the irony? :)

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