The Two Gentlemen of Verona based on Feminine Work

 

The Folio provides the only surviving text of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a comedy so tentative in its dramaturgy (for example, its ineptitude in the few scenes where the playwright attempts to manage more than two characters on the stage at once), and so awkward in its efforts to pit the claims of love and friendship against each other, that many scholars now think it to be the first play Shakespeare ever wrote. Based largely on a 1542 chivalric romance (Diana Enamorada) by Portuguese writer Jorge de Montemayor, The Two Gentlemen of Verona depicts a potential rivalry between two friends--Valentine and Proteus--who fall in love with the same Milanese woman (Silvia) despite the fact that Proteus has vowed his devotion to a woman (Julia) back home in Verona. Proteus engineers Valentine's banishment from Milan so that he can woo Silvia away from him. But Silvia remains faithful to Valentine, just as Julia (who has followed her loved one disguised as his page) holds true to Proteus, notwithstanding the character he discloses as a man who lives up to his name. In the concluding forest scene Valentine intervenes to save Silvia from being raped by Proteus; but, when Proteus exhibits remorse, Valentine offers him Silvia anyway, as a token of friendship restored. Fortunately, circumstances conspire to forestall such an unhappy consummation, and the play ends with the two couples properly reunited.

Unlike The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona has never been popular in the theater, even though it offers two resourceful women (whose promise will be fulfilled more amply in such later heroines as Rosalind and Viola), a pair of amusing clowns (Launce and Speed), and one of the most engaging dogs (Crab) who ever stole a stage. In its mixture of prose and verse, nevertheless, and in its suggestion that the "green world" of the woods is where pretensions fall and would be evildoers find their truer selves, The Two Gentlemen of Verona looks forward to the first fruits of Shakespeare's maturity: the "romantic comedies" of which it proves to be a prototype.

Titus Andronicus

The one remaining play that most critics now locate in the period known as Shakespeare's apprenticeship is a Grand Guignol melodrama that seems to have been the young playwright's attempt to outdo Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (produced circa 1589) in its exploitation of the horrors of madness and revenge. The composition of Titus Andronicus is usually dated 1590-1592, and it seems to have been drawn from a ballad and History of Titus Andronicus that only survives today in an eighteenth-century reprint now deposited in the Folger Shakespeare Library. (The Folger also holds the sole extant copy of the 1594 first quarto of Shakespeare's play, the authoritative text for all but the one scene, III.ii, that first appeared in the 1623 Folio.) If Shakespeare did take most of his plot from the History of Titus Andronicus, it is clear that he also went to Ovid's Metamorphoses (for the account of Tereus's rape of Philomena, to which the tongueless Lavinia points to explain what has been done to her) and to Seneca's Thyestes (for Titus's fiendish revenge on Tamora and her sons at the end of the play).

Although Titus Andronicus is not a "history play," it does make an effort to evoke the social and political climate of fourth-century Rome; and in its depiction of a stern general who has just sacrificed more than twenty of his own sons to conquer the Goths, it anticipates certain characteristics of Shakespeare's later "Roman plays": Julius Caesar,Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. But it is primarily as an antecedent of Hamlet (influenced, perhaps, by the so-called lost Ur-Hamlet) that Titus holds interest for us today. Because whatever else it is, Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's first experiment with revenge tragedy. Its primary focus is the title character, whose political misjudgments and fiery temper put him at the mercy of the Queen of the Goths, Tamora, and her two sons (Demetrius and Chiron). They ravish and mutilate Titus's daughter Lavinia, manipulate the Emperor into executing two of Titus's sons (Martius and Quintus) as perpetrators of the crime, and get Titus's third son (Lucius) banished for trying to rescue his brothers. Along the way, Tamora's Moorish lover Aaron tricks Titus into having his right hand chopped off in a futile gesture to save Martius and Lucius. After Lavinia writes the names of her assailants in the sand with her grotesque stumps, Titus works out a plan for revenge: he slits the throats of Demetrius and Chiron, invites Tamora to a banquet, and serves her the flesh of her sons baked in a pie. He then kills Tamora and dies at the hands of Emperor Saturninus. At this point Lucius returns heading a Gothic army and takes over as the new Emperor, condemning Aaron to be half-buried and left to starve and throwing Tamora's corpse to the scavenging birds and beasts.

As Fredson Bowers has pointed out, Titus Andronicus incorporates a number of devices characteristic of other revenge tragedies: the protagonist's feigned madness, his delay in the execution of his purpose, his awareness that in seeking vengeance he is taking on a judicial function that properly rests in God's hands, and his death at the end in a bloody holocaust that leaves the throne open for seizure by the first opportunist to arrive upon the scene.

5.2 Character of Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

 

Affectation of another kind is depicted in a delightful scene from what many regard as Shakespeare's most charming comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream. As the Athenian courtiers are quick to observe in their critiques of the "tragical mirth" of Pyramus and Thisby in V.i, the "mechanicals" who display their dramatic wares at the nuptial feast of Theseus and Hippolyta are even more fundamentally "o'erparted" than the hapless supernumeraries of Love's Labor's Lost. But there is something deeply affectionate about Shakespeare's portrayal of the affectations of Bottom and his earnest company of "hempen home-spuns," and the "simpleness and duty" with which they tender their devotion is the playwright's way of reminding us that out of the mouths of babes and fools can sometimes issue a loving wisdom that "hath no bottom." Like "Bottom's Dream," the playlet brings a refreshingly naive perspective to issues addressed more seriously elsewhere. And, by burlesquing the struggles and conflicts through which the lovers in the woods circumvent the arbitrariness of their elders, "Pyramus and Thisby" comments not only upon the fortunes of Demetrius and Helena, Lysander and Hermia, but also upon the misfortunes of Romeo and Juliet. After all, both stories derive ultimately from the same source in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Shakespeare's parallel renderings of the "course of true love" in Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream are so closely linked in time and treatment that it is tempting to regard the two plays as companion pieces--tragic and comic masks, as it were, for the same phase (1595-1596) of Shakespearean dramaturgy.

Whether or not A Midsummer Night's Dream was commissioned for a wedding ceremony at Whitehall, as some scholars have speculated, the play is in fact a remarkable welding of disparate materials: the fairy lore of Oberon and Titania and their impish minister Puck, the classical narrative of Theseus's conquest of the Amazons and their queen Hippolyta, the confused comings and goings of the young Athenian lovers who must flee to the woods to evade their tyrannical parents, and the rehearsals for a crude craft play by a band of well-meaning peasants. It is in some ways the most original work in the entire Shakespearean canon, and one is anything but surprised that its "something of great constancy" has inspired the best efforts of such later artists as composer Felix Mendelssohn, painters Henry Fuseli and William Blake, director Peter Brook, and filmmakers Max Reinhardt and Woody Allen.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is in many respects the epitome of "festive comedy," an evocation of the folk rituals associated with such occasions as May Day and Midsummer Eve, and its final mood is one of unalloyed romantic fulfillment. Romance is also a key ingredient in the concluding arias of Shakespeare's next comedy, The Merchant of Venice, where Bassanio and Portia, Lorenzo and Jessica, and Gratiano and Nerissa celebrate the happy consummation of three love quests and contemplate the music of the spheres from a magical estate known symbolically as Belmont. But the "sweet harmony" the lovers have achieved by the end of The Merchant of Venice has been purchased very dearly, and it is hard for a modern audience to accept the serenity of Belmont without at least a twinge of guilt over what has happened in far-off Venice to bring it about.

The Merchant of Venice

Whether The Merchant of Venice is best categorized as an anti-Semitic play (capitalizing on prejudices that contemporaries such as Marlowe had catered to in plays like The Jew of Malta) or as a play about the evils of anti-Semitism (as critical of the Christian society that has persecuted the Jew as it is of the vengeance he vents in response), its central trial scene is profoundly disturbing for an audience that has difficulty viewing Shylock's forced conversion as a manifestation of mercy. Shylock's "hath not a Jew eyes" speech impels us to see him as a fellow human being--notwithstanding the rapacious demand for "justice" that all but yields him Antonio's life before Portia's clever manipulations of the law strip the usurer of his own life's fortune--so that even if we feel that the Jew's punishment is less severe than what strict "justice" might have meted out to him, his grim exit nevertheless casts a pall over the festivities of the final act in Belmont.

By contrast with A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play in which the disparate components of the action are resolved in a brilliantly satisfying synthesis, The Merchant of Venice remains, for many of us, a prototype of those later Shakespearean works that twentieth-century critics have labeled "problem comedies." Even its fairy-tale elements, such as the casket scenes in which three would-be husbands try to divine the "will" of Portia's father, seem discordant to a modern audience that is asked to admire a heroine who dismisses one of her suitors with a slur on his Moroccan "complexion." Though it seems to have been written in late 1596 or early 1597 and, like A Midsummer Night's Dream, was first published in a good quarto in 1600, The Merchant of Venice feels closer in mood to Measure for Measure--which also pivots on a conflict between justice and mercy--than to most of the other "romantic comedies" of the mid to late 1590s.

The Merry Wifes of Windsor

The first good text of a related play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, also appeared in the Folio, but it too was initially published in a bad quarto, this one a memorial reconstruction dated 1602. Just when Merry Wives was written, and why, has been vigorously debated for decades. According to one legend, no doubt apocryphal but not totally lacking in plausibility, Shakespeare was commissioned to write the play because the Queen wanted to see Falstaff in love. If so, it seems likely that the play was also produced as an occasional piece in honor of the award of the Order of the Garter to Lord Hunsdon, the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on 23 April 1597. There are references to a Garter ceremony at Windsor Castle in act five of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Leslie Hotson has argued that even though the play may well have been performed later at the Globe, its first presentation was before Queen Elizabeth and Lord Hunsdon at Windsor on St. George's Day 1597.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is unique among Shakespeare's comedies in having an English town for its setting. Its bourgeois characters have delighted audiences not only in the playhouse but also on the operatic stage, in what many critics consider the most successful of Verdi's numerous achievements in Shakespearean opera. Despite its obvious charms, however, the play has never been a favorite among Shakespeare's readers and literary interpreters. The reason is that the Falstaff we see in The Merry Wives of Windsor is a Falstaff largely lacking in the vitality and appeal of the character we come to love in the first part of Henry IV. Without Prince Hal and the wit combats afforded by his jokes at Falstaff's expense, the Falstaff of Merry Wives is merely conniving and crude. We may laugh at the comeuppances he receives at the hands of the merry wives he tries to seduce--the buck-basket baptism he gets as his reward for the first encounter, the beatings and pinchings he suffers in his later encounters--but we see nothing of the inventiveness that makes Falstaff such a supreme escape artist in part 1 of Henry IV. So attenuated is the Falstaff of The Merry Wives of Windsor that many interpreters have argued that it is simply a mistake to approach him as the same character. In any case, we never see him in love. His is a profit motive without honor, and it is much more difficult for us to feel any pity for his plight in Merry Wives than it is in the three Henry plays that depict the pratfalls and decline of the young heir-apparent's genial lord of misrule.

The play does have the clever Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. And in the jealous Master Ford and the tyrannical Master Page it also has a pair of comic gulls whose sufferings can be amusing in the theater. But it is doubtful that The Merry Wives of Windsor will ever be among our favorite Shakespearean comedies, particularly when we examine it alongside such contemporary achievements as Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It.

Much Ado about Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It were probably written in late 1598 and 1599, respectively, with the former first published in a good quarto in 1600 and the later making its initial appearance in the 1623 First Folio. Both are mature romantic comedies, and both have enjoyed considerable success in the theater.

"Nothing" is a word of potent ambiguity in Shakespeare (the playwright was later to explore its potential most profoundly in the "nothing will come of nothing" that constitutes the essence of King Lear), and in Much Ado About Nothing its implications include the possibilities inherent in the wordplay on the Elizabethan homonym "noting." Through the machinations of the surly Don John, who gulls the superficial Claudio into believing that he "notes" his betrothed Hero in the act of giving herself to another lover, an innocent girl is rejected at the altar by a young man who believes himself to have been dishonored. Fortunately, Don John and his companions have themselves been noted by the most incompetent watch who ever policed a city; and, despite their asinine constable, Dogberry, these well-meaning but clownish servants of the Governor of Messina succeed in bringing the crafty villains to justice. In doing so, they set in motion a process whereby Hero's chastity is eventually vindicated and she reappears as if resurrected from the grave. Meanwhile, another pair of "notings" have been staged by the friends of Benedick and Beatrice, with the result that these two sarcastic enemies to love and to each other are each tricked into believing that the other is secretly in love. At least as much ado is made of Benedick and Beatrice's notings as of the others, and by the time the play ends these acerbic critics of amorous folly, grudgingly acknowledging that "the world must be peopled," have been brought to the altar with Claudio and Hero for a double wedding that concludes the play with feasting and merriment.

Shakespeare could have drawn from a number of antecedents for the story of Hero and Claudio, among them cantos from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Spenser's Faerie Queene. But the nearest thing to a "source" for Beatrice and Benedick may well have been his own The Taming of the Shrew , whether another pair of unconventional would-be lovers struggle their way to a relationship that is all the more vital for the aggressive resistance that has to be channeled into harmony to bring it about. In any event, if there is some doubt about where Benedick and Beatrice came from, there is no doubt about the direction in which they point--to such gallant and witty Restoration lovers as Mirabell and Millamant in William Congreve's The Way of the World.

As You Like It

With As You Like It Shakespeare achieved what many commentators consider to be the finest exemplar of a mode of romantic comedy based on escape to and return from what Northrop Frye has termed the "green world." As in A Midsummer Night's Dream (where the young lovers flee to the woods to evade an Athens ruled by the edicts of tyrannical fathers) and The Merchant of Venice (where Belmont serves as the antidote to all the venom that threatens life in Venice), in As You Like It the well-disposed characters who find themselves in the Forest of Arden think of it as an environment where even "adversity" is "sweet" and restorative.

Duke Senior has been banished from his dukedom by a usurping younger brother, Duke Frederick. As the play opens, Duke Senior and his party are joined by Orlando and his aged servant Adam (who are running away from Orlando's cruel older brother Oliver), and later they in turn are joined by Duke Senior's daughter Rosalind and her cousin Celia (who have come to the forest, disguised as men, because the wicked Duke Frederick can no longer bear to have Rosalind in his daughter's company at court). The scenes in the forest are punctuated by a number of reflections on the relative merits of courtly pomp and pastoral simplicity, with the cynical Touchstone and the melancholy Jaques countering any sentimental suggestion that the Forest of Arden is a "golden world" of Edenic perfection, and her sojourn in the forest allows the wise and witty Rosalind to use male disguise as a means of testing the affections of her lovesick wooer Orlando. Eventually Orlando proves a worthy match for Rosalind, in large measure because he shows himself to be his brother's keeper. By driving off a lioness poised to devour the sleeping Oliver, Orlando incurs a wound that prevents him from appearing for an appointment with the disguised Rosalind; but his act of unmerited self-sacrifice transforms his brother into a "new man" who arrives on the scene in Orlando's stead and eventually proves a suitable match for Celia. Meanwhile, as the play nears its end, we learn that a visit to the forest has had a similarly regenerative effect on Duke Frederick, who enters a monastery and returns the dukedom to its rightful ruler, Duke Senior.

As You Like It derives in large measure from Thomas Lodge's romance Rosalynde or Euphues' Golden Legacy, a prose classic dating from 1590. But in his treatment of the "strange events" that draw the play to a conclusion presided over by Hymen, the god of marriage, Shakespeare hints at the kind of miraculous transformation that will be given major emphasis in the late romances.

Twelth Night

The last of the great romantic comedies of Shakespeare's mid career, probably composed and performed in 1601 though not published until the 1623 First Folio, was Twelfth Night. Possibly based, in part, on an Italian comedy of the 1530s called Gl'Ingannati , Twelfth Night is another play with implicit theological overtones. Its title comes from the name traditionally associated with the Feast of Epiphany (6 January, the twelfth day of the Christmas season), and much of its roistering would have seemed appropriate to an occasion when Folly was allowed to reign supreme under the guise of a Feast of Fools presided over by a Lord of Misrule. In Shakespeare's play, the character who represents Misrule is Sir Toby Belch, the carousing uncle of a humorless countess named Olivia. Together with such companions as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the jester Feste, and a clever gentlewoman named Maria, Sir Toby makes life difficult not only for Olivia but also for her puritan steward Malvolio, whose name means "bad will" and whose function in the play, ultimately, is to be ostracized so that "good will" may prevail. In what many consider to be the most hilarious gulling scene in all of Shakespeare, Malvolio is tricked into thinking that his Lady is in love with him and persuaded to wear cross-gartered yellow stockings in her presence--attire that he believes will allure her, but attire that persuades her instead that he is deranged. The "treatment" that follows is a mock exercise in exorcism, and when Malvolio is finally released from his tormentors at the end of the play, he exits vowing revenge "on the whole pack" of them.

As with the dismissal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, the punishment of Malvolio's presumption in Twelfth Night has seemed too harsh to many modern viewers and readers. But that should not prevent us from seeing that Twelfth Night is also a play about other forms of self-indulgence (Count Orsino's infatuation with the pose of a courtly lover, and Olivia's excessively long period of mourning for her deceased brother) and the means by which characters "sick of self-love" or self-deception are eventually restored to mental and emotional sanity. Through the ministrations of the wise fool, Feste, and the providential Viola, who arrives in Illyria after a shipwreck in which she mistakenly believes her brother Sebastian to have died, we witness a sequence of coincidences and interventions that seems too nearly miraculous to have been brought about by blind chance. By taking another series of potentially tragic situations and turning them to comic ends, Shakespeare reminds us once again that harmony and romantic fulfillment are at the root of what Northrop Frye calls the "argument of comedy."

All’s Well that Ends Well

Modern in another sense may be a good way to describe All's Well That Ends Well. After a long history of neglect, this tragicomedy has recently enjoyed a good deal of success in the theater and on television, and one of the explanations that have been given is that it features a heroine who, refusing to accept a preordained place in a hierarchical man's world, does what she has to do to win her own way.

Orphaned at an early age and reared as a waiting-gentlewoman to the elegant and sensitive Countess of Rossillion, Helena presumes to fall in love with the Countess's snobbish son Bertram. Using a cure she learned from her dead father, who had been a prominent physician, Helena saves the life of the ailing King of France, whereupon she is rewarded with marriage to the man of her choice among all the eligible bachelors in the land. She astonishes Bertram by selecting him. Reluctantly, Bertram consents to matrimony, but before the marriage can be consummated he leaves the country with his disreputable friend Parolles, telling Helena in a note that he will be hers only when she has fulfilled two presumably impossible conditions: won back the ring from his finger and borne a childe to him. Disguised as a pilgrim, Helena follows Bertram to Florence. There she substitutes herself for a woman named Diana, with whom Bertram has made an assignation, and satisfies the despicable Bertram's demands.

One of the "problems" that have troubled critics of All's Well That Ends Well is the device of the "bed trick." But we now know that Shakespeare had biblical precedent for such a plot (Genesis 35) and that it was associated in the Old Testament with providential intervention. Which may be of some value to us in dealing with the other major issues: why should Helena want so vain and selfish a man as Bertram in the first place, and how can we accept at face value his reformation at the end? If we suspend our disbelief enough to grant the fairy-tale premises of the plot (which derived from a story in Boccaccio's Decameron,) we should be able to grant as well that in a providentially ordered world, the end may not only justify the means but sanctify them. And if the end that Helena has in view is not only to win Bertram but to make him "love her dearly ever, ever dearly," we must grant the playwright the final miracle of a Bertram who can be brought to see his evil ways for what they are and repent of them.

Measure for Measure

A similar miracle would seem to be the final cause of Measure for Measure. At the beginning of the play, Duke Vincentio, noting that he has been too lenient in his administration of the laws of Venice, appoints as deputy an icy-veined puritan named Angelo, whom he expects to be more severe for a season of much-needed civic discipline. Almost immediately upon the Duke's departure, Angelo finds himself confronted with a novitiate, Isabella, who, in pleading for the life of a brother condemned for fornification, unwittingly arouses the new deputy's lust. Angelo offers her an exchange: her brother's life for her chastity. Astonished by the deputy's disregard for both God's laws and man's, Isabella refuses. Later, as she tries to prepare Claudio for his execution and discovers that he is less shocked by the deputy's offer than his sister had been, Isabella upbraids him, too, as a reprobate.

At this point the Duke, who has been disguised as a friar, persuades Isabella to "accept" Angelo's offer on the understanding that his former betrothed, Mariana, will sleep with him instead. Once again the bed trick proves effectual and "providential." In the "trial" that takes place at the entrance to the city upon the Duke's return, Isabella accuses Angelo of having corrupted his office and executed her brother despite an agreement to spare him (an order of the deputy's that, unknown to Isabella, has been forestalled by the "friar"). But then, in response to Mariana's pleas for her assistance, she decides not to press her claim for justice and instead kneels before the Duke to beg that Angelo's life be spared. The Duke grants her request, and Angelo--illustrating Mariana's statement that "best men are molded out of faults"--repents and accepts the Duke's mercy.

Measure for Measure qualifies as a tragicomedy because the questions it raises are serious (how to balance law and grace, justice and mercy, in human society) and the issue (whether or not Angelo will be executed for his evil intentions with respect to Claudio) is in doubt until the moment when, by kneeling beside Mariana, Isabella prevents what might have been a kind of revenge tragedy. (The Duke tells Mariana, "Against all sense you do importune her./Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact,/Her brother's ghost his paved bed would break,/And take her hence in horror.") In Shakespearean comedy, of course, all's well that ends well. Revenge gives way to forgiveness or repentance, and characters who might have died in self-deception or guilt are given a second chance. As for Isabella, she too gains insight and sensitivity as a consequence of her trials, and at the conclusion of the play she finds herself the recipient of a marriage proposal from her previously disguised counselor, the Duke. Whether she accepts it, and if so how, has become one of the chief "problems" to be solved by directors and actors in modern productions.

The Empowerment of Women in Shakespearean Comedy[2]

In Shakespeare’s comedies, many – possibly even most - of the female characters are portrayed as being manipulated, if not controlled outright, by the men in their lives: fathers, uncles, suitors, husbands. And yet, there are women inhabiting Shakespeare’s comedic world who seem to enjoy a greater degree of autonomy and personal power than one would expect in a patriarchal society. Superficially, therefore, Shakespeare’s comedies appear to send mixed signals regarding the notion of female empowerment. Some women are strong and independent, others are completely submissive, and the behavior of either seems to be influenced more by theme or plot than by any qualities within the characters themselves.

A closer look, though, should make it evident that this is not the case; as in many of Shakespeare’s plays, appearances can be deceiving. In some cases, the exterior behavior is a deliberate faзade to mask the character’s real feelings; in others, it is an acculturated veneer that is burned away as a result of the play’s events. Despite their outward appearances, though, most of these comedic women belong to one of two opposing archetypes. An examination of these archetypes allows the reader to see past such deceptions to the real personality beneath.

The “Daughter” and “Niece” Archetypes

Within Shakespeare’s comedies, many of the female characters are portrayed as submissive and easily controlled. Like dutiful daughters, these women submit to patriarchal repression with little complaint.

Perhaps the best example of a “daughter” character in Shakespearean comedy is the role of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. Hero is completely under the control of her father Leonato, especially with regard to courtship. When, in Act Two, Leonato believes that Don Pedro may seek Hero’s hand in marriage, he orders Hero to welcome the prince’s advances despite the difference in their ages:

“Daughter, remember what I told you.

If the Prince do solicit you in that kind,

you know your answer” (II.i.61-3).

Thus we see that Leonato controls not only Hero’s actions, but even her words as well.

In fact, Hero is so thoroughly repressed by the male-dominated society in which she lives that she submits not only to her father’s will, but to that of nearly every other man in the play. She is easily wooed and won by Don Pedro posing as Claudio (II.i.80-93). She is just as easily undone in a single speech when Claudio pronounces her an adulteress (IV.i.30-41). Even Don John, through his nefarious schemes, is able to manipulate Hero, very nearly to her death. Despite the influence of the more liberated Beatrice in her life, Hero shows no sign of acting under her own volition anywhere in the play.

Unlike Hero, however, other female characters in Shakespeare’s comedies do not submit easily to the will of a patriarchal character, or indeed, that of any man. Just as Much Ado About Nothing presents us, in Hero, with the very model of a dutiful “daughter” character, so it delineates the archetypical “niece” character, the quick-witted Beatrice. The “merry war” (I.i.58) she wages with Benedick may showcase her character to best advantage, but it is clear from the first scene of the play that Beatrice does not easily submit to the commands or beliefs of any man.

In fact, it often seems that Beatrice would liberate her cousin Hero from patriarchal repression as well. While virtually every main character in the play is conspiring to arrange Hero’s marriage, Beatrice counsels Hero to follow her own desires, despite contemporary custom:

[I]t is my cousin’s duty to make curtsy and say, “Father, as it please you.” But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say, “Father, as it please me” (II.i.49-52).

Beatrice’s willfulness continues even through the final scene of the play. Despite her earlier vows to requite Benedick’s love (III.i.109-16), when he at last proposes, she makes sure to emphasize that they are to be married only because she agrees, not because he wills it (V.iv.72-95).

The “Daughter”/“Niece” Binary in The Taming of the Shrew

Although Kate is (literally speaking) a daughter to the patriarchal figure Baptista, she seldom submits to her father’s authority, in matters of behavior or of courtship. She therefore fits better with the willful “niece” characters than she does with the obedient “daughter” types; the archetype is informed by the behavioral, not familial, relationship. It is Kate’s disobedience – her “niece” behavior - that provides the impetus for the play’s action.

By contrast, Kate’s sister Bianca is presented as a “daughter” character throughout most of the play:

“[W]hat you will command me will I do

So well I know my duty” (II.i.6-7).

Even the play’s minimal stage directions emphasize Bianca’s submissive nature: Bianca enters and exits scenes only at the behest of a male character (or Kate, in Act II and again in Act V). Her subjugation to her father is especially evident with regard to her potential suitors: Baptista proclaims in his first lines that Bianca may not be courted until Kate is married (I.i.49-51). Bianca, in fact, is outwardly so submissive that she even professes to be willing to stand aside and allow Kate her choice of Bianca’s many suitors (II.i.10-18).

The final scene of the play, however, reverses these archetypal characterizations completely. Once married to Lucentio, Bianca immediately becomes willful and disobedient, refusing to respond to his summons (V.ii.79-85). Kate, on the other hand, comes dutifully when Petruchio calls for her (99-104). At his request, she fetches Bianca, and delivers her long speech regarding wifely duty (140-183).

This final scene demonstrates that the “daughter” and “niece” characterizations are actually masks that each sister has used to obtain the sort of husband each desires. Bianca poses as a dutiful, obedient “daughter” to attract a husband of means; once she has done so, she can drop the faзade and become the pampered, petulant child she has always been. Kate, on the other hand, wields her “shrewishness” to rid herself of suitors whom she cannot respect. When Petruchio resolves to wed her anyway, she realizes that he is just the sort of husband she can be happy with, and so becomes a loving, obedient wife (whether to please him, or because that is the sort of relationship she desires). It is fitting, in a play so concerned with disguise, that both Kate and Bianca exercise power by exploiting the guises provided by their respective archetypes.

The “Daughter”/“Niece” Binary in As You Like It

The “daughter” and “niece” archetypes, of course, are not universally applicable to all women in Shakespeare’s comedies. In As You Like It, there are other female characters which defy such classification. Phoebe, for example, exhibits traits of both “niece” (in her willful pursuit of the erstwhile Ganymede) and “daughter” (as when she readily submits to Ganymede’s stipulation that she marry Silvius), while the country wench Audrey cannot easily be assigned to either category. Still, the archetypes once again prove useful in an examination of the relative empowerment of the play’s central female characters, Rosalind and Celia.

On the surface, Rosalind appears to be one of the most independent, and thus empowered, women in any of Shakespeare’s works. Like Beatrice with Benedick, Rosalind is able to dictate completely the terms of her relationship with Orlando; throughout most of the play, he obeys her every whim – and this despite his belief that she is only a simulacrum of Rosalind. In a time when marriage was customarily (judging by the texts) a business arrangement between the groom and the bride’s father, Rosalind actually arranges her own union with Orlando, albeit in disguise (V.iv.5-10); further, she even arranges the marriage of Silvius and Phoebe (V.ii, V.iv.11-25). The dramatic irony of this chain of circumstances, in fact, is the basis for the play’s comedic action: Ganymede, who exerts such control over the lives of others, is really a woman.

It may be contended that Rosalind gets what she wants not because she is a truly empowered woman, but because she poses as a man, and that before adopting this disguise, she has no agency. Duke Frederick, to whom Rosalind is a literal as well as archetypical niece, robs her of control over her own fate when he summarily banishes her from his court (I.iii.39-87). Yet even here we can see that Rosalind already possesses the potential to become empowered. When asked why she is sentenced to exile, the duke replies, “Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not . . . Thou art thy father’s daughter” (I.iii.53, 56). The duke, rightly or wrongly, views Rosalind as a threat, and only an empowered woman would pose a threat to him. Viewed in this light, the masculine disguise only unlocks the latent power that the “niece” archetype already possesses.

Celia, on the other hand, is clearly a “daughter” character. Her sole act of volition in the entire play comes when she determines to join Rosalind in exile (I.iii.83-103), and even this one act of defiance is motivated more by Celia’s loyalty to her cousin than by any desire of her own. When, in the play’s final act, Oliver determines to marry Celia, only Orlando is given any right of decision over her lot (V.ii.1-15); Celia has apparently consented to be wed (l. 7), but is not really a party to the negotiations.

Thus, even while presenting a strong, independent female character, As You Like It seems to reinforce the patriarchal notion of women as subjugated beings. Rosalind exercises some control over her own destiny, but only after she disguises herself as a man; lacking such a guise, Celia is virtually powerless to determine her own fate. But this superficial view is an inadequate interpretation. The Ganymede disguise – indeed, the entire journey to Arden – is the crucible that releases Rosalind’s latent personal power, but the power has always been there; like Kate and Bianca, she has always been a “niece.” Celia remains subjugated not because she chooses to travel as a woman, but because she is, at heart, a dutiful “daughter.”

Conclusion

 

1.3. Having said about Shakespeare’s comedies we dare to say that it is the most important milestone in the creative activity of him. But even amongst his immortal works of this kind the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” stands in the special play. The first reason of this lies in the period of writing of it. The play is referred to the third, last period of creative activity, it is seemingly summarizes the whole life of the dramatist and the death of the main heroes at the fourth act is a hint for the closest death of Shakespeare himself. So one another reason for the significance of the comedy follows just after: it maybe the only work of Shakespeare where the humour and laughter are being mixed with the tragedy. And this mixing appears on the background of the exact description of humans life and characters which are closely similar to the historic chronicles. In our work we tried to demonstrate this spirit of comedy mixed with the tragedic chronicles of the author himself.

Our work aimed to show the novelity of the play though it was written three-four centuries ago, we tried to prove that even being a dream the narration does not lose the real character. We made our conclusion that fairy tales cannot but link with the real life and the problems of life, love, happiness, sadness, revenge exist in both at the Heavens and the Earth.

2.3. In our qualification work we tried to give some light to the following items:

a) To show the unusual, unique compositional structure of the play on the example of the most significant scenes of each act of the play.

b) To analyze the main themes of the play.

c) To prove the brilliant nature of the Shakespeare’s language.

d) To compare the different features of the main heroes in their controversy and similarity.

Having worked on our qualification work we could do the following conclusion and notes:

1) Being not volumable play it remained in our hearts as one of the most

brilliant things created by the “Avon Bard”.

2) The main idea of the play was to show the interrelations between life and dream, the different state of minds of illiterate but kind and passionate wandering actors and foolish, cruel, envious power “handers”.

3) The main themes of the play are order and disorder, love and marriage, appearance and reality.

4) The genius of the author is concluded in mixing and installation of one narration into another, assistance of prose and poetry with single repliques and comments.

5) The heroes of the play are not happy even having got the things they dreamt.

In the very end of our qualification work we would like to say that the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream ” seems to us as the most meaningful not only for those who is interested in Shakespeare but for the whole humanity.

Shakespeare’s Tragicomedies and women images in them.

The Winter’s Tale (tragicomedy)

Enlightenment and contrition are prerequisite to the happy ending of The Winter's Tale, too. Here again a husband falls victim to vengeful jealousy, and here again the plot builds up to the moment when he can be forgiven the folly that, so far as he knows, has brought about his innocent wife's death. Based primarily on Robert Greene's Pandosto: The Triumph of Time, a prose romance first published in 1588 and reprinted under a new title in 1607, The Winter's Tale was probably completed in 1610 or 1611. Its initial appearance in print was in the 1623 Folio.

The action begins when Leontes, King of Sicilia, is seized with the "humour" that his wife Hermione has committed adultery with his childhood friend Polixenes. It is abundantly clear to everyone else, most notably Hermione's lady-in-waiting Paulina, that Leontes' suspicions are irrational. But he refuses to listen either to the counsel of his advisers or to the oracle at Delphi--persisting with this "trial" of Hermione until he has completely devastated his court. He drives Polixenes away with the faithful Sicilian lord Camillo; he frightens to death his son Mamilius; and he pursues Hermione so unrelentingly that she finally wilts into what Paulina declares to be a fatal swoon. At this point, suddenly recognizing that he has been acting like a madman, Leontes vows to do penance for the remainder of his life.

Years later, after Perdita (the "lost" child whom the raging Leontes has instructed Paulina's husband Antigonus to expose to the elements) has grown up and fallen in love with Florizel, the heir to Polixenes' throne in Bohemia, the major characters are providentially regathered in Leontes' court. Leontes is reunited with his daughter. And then, in one of the most stirring and unexpected moments in all of Shakespeare's works, a statue of Hermione that Paulina unveils turns out to be the living--and forgiving--Queen whom Leontes had "killed" some sixteen years previously. In a speech that might well serve to epitomize the import of all the late romances, Paulina tells the King "It is requir'd/You do awake your faith." The regenerated Leontes embraces his long-lamented wife, bestows the widowed Paulina on the newly returned Camillo, and blesses the forthcoming marriage of Perdita to the son of his old friend Polixenes, the object of the jealousy with which the whole agonizing story has begun.

Tempest (tragicomedy)

The circle that is completed in The Winter's Tale has its counterpart in The Tempest, which concludes with the marriage of Prospero's daughter Miranda to Ferdinand, the son of the Neapolitan king who had helped Prospero's wicked brother Antonio remove Prospero from his dukedom in Milan a dozen years previously.

Like The Winter's Tale,The Tempest was completed by 1611 and printed for the first time in the 1623 Folio. Because it refers to the "still-vext Bermoothes" and derives in part from three accounts of the 1609 wreck of a Virginia-bound ship called the Sea Adventure, the play has long been scrutinized for its supposed commentary on the colonial exploitation of the New World. But if the brute Caliban is not the noble savage of Montaigne's essay on cannibals, he is probably not intended to be an instance of Third World victimization by European imperalism either. And Prospero's island is at least as Mediterranean as it is Caribbean. More plausible, but also too speculative for uncritical acceptance, is the time-honored supposition that the magician's staff with which Prospero wields his power is meant to be interpreted as an analogy for Shakespeare's own magical gifts--with the corollary that the protagonist's abjuration of his "potent art" is the dramatist's own way of saying farewell to the theater. Were it not that at least two plays were almost certainly completed later than The Tempest, this latter hypothesis might win more credence.

But be that as it may, there can be no doubt that Prospero cuts a magnificent figure on the Shakespearean stage. At times, when he is recalling the usurpation that has placed him and his daughter on the island they have shared with Caliban for a dozen lonely years, Prospero is reminiscent of Lear, another angry ruler who, despite his earlier indiscretions, has cause to feel more sinned against than sinning. At other times, when Prospero is using the spirit Ariel to manipulate the comings and goings of the enemies whose ship he has brought aground in a tempest, the once and future Duke of Milan reminds us of the Duke of Vienna in Measure for Measure. But though his influence on the lives of others turns out in the end to have been "providential," Prospero arrives at that beneficent consummation only through a psychological and spiritual process that turns on his forswearing "vengeance" in favor of the "rarer action" of forgiveness. Such dramatic tension as the play possesses is to be found in the audience's suspense over whether the protagonist will use his Neoplatonic magic for good or for ill. And when in fact Prospero has brought the "men of sin" to a point where they must confront themselves as they are and beg forgiveness for their crimes, it is paradoxically Ariel who reminds his master that to be truly human is finally to be humane.

Uniquely among the late tragicomic romances, The Tempest has long been a favorite with both readers and audiences. Its ardent young lovers have always held their charm, as has the effervescent Ariel, and its treatment of the temptations afforded by access to transcendent power gives it a political and religious resonance commensurate with the profundity of its exploration of the depths of poetic and dramatic art. In the end its burden seems to be that an acknowledgment of the limits imposed by the human condition is the beginning of wisdom

Appendix 1

 

Some quotes from Shakespeare’s comedies

1 As you like it (Act V Sc. I)

JAQUES:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

Ttranslation:

Жак: Весь мир – театр.

В нем женщины, мужчины – все актеры.

У них свои есть выходы, уходы,

И каждый не одну играет роль.

Семь действий в пьесе той.

2 Much ado about nothing (Act V Sc. II)

CLAUDIO

Never any did so, though very many have been beside their wit. I will bid thee draw, as we do the minstrels; draw, to pleasure us.

DON PEDRO

As I am an honest man, he looks pale. Art thou sick, or angry?

CLAUDIO

What, courage, man! What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.

BENEDICK

Sir, I shall meet your wit in the career, and you charge it against me. I pray you choose another subject.

Translation:

Клавдио: Этого еще никто не делал, хотя многим их остроумие вылезает боком. Мне хочется попросить тебя ударить им, как мы просим музыкантов ударить в смычки. Сделай милость, развлеки нас.

Дон Педро: Клянусь честью, он выглядит бледным – Ты болен или сердит?

Клавдио: Подбодрись дружок! Хоть говорят, что забота и кошку умудрить может, у тебя такой живой нрав, что ты можешь и заботу уморить.

Бенедикт: Синьор, я ваши насмешки поймаю на полном скаку, если они ко мне относятся:нельзя ли выбрать другую тему для разговора?

3 The Merchant of Venice (Act.1 Sc.3)

Antonio: The devil can gnote Scripture for his purpose.

 An evil soul, producing holy witness,

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Translation

Антонио: Заметь, Бассанио:

В нужде и чорт священный текст приводит.

Порочная душа, коль на святыню

Ссылается, похожа на злодея

С улыбкой на устах иль на красивый,

Румяный плод с гнилою сердцевиной.

О, как на вид красива ложь бывает!

4 Troilus and Cressida (Act III, Scene 2)TROILUS      You have bereft me of all words, lady.PANDARUS Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'llbereave you o' the deeds too, if she call youractivity in question. What, billing again? Here's'In witness whereof the parties interchangeably'--Come in, come in: I'll go get a fire.[Exit]CRESSIDA   Will you walk in, my lord?TROILUS      O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus!

Translation

Троил Милая! Ты лишила меня языка.

Пандар Язык тут ни при чем. Долг платежом красен. Плохо, если на дело не хватит сил. Так, так... опять уж нос с носом... Отлично... «Когда обе стороны приходят ко взаимному соглашению»... и проч... и проч. Войдите, войдите в двери, а я поищу огня. (Уходит.)