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| Most critics agree: the Countess |
| Rousillon character is fantastic. |
| Yup, that's Judi Dench! |
On Votaries, I am examining the process of turning books into other mediums. A-Z List 8 examines certain books made into films by the author's last name. I am also examining Peter Jackson's Tolkien trilogies chapter by chapter.
On Romance & Manga, I decided to examine the filmed versions of Shakespeare's romantic couples.
Going in alphabetical order, the first couple comes from All's Well That Ends Well and there simply aren't that many versions of the play-as-movie to compare and contrast. The play has been made into a movie as part of The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare--though those televised versions are often presented as plays.
The story involves a woman who sleeps with a man who didn't want to marry her--and tries to get away after he is forced to marry her. She follows him, takes the place of another woman, and sleeps with him. It's a variation on the Trope of the Forced Relationship and brings with it all the problems of the forced relationship. It is also paired with unrequited love--though Helena comes across as far more with-it than Eponine from Les Miserables. She's decided, "This is the guy I want," and she makes it happen.
And yet, still--
There's an extremely funny scene in a Sarah Caudwell book regarding the play. Julia takes Cantrip's Uncle Hereward to see All's Well That Ends Well. The elderly gentleman conflates the actors with the characters. He stands up in the theater and cries, "Shame, sir, shame, you're a scoundrel," directing his comments at Bertram. After getting thrown out of the theater, he and Julia move on to a restaurant where the Colonel "was anxious to believe that in spite of having been perfectly beastly to Helena through five acts Roussillon was really deeply in love with her, and would thereafter make her an ardent and devoted husband." Julia tries to pacify him by explaining that she thinks the title is ironic. At this point, the cast enters the restaurant and the Colonel gets into a shouting match with the actor who plays Bertram, resulting in the older man tossing spaghetti at the younger.
The couple does in fact provoke extreme reactions: critics who despise Helena. Critics, like the Colonel, who don't see WHY she loves Bertram.
Not a great many fans of the couple as a couple.
The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare does offer one interesting interpretation--at least of the play's setting. The play uses Dutch costuming and houses, which is a captivating change from the (usually) Elizabethean look of "historical" Shakespeare plays.
Shakespeare lived into the Jacobean Era, till 1616. The play is one of his early seventeenth-century problem plays. "Problem" is a term invented by Frederick S. Boas to group all of Shakespeare's plays he didn't like.
One can see why All's Well That Ends Well ended up on that list.
