The Lack of Couples--And Interest--in 3 of Shakespeare's Plays

I gave myself a pass on Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, and The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida. I didn't try to read or watch them.  

The authorship of at least one of these plays is disputed. It isn't that Shakespeare couldn't write bad plays. But the plots of these plays...

Words fail me. 

I distill the play's plots using three different quotes plus fantastic cartoons from Good Tickle Brain:

Timon of Athens. A video summarizing the plot states, "Apemantus swings by to accuse Timon of copying his sarcastic and negative attitude." 

I love "swings by."   

A FaceBook summary of Titus Andronicus states, "14 people dead, 6 severed members, one rape, one live burial, one person insane, and one case of cannibalism."

And of Troilus and Cressida, Wikipedia states, "While this plot gives the play its name, it accounts for only a small part of the play's run time."

So...I'm not going to waste my time pondering these plays' relationships. 

Shakespeare's Couples: Altaira & Adams

Forbidden Planet is based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. 

I consider Altaira and Commander Adams a more than decent sci-fi couple. 

Here's why (repost form  2020):

One of the things that bugs me about many so-called feminists is how susceptible they are to superficialities.

What's also sad is how far these superficialities creep into the culture, so people adopt them without thinking. 

A few years ago, I showed a clip of Forbidden Planet in class. In the clip, Anne Francis as Altaira walks across the floor to speak to Leslie Nielsen's Captain Adams.  

"What do you see?" I said.

All the students could come up with was her short skirt--oh, it is so sexist--and her supposed demureness, based, I suppose, on her blondness and high voice. Or the fact that the man is taller than she (Leslie Nielsen at 6'1"). Or that the two hug. I really have no idea.

They entirely missed her direct gaze; her level, clear voice; her willingness to argue; her nearly proprietary caress, the fact that she controls the situation.

Anne Francis, like other great sci-fi heroines, took the role and made it her own. To miss these obvious clues for the sake of cliches is to ignore her contributions: how she helped create a great film, her steady career as a working actress.

She and a non-joking Leslie Nielsen convey a workable relationship--she isn't a damsel in distress, no matter her temporary role. She's a working partner. 

Shakespeare's Couples: Yes, Kate and Petruchio are a Great Couple

In my review of couples in Shakespeare's plays, I have now reached Taming of the Shrew. Below is a post from Votaries about why it is such a great play. 

Re-post from 2005

* * *

In one of my undergrad classes, the issue of sexism in Shakespeare came up. We had just gone to see Taming of The Shrew, and the class was divided into those who thought it might be sexist but hey, women can be jerks too; those who thought it was totally sexist; and those (the professor mainly) who thought that it wasn't sexist at all. (He basically saw Shakespeare as a modern, thoroughly unspoiled liberal writer who could do no wrong—no sexism, no racism, no "isms" at all. The professor was kind of daft.)

I thought everyone was nuts, which may be typical for an undergrad but not very helpful. I can articulate better now what I thought then, so I will.

What I thought was (1) the play we had just seen stank; (2) so, it's sexist--so what are you going to do about it?

Concerning (2), I don't think anyone in the course (at that time) was gunning for censorship. I think, if the issue had been pressed, education would have been promoted as an answer. That is: every production of Taming of the Shrew should begin with an apology from the director and actors; it should end with a discussion led by a women's group, and the program should be embellished with essays by concerned professors who are afraid that the audience will, by watching the play, assume that wife-beating is okay.

I'm not particularly opposed to apologies, discussions or essays, but they all so miss the point.

The most classic version of Taming of the Shrew [not necessarily my favorite; my favorite is Shakespeare Retold's version with Henderson and Sewell] is Zeffirelli's Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor production, and [although not my favorite] it is magnificent. 

It is magnificent for several reasons. First, the play is allowed to speak for itself. I don't mean that interpretation isn't involved--Zeffirelli's hand is omnipresent--but there's no attempt to create an application to our modern day.

The play that I saw as an undergrad, the one that stank, made such an attempt. Instead of being a beer-guzzling, larger than life, obnoxious, funny and ultimately chauvinistic nutcase, Petruchio was portrayed as a mild-mannered, sweet, well-meaning bleeding heart. Yeah, right. The relationship between Petruchio and Catarina was mended when Catarina realized that Petruchio was just trying to save her cultural embarrassment; it's all a game, honey, play along.

Elizabeth Taylor was criticized for not

being a true Shakespearean actor. Whatever.

She turns this scene into a demand rather than

supplication through sheer force of personality.

In the Zeffirelli version, Petruchio and Catarina have got so much chutzpah, sexual come hitherness and physical energy, they would probably kill anybody else they married (this was also true of Burton and Taylor). This Petruchio, unlike the appallingly chauvinistic Petruchio of the "modern interpretation," is never sure of Catarina. They will keep fighting until the day they die, and they will love every minute of it. And yeah, it freaks out most of us but as Joan Armatrading pointed out (possibly also ironically), some people are into that sort of thing.

The second reason Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew is amazing is the last scene. I'm not a huge Elizabeth Taylor fan, but when she sweeps into the banquet hall, hauling her sister by one ear and the newly married widow by the other, she takes the room and the screen by storm. And then she gives the speech—THE speech—the speech about a woman's place. And it is a thing of beauty. It is gorgeous. You sit there, thinking, "An ordinary, mortal, money-making playwright wrote this." Not a word wrong. The speech flows.

Which is the final wonderful thing about Zeffirelli's production: it lets Shakespeare sing. The cinematography is plush and colorful; the scenes are full of extras; the pace is hyperactive and alongside all this are the words, those stunning words that explain Shakespeare's reputation down the ages. Yeah, the man could descend to bad writing, but when his verse was good, oh my.

[2020 tangent:] What is so sad about all the social justice people who kill art--even my readily offended classmates from many years ago--is that they are so busy focusing on message, they miss not only content but the sheer exuberance of caring about something for the sake of its beauty or wittiness or poetry. I recently watched Ford v. Ferrari. It was way too long for me and seemed a tad uneven. The thing that struck me most, however, was the power of hobby. It's the element that underscores Last Man Standing and makes it more than about politics--and it is the element that literal-minded "let's expurgate everything!" types will never understand as they embroil themselves more and more in the mindset of petty politics.

Car guys have fun.

Zeffirelli's Kate and Petruchio have fun.

Shakespeare Couples: Richard and Anne Neville

Although I watched much of The Hollow Crown, I did not watch The Hollow Crown's Richard III. 

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the hunchback evil king--I understand that he did a splendid job. I also understand that the interpretation is classic. 

And I appreciate that Shakespeare went to town when he created a villain to top all villains. 

Nevertheless, I find the characterization annoying. 

The reason is not because I think that Richard III didn't oversee the deaths of his nephews. I think they likely died from disease in the Tower, leaving Richard III with an almighty problem on his hands. I do think he deposed his oldest nephew and turned both children into bastards. I frankly found the movie The Lost King to be somewhat irritating since it is saturated with a sense of victimhood (poor misunderstood king and poor misunderstood researcher). 

What irritates me about Shakespeare's villain to top all villains is the non-historicity. I don't agree with all Josephine Tey's arguments in Daughter of Time but she makes the excellent point that historians tend to see the removal of heirs prior to Henry VII and Henry VIII as barbaric and medieval--yet the same systemic shoring up of a dynasty by the Tudors, they paint as crafty statesmanship. (Uh, folks, it's the same thing.)  

I continue to believe that Richard III and Henry VII would have understood each other substantially better than they would understand us--or we would understand them. 

Tey argues in Daughter of Time that Richard was beloved by the city of York (his primary seat was in the North--as they say in Dr. Who, "Every planet has a North!"). She argues that he loved his wife, Anne Neville, and mourned his son and heir, who died before the age of 10. 

At a purely human level, there's no reason to doubt her regarding these relationships. As Shakespeare points out, any single king or magistrate has his supporters.    

Shakespeare Couples: Richard II and His Subjects

Richard II doesn't really have a romance. It is one of Shakespeare's (extremely well-written and terrifyingly human) political plays. It's rather astonishing that he wasn't, at the time the plays were put on, accused more often of treason. But the plays can be interpreted in multiple ways, which may be what protected him.

Richard II is about what a king, however divine he perceives himself, should not do--not if he wants to prevent the War of the Roses. I watched The Hollow Crown version, which starts that series with a profoundly gifted set of actors!

The Hollow Crown presents Richard as believing fully in his mantle (unlike some of Shakespeare's other kings). He is nevertheless profoundly out of his depth regarding human behavior. What he assumes will be an object lesson (stopping the tournament) is perceived quite differently by the combatants. He appears waffling rather than decisive and understanding.

One of the most memorable scenes is when he attempts to face down the returning Bolingbroke. He is terrified, yet he once again attempts to respond through elaborate playacting. Bolingbroke--a far more pragmatic and down-to-earth guy (he becomes Henry IV)--is confused by this king whom he wants to follow but who seems mired in performances rather than actual statecraft. 

One of the most popular videos online is the scene where Richard gives up his crown to Bolingbroke and prophecies, in sum, that it is a burden that will destroy him.They want to understand each other yet cannot.

The most important relationship is not between Richard and a wife but between Richard and his subjects, which is, in many ways, appropriate to the time period and genre. An example on the plus side (despite an equally fraught relationship) is Aragorn and Boromir at the end of Boromir's life. 

 

Shakespeare Couples: The Non-ness of Pericles

Pericles, Prince of Tyre is one strange play. 

Although I think that Shakespeare was capable of writing bad plays, in this case, he likely only wrote half. I surmise that he wrote the second half since that is the half that actually has a plot. However, even the part with a plot reads exactly like a "fixer" came in to make the play actually producible. 

In fairness, lots of exciting stuff happens. But it rambles--it reads as if someone tried to create an epic but the end result is similar to the Anne of Green Gables: Continuing Story movie, in which Anne almost but doesn't quite do anything. Pericles might marry a young woman sleeping with her father...but doesn't. He might settled down in a country he saved from famine...but he doesn't. He might stay in the kingdom where he is shipwrecked...but he doesn't. 

With such a lack of focus, it's hard to pin down any relationship that actually goes anywhere at all. 

I suppose the primary relationship (in the second half) is between Pericles's daughter, Marina, and Lysimachus, who meet precisely once before the denouement. The relationship strains credibility, mostly because Marina--who is sold to a brothel at the age of 14--retains her virginity by...delivering speeches to men. 

Yeah, right. 

The play is sentimental, moralistic, unbelievable (even by Shakespeare's "hey, let's have fun!" wacky standards). 

Again, as pure spectacle, it wouldn't be boring, but for the purposes of this blog, the relationships are mere passing references. Pericles's wife, with whom he is reunited at the end, is mostly famous for being dumped overboard when the sailors think she is dead. That's it. 

These couples are a world away from Katherina & Petruchio or Beatrice & Benedict.  

Shakespeare Couples in Midsummer's Night Dream: Not That Romantic

Midsummer's Night Dream can be absolutely hilarious. 

But not because the lovers are terribly likable. I don't think this lack of likability is a mistake on Shakespeare's part. He was fully capable of creating likable lovers. Despite the far greater social stigma, Katherine and Petruchio are delightful. 

But the lovers in Midsummer's Night Dream are kind of jerks. And they bring up the uncomfortable possibility that romantic feelings are entirely arbitrary and significant others entirely replaceable. Although everyone ends up at the end with the significant other that everyone started out with, that pay-off is little more than a contrivance. 

I suggest again that Shakespeare was entirely aware of what he was doing. One appealing aspect of Shakespeare's plays is how many genres they fall into. Philosophy? Sure. Historical reenactment? Sure. Family drama? Sure. Horror? Sure. Romance? Sure. Raunch? High-jinks? Sure. Sure. 

Screwball comedy?  

Okay! 

Midsummer's Night Dream feels like Shakespeare took Romeo & Juliet, which he wrote about the same time, and  turned such emotional excess on its head. You want angst? Heh heh heh. The fairies will give you ANGST. 

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

The best version I've ever seen EVER was a televised version of a live "Shakespeare in the Park" starring (I'm not making this up) William Hurt as Oberon. You can find it below (the quality isn't so great). I've never laughed so hard in my life. 

Touchingly enough, the one couple who aren't totally mocked is Bottom and Tatiana. At the very end of the play within the play, he has a moment of greatness as an actor--and all due to spending a night in the otherworld, with the queen of the fairies.

1982 Midsummer Night's Dream, Part 1  

1982 Midsummer Night's Dream, Part II 

 

Shakespeare Couples: Falstaff Shouldn't Have His Own Sitcom

It's wild to realize how much human nature remains the same. Individual people are different but people's desires remain remarkably consistent. 

Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor was apparently the equivalent of Joey or Frasier. It was a spin-off, written for the sake of a subordinate character, Falstaff. People loved Falstaff so much that Shakespeare had to keep bringing him back. He supposedly wrote Merry Wives at Queen Elizabeth's command (which reminds me of Jamie saying bluntly, "Really!?" when Obama wanted him and Adam to try out the mirrors-as-weapons experiment again on Mythbusters). 

Despite being requested by Queen Elizabeth, Merry Wives of Windsor wasn't particularly liked even at the time, though it was one of the first Shakespearean plays shown at the start of the Restoration (after the equivalent of lockdowns were lifted). I imagine it was chosen as a way for the theater-going crowd to thumb their noses (or bite their thumbs) at the Puritans. 

I didn't especially want to read the play since I don't care about Falstaff at all. Instead, I watched Orson Welles in The Chimes at Midnight. It helped that the older Orson Welles is how I see Falstaff!

This movie is basically Henry IV, Parts I and II with text from other plays. It is exceptionally well-edited. It is told mostly from Falstaff's point of view but the plot isn't about him (directly).  

And it proves that Falstaff is best presented within a larger story. Like with so many spinoffs, he is more interesting as a subordinate rather than a main character (Frasier was truly an exception, not a rule.)

From a romance perspective, Falstaff has less luck than the man who played him. I'm not a fan of the poor buffoon plot used by Merry Wives. And I agree with those critics that the complication of Falstaff is that despite his jokes and joie de vivre, he is in fact a villain. Hal is right to repudiate him.

The true relationship is Falstaff and Hal.  

Shakespeare Couples in Merchant of Venice

Merchant of Venice is a fascinating play since it showcases how Shakespeare was very much a product of his time and very much his own person with his personal creative sensibilities.  

That is, with Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare was using a current popular plot--similar to how every studio in Hollywood will churn out a robot film or a social commentary film or a film about bugs in the same year. 

And yet, Shakespeare's version of a "popular plot" has strong characters and a hint at another side to the equation. It can--and has--been endlessly interpreted. 

The Romeo & Juliet relationship, Lorenzo and Jessica, has a certain pathos. The Antonio-Bassanio relationship can be interpreted as having an underlying homoeroticism. 

But the relationship that runs the play is Shylock and Antonio.

I wrote a book years ago in which Antonio and Shylock have a kind of son-father relationship. They don't perceive each other in those ways but they are constantly orbiting each other, looking for opportunities to clash. Antonio ends up with Portia (who discovers that marrying a man, Bassanio, who needs money, after practically feeding him the answer to a riddle might be a tad dull). They both go looking for Shylock. 

If I wrote the story now, I might make Antonio and Shylock lovers after Shylock moves into Antonio's pensionne and takes over his trading business. ("Diversify! Diversify!") 

The point is, THAT relationship--that frenemies, enemies to enemies, enemies to lovers relationship--is the relationship that pulls in viewers. Portia is interesting in her own right but she becomes MORE interesting when she is forced to negotiate between these two men. 

Unique play in which 2 strong male leads make all the difference. 

Shakespeare's Couples: Isabella and the Duke

Measure for Measure is Shakespeare getting sick of the Woke Progressives of his day, the "pelting petty officer [who] would use heaven for thunder, nothing but thunder." 

He went after the type through Malvolio in Twelfth Night. In Measure for Measure, he makes the minor issue the major one. What happens when a preachy, label-happy, " I know how poeple should behave about everything moral" is left in charge of a community? 

Unlike Malvolio, Angelo is initially ego-less and well-meaning, until he proves utterly hypocritical (it's okay when I do it). Whatever the initial motivations, the end result is legalism, parsing the meaning of words at the level of pronouns in order to punish violators. 

Actually, the interpretations--and villains--are endless. For instance, there is an all-male version in which the discouraged behavior is gay marriage. I wasn't able to track down a copy, but I suspect that it would capture the wild disguises and violent implications and pointed criticism in a way a modern audience would quickly grasp.

Really, the underlying analogy could be almost anything. 

The controversial relationship for playgoers is the magnanimous Duke and Isabella, the novice nun. She leaves the convent to save her brother. The Duke asks her to marry him at the end. She replies with silence. "Silence" was consent for Elizabethans but Shakespeare never keeps his heroines silent. So the character's silence here is a deliberate choice. 

Is she consenting against her will? Consenting because she knows she'd make a lousy nun? Not truly consenting but unwilling to turn down yet another power-player? Happy to consent but not wanting to admit as much? Overwhelmed? Conflicted? 

The BBC version , which is quite faithful to the script as well as well-acted, portrays the Duke and Isabella working easily together to save her brother since she and the Duke have a similar serious mindset and strict though sensible moral code. 

At the end of the BBC version, Isabella accepts the Duke outstretched hand. He waits patiently for her decision, and she appears to consider and then make a thoughtful choice. 

However, the moment is still fraught with questions: Is Shakespeare saying that there is a time and place for chastity? Or is he suggesting that the Duke (and Isabella) are putting on a play for the populace? Or is he--with transparent effort--doing what he is supposed to do as the playwright? 

Measure for Measure is one of Shakespeare's problem plays, so I suppose an ambivalent end is allowed. 

Shakespeare Couples: Mr. and Mrs. MacBeth

In a post on Votaries, I discuss the dysfunction of MacBeth and his lady. In sum, I suggest that Lady MacBeth helps put in motion a series of events that culminate in a man she cannot control. 

Here, I will discuss the relationship itself. 

Nearly every version of MacBeth portrays the two as a loving couple with compatible goals. I find Shakespeare's achievement here quite remarkable. With Taming of the Shrew, he directly suggests that Kate and Petruchio are equals, no matter what concessions she makes to social mores. 

With MacBeth, however, he doesn't have to suggest. He simply presents the couple as equally ambitious, equally intelligent, equally cunning. 

Lady MacBeth's name has become synonymous with a clever woman who pushes her spouse to extremes or, at least, can't be trusted not to kill off her house guests. But unlike, say, the Whore of Babylon, she isn't alone in her bad behavior. MacBeth is as large a character as she is, so the play offers powerful roles to both the man and the woman. 

I've mentioned elsewhere that Shakespeare appears to believe--even in his comedies--that every relationship is different, so even the token happy endings/marriages are between THAT woman and THAT man. With Taming of the Shrew he took a well-used trope and made it unique, distinct. It isn't just any shrewish woman and domineering man. It's THIS woman and THIS man. 

He does the same with the ultimate ambitious couple. Although MacBeth-types are used over and over again in numerous murder mystery shows, those episodes usually stand out because the couple are memorable. And they are memorable because Shakespeare didn't simply throw "conniving" and "ambitious" into a bag and shake it up. The MacBeths have thought through their crimes. They are human enough to balk after the fact--to see ghosts. They are self-protective enough to keep going. And although they eventually fall apart, they could never had gone so far if they weren't--however evilly--compatible. 

Their murders are, in sum, character and relationship-driven.  

 

Shakespeare's Couples: Teens Teens Teens in Love's Labour Lost

In the world of "Yeah, Shakespeare really did try his hand at anything" stands Love's Labour Lost. A story about four friends swearing off women (sex) and then falling in love anyway seems on par with some of the stupider comedies of the 1980s. 

I watched the 2017 version of Shakespeare's play, which is set in a boarding school in a conservative Christian community. It made me laugh right away with the Bad Girls Get Diseases/Good Girls Don't poster. In fact, there are several scenes that match Monty-Python sex-ed-talk levels. 

The movie's producers "got" that in the earliest of Shakespeare's comedies, he is throwing dopey behavior and discomfort regarding dating and flirtation (and eating paper, which in the world of farce, strikes me as supremely hilarious--don't ask me why) into the blender and having fun. And he was likely quite young when he did it. 

There are naturally four male students and four female students who flirt and court. In truth, the relationships are rather touching, in part because they are so young. The same behavior in older characters would be kind of wearing and tacky and exasperating, which may explain why Branagh's version of this play was not successful (but his Much Ado, which is more witty and challenging, was). 

It is rather sweet to watch bumbling and gawky and frankly horny teenage boys gain a measure of maturity--to watch them grow from wanting to date any girl to being enamored of a single young woman with whom they want to spend time. 

So one lady can encourage Berowne to stop making snide remarks about people and use his wit to help them instead; the final scene of the movie shows him visiting cancer kids and using his clever (self) mockery to cheer them up. Likewise, after the princess's father dies, her beau attends the funeral to give her comfort. Everybody grows up a little.

It is less sweet to watch older folks going through the same ups and downs--which is why Midsummer Night's Dream is funny but has a seriously dark side. 

Shakespeare Couples: Lear and the Fool

I was recently surprised to discover that King Lear is a common subplot in a number of spoofs and remakes, modernized films/series. I suspect that like MacBeth, with King Lear, Shakespeare captured a series of classic tropes in a way that worked better than anything before or since.

There aren't romantic couples in King Lear, not really. The bad sisters fight over Edmund, who is the ultimate charismatic bad boy. Cordelia's husband seems to like her, but we don't see them on stage together much--until Cordelia's death.

The most sustained relationship is between Lear and the Fool.

The comic-actress Melora Hardin as Madelyn in If I Were You is trying to figure out if her cheating husband truly loves her and if she truly loves him. Madelyn befriends the young woman who is having an affair with her husband; that young woman ends up playing the Fool in a local repertory version of Lear while Madelyn ends up as a female Lear. Her hunt for affirmation provides a different perspective on the titular character's anguish. Lear is looking for love in all parts of his life, and that hunt, like rage, is entirely overwhelming (and even destructive). 

The themes of heartbreak, aging, and abandonment (being orphaned) also occur in the frame story: the death of Madelyn's mother. There, Madelyn meets the temporary romantic lead, Derek, played by Aidan Quinn (who gets to yell at one point, "I'm sleeping with King Lear!"). 

Hardin and Quinn have great chemistry. However, in terms of great loves, the frame story brings the audience back not to the marriage or the boyfriend but to Lear and the Fool. The ultimate point? 

The theater--the relationships within the theater--outlast everything. 

I think Shakespeare would have approved.

Shakespeare's Couples: Blanche and Louis

Wow--if one wants to watch a play about a custody battle, watch King John! 

It's not one of Shakespeare's popular plays. I don't think I'd read or seen a production until I started this list. I'm rather surprised that it isn't more popular. For one thing, it isn't quite as dismal and unending as the War of the Roses plays.  

It also has a great mystery, Arthur--the rival to King John's accession to the English throne--disappeared when he was fifteen to sixteen. Like Richard III's later nephews, he was likely murdered; it was apparently quite easy in the Middle Ages to kill and hide the bodies of teenage boys.

Philip of Cognac as "Philip the Bastard," the son of Lady Faulconbridge and King Richard, is unique in that he is a main character who acts beside the nobility and also produces much of the play's dark humor. Despite his self-serving nature, he has a grasp of basic morality and operates as a kind of Loki commentator. Unlike Edmund from King Lear, he is not (necessarily) villainous. 

For the purposes of this list, the play doesn't produce a grand passion, but Shakespeare uses a marriage--Blanche of Castile to the Dauphin--to temporarily establish peace between England and France. Shakespeare witnessed the ongoing uncertainty about who would inherit the English throne after Henry VIII (he was 17 when Henry VIII died) and after Elizabeth (he lived into King James I's reign). The world in which he operated discussed royal marriages as much as modern people do, with better reason. 

Shakespeare's approach here--marriage as a form of peace--is in keeping with the beliefs of those royal families. That is, it was "given" that a marriage WOULD influence political outcomes, even if not the exact political outcomes that the marriage was expected to create. 

So Blanche, played by Jennifer Mogbock, in King John is placed--like the teen Arthur--in a kind of custody battle with her marriage when England and France (pressured by the Vatican) part ways again. Like Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Henry II, every choice regarding the marriage will have ramifications. (After all, would any other set of parents have produced such ambitious, intelligent, charismatic, and reckless sons?) 

Ultimately, Blanche survived, became queen of France and exercised a great amount of power!

Shakespeare's Couples: Henry VI and Margaret

I read somewhere that Henry VI was Shakespeare's idea of a truly virtuous king.

I'm not sure Shakespeare would agree. The Hollow Crown portrays him as sweet-natured and sincere but troublingly naive. He tries to bring his magnates together but doesn't understand the underlying politics and isn't tough or honest enough to take a position that could result in violence since he would then have to defend that decision. Dante would have stuck Henry VI in a circle of hell that punishes those who undermine or ignore the need for social order. 

Henry VI is married to Margaret of Anjou, who was chosen for him by her lover. Towards her, Henry VI is bashful and romantic while she is...

Bored by him.

As a romantic, I could wish that like a tough Christie heroine, Margaret would be happy to marry a sweet guy who won't challenge her but rather give her safe harbor and scope to do as she wishes. 

But she isn't, and she isn't happy in a very believable way. She is tough, clever, manipulative, a chess player (the queen figure that moves!). She is derisive of Henry and can't shed her derision. She is such a strong character that some critics think that Shakespeare really wrote the plays (Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2) about her. Hey, he even brought her back in Richard III! And the critics have a point. In The Hollow Crown, which is fairly faithful to the plays, Margaret starts out out-maneuvering various ladies at court. The politics are as petty as all politics; they are also a fight over who will control Henry and therefore, the throne. She eventually burns down a guy's house and slaughters him.

I'd never seen a production of Henry VI, in part because I thought it was about a sweet king being manipulated by evil advisors and...okay, it is a play about a sweet king being manipulated by evil advisors (The Hollow Crown is also incredibly violent, showing what Shakespeare has characters describe; I skipped through the last hour or so). But the play is about more than sweetness and evil. Everyone, including Margaret, has legitimate grounds for their particular agenda: a wish to survive, too-long memories and grudges as well as past reason to distrust and fear, lack of better options, loyalty. Advisors play off against each other, creating distractions from more important issues. And many of them behave as decently as they can in the moment.

Shakespeare understood human behavior, including the wretchedness of political behavior (it's rather astonishing that more of his plays weren't banned by the powers-that-be but he was clever enough to use the past for his criticisms and to cloak his plots in apparent symbolism about something else). 

Shakespeare's realism here is why I'm not a big fan of royalty romances--contending with real-life politics is demoralizing. Bonding with a royal can in fact be dangerous--to health, rationality, emotional stability, and one's actual life. In real life, Henry VI and Margaret got along okay since they shared interests in intellectual pursuits and art. I still suspect--William and Kate aside--that these royal relationships are inherently kind of awful. 

Powerhouse!

Dysfunctional Relationships in Crime Shows: MacBeth

The dysfunction in MacBeth's primary relationship isn't that Lady MacBeth talks MacBeth into killing the king. That's bad. But from a relationship point of view, it isn't automatically the thing that destroys the relationship. 

What destroys the relationship is that Lady MacBeth can't control what she has inspired. 

In Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers's characters discuss what happens when one spouse limits or pulls down the other, either intentionally or unintentionally. The problem with MacBeth entails the opposite behavior (one spouse pushes rather than limits the other) but it relates to the first: one couple is trying to design or fix or otherwise manufacture a "perfect" spouse. In Lady MacBeth's case, that perfect spouse is a king. In another case, a perfect spouse might be one who doesn't do that type of work or write that type of stuff or spend time on those kind of causes. 

The ambitions are different but the behavior is the same: trying to organize someone else's life to make one's own life feel organized. 

Lady MacBeth fails in the long run and she fails before it is clear that MacBeth is doomed. She fails because actions have consequences. The act of assassination didn't occur on paper. It occurred in real life. MacBeth didn't turn into a nicely ambitious bloke. He turned into a nut-case. 

I suggest, as have others, that even if MacBeth hadn't turned into a nut-case, he still would have failed Lady MacBeth. Again, actions don't have tidy consequences. Eventually, she would have become another enemy, another person standing in his way. It was only a matter of time. 

Better, truly, for people to know what they are marrying than to try to force a spouse towards what they imagine they are marrying. 

*MacBeth is one of those plays that works at the narrative level, no matter what its trappings--like Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. A number of mystery shows have "done" Lady MacBeth, including Jake & the Fatman, Season 1, "Rhapsody in Blue." Strong parts for many actors!

Shakespeare Couples: Henry V & Kate!

I grew up in a house without a television. When our family wanted to watch something, my parents either rented a TV or we went next door to our church (my parents had keys) and watched a VHS on the TV with the VHS player. 

In this way, I encountered David Gwillim in the BBC Henry IV and Henry V. When I went to college, I would visit the AV area and watch Henry IV, Parts I and II over and over again. 

I consider Tom Hiddleston's Prince Hal (from Hollow Crown) to be quite impressive (even as one is reminded that dark-haired Hiddleston is quite tall and lanky; he just doesn't look that way when acting next to Chris Hemsworth). 

I consider Branagh's Henry V to be a tour de force--and the love scene between Branagh's Henry and Thompson's Katherine showcases the skill and comic abilities of both actors. 

However, I had a HUGE crush on David Gwillim as a teen. Major major crush that was really only replaced, eventually, by Sean Pertwee in the Brother Cadfael mysteries. 

Luckily, for my self-perception, David Gwillim is a good actor. He shows up in Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes as Percy Phelps (with a mustache!).

However, in fairness, I think looking back that my crush was less, ah, reasonable than an objective assessment of Gwillim's abilities. I think it was partly because I considered Gwillim hot but also because his character undergoes a transformation. 

I find double identities and transformations inherently charismatic. In one scene at the end of Henry IV, Part II, Gwillim as the newly crowned Henry V, no longer the rapscallion Prince Hal, walks through a crowd. He wears a kind of astonished smile. 

It is utterly charming. (And, yup, I watched the scene a dozen times.)