All's Well...eventually.

All's Wellies,

All's Well, even if it's a little late, eh?

All’s Well was a completely new play for me, as I have never seen it produced for the stage anywhere in Colorado, and I have faithfully been attending the Colorado Shakespeare Festival every year (except this one), and the Denver Center typically produces one Shakespeare offering every year. I, too, wonder why this play is not produced more often. There are some beautifully drawn, complex characters that would be entertaining indeed.

As always, I am curious and intrigued with Shakespeare’s depiction of his women. I am crazy about the Countess and her support of Helena. She asks that Helena speak honestly, and when Helena does, the Countess responds:

Why Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love,

Means and attendants, and my loving greetings

To those of mine in court. I’ll stay at home

And pray God’s blessing into thy attempt.

Be gone tomorrow; and be sure of this,

What I can help thee to, thou shalt not miss. (I.iii.253-258)

Perhaps the Countess reminds me of Constance in King John. Curiously, at this point in the play, we have not seen Bertram onstage, thus Helena doesn’t look foolish for loving him so, but I digress. When we do learn what an ass Bertram is, even his own mother supports Helena: “He was my son,/But I do wash his name out of my blood/And thou art all my child” (III.ii.68-70). The strength, integrity, and assertiveness of the women in this play make the roles of women a natural focus of study for my students.

Now, Helena. She perplexes me and I want to slap her for loving a cad like Bertram. But that aside, I adore her other qualities and applaud Shakespeare for creating a woman who is not only intelligent, but also resourceful, confident, and assertive. In fact, she strength eclipses that of Viola, who amidst her angst and yearning for Orsino, and the subsequent love triangle complications, submits to fate: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I./It is too hard a knot for me t'untie.” Helena informs us early on that she is a woman of action: “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,/Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky/Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull/Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull” (I.i.223-226). Helena is not about to sit at home and wait for Bertram’s return. We see her confidence in action when she asserts that she can cure the King, and later her resourcefulness as she uses Bertram’s lust for Diana to entrap him in the same substitute bride motif we see in Measure for Measure. Helena=really great character, but one who falls for one who is unworthy of her. Sure, she might be trying to marry above her station, but who is going to argue with the approval of the Countess and the King? I didn’t discover any evidence to suggest that anything but love is her motivation. Silly girl.

In the high school English classroom, I would ask students to make thematic connections between this and other plays. For example, the aforementioned substitute bride motif, the “bride is dead” deception a la Much Ado About Nothing and A Winter’s Tale. I would also have them attempt to categorize this play: comedy? problem play? We would look at characters and language, as well as the subplot. I, for one, find Parolles tedious, whereas the subplots in Twelfth Night are so rich indeed. In most comparisons, All’s Well pales in language, wit, and overall experience, but characters Helena and the Countess, at least for me, redeem it.

...that ends well,

Cindy

All's Well That Ends Well - On the Road

Ernst writes:

I am sitting, early morning, in our Adirondack cabin, on the second beautiful day in a row.

I read the first act of All’s Well That Ends Well last night. I know I skim-read it once, but I am now looking at it with very different eyes. I am also reading it in our Rockwell Kent-illustrated edition (Cambridge version c. 1936) filled with statuesque figures of various characters in a sort of Roosevelt-era style (think: Rockefeller Center). Rockwell Kent lived in the Adirondacks, and some of his paintings with their geometric shapings and use of northern light are terrific.

What a pastiche of strange bits and pieces. Why did Shakespeare write it and when? (intentional fallacy, but Harold Bloom reminds us that such terms are dead). Was it a hurry-up job? Was it an earlier play re-written? Is it in any way satirical?

Some things I noticed:

1. The play opens in prose—spoken by characters who would normally speak in blank verse.
2. Helena’s “I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too” calls to mind Hamlet’s distinction between shows of sorrow and real sorrow.
3. The Countess’s advice (“Love all, trust a few’) is clearly a variant on Polonius’s famous “advice’ (how frequently one used to see Polonius’ words published on school bulletin boards as the right way to behave).
4. I don’t know what to make of Helena’s initial, somewhat over-the-top description of her love for Bertram. Parts of it sound a bit artificial to me, although her description of Parolles as one of St. Bertram’s “reliques” is very clever. (“Parolles” means “words” in—is it?—Italian—related to our word, ”palaver”?).
5. The discussion beginning around I.i.107 (my book has no line numbers in the text) has, I believe, been called a “blot,” and is frequently left out of productions.It is certainly a strange bit, with its frank discussion of bodily sex, but it seems excessive. Just before it, Helena has told us that Parolles is a man of “superficial folly” and then proceeds to engage him in a lengthy dialogue that makes that point clear. It might be the sort of banter that goes on between Viola and Feste, except it is hard to see Parolles as a Feste-like figure (for me, at least). Did Shakespeare owe Robert Armin a favor? (That is if Armin took this role and not that of the Clown)
6. End of I.i. Helena’s final monologue is rich, vaguely reminiscent of Edmund’s view of his father’s beliefs in cosmic fate in “Lear.” (Sonnet 15: “cheered and checked by that self-same sky.”
7. There are, again, some rather rich musings on death and courtiers (a favorite Shakespeare concern) in Scene ii.

This is good stuff, but does its seriousness work--especially early on in a comedy?

There’s more, but we want to get out into this beautiful day before driving back down to Kingston.

Ernst

The Henry Explications - Part M

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

KING HENRY V
Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the king!
We must bear all.
... What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd
Than they in fearing.
What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;
I am a king that find thee, and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium.

(Henry V 4.1.230-274)

In this soliloquy, the fact that it is Henry V speaking changes the mood of the passage, especially when he says, “Upon the King! let us our lives, our souls/Our debts, our careful wives/Our children, and our sins lay on the King!/We must bear all.” Because the King says this, it can be inferred that he is saying it with a somewhat ironic tone. He appears to be overwhelmed with his duties and laments his people thinking they should lay all of their burdens upon him. As the King, he has personal knowledge and experience with what he goes on to talk about and he uses sleep to show how his duties affect him: he is so tired by night that he doesn’t wake at all in the night.

The speech is perhaps motivated by Henry’s recently becoming King and becoming overwhelmed with all his duties. He is obviously in despair over the fact that he is no different from anyone else except for the ceremonies he has that come with the title of King, yet he has the burdens of his people thrust upon him. He mentions that he sleeps as well as a starving, exhausted slave due to all the work he must do as King. The novelty of being named King may have worn off at this point, and now the King just laments all the work he has to do and explains how he feels that all his citizens put all their needs in his hands.

He mentions all the perks people generally think that kings get, such as his "imperial crown" and gold and pearl "intertissued robe," and says that this is all just ceremony and that there are no real benefits. He uses this speech to complain about the position he has been given, even comparing himself to a slave. His use of mythology in the speech, mentioning Phoebus and Elysium, show that he is well educated but more importantly show the feeling that although King Henry V does not think the king gets any benefits, he does see that kings do have power and honor associated with their names. Perhaps this shows that his disapproval of the role of King is fleeting in the chaos of his first months on the throne, or that it does not truthfully represent what he believes. By implying that at night he sleeps in Elysium, King Henry V says that he is honorable. Either he believes this honor stems from his role of King, or from the work he has to do in supporting his people, although his earlier statements discount both of these ideas when he says that he is just like a commoner.

The King is still young at this point, so he probably does not know exactly what he believes and is impulsive in his thoughts and actions.

Rachel Kinney (SPA '12)

The Henry Explications - Part L

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

MICHAEL WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs, and arms, and heads, chopp'd off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, "We died at such a place" -- some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it.

(Henry V 4.1.134-145)

Williams' speech, in Henry V, illustrates both the violent nature of war and the human cost of honor. Williams outright states, "If the cause be not good, then the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make." The issue of tactics and strategy -- good or bad -- in the fighting does not come up. Rather, the issue stands on whether or not the reason for fighting was at all sound. It brings to mind the Chinese idea of the Mandate of Heaven, or the divine right of kingship. The king remains in the right only if the heavenly powers favor him.

However, in the case of 1 Henry IV, honor comes into play where divine favor might have in another story. Is the king right in taking his cause to the battlefield? If he is not, then his soldiers will have died in vain and the king will have to pay "a heavy reckoning," making everything right again in the eyes of heaven and his troops alike.

Williams also uses the image of severed body parts -- arms, legs, and heads -- all crying out that they were killed, but not the wounded soldiers themselves. In death, the common soldiers are reduced to the sum of their injuries -- their body parts. No longer alive, they become meat in the eyes of the survivors and the king. The parts shall "join together at a later day" to state the way they died and what they left behind. And if it is an unjust way to die, then they will haunt the king. Unjust deaths tend to do that in Shakespeare. Consider Hamlet and Macbeth. The ghosts of unjustly killed men tend to stick around and taunt those responsible, or give advice to those who can arrange the downfall of the responsible party.

"I am afeard that there are few die well that die in battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?" Williams asks, exposing the realistic side to the play's romantic notion of fighting. Though a common soldier himself, Williams does a bit of philosophical musing over whether or not the soldiers who died in the fighting actually died a "good" -- or just -- death, for they have little to bargain with when heaven comes rolling around, only blood, both theirs and some belonging to others spilled by their hands. Their "argument" is their ticket into heaven and while a loyal soldier may be willing to go downstairs for the sake of fighting for his king's good cause -- murder being against the Ten Commandments and what not -- the same cannot be said if the king's cause is not just. No one wants to be told that they fought for a bad cause. Soldiers cannot "charitably dispose of anything" with their hands so dirtied. They cannot say they are innocent upon reaching the afterlife, whatever form it happens to take. The dead ones had families, wives and children in some cases, and those survivors will be left alone. Hopefully it was for a good cause.

The last part of the speech wraps up and reinforces the message nicely: "Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it." Williams' speech is not confusing. The meaning does not disguise itself with fancy language, only violent imagery, perhaps a testimony to Williams' standing as a common soldier and not a member of the nobility as Hal is.

Emma Johnson-Rivard (SPA '11)

The Henry Explications - Part K

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

KING HENRY V
I know thee not, old man, fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and a jester!
I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;
But being awak'd, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body (hence) and more thy grace,
Leave gormandizing, know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest,
Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and feeder of my riots.
Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.

(2 Henry IV 5.5.47-65)

Ah, divorce. Medieval style. Is Henry V's restraining order against Falstaff the first instance of the proverbial "ten-foot pole" concept? Ten miles is significant. If you have Google Earth, and you type in "London, England" you'll notice the city's current sprawling urban density goes on for miles and miles. To keep out of Henry's way today, Falstaff could just pick up and move to East Ham, where there is sure to be a sufficient number of pubs for him to satisfy his craving for a capon and a small beer. But in the 15th century, Falstaff's ten-mile punishment means complete expulsion from London, for the city is barely two miles in diameter (click on the historical map above). If London is heaven, Falstaff has been tossed out.

I think the religious imagery here is intriguing. It feels like Hal has a bit of anxiety about his transition from bad boy to good king, so he evokes God's omniscience to corroborate his transformation. The people may be skeptical, but God knows. Falstaff (along with Poins and Bardolph), on the other hand, is a "misleader" and "tutor" of dissolute behavior, which sounds distinctly fiend-like. Thus, Henry V's banishment of him is like God's expulsion of the rebel angels:

"And the great dragon, that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, was cast out, which deceiveth all the world; he was even cast into the earth, and his Angels were cast out with him" (Revelation 12.9).

Notice the neat connection between "old serpent" and Hal's double taunt ("old man," "so old") regarding Falstaff's age. To take this one step further, Falstaff's banishment, by analogy, elevates King Henry into the place of God. His decree, then, further establishes the divine right of his rule.

Randall

All's Well That Ends Well - Against Coleridge

Well-wishers,

While we’re ruminating on All’s Well That Ends Well, and Gil’s comments, I thought I’d invite a “literary light” into the discussion: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In one of his briefer table talk pieces, Coleridge takes Bertram’s side, explaining that Bertram is not an intolerable jerk because he has every reason to be disgruntled with an arrangement that finds him forced to marry a woman he has previously considered only a friend. Coleridge calls the king’s decree “tyrannical.” Of “Helena,” he opines the following:

“Indeed, it must be confessed that her character is not very delicate, and it required all Shakespeare’s consummate skill to interest us for her; and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other characters,–the Countess, Lafeu, etc. We get to like Helena from their praising and commending her so much” (Hawkes 254).

Really? That’s a pretty odd argument, that we only engage with a character because others are there to prompt us. Let’s take a couple scenes where this is demonstrably not possible: Act 1 scene 1 and Act 3 scene 2. Those are the scenes in which we find Helen’s soliloquies. Often, soliloquies define what is compelling about a character – Iago’s gleeful villainy (“And what’s he, then, that says I play the villain, when this advice is free I give and honest”); Hamlet’s incapacitating grapple with suicide and despair (“O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter”); Hal’s lawyerly crash course in Medieval public relations (“If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work, but when the seldom come, they wished-for come, and nothing pleaseth but rare accidents”); Juliet’s crisis of confidence regarding the reliability of those who would protect her (“What if it be a poison which the Friar hath subtly ministered to have me dead, lest in this marriage he should be dishonored because he married me before to Romeo?”). And soliloquies establish this character while he/she is alone on the stage.

Do Helen’s soliloquies reveal a depth of character? Here’s the first:

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high,
That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove
To show her merit that did miss her love? (1.1.222-233)

There’s a sexist tang to Coleridge’s assessment, as if the concerns of women (love and matrimony) do not carry the weight of men’s. Yet here we find concerns about fate, free will, and the restrictive boundaries of social class. And parsed in couplets, too. If her thoughts lack gravitas, what do we make of the first lines’ similarity to Cassius’s comment in Julius Caesar?

Men at some time are masters of their fate.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.146-148)

Helen’s ambition is to marry above her station; Cassius’s is to assassinate a Roman leader. Both challenge socio-political order. And isn’t that what we find most compelling about Shakespeare’s heroes and heroines? Their fearlessness in confronting the cosmos and seeking to reorder it? Her comment, “Impossible be strange attempts to those that weigh their pains in sorrow and do suppose what hath been cannot be,” shows just how far she’s willing to beyond the established order of things. Her quest will be “strange,” out of the ordinary, uncommon, remarkable, the kind of thing others have failed at because they lacked imagination or were defeatist – a hero’s vision. Her final question, it seems to me, is rhetorical, not plaintive. She’s saying “if I strive, I will succeed” – a hero’s stance.

I’ll save a close reading of the second soliloquy for another time.

Randall

The Henry Explications - Part J

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HENRY V
You are right justice, and you weigh this well,
Therefore still bear the balance and the sword,
And I do wish your honors may increase,
Till you do live to see a son of mine
Offend you and obey you, as I did.
... You did commit me;
You shall be as a father to my youth,
My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear,
And I will stoop and humble my intents
To your well-practic'd wise directions.

(2 Henry IV 5.2.102-121)

Shakespeare begins this passage with a play on words. "Justice" can be a judge (he's speaking to the Chief Justice), but it can also mean "fair" or "right," ideas symbolized by "the balance and the sword." In a way, we can see Hal find balance, or rightness, in his own life by the end of 2 Henry IV. This passage shows his transformation since "Part 1." In the first play, he is very laid back, lazy, unready to be king, and scheming to manage his image and create an insincere metamorphosis. Here, he shows himself to be the true self he projects in "Part 1." He has emerged as a very honorable man, one who has matured and is ready for the responsibility of being king.

Shakespeare emphasizes this transformation and maturity with his use of imagery that evokes fatherhood and the implication that King Henry IV's influence on Hal has been significant. In the first play we see his struggle to maintain (or regain) his father's approval in his declaration: "I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord, be more myself" (1Henry IV, 3.2). In 2 Henry IV, Hal's true "self" has emerged. He mentions to the Chief Justice that he hopes the Justice will be able to see Hal's sons "offend you and obey you, as I did." This shows Hal taking on his father's role, as he is trying to act and discipline people how his father would have, with fairness. In addition, he is arriving at the balance between his youthful behavior (which he understands definitely influenced who he is now) and his future responsibility. He expects no special treatment for his son, but he also acknowledges that youthful rebelliousness is part of the equation.

Calvin Va Her (SPA '12)

All's Well That Ends Well, I Hope

Gil writes:

The Will Shakespeare Experience seems to have choked on The Merry Wives of Windsor, and I am not confident that All’s Well That Ends Well will succeed as a Heimlich maneuver (there’s an analogy that gets out of control).

My own history with the play is minimal, though I may have been prejudiced against it very early in my 60 years of association with Shakespeare. Once upon a time elementary-school Gilbert saw an evening of excerpts from Taming of the Shrew and Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by either Eva Le Gallienne or Margaret Webster, both of whom toured the US at the time, when I was in grade school, but the only image I’ve kept was being allowed to move to the front row at intermission where I was fascinated to see the detail of Puck’s makeup. My first full production was a Tempest when I was in junior high (again, either Webster or Le Gallienne), and from that I remember the scenery, a backdrop of the tempest on a giant roller so the storm sped by as the sailors tilted back and forth to simulate being rocked by waves. Caliban wore a tortoise shell.

It wasn’t until I was in England in high school, and I saw Peggy Ashcroft and Leo McKern in Twelfth Night at the Old Vic that I was hooked for life. Soon thereafter was a Love’s Labour’s Lost with Michael Redgrave (in Newcastle, for some reason), and then acting in my own high-school productions of Henry V—want me to recite the “Upon the King…” speech for you? And since, I have spent many more than a hundred nights (and days during all those summer Shakespeare festivals) in the theatre, read the plays close to a hundred times, and taught at least eighteen.

So where in all that is All’s Well That Ends Well? Well (that didn’t end well), I’ve seen it only once, in Ashland, Oregon, on my honeymoon in 1961, forty-nine years, eleven months ago. What was most memorable about it? It finished last among Midsummer Night's Dream, 1 Henry IV, Hamlet with Richard Russo, and The Alchemist. Honeymoonwise, I remember tubing on the Rogue River, being amused by the Oregon Vortex (“center of mystery”), and splurging on chateaubriand for two in the Mark Antony Hotel. And I vividly remember the young woman I was with, the focus of so many memories for the last 49 11/12 years.

But I’m stalling. Of All’s Well my indelible memory is what an unpleasant play I witnessed, and that was concentrated on what an intolerable jerk Bertram is. He is callow from the start, stiffs the admirable and beautiful Helena (played by Elizabeth Huddle who later was director of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle ) in the complication phase of the plot, and yet when reconciliation and resolve might be anticipated by conventions of comedy, he is still the same, or worse, egocentric pig. To a honeymooner, a play about how grim marriage must be, even at its beginnings, is not promising.

So we left Ashland and went to the Oregon Caves—“see how this single match can illuminate this entire cavern; that illustrates one candle-power.” Bertram was played by a young Nagle Jackson, who has since flourished as a director, including six shows at Ashland (I saw his Pericles in 1967), and playwright (I’ve seen The Quick Change Room, This Day and Age, and Taking Leave). He was guest director at Carleton in 2002, where he directed his own The Elevation of Thieves (he and prof Frank Morral were classmates at Whitman College). He must have given a memorable performance or it wouldn’t be so indelible. I confess that when an actor is so good as a creep that I despise him, I later don’t want to see that actor again anywhere (Jason Alexander after Pretty Woman or Michael Gambon after The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover; I know it’s foolish to penalize excellence, but there you are). I didn’t hold Bertram against Jackson, because he also played a definitive Face in The Alchemist as well as bits as Westmoreland and the Player King, but I seem to have dismissed All’s Well forever.

For a graduate course in Shakespearean Comedy, we read nineteen plays—Comedies, Romances, and both Henry IV’s—the final was a take-home (“You have just read a book with nineteen chapters; now write the twentieth chapter”)—and I see that I have no marginal notes for All’s Well at all. (Ernst, don’t tell Bill Matchett that I didn’t read it.)

Reading it this week, it was hard to resist being frivolous:

• the Countess sends Bertram to court with parental advice: “Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none,” Polonius to Laertes again, and we know how that worked out;
• Parolles first described as “you go so much backward when you fight,” a miles gloriousus, but he will never come up to Falstaff’s example;
• Helena, having miraculously resurrected the King wins her reward: Enter three or four Lords. “Fair maid, send forth thine eye. This youthful parcel/ Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,” so for background, you’re going to make me watch The Bachelorette?!? Not to say that Helena journeys on a quest to the King, cure him or die, but if she succeeds she gets to marry the prince, the old fairy tale [but in this case it’s Bertram who wants to marry the King; I said it was as fairy tale—just kidding!!!!]
• Parolles is hooded by a disguised band of strangers (the French Lords) and they speak to him in tongues: “Boskos vauvado…Oscorbidulchos volivorco…Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo.” And I don’t even know where my Klingon dictionary is.
• And the unnamed 1 Lord and 2 Lord are at last named in act IV: Capt. Dumaine and Capt. Dumaine, that is my brother Daryl and my other brother Daryl.

OK, you can see my skepticism. But now The Will Shakespeare Experience has been challenged by Randall to redeem All’s Well from the abyss. Mirabilis dictu (that’s Klingon for “oh, wow!), I think we might. I am reading with the attention of a man two generations older than the one who dismissed the play at Ashland in 1961 and am willing to take up the challenge of structure and genre. This is a comedy, “problem” or not, and I’d like to trace that motion of comedy which celebrates change, the younger generation supplanting the older one.

I’d like to listen to Cindy and Mike (and Randall) on what might resonate with contemporary students—something beyond Bachelorette and the Klingons, I hope. And I’d like, not alone, to take on Ellen Terry and account for my Helena. May my second fifty years rise above the prejudice of the first.

Gilbert

The Henry Explications - Part I

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

KING HENRY V
This new and gorgeous garment, majesty,
Sits not so easily on me as you think.
Brothers, you [mix] your sadness with some fear:
This is the English, not the Turkish court;
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers,
For by my faith it very well becomes you.
Sorrow so royally in you appears
that I will deeply put the fashion on
And wear it in my heart. Why then be sad,
But entertain no more of it, good brothers,
Than a joint burden laid upon us all.
For me, by heaven (I bid you be assur'd),
I'll be your father and your brother too.
Let me but bear your love, I'll bear your cares.
Yet weep that Harry's dead, and so will I,
But Harry lives, that shall convert those tears
By number into hours of happiness.

(2 Henry IV 5.2.44-61)

Through the new king Henry V's speech to his brothers (John of Lancaster, Thomas of Clarence, and Humphrey of Gloucester) after their father's death, Shakespeare deals with the realities of succession — that difficult negotiation between governmental stability and chaotic power struggle — and the death of a king while keeping his character true to his personality. This speech touches on everything from propriety and external perception, to the fear that naturally comes in a shift of power, to different kinds of mourning.

Mourning, whether for a king or commoner, can also be a difficult balancing act. Tradition requires particular rituals and outward displays, while the loss itself exacts things, even less predictably. Hal, newly King Henry V, must take his place as king and reassure everyone of the continuing stability of the regency, demonstrate a proper degree of public mourning as both a subject of and the son of the former king, and deal with his own grief. Thus, when he says "this new and gorgeous garment, majesty, sits not so easily on me as you think," he is not merely trying to dispel any jealousy or thought of opposition amongst his brothers, but telling the absolute truth.

As he does with the epitaphs of both Hotspur and Falstaff in the previous play, Hal continues to use honesty in order to lend a more genuine tone to his otherwise fairly ceremonial words. He reassures them of his intention to support them by bluntly telling them that he knows they fear what he may do (implying even that they might fear for their own lives), but that it "is the English, not the Turkish court, not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, but Harry Harry." He introduces and dispels comparison between himself and a ruler who literally strangled his brothers, thus addressing the most extreme of possibilities quickly.

By the end, he assures them that not only will he not harm them, he will protect them and do well by them: "I'll be your father and your brother too. Let me but bear your love; I'll bear your cares." In that, he furthermore introduces the potentially uncomfortable issue of personal relationships. Once their brother, he is now also their king; once his brothers, they are now his subjects. He works with this beautifully, referring to their mourning and sadness for the death of their father as "a joint burden laid upon [them] all" before he moves on to the things he himself promises, thus connecting himself with them in one way even as he has to separate himself from them in another.

Gavi Levy Haskell (SPA '11)

All's Well That Ends Well - Opening Thoughts

Shakespeareans,

I mentioned earlier that I’ve had the chance to see All’s Well That Ends Well twice in the last year, the only times I’ve seen the play produced in 34 years of Shakespeare-going. Having now read the play, I don’t understand why it’s not produced more frequently. The characters are distinctly drawn, the play has a clever fairy tale-like quality, the plot addresses a moral question seriously, the humor is accessible to a modern audience, and our heroine, I think, holds her own against Rosaline and Viola. She’s resourceful, intelligent, devout, and interestingly the only one of the three who need not disguise herself as a guy to successfully complete her quest. Sure, Bertram is a scoundrel. And his lying to the King at the end of the play is cowardly, but it’s not really the problem that critics who label All’s Well a “problem play” make it out to be, depending on how you set up the characters and themes in production.

So that’s my first question. And I address it to Stu and Doug, particularly – Why isn’t All’s Well That Ends Well a more regular part of the Shakespeare comedy rotation? Last year, Stu’s company performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the sixth time in its 35-year history. But in all that time Shakespeare and Company has staged All’s Well only once. Doug’s company, Great River Shakespeare Festival, still in its first decade, has not yet produced it. So, theater people, when you’re selecting plays for the upcoming season and someone says “How about All’s Well,” what tends to be the response? And what are the real criteria for any decision?

Second, for those of you interested in structure and genre, a question about what this play is. Despite its perfection, Twelfth Night is not the last comedy Shakespeare writes (probably). Does a play like All’s Well represent a further development in his concept of comedy, or is it (and the other “problem comedies”) something altogether different?

Third, I’m just now wrapping up a semester of Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, 1 Henry IV, Othello, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure), pretty happy with the selection of plays and their success with students. For you high school teachers – Cindy and Mike – if you taught All’s Well what aspect of the play do you think would resonate with your students the most?

Fourth, has anyone seen a production of this play? What was most memorable about it?

Fifth, actress Ellen Terry is supposed to have called Helen a “doormat.” Is she?

And finally, Ernst, here’s one for you: You noted a while back that Elizabethan youth found it hip to be melancholy, to dress all in black and mope around, probably to tick off their parents, and we see this culture reflected in Hamlet. I’m wondering if characters like Lucio in Measure for Measure, who is listed as a “fantastique,” and Parolles in All’s Well, with his gaudy and unapologetic clothing, are also a “type”? Are these satirical characters? Or just fops?

All’s well that starts well,
Randall

The Henry Explications - Part H

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

(Hal has tried on his dying father's crown when his dad comes to and scolds him.)

HAL
I never thought to hear you speak again.
KING HENRY
Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought:
I stayed too long by thee, I weary thee.
Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair
That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honors
Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth,
Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.

(2 Henry IV 4.5.91-97)

Hal's action, trying on his father's crown, tells us he is impulsive, anxious to become king. and without the respect or sense of propriety that he claims to possess. Hal seemingly cannot wait for his father to die to put on the crown, although his father's catching him would result in shame and hurt feelings, and clearly treasures the crown as a sign of kingdom, although it is only a symbol.

While his desire to take on the power that he rejected throughout 1 Henry IV shows that he has changed and grown into his title of prince, his actions are still juvenile, like those of any son trying on his father's clothes in an attempt to be more like him. Hal shows some kingly feelings, but lacks the sense of what is socially acceptable and what is honorable that his father so desires to see in him.

The king, when he wakes and sees his crown on Hal's head, is disappointed and angry. Hal does not acknowledge that he has committed a transgression and instead attempts to calm the situation by saying "I never thought to hear you speak again," an ambiguous sentence that could show his caring for the king and his gladness at his father's recovery, but one that could also simply mean that Hal thought his father unable to recover, certifying his ascension into the role of king.

His father takes the latter view of this statement, despite Hal's previously voiced good intentions, and accuses him of wishing for his death: "Thy wish was father, Harry, to thy thought." Not only does this accusation communicate his belief in Hal's ambition, it also puns on the word "father." As Hal would prematurely step into his father's role, so are his wishes usurpatious. And those wishes, in turn, sire rebellious thoughts, much as Henry fears he has sired a rebellious son.

Despite his harsh attitude toward Hal's indiscretion, the king also still cares for him. While he speaks of the king's role as something that Hal cannot fill, he does this seemingly out of fear for Hal's happiness and health, saying that Hal is looking to take it on "before [his] hour be ripe" and that Hal will inevitably become overwhelmed by the duties involved.

The passage as a whole highlights the reemergence of the differences in outlook between the king and Hal that seemed to be resolved in 1 Henry IV. The king's language indicates a reverence for kingship; he speaks of kinghood as something honorable, majestic, and incredibly powerful, in an almost spiritual way. Hal, by his previous actions and current action, does not seem to feel this same reverence. Instead, as we see in his reaction to King Henry's "recovery," he is unrepentant and does not acknowledge that he has done anything wrong, yet another sign that he does not yet possess the necessary maturity and consideration that his father expects. And King Henry's disappointment in Hal is amplified by his realization that he is entirely powerless to change him.

Hannah Lutz (SPA '11)

The Henry Explications - Part G

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HAL
What, old acquaintance, could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell.
I could have better spared a better man.
O, I should have a heavy miss of thee
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer today,
Though many dearer in this bloody fray.
Emboweled will I see thee by and by;
Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.

(1 Henry IV 5.4.104-112)

Since Prince Hal believes that he is completely alone with the body of an old acquaintance, Falstaff, his small monologue is almost a soliloquy. It is addressed to Falstaff, but since Falstaff is “dead,” it’s much more for the benefit of the audience/himself in intention.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the passage is the dramatic irony. In some ways, Hal is forgiving Falstaff for all of his cowardice by confessing that he cares for him and will mourn his passing. It’s an interesting commentary on how much more fondly we remember the dead than we appreciate the living. But it’s not just because he’s dead. Falstaff becomes more worthy of Hal’s forgiveness because Hal assumes that Falstaff has done the honorable thing and died defending the monarchy. But the audience knows that Falstaff is just pretending to be dead to save his own hide, an act of cowardice so complete that (the new) Hal would probably never forgive him for it. It completely tints the audience’s perception of Hal’s speech.

At the same time, Hal isn’t forgiving all of Falstaff’s faults, even if he does think he’s dead. In fact, he seems to switch back and forth between insulting and complimenting Falstaff, revealing that Prince Hal really does have one foot on the throne and the other on the table of a bar. He begins by calling Falstaff an acquaintance. Not a love, not a friend, but an acquaintance. His next sentence is a fat joke, as usual. But after that, the tone get’s a bit more serious. “Poor Jack, farewell,” says Hal, “I could have better spared a better man.” This is the most important line. In this line, Hal comes to realize (or has he realized it all along? It’s hard to tell with him) that he knows there are many men better, more honorable, more true than Falstaff. And yet he wishes that one of them could have died, that Falstaff could have lived. This suggests that there is something lasting and loving about Hals feelings for Falstaff.

His next line basically expresses the amount he would have missed Falstaff (heavy; another fat joke) if Hal were still the man he used to be (a man of frivolity). He then compares Falstaff to a Deer (an animal? A fat animal? A dumb animal? A sweet and defenseless animal? I’m still not sure) and again states that many who were more valuable than Falstaff died today. But he’s talking to Falstaff’s body, not to those other bodies. He knows, intellectually, that Falstaff’s life is not as valuable as others, but emotionally, Falstaff’s death hits him hard.

In his final line, Hal lays the body (drags the body? Doesn’t move it at all?) near Percy and says “Till then [your funeral], in blood by noble Percy lie.” The added bit about “in blood” implies that Falstaff wouldn’t be good enough to lie next to Percy in, say, honor, but he is good enough to lie next to him in blood. Or maybe it’s just an appropriate expression considering that there’s probably blood everywhere.

Nadja Milena (SPA '11)

The Henry Explications - Part F

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

KING HENRY IV
Thou has redeemed thy lost opinion
And showed thou mak'st some tender of my life
In this fair rescue thou has brought to me.

(1 Henry IV 5.4.48-50)

Redemption emerges as a prominent theme in 1 Henry IV. In these student explication passages alone we've seen it three times -- when Hal says "I'll so offend to make offense a skill,/ Redeeming time when men think least I will"; when he says "God forgive them that so much have swayed/ Your Majesty's good thoughts away from me./ I will redeem all this on Percy's head"; and in the passage above, where King Henry brings closure to the promise Hal makes in the first citation. In addition Hotspur uses the image twice, both times in reference to honor regained.

In fact, one could read all six of the play's redemption metaphors fairly secularly. People redeem, in the sense that they recover something or fulfill some obligation, time and honor and lost reputation, and we can leave it at that. But redemption is a big word, and we must ask: what religious implications are present?

So, because I'm pretty uninformed when it comes to religious imagery, I sent my friend Jim Bofenkamp (who teaches a Shakespeare and the Bible class) a note, asking for a quick run down on redemption in the Bible. His rejoinder was that it would take most of a lifetime to answer the question. The Bible, he wrote, from Genesis to Revelations "covers the story of our redemption by the second Adam (Jesus Christ) because of what the first Adam did at the very beginning." This is significant because some clear parallels suggest that we can read Richard, King Henry, and Hal allegorically.

In fact, a number of critics, including Steven Marx and Marjorie Garber, have already done so. Garber, in Shakespeare After All, spreads the net wide. "Much of the imagery in Richard II," she writes, "was concerned with England as a little Eden, a 'demi-paradise,' and with Richard as a kind of Adam and a kind of Christ, suffering what his queen called 'a second fall of cursed man.' By the beginning of 1 Henry IV the tide of public opinion has already reversed itself. Richard's loss is mourned, and Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, is the villain. Even Hotspur, who with his father Northumberland, swore allegiance to Bolingbroke's cause, now expresses fury at the fact that the usurpers chose to 'put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose, / And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke.' This is post-fall language ... Yet like most falls in English literature, this will turn out to be a fortunate fall, because after the fall of Adam, as Shakespeare's Christian audience would have believed, came the redemption through Christ, and after the fall of Richard will come the redemption of Prince Hal" (314-315).

Marx too, in his Shakespeare and the Bible, sees broader implications in the play's redemption imagery, citing "the perennial tendency of the British to identify themselves with the Israelites" and noting that "Shakespeare's sources, Holinshed and Halle, modelled English history on the Bible's providential pattern" (41).

In the passage above then, we can prepare to look beyond the mere redemption of Hal's reputation in King Henry's eyes and read it as the conclusion to Hal's own goal, stated in the first act, to redeem "time" (1.2.224). The Folger edition of the play indicates that this line alludes to Ephesians 5:15-16, Paul's admonition to "Take heed therefore that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, for the days are evil" (Geneva Bible). (A note: I almost missed this by checking first in my Revised Standard Version Bible, which does not have the "redeeming the time" phrase; let's hear it for contemporary sources!)

Hal, then, is promising to make amends for his bad behavior, later. King Henry's comment tells us he has. But, to my mind, nowhere do I find Hal portrayed as a Christ figure in this play. Yes, one may argue that the fall of man is reflected in the Richard/Bolingbroke story, and that the civil wars Henry laments at the beginning of the play reveal mankind in a state of sin, and that Henry himself uses language that suggests he will receive God's vengeance, personified by Hal:

He'll breed revengement and a scourge for me.
But thou dost in thy passages of life
Make me believe that thou art only marked
For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven
To punish my mistreadings. (3.2.8-12)

But Hal's redemption is particularly personal, reinforced by King Henry's use of the pronoun "thy." And if we take the Ephesians allusion at face value, then Hal parallels the object of Paul's letter, not Christ but the followers of Christ, those who would walk a more righteous path. In Garber's summary, the pronouns expose the distinction: it's "redemption through Christ," but "redemption of Hal" (emphasis mine).

The text is clearly available to scriptural interpretation -- one might look at the fact that Hal has "rescued," or saved, his sinning father -- and so the conversation is opened here for a discussion of the Biblical reading of Shakespeare's tetralogy (that's an invitation). A reading of these three lines, however, on their own or even extended to include the other redemption images, does not, I think, bring us all the way to Hal as Christ figure.

Randall

The Henry Explications - Part E

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

PRINCE HENRY
Do not think so. You shall not find it so.
And God forgive them that so much have sway'd
Your majesty's good thoughts away from me.
I will redeem all this on Percy's head,
And, in the closing of some glorious day,
Be bold to tell you that I am your son.

(1 Henry IV 3.2.134-139

This passage is an example of the changing relationship between Hal and his father. Hal is motivated by lies that have been told to the king in order to attempt to change his view of his son. He tries, in this passage, to adjust the king's opinion and express his anger about the lies that have been told. The language of Hal’s speech is generally forceful, the boldest parts being: “all this on Percy’s head” and “Be bold to tell you that I am your son.”

This language reveals an aspect of Hal’s character we have seen little of in the first few acts or the play (or in the latter act of Richard II). Up to this point, we've seen Hal in a bar with Falstaff slacking off and avoiding responsibilities; however here Shakespeare reveals Hal's inner strength that one would not necessarily guess was there. Hal seems on the verge of making his "I know you all" speech a reality. In addition, Hal's request that "God forgive" those who have lied about him suggests a certain piousness we haven't seen in the Boar's Head scenes, a devout aspect to his identity not unlike King Henry's.

Ben Palmer (SPA '12)

The Henry Explications - Part D

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HAL
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humor of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him ...
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

(1 Henry IV 1.2.202-210, 215-224)

I am surprised at my students' general animosity toward Hal in this speech. They find him dishonest and manipulative and vain, and ignore the irony of disregarding Hal's more lofty goals because he's not being straightforward with his loutish pub friends. They expect honor, as it were, among thieves. How dare he refer to the guys he hangs out with as "base contagious clouds"!

I wonder, how can they not recognize the favorite children's allegory of "the ugly duckling" in Hal's statement that those clouds "smother up his beauty from the world" and that he will break "through the foul and ugly mists/ Of vapors that did seem to strangle him"? Isn't that the dream of every adolescent? How do they not hear echoes of the Bush administration's frequent attempt to lower our expectations before major announcements? Isn't that a wise tactic for managing people's unrealistic expectations? Or if that seems too politically manipulative, how can they not recognize the standard rubric of successful businesses: "underpromise/overproduce"?

Hal is real world, pragmatic and clever. Even without the foreknowledge of what use he will make of his "wilder days," we must be impressed by his plan to capture people's imagination and turn it in his favor; it is masterful.

But no; they label him "Machiavellian." And I think the problem centers on his admitting that he will "falsify men's hopes." That just sounds ugly. Hope is a powerful force in our lives. (Questioning it, poet Kay Ryan refers to it as "the always tabled/ righting of the present.") And young people are full of optimistic hope. Having that challenged, along with their sense of loyalty to one's comrades, however unacceptable they may be to one's father, makes accepting Hal's careful character-building less palatable.

Posted by Randall

RE: Performance Log - All's Well That Ends Well (May 2011)

Stu writes:

For the most part, when performing indoors, in theater lighting, you can barely see the audience. Even when facing out towards the audience, you are generally looking over the heads of the people in the first few rows. I don't want to say that one is not aware of the audience, because you can also hear them and sense them in other ways, but it is much easier to focus on the actors on stage and, to some degree, disregard the audience. Indoor performance and lighting are the principal elements that create the "fourth wall" separating audience and actors.

Working outdoors, you are constantly aware of the audience right in front of you. When you look out, you are looking into people's faces! When I started working in outdoor theater, I found it intimidating that you could see people and their expressions. Initially I had to be careful not to focus on any individual. Now that I am more used to it, I don't hesitate to speak directly to the audience or even individual in it.

Personally, I enjoy doing outdoors because it allows you to connect with the audience. When I'm talking about children, or pretty girls, or bald men, I can take gesture or take the line to a child, a pretty girl, or a bald guy. There's a big difference when doing something like Shakespeare, which was written to be performed outdoors. Indoors, I see many actors doing soliloquies as thinking out loud to oneself. Outdoors, I encourage actors to take soliloquies or asides direct to members of the audience.

Doing something like Moliere allows you to break the fourth wall and involve members of the audience. One of my favorite memories was playing Harpagon in The Miser. As Jacques described what my neighbors thought of me, he pointed to a member of the audience as the source; it was hilarious: "One says that you have special almanacks printed, where you double the ember days and vigils, so that you may profit by the fasts to which you bind all your house; another, that you always have a ready-made quarrel for your servants at Christmas time or when they leave you, so that you may give them nothing. One tells a story how not long since you prosecuted a neighbour's cat because it had eaten up the remainder of a leg of mutton; another says that one night you were caught stealing your horses' oats..." Ultimately Jacques had to drag me back onstage to keep me from strangling one of the audience members.

-- Stu

The Henry Explications - Part C

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HAL
Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

(1 Henry IV 1.2.2-13)

During Hal's descriptive insult to Falstaff, the audience learns more about the prince than the pub-crawler. Hal scolds his friend Falstaff for his lethargic and irresponsible behavior, a speech he is motivated to deliver due to his irritation with his companion. Deeper within the relationship, though, one may see that his irritation might not just be with Falstaff, but also with himself. Hal has been ignoring his princely duties and spending time in the dirty parts of London with Falstaff, actions of drunkenness and lack of accountability he may not believe in.

Further, Hal's insults represent the strain on his friendship with Falstaff. He knows that if Falstaff does not adapt to the man Hal truly is, a prince with responsibility, he can no longer be Hal's companion. Hal's inner mental struggle foreshadows his upcoming declaration of maturity and reform to his father. By speaking out against Falstaff's immature and unruly behavior, he is criticizing his own indolence and implying that he does believe in his royal duties and does want to embrace them.

Malika Dale (SPA '12)

Performance Log - All's Well That Ends Well (May 2011)

All’s Well That Ends Well
Directed by Joseph Papke
Classical Actors Ensemble
Minneapolis, MN
May 6, 2011

Last summer I saw the American Shakespeare Center’s production of Othello at Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia. Prior to the play, Benjamin Curns (who played Iago) explained for audience members unfamiliar with the company’s approach that they would be performing in conditions similar to those of Shakespeare’s day, specifically with stage and house under the same lights, a relatively naked stage, and a lot of interplay between actors and audience members, some of whom would even be sitting on the stage. I’ll tell you; it really increases the suspense when you find yourself weighing the chances that a paying customer will end up skewered by rapier during a fight scene. Although there were no fatalities, except those planned by Shakespeare, I found it a very refreshing approach to indoor staging, and I especially enjoyed how the opportunity for audience/character interaction allowed Curns to play up Iago’s villainy.

Fast forward to May 2011. The Classical Actors Ensemble, a relatively young company in Minneapolis, is performing All’s Well That Ends Well at the Walker Community Church under similar conditions, “a simple platform stage with few scenic elements surrounded on three sides by the audience, universal lighting …, and music performed between acts” (by the actors, still in costume), director Joseph Papke writes in the program. Now, how much one enjoys a show (as I did this one) may be independent of whether they leave the lights on, but I’m intrigued: what’s the difference, for the performers, between a play performed in the dark and one performed with the audience in full view?

Obviously, to those of us who regularly attend Shakespeare performances in the park, an illuminated audience is nothing new. But I’d never considered that the different “feel” of Shakespeare in the park is due to more than just its being outdoors until I began to think about the similar feeling one gets indoors when the lights are on. “Actors are usually very aware of the audience,” Papke wrote me in an e-mail, “whether they can see them or not (dark theaters mean we usually pick up on them aurally). With being able to see them clearly, instead of becoming hyper-aware of the audience, I find that some of the performance-related pressure is alleviated—there is no 'fourth wall,' no pretence of verisimilitude; the white elephant of ‘we’re other human beings pretending in front of you’ is gone. The audience is no longer a potential critical void that the actor must pour himself into; instead, a beneficial and necessary communication is heightened between actors and audience, and a truer communal experience can be reached.”

I like what Papke says about the elephant. I often find myself during a performance waiting for the theatrical experience to take over and for my sense of the affectation of theater to dissipate. I think the dark enhances that sense of affectation. From the actor’s point of view it’s just a fourth wall, but from ours it makes us voyeurs, sitting in the dark, disconnected from the stage action, looking in on the characters’ lives. I think that works against the theatrical. Turn the lights on and we’re involved in the performance, easy co-conspirators, available for asides and spur-of-the-moment magic, and less likely to fall asleep. It’s this communal experience that accounts for a lot of the charm of Classical Actors Ensemble’s All’s Well That Ends Well. For one it really frees up the comic characters, in this case Levatch (played by Papke) and Parolles (Christopher Kehoe) who are able to use the audience more naturally for comic effect.

I remember a similar feeling a couple years ago, in Stu Naber’s production of Much Ado About Nothing for Shakespeare and Company, outdoors in White Bear Lake. Benedick, played by Tim Perfect, hid in the audience during the garden scene where Claudio and Don Pedro trick him into believing that Beatrice is in love with him. The great humor of it wasn’t that Benedick was among us, ridiculously crawling around on his hand and knees, audaciously dipping into patrons' picnic dinners (well, that was pretty funny), but that he was in plain sight of everyone. That’s what I mean by co-conspirators. It’s the difference between being told a joke and being in on it.

Papke’s tone in All’s Well That Ends Well is relatively and successfully light (I saw a darker, literally and figuratively, version last summer at American Players Theatre) even though key characters are not likeable people – Bertram (David Darrow) who heartlessly rejects the devoted love of a talented woman; Parolles the blowhard braggart, liar, coward, and traitor. I found myself both believing in Bertram’s final acceptance of Helena (Danielle Silver) and even, at one point, feeling sorry for Parolles. Perhaps this mitigation of their dislikability is because, with the lights on, we see them more clearly both as comic figures and as characters. Or perhaps it’s because we learn, between acts, that Bertram also blows a mean trumpet and Parolles is capable of a show-stopping deadpan spoken version of ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man.”

This whole universal lighting question is just that, a question. I’m not sure it would be effective to suggest that all theatrical productions turn on the house lights. And lights or no lights, what really matters is the talent on the stage. But theater involves live actors plying their trade in front of a live audience. Why remove one of those from the equation, especially when it can have a positive effect for the other party? Let film-goers, communing with two-dimensional celluloid versions of human beings, sit in the dark. For me, I’ll agree with King Claudius: “Give me some light!”

Logged by Randall

Photo credit: David Darrow and Danielle Silver in All's Well That Ends Well. Photo by Zach Curtis, courtesy Classical Actors Ensemble.

The Henry Explications - Part B

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

KING HENRY IV
Yea, there thou mak'st me sad and mak'st me sin
In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son,
A son who is the theme of honor's tongue,
Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant,
Who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride;
Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,
See riot and dishonor stain the brow
Of my young Harry. O, that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call'd mine "Percy," his "Plantagenet"!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.

(1 Henry IV 1.1.78-90)

King Henry, throughout 1 Henry IV, is revealed to be a very religious person, and it is no surprise that religious imagery turns up in this speech ("mak'st me sin in envy") where it provides a snapshot of the king's concerns. Here is a man who relies on religion and God as a pillar of strength in his reign, and who clearly feels that he is the "good guy" in this situation, but it is necessary to remember how he came to power.

I think it is possible that deep down the king recognizes his own guilty hand in the dethroning and indirect execution of Richard II, and therefore he may think that God could seek to punish him for his actions. So he acknowledges the possibility that he is committing a deadly sin (envy) for the otherwise forgivable frustration he feels about Hal. In this he overexerts himself in his religious efforts in order to mollify the God who could be angry with him, an early indication in the play that he is in constant search for forgiveness from the heavens for his actions.

Nathan Rice (SPA '11)

RE: The Henry Explications - Part A

I did not see the clear subtextual connections between "unrestrained loose companions" and "dissolute" (indifferent to moral restraints) and "wanton" (dissolute or unrestrained) in this speech. Now that King Henry's concern about restraint emerges more clearly, we can look also at that first line: "Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?" Signet (Kenneth Muir) defines "unthrifty" here as "prodigal," fitting with King Henry's growing spiritual observances. However, the more common definition of frugality suggest yet another form of restraint, extending Henry's expectation of it to social, moral, and economic.

What is the king's attitude about restraint? Is it a particularly Medieval concept? Is it particular to his character? Is it also couched in religious observance? Do we see it equally in 1 Henry IVand 2 Henry IV? Is it, as Paul suggests, wrapped up in Henry's attitudes about class, a euphemism for sticking with your own kind? Thoughts?

Randall

The Henry Explications - Part A

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?
'Tis full three months since I did see him last.
If any plague hang over us, 'tis he.
I would to God, my lords, he might be found.
Inquire at London, 'mongst the taverns there,
For there, they say, he daily doth frequent,
With unrestrained loose companions,
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes
And beat our watch and rob our passengers,
Which he, young wanton and effeminate boy,
Takes on the point of honor to support
So dissolute a crew.

(Richard II 5.3.1-12)

King Henry IV's speech to the court in Richard II, Act 5, scene 3, reveals his strong disappointment in his son, the prince. He criticizes Hal's carelessness, criminal behavior, femininity, and overall poor demeanor. Motivated by this overwhelming disappointment and embarrassment, the king angrily vilifies Hal's life, citing both his poor behavior and his decision to associate with socially inferior friends, a lifestyle not befitting royalty.

Stating that Hal "takes on the point of honor to support so dissolute a crew," the king's belief that his son wastes honor by associating with criminal, roguish commoners, such as Falstaff and Poins, reveals several character traits, including social classism and anger. Labeling such fellows as "unrestrained loose companions" and "a dissolute crew," Henry makes it clear that appropriate behavior involves restraint, both moral and social. Given Henry's own actions, including deposing a king, one might consider his complaints a bit ironic. Or it may be that Henry simply would rather his son associate with others of higher social stature.

The king's concern about restraint is also evident in his attack on Hal's masculinity. When criticizing Hal for his conduct and lifestyle, King Henry IV describes him as "wanton" and "effeminate." Yet Henry offers no support for this effeminacy. It seems enough that Hal is not involved in activities similar to Hotspur's, activities steeped in leadership and testosterone and honor, and instead involves himself in "wanton" activities, robbing and drinking and rebelling against his father's wishes. To Henry this is womanish because it fails to follow his concept of order, and that which defies order (unrestrained) is automatically unmanly.

Paul Micevych (SPA '12)

RE: Merry Wives of Windsor - Musings

Randall writes:

And so we learn that Derek Traversi (and Gil, too) was right, and Merry Wives of Windsor is not dealt with at much length at all, despite the best of intentions. But the William Shakespeare Experience does go on. Here's what's in store.

1) The Shakespeare-in-the-Park season is gearing up even in the midst of ongoing indoor productions. I just saw a wonderful All's Well That Ends Well performed by the Classical Actors Ensemble (a relatively new company). If you have a mind to post a performance log or review of something you see, please do.

2) My Shakespeare class has started its fifth and final play, Measure for Measure. A while back, we read 1 Henry IV and I asked the students to write brief explications of speeches from the entire second tetralogy. I'll be posting those at intervals over the next few weeks.

3) It's time to start a new play. Which will be All's Well That Ends Well. And then Hamlet. And perhaps we'll return to Merry Wives at a later date.

Randall