be the villain, but he's really the tragic hero. In The Taming of the Shrew, there is something reprehensible in how Petruchio treats Kate. In order to tame his wife, says the play, a man must behave as badly as Petruchio behaves. No good man would be comfortable doing that.
But there’s also the husband’s side to the story. Why on earth would a happy woman constantly nag and sneer at her father, at her suitors, and finally at her husband? Would she not be happier simply being less angry and more loving? No good woman would be comfortable behaving as does the untamed Kate.
And while the play is sexist (by today’s standards) in assigning strict roles to the wife and husband, there is a contract, there is a quid pro quo between the husband and the wife. If the wife is to bow to her husband’s will and love him too, he must for his part bestow on her his protection and the fruit of his labor. There is balance of a sort.
Love’s Labor’s Lost—The taming of the knights
If The Taming of the Shrew offers audiences the fantasy that men can tame women and in this way find happiness for all married couples, Love’s Labor’s Lost gives us a more realistic appraisal of relationships. Men are to allow themselves to be tamed by women.
Love’s Labor’s Lost opens with King Ferdinand of Navarre vowing to give up love, long sleep, and good food for a period of three years to devote time to study and bettering his person. He commands his three close courtiers to join him. Dumaine and Longaville accept, but Berowne, the quickest and wisest man among the four, is at first unenthusiastic.
Of course, the minute they swear the oath, four women appear into their lives. The princess of France arrives with her four attendants: Rosaline, Katherine, Maria and a chaperon named Boyet. The princess comes to negotiate on her father’s behalf some disputed land and debts.
The king and his three courtiers promptly fall in love, each man trying to keep this secret from the other three. But you can’t hide the symptoms of love and they instead agree to break their oaths, or rather they ask Berowne to explain why their oath was in fact against nature and so improper and therefore to be broken.
They express their love, but having heard of their oath, the four women think the men are toying with them. They decide to have a little fun at the men’s expense but they come to realize that the men have given up their earlier promise and are sincere in their suit. Just as the women are ready to accept their suitors, word arrives that the French king has died. The princess, now the queen, goes into mourning with her attendants. They ask the men to wait for them twelve months, after which done with mourning, they will take them.
These are women of power and of substance but women still. Shakespeare is quite clear here that women are not the toys of men and yet that men will not find happiness in abstinence. Women are to be pursued with respect.
Shakespeare also has great fun with a pompous pedantic school teacher and his sidekick who reminded me very much of Frasier Crane and his brother Niles. Shakespeare loves the masses and even if they only buy the cheap standing room tickets, there are more of them. He panders to them, and probably agrees with them, by showing how education doesn’t necessarily mean wisdom.
Trivia
Costard, the wiser clown of the play, utters the word “honorificabilitudinitatibus”, often cited as the longest word in the English language.
Measure for Measure—A comic moral lesson
This is a comedy, not a farce, yet for all its thoughtfulness it is not a romance either; it’s not insightful enough for that. We don’t feel elevated or enlightened by what we witness in Measure for Measure, but we do get a lesson in the value of wise leadership and decent behavior. The play entertains us but it also reassures us that good and bad men meet their just reward.
Vincentio is Duke of Vienna and the priggish Angelo is his chosen deputy. He leaves on a lengthy holiday and entrusts Angelo with all his powers to dispense justice while he is away. Angelo soon condemns the good Claudio to death for having made his fiancée Juliet pregnant before their nuptials were sanctified.
Claudio’s sister Isabella, a novice in a nunnery, pleads with Angelo that he spare her brother. Angelo is smitten with her and agrees to spare Claudio’s life if she would become his mistress. Scandalized, she refuses. She tells the bad news to her brother. Frankly, Isabella does not impress me much; she’s basically telling her own brother that his life isn’t worth a fuck…
In the meantime, the Duke returns disguised as a monk and arranges a sting. He instructs Isabella to agree to meet Angelo but he sends Angelo’s former fiancée Mariana in her stead. Their betrothal had been undone long before because Mariana had no dowry to bring Angelo. It is dark, Angelo doesn’t realize the subterfuge and there is now a witness to his machinations. A prisoner dies in the night. The disguised Duke convinces the executioner to chop off the dead prisoner’s head and send that to Angelo as proof that he has executed Claudio.
In the end, everyone makes up, a penitent and chastised Angelo marries Mariana, Claudio and Juliet wed late but not too late, and even Isabella abandons the nunnery to find love with the Duke. (Actually, that depends on the director and the actress, since Isabella doesn't answer the Duke's proposal out loud, she could turn away from the duke as easily as she could accept his hand.)
The moral lessons here are simple: do no wrong, bear not false witness, temper your judgments lest you be judged as well. There's a subplot involving a pompous lord, the moral of which is that lying and boasting gets you in trouble. We won’t learn anything especially insightful from Measure for Measure, but we will be entertained while we are reminded that decency is a pretty good way of life.
Twelfth Night—Loving, drinking, and brawling
High school English teachers often introduce their students to Shakespeare with this play. It's a comedy, it's pretty funny, it's got a bit of action and the plot is neat, if a bit contrived.
The magnificent opening lines immediately tell the audience that love has turned into dread.
If music be the food of love, play on
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
Orsino, the bitter speaker of these lines, is in love with Countess Olivia, but she doesn't return his feelings. Olivia is quite literally mistress of her domain: her father and brother have passed away so she owns her property herself. Were she to marry, her husband would own everything. Unlike Kate in the Taming of the Shrew, she is a composed, sensible person, though perhaps a bit haughty as befits her station in life. She is open to marriage but she is in no hurry; she simply doesn't love Orsino.
Her only male relative, Sir Toby Belch, is hardly fit to be her guardian. Fat and boisterous, he is what Falstaff would be were Falstaff brave. On the other hand, he doesn't have Falstaff's wisdom. Soon upon arriving on stage, he belches and curses the pickled herrings rotting in his stomach.
Sir Toby would like his friend Andrew Aguecheek to court and marry Olivia. Why not? But Malvolio, Olivia's puritan steward, disapproves of Sir Toby and watches over his countess. Sir Toby arranges for Malvolio to intercept a fake letter from Olivia in which she supposedly confesses her love for her steward. That letter will trick Malvolio to unknowing impertinence and get him into jail and out of Sir Toby’s way.
A ship wrecks itself on the shore. A woman, Viola, and the captain survive. She is looking for her twin brother Sebastian, of whom she knows but has never met. She fears for her honor and with the captain's help, pretends to be a man and calls herself Cesario. (Since women weren't allowed to perform in the theater, this led in Shakespeare's days to the ridiculous situation of a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man.) Viola/Cesario enters Orsino's service. He sends her off to woo Olivia on his behalf. But of course, a situation comedy demands the obvious problem and so Olivia falls in love with Cesario.
Meanwhile, Viola's long lost twin brother Sebastian arrives in town. When she i
s disguised as Cesario, Viola bears an uncanny resemblance to her brother. The rest of the play involves misunderstandings between Olivia and Malvolio, and confusion over Viola being mistaken for Sebastian and Sebastian for Viola. Andrew Aguecheek challenges Viola to a duel, but winds up fighting Sebastian. Aguecheek is not much of a fighting man, so Sir Toby steps in and holds his own; this is something Falstaff never would nor ever could have done.
In the end, Olivia marries Sebastian, and after Viola reveals herself to be a woman, Orsino marries her. Malvolio is released from jail, and we can presume Sir Toby will reluctantly be invited to the weddings, where he will eat and drink his fill.
Twelfth Night is the model of a Shakespeare comedy which makes it ideal as an introduction to studying his plays. Its comic situation belies some depth. Why should a strong woman lose property and thus her identity in marriage? Why not stay single a little longer? (Though Shakespeare never asks a question we would today find obvious: why should Olivia get married all?) What is the difference between men and women anyway, if a pair of twins differing only in their sex can be so easily confused?
These questions underlie the play but they don’t rule it. In the end, Twelfth Night is chiefly a satisfying and