The Comedies - Shakespeare

Now that I'm completely done with all 13 of Shakespeare's comedies, I thought it would be fun to try and rank them in order of how much I enjoyed them.  This list is completely subjective (of course) but I want to point out that most of these I have read, but not watched.  It's entirely possible that if I saw all 13 of them staged with good directors and casts, I'd move things around.  In reverse order:


13. Troilus and Cressida - This play is simply too unrelentingly dark for me.  Poor Troilus gives his heart away and then has his love taken from him.  Not only is she gone for him, but the poor sap then witnesses her betrayal of him.  It may be unfair to judge this as a comedy.  There has been debate over this for literally centuries and it's usually simply put as a 'problem play'.  But, this is how my sources had it pegged.  So I'm putting it last.


12. All's Well That Ends Well - Another 'problem play'.  The problem here is that I can't respect the love that the heroine has for her husband.  She pursues him and he runs away.  She only catches him by tricking him into her bed.  After that, it's all love and roses.  I can't buy it.  And, unfortunately, none of the rest of the play makes up for the hollow love story at the center. 


11. Taming of the Shrew - My big problem with this is that I simply can't respect how Petruchio treats Kate.  My modern reading just can't get past the 'punish her till she relents' treatment here.  Having said that, I enjoyed the version I watched (Taylor/Burton).  I've read in a few places that a well done performance can smooth the rough (for modern) edges.  That could certainly be the case here.


10. Two Gentleman of Verona - Another play where the fifth act undoes everything I enjoyed about the previous acts.  Here, Proteus has utterly betrayed his friend Valentine over love.  Then a simple apology is uttered and the betrayal is forgotten and Valentine is ready to hand over his love.  It's stupefying.  And right up until that, I enjoyed it quite a bit.


9. Merry Wives of Windsor - I came into this with a negative review from W.H.  Auden on my mind.  I was a bit afraid but I enjoyed it.  Well, not completely.  It has it's problems but it has the bones of a pretty good play.  With some editing and tightening up, it could be as good as (almost) any of the rest.


8. Comedy of Errors - One of Shakespeare's earliest plays and it kind of shows in terms of sophistication.  Any play that centers around two estranged sets of identical twins is going to be at least a bit zany.  But it works.  It's funny and it has heart. 


7. Love's Labor's Lost - I almost ruined this one by watching the awful movie version.  Fortunately, I went back to the text and enjoyed it quite a bit.  The love struck scholars are utterly defeated by the lovely courtly ladies and you can't help but be happy for the ladies. 


6. Merchant of Venice - This is another one where the modern attitude can't help but overshadow the Elizabethan text.  But there is enough nuance here to make it interesting rather than disgusting.  Shylock has an awful edge to him, that is certainly related to the way he has been treated, but does keep at least some sympathy back from him.  Plus, the interplay with the caskets is fascinating. 


5. Measure for Measure - After the other 'problem plays', I was afraid of this one but I really enjoyed it.  The problems are complex and interesting.  The solution is clear but the route to get there isn't.  This may be at the top of my list of plays I'd like to see live.


The top four are so hard to rank.  I'm sure the order would change depending on my mood of the day.


4. Twelfth Night - Another comedy with twins, but only one set so it's easier to work with.  Here the love story is interesting, but the subplot with Sirs Belch and Aguecheek is superb.  The trick played on Malvolio is wonderful and I enjoyed it all immensely. 


3. As You Like It - What a delightful play!  Rosalind is a complete joy and the entire interplay between her and Orlando in the forest is simply wonderful.  This one was new to me and I'll certainly seek it out again.


2. Much Ado About Nothing - An old favorite of mine and I wonder if that didn't color my rankings.  If I'd come at this fresh as the previous two, would I have put it ahead of them?  It doesn't matter.  I love, love it, love it.  Maybe the best duel of wits in the bunch.


1. A Midsummer Night's Dream - I like each of the plots here, and I'll always have a special place in my heart for the role of Puck.  There is a playfulness here that I love, in the whole twisty lovers plot.  However, what sells this for me, is the rude mechanicals and their awful play within the play.  To the delightfully named Bottom, my hats off to you.


Disagree?  Feel free to leave a comment.

Links to the Past

Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays on the Tube link

Reviving the spoken Aeneid link

Heaney's Virgil is our Virgil link

Philosophically Curious George (Existential Comics) link

Measure for Measure - Shakespeare

This play opens with the Duke of Vienna deciding to go away and leave matters of justice in Vienna to his Deputy, Angelo.  One of the first cases that he oversees is that of a young lord named Claudio and his pregnant girlfriend, Juliet.  The two are in love and jumped the gun a bit on marriage.  Angelo tells them that they have broken the law and sentences Claudio to death.
Claudio's sister is a novice nun named Isabella.  She is tasked with going to Claudio and begging for a lighter sentence and mercy.  Angelo will not give in to this mercy, but he is struck by Isabella's wit and beauty.  He begins to fall for her.  He postpones the execution and tells her to return the next day.  When she comes back, Angelo tells her that he will be merciful to Claudio if she, Isabella, sleeps with him.
She is horrified by this and uncertain what to do.  She goes to the prison and talks with Claudio.  While there, she is overheard by a friar who is actually, the Duke of Vienna in disguise.  He takes her aside and devises a plan.  Angelo was engaged to be married some years prior, but broke off the wedding after his fiancé lost her dowry.  The Duke suggest that they enlist the aid of this young lady, Mariana.  They will trick Angelo into bed with her.  They will then wed and Angelo will release Claudio.  Mariana agrees to the 'bed trick' and they're off.
But the plot runs into trouble.  Angelo has sent word to the prison that Claudio should be executed the next morning, no matter what other message is sent.  He also wants Claudio's head brought to him as proof that he has been killed.  The friar (disguised Duke) convinces the Provost to delay the execution.  They even try to hurry the execution of a different man so they can send his head.  That doesn't work but a pirate dies and his head is used.
The Duke then sends word that he is returning to Vienna and he asks to be met at the gate so that he can hear of any case of injustice.  Isabella, believing he brother to be dead, brings suit and is heard.  Angelo protests his innocence but he simply digs himself in deep.  The injustice is soon known and the Duke's disguise is found out.  He knows everything and metes out justice.  Marriages all around, for virtually everyone.


I liked 'Measure for Measure' quite a bit.  After I found it lumped together as a 'problem play' with 'Troilus and Cressida' and 'All's Well that Ends Well', I feared it a bit.  But I was very pleasantly surprised.  The plot is tricky and I'm not sure I understood everyone's motivations, but the questions raised were interesting. 
For instance, Angelo wants to execute Claudio for sex outside of marriage.  He then quickly offers mercy to him, if Isabella will commit the exact same offense with him.  Angelo then double crosses her and withholds that mercy.  I didn't expect any of that.
The play is also filled with some very interesting passages.  Isabella argues for her brother's salvation with great skill.  This prompts Angelo into a moving speech about how she captivates him. 


I liked it a bunch and I'd really like to see it on stage.

All's Well That Ends Well - Shakespeare

The king of France is sick and no one can find a cure.  There was some hope that a famous doctor could help him, but the doctor has died.  Fortunately, that doctor had a daughter, named Helena.  Helena is a poor girl, but much loved by the Countess of Rossillion, who thinks of her like her own daughter.  The Countess finds out that Helena loves her son, Bertram.
Helena journeys to see the king and offers him a cure of her father's.  She pledges her life if it doesn't work.  In return, the king offers her the hand in marriage of any of the noble men of her choosing.  The cure works and Helena chooses Bertram.  Bertram is less than pleased at this.  He decides to avoid his new wife and go to war instead.
Helena chases after him in disguise.  She finds that Bertram is wooing another woman, Diana.  Diana is fiercely protective of her virginity and refuses all of Bertram's advances.  Helena approaches her and proposes a 'bed trick' in which Diana will seem to accept Bertram into her bed, but it will really be Helena there.  Bertram beds her and then flees, leaving a family ring behind.
The war ends and everyone goes back to find the king visiting the Countess of Rossillion.  Bertram is told that Helena has died of grief.  Diana has followed him to berate him for broken promises.  Bertram denies that he has been with her.  Helena enters with the ring.  And also pregnant.  Bertram is trapped and agrees to be a loving husband to his wife.


In 'All's Well that Ends Well', Shakespeare turns the table on the story from 'Taming of the Shrew'.  Here we have a girl choosing to marry someone who doesn't want to marry her.  This story feels more sympathetic to the rejected party.  I wonder how the audiences of Shakespeare's time felt about that?
This end of the 'war between the sexes' feels very unfunny.  Helena is rejected by an awful man and then she chases after him.  He is tricked into a bed with her and only then agrees to be a good husband.  None of this feels like justice.  None of it feels like a recipe for a happy life after.
In fact, there is another unique end to this comedy.  Both of the young women, Helena and Diana, have mothers (or at least mother figures) who are actively trying to help them.  I don't think this is true in any other of Shakespeare's comedies.


There is also a bit with a braggart named Parolles, who is tricked into showing his bad nature to Bertram.  Maybe it works well on stage, but it didn't work well from the page.  He seems a particularly lackluster 'clown'.  He is tricked while being threatened with death. 
All in all, this is a very dark comedy.  That's not necessarily bad, but it didn't feel like it worked here.  This was new to me, and I didn't really care for it.

Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare

A group of young nobles are returning from the wars and chance to stop at the house of one of their friends, Leonato, the governor of Messina.  As soon as they arrive, Leonato's niece, Beatrice, starts a war of wit with one of the nobles, Benedick.  (The two have obviously tangled in the past.)  Another noble, Claudio, professes that he has fallen in love with Leonato's daughter, Hero.  In response to this, Benedick tells everyone that he will never marry.  The leader of the nobles, Prince Don Pedro, tells Claudio that he will win Hero for him.  Another of the nobles is Don Pedro's bastard brother, a villain named Don John, decides to ruin things out of spite.
With some small, easily resolved, difficulty, Don Pedro wins the hand of Hero for Claudio.  The nobles then gather with Leonato and decide to try and make Beatrice and Benedick fall in love with each other.  They do this by allowing Benedick to overhear a conversation in which he 'learns' that Beatrice is in love with him but afraid to say anything because she is sure it will be unrequited.  The women pull the same trick on Beatrice.  Both of them are lodged firmly in the other's brain.
Meanwhile, Don John has figured out a trick to ruin the upcoming marriage between Hero and Claudio.  One of his men makes loud love to Hero's nurse while using Hero's name.  Claudio is made to overhear this and thinks that his Hero has been untrue.  Claudio disgraces Hero at their wedding and storms off.  Leonato is shattered but is soon convinced by the priest that his daughter must have been slandered.  They agree to pretend that Hero has died from the shock of the accusation.  In the aftermath of this, Beatrice and Benedick admit that they love each other.
Don John's man is caught by the village guards, a loveable group of idiots led by constable Dogberry.  He confesses to Leonato and word trickles back to Claudio and Prince Don Pedro.  Claudio asks forgiveness of Leonato and is bid to marry, sight unseen, a previously unmentioned niece.  Claudio agrees to do so.  At the wedding, the new niece is unveiled as Hero and the marriage is held.  Benedick and Beatrice have their love proclaimed publicly.  The villain, Don John is captured, but he will be dealt with later.  All is happy.


I know this play well because of the excellent film adaptation from Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.  I've seen the movie several times but this was my first time reading through everything.  The movie does a good job of sticking to the script and there was nothing I noticed edited out that would have been missed. 
I love the movie but I felt that it was hard for me to imagine the story being played differently.  This isn't the case in the couple of Shakespeare plays that I've actually acted in.  Thus the power of movies, I guess.  (I hope to get a chance to see a live performance next month so that may help get past this.) 
If you haven't seen this film version, find time to do so.


That battle of wits between Beatrice and Benedick is truly wonderful.  Both of them are so hardened against love and then they are betrayed and fall for each other.  I find it impossible to not enjoy the two of them.  Maybe more than any other pair of Shakespearian lovers.  From what I've read, this is a popular feeling. 
The love affair between Hero and Claudio, meanwhile, suffers in comparison.  The love is straightforward, even if the path to get there isn't.  The scheme that keeps them apart is also simple and easily pierced.  In fact, it's so simple that the simplest people in the play discover the plot. 


This might be my favorite of the comedies.  When I've reviewed them all, I'll (why not?) try and come up with some kind of ranking.  Then I'll try and compare that to some other ranking system and see how far out of step I am with conventional wisdom.

Upcoming

Chaucer went very quickly.  (Some very good stuff there.)  Up next is Rabelais, with books 3 and 4 of 'Gargantua and Pantagruel'.  We read the first two books all the way back in year one.  If I'd followed the pattern of the 10 year reading plan, I would have tackled these two in year seven.  That's not how I would have designed it.  Anyway, I enjoyed the first two books and I'm looking forward to this too.


In other writings, I've now finished all of Shakespeare's comedies.  I need to write about the last three of them.  Hope to do that next week.  I'm currently planning on reading the Henry VI plays and Richard III.  Then on to the rest of the tragedies.  We'll see what happens.

On Christian Doctrine - St Augustine

'On Christian Doctrine' is primarily a guide on how to read the Bible.  St Augustine sets out various rules to help people understand.  More passionately, he provides several rules to fight back against the critics of the Bible.  Those seem to me to be the core of this work.
There are two main prongs that he works with.  The first is that the reader work hard to understand what is written as a metaphor.  This may mean digging deeper into translation.  It may mean letting quick understanding slide past at first.  It absolutely might mean relying on more learned scholars for interpretation.
The other rule is to read passages with the idea of the larger context in mind.  Try to make each part work together with the overall message given.  Don't take a verse on its own, if it seems to disagree with everything else.  And above all, be open to giving the reading the benefit of the doubt.
There are other discussions about things like how important eloquence is to preachers of the Bible.  Augustine thinks it is good, but not crucial.  He advises that uncertain speakers should lean as heavily as they can on the written word.  That strikes me as good advice.


I struggle a bit with the rule that Augustine has about giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt.  Lord knows, it's frustrating to deal with arguments from people who want to pluck one verse out of context and stake a whole argument on that.  I see this done rather constantly on social media and it's almost always done in bad faith.  Any large doctrine can be picked apart if you strain at gnats.
On the other hand, is it fair to argue that a contrary reader must give the writer all benefit of the doubt?  I don't know that it is.  It's akin to saying that you can only understand the Bible if you have full faith in it.  Essentially it demands that the reader swallow the camel whole.
I suppose a careful reader can try to swing back and forth between the two points, but that isn't a common skill.  Though, if it were, the world would undoubtedly be a better place.