"All's Well", I Suppose

Sometimes, it pays to be a complete and utter dipshit.

If you'll forgive me for my coarse language in an academically themed blog. I was merely following Dr. Sexson's assignment to make the first sentence of my new entry to be eye-catching and hooking.

Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well is a play that requires a bit of reflection and processing after reading it. It isn't the crowdpleaser that Midsummer Night's Dream is, nor does it have the appealing complexity of As You Like It. It's a real challenge to really make sense out of, and the conventions of some of the characters' decisions and personalities at times made me feel like I was reading a Bertolt Brecht play rather than a work of Shakespeare. Brecht, a 20th century playwright, wrote his works with the "alienation effect" in mind--which allows the play to function in a way that the audience member never has a complete "suspension of disbelief", and the whole time is a critical observer of the course of events on stage.

Northrop Frye's essay, "The Argument of Comedy", sheds light on why the play just isn't as resonant as Shakespeare's other comedies. All's Well That Ends Well is classified as "New Comedy", yet Shakespeare's twists on the standard conventions lead it to play out in outright confusing ways. Frye observes that the role of the senex (the old man/father) is reversed in this play. Whereas the father figure usually opposes the love affair in question (as in Egeus in Midsummer Night's Dream), the senex in this case, being the King, forces Bertram to marry Helena. As this concerns to storytelling and character development, the dynamic between these two "lovers" is a jarring one.

Why Helena, a lowly but gifted daughter of a physician, would be attracted to Bertram to the point that she goes through such extensive measures to woo him does adhere to our definition of courtship. Bertram is not a likable or relatable character. Some would say that he is revolting and detestable. And yet, when he rather coldly tells her that she will never truly be his wife via letter (probably the Shakespearen equivalent to a text message breakup), she still pursues him by attempting to secure his ring and his child, per his challenge. It's rather off-putting how much effort she goes through to marry below her in terms of her mate's moral character.

The convention of New Comedy pertaining to the wedding at the end is still intact, but once again, it feels out of place. Is it realistic to expect Bertram to accept Helena as his wife after he has been deceived with the elaborate "bed switching" plot?

If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, / I'll love her dearly - ever, ever dearly. (V.3)

It's a problematic situation, indeed. Realistically, why wouldn't Betram be further repulsed by Helena's troubling measures to woo him? By today's standards, the way that these two work together would be a compelling case study of a very unhealthy relationship. Bertram's submission to Helena's proposal is really the strongest point in which any sort of redeeming quality is apparent in his character, and it rings false.

Perhaps Shakespeare could have further skewed the conventions of New Comedy by having this realization on Bertram's part being quashed by Helena's realization that she deserves better. In a final act, she turns the tables and rejects him. Thus, the end would have no obligatory wedding that is a standard part of the New Comedy formula, but the majority of the cast would be present for what many readers/audience members would call justified humiliation. Sadistic? Probably. But to me, it makes more sense. Look at the myth of Venus and Adonis: the female is in the position to pursue the male. Adonis ends up meeting a brutal fate, and while this is far from comedic, one can argue that his rejection of the love of a goddess set him up for an untimely death. He did nothing to deserve her love, so why should he get it? In the case of Bertram, why the sudden change in heart?

What we're left with instead is a message that you can still be a terrible human being and wind up with a girl whom you've done nothing to deserve (unless being beaten at your own game of deception and impossible riddles makes you qualified). That's not to say that the word play and innuendos (as mentioned by Anne) don't give the play a humorous touch that makes it an interesting and clever play. Clever, but confusing... and not strictly in the Shakespearian sense.

Test tomorrow. Bring it on!

The Bible: "As (Shakespeare) Like(d) It"

I'm a bit of a mythology newbie myself. Before taking this class, previous experience exploring classical mythology being almost exclusively rooted in my 6th and 9th grade classrooms (yes, that long ago). Dissecting Shakespeare for the myth is something that admittedly doesn't come as intuitively to me as it does to others. However, here's my best crack at looking at Acts I & II of As You Like It. The first thing I noticed was stylistic--unlike Midsummer Night's Dream, the characters seem to speak in prose about as often as they shift into the lyrical sonnet style that Shakespeare uses so prominently.

My observations to Shakespeare's Biblical allusions may seem a bit trivial and obvious, but I found them to make for an interesting inclusion. In class, we already went over the big ones. The ever prevalent element of feuding brothers cannot be explored without considering the Cain and Abel. The banishment of Orlando and Duke Senior into the uncivilized forest of Arden ties back to God's banishment of Men from the Garden of Eden, etc., etc.

First off, pointing out the fact that the tension between Orlando and Oliver has ties to the parable of the prodigal son does not require much reading between the lines. Orlando speaks out against the pathetic conditions to which Oliver subjects him:

Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I spent that I should come to such penury? (I.1, 35-7)

It's the prodigal son with a twist: Oliver subjects Orlando to life like a peasant, depriving him of the education and fortune promised in his father's will. Orlando pleads that age has no effect on the fact that he is as much Sir Roland de Boys' son as Oliver is, and that he is entitled to an inheritance that would liberate him from the grip that Oliver holds. It's the kind of reasoning that allowed the prodigal son in the parable to go out on his own, and arguably the father had this mindset when he welcomed the son home after taking a walk on the wild side. If I had to sum that rationale it up in a few words, I suppose they would be unconditional entitlement.

Another interesting bit jumped out at me when Orlando was pitted against Charles in a wrestling match. Charles, the duke's wrestler, was described in class as a "badass" of sorts. Orlando went into it as an underdog. Does this remind you of something? Well, it should.

True, no beheading took place in this instance, but Orlando's defeat of Charles is unmistakably a David and Goliath story. Orlando accepts the challenge and overcomes insurmountable odds against him to overcome Charles, with enough energy to spare as he cockily declares "I am not yet well breathed" when the duke calls the match to stop. Granted, Orlando is banished for victory and not lauded like David was, but you get the idea.

I'm really impressed with the quality of blogging going on in the class. While mine is not quite as high-brow as others, hopefully it effectively conveys what I like about Shakespeare and about As You Like It. The Bible with a twist--and I assume it only gets better.

Act V: Bringing it All Together

I'm a sucker for theater. At it's best, you're transfixed by something that makes no attempts to mask the artifice of the craft. It's almost like watching a movie, but made all the more exciting, hilarious, or emotional by the very notion that you're looking into a real scenario. There's an immediacy to theater that can't be replicated by technology, and thus, it's not going anywhere.

Now when theater is bad, it's bad. I mean really, really bad. You can typically tell within the first two minutes of a rotten play that you're in for an excruciating experience. And yet, I've always looked back on bad theater with a smile on my face--sure, the acting may have been awful and the blocking awkward as can be, but there's something a bit charming about when something goes horribly wrong on stage in spite of the best efforts of the players to make it good. I don't mean to sound like a sadist. I would much rather see a bad play than a bad film any day.

To expand a bit upon my contribution to my (enormous) group's presentation, Act V addresses an important notion of theater of reality and suspension of disbelief. Shakespeare can't be appreciated fully unless we acknowledge the fact that part of its liveliness and longevity lies in the performance of his plays.

Russ McDonald's preface to A Midsummer Night's Dream illuminates the notion of the play-within-a-play as a means to explore what is real:

Shakespeare's manipulation of perspective takes its most revelatory form in the arrangement of the play-within-the-play. During the performance of "Pyramus and Thisby", we may imagine the stage and the theater and the world as a series of concentric circles. At the very center are Bottom and Flute, playing tragic lovers. They are watched by actors playing the courtly lovers, characters whose experience might have paralleled that of the doomed Pyramus and Thisby but who fail to notice the similarity. They, in turn, are watched by the theater audience...Isn't it possible that we, too, are performing for unseen spectators... that the world we take to be real may be nothing more than a stage set for a divine audience? (pg. 255)

 The characters in the play are in a sense players for the amusement of the fairies. Oberon and Puck have their fun with them and when everybody is with the lover they are meant for, the events that happened before are merely dreams. Any uncertainties that the lovers possess aren't enough to lead them away from their newly found happiness in love. In a way, isn't the artifice of theater not enough to make us reconsider the experience we had with it?

Of course the breaching of the fourth wall at the end of the play is significant in supporting this idea. Puck's monologue tells the audience to merely forget what they have seen if the "shadows" on stage have offended them... wait, is it Puck or the actor playing Puck delivering the lines? Who knows?

In a play with the magic of otherworldly forces and imagination at work, Shakespeare carried the message to the end of the play in an exercise of self-awareness and metatheacricality. The players on stage (and us in the audience) may judge the mechanicals harshly for their amateurish production, but who then will be judging us?

I may come back and edit this when more comes to me... I'll think about it.