What a slacker I am for having missed last weeks read. It was a busy week though, so unfortunately I really felt that taking a short break from a few minor obligations would be for the best. I hated skipping the read for the week though, since it would have seen me at the end of the comedies. So my conclusion of this part of the book was postponed for a week, but here I am and the play is read, and next week I’ll be moving on to the histories.
This play, like the previous two, is another of Shakespeares “problem plays”. The first of these problem plays is definitely the worst play I’d read from this book so far, but luckily the second one at least proved to be an improvement. So with the record being 1 and 1, this play presents something of a 50/50 shot at being good or bad.
Story
To be honest, I’m not even sure why this one is considered a problem play. I guess it isn’t as comical as his comedies, but it’s definitely not a tragedy since it concludes the way it does. Of the three problem plays, I would say this is probably the least problematic of the bunch, and I kind of wonder why this one is last instead of “Troilus and Cressida”, even though I don’t even think that one should have been in the comedies period.
The central theme in this play is that of deception, kind of like “All’s Well that Ends Well” before it. While love plays a factor in this case, it’s not nearly as prominent in this and the other problem plays, which might also add to the reasoning behind them being singled out. Then again, “The Merry Wives of Windsor” was also primarily focused on trickery rather than love and it is not considered a problem play. On the other hand, in the case of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” the trickery is comical as opposed to the more serious tone taken in these last two plays.
In this play the story is quite serious in that young Claudio has managed to get Juliet, his betrothed, pregnant before they were wed, and he has been sentenced to death for the crime. As much as we like to talk about those civilized times back then, this portrayal of a society that will execute someone for such a crime definitely doesn’t convey that romantic perception of the time. Claudio seeks the assistance of his sister, Isabella, who is soon to become a nun. In her effort to convince the judge Angelo, who has been left in charge by the away Duke, he tries to bed her while using Claudio as his leverage, which she refuses to do.
The trickery comes from the fact that the Duke is not actually away, but is in the city disguised as a Friar to watch over matters. When he becomes aware of what’s going on he has Isabella agree, only to substitute her with Mariana when the time comes. Mariana was Angelo’s betrothed whom he later rejected, which sort of justifies the act. Angelo then deceives Isabella by ordering Claudio executed anyways, but the Duke also puts a stop to that. All is eventually revealed when the Duke returns from his “journey” and is unmasked as the Friar and Angelo’s hypocrisy is revealed.
It kind of follows along the lines of the other comedies in that everyone is married off and all the loose ends are basically tied up in the end. There wasn’t quite as much comedy in this play, but there is the presence of a clown and a small side story surrounding him, so it’s not like it’s a constantly serious play. The character of Lucio also seems to provide a character that is something of a fool, for more comedic effect. There’s no denying that the play is certainly a more serious one than other comedies, it still seems to fit in amongst the rest rather well.
Oddly Isabella is set to marry the Duke at the end, but her response or reply to this is omitted, as the play ends with the Duke making the proposal. I found this odd since Shakespeare seems to love tying up everything in the final act, but yet something like this comes out of left field and is left effectively unresolved. There was never a sign that the Duke was interested in Isabella, so it just seemed weird he’d suddenly propose like this, and that there would also be no response on her part before the play ends.
Characters
Claudio is a young and good man who was apparently a bit to eager to sleep with Juliet, and managed to impregnate her in the process, before they were married. Even though they are to be married, he is still sentenced to die for the crime, because apparently they were bored back then and had nothing better to do than cut peoples heads off for minor crimes. While much of the play focuses around this fellows plight, he actually doesn’t have too much of a presence in the play. His betrothed, Juliet, has an even smaller role in the play since she only shows up one time that I recall. The fact she isn’t there when all is said and done kind of gives the conclusion a different flair than most of the others I’ve read so far.
Isabella is, arguably, the protagonist in this play. While Claudio is set to lose her life, she is forced to choose between her own purity and the life of her brother. She is a strong willed woman of wise words and strong conviction and she is also supposedly beautiful. I say “supposedly” because I’ve seen artistic representations of her, but none of them were particularly flattering to be honest. Still, a artists painting is hardly representative of the authors intent or vision. Isabella works with the disguised Duke for most of the play to trick Angelo in to bedding his former betrothed by making him think he will be with her instead.
The Duke is the other protagonist, since he is responsible for setting pretty much every gear in motion from start to finish. He seems to be a good man, and a fairly clever man as well. I do have to wonder why he didn’t just intervene as the Duke before things went as far as they did, but I guess that would take away from the drama of the big reveal at the end.
Angelo is the Judge that the Duke has put in charge. He represents himself as a strict and pious man, but is proven to be something of a hypocrite. At first you can kind of sympathize a little bit with him, since he’s a pious man who simply falls for a woman, which itself isn’t that much of a crime. Like Bertram in the last play though, he eventually acts and behaves in a manner that strips him of any sympathy he may have earned, and he’s lucky to have gotten off as well as he did when all was said and done. It kind of makes me wonder if Shakespeare realized in these two instances that his antagonists weren’t as antagonistic as he’d wanted, and so he tossed in some more evil on their part as he continued writing. It’s just odd that the antagonist in the last two plays weren’t all that bad at first, but eventually turned out to be completely deserving of the audiences hate.
There are other characters in the play of minor importance, including a clown and a fool, but not really anyone else that I’d consider particularly noteworthy.
Writing
The plays writing was pretty good overall. The plot wasn’t an incredibly complex web, but it was at least somewhat sophisticated and well written. It was certainly a more complex play that a number of the other comedies, although there were comedies I would consider more complex than this. It was also pretty well paced, though maybe a bit slow at points in the middle and in the earlier half. Shakespeare did try to wrap things up a bit too neatly at the end though, particularly with himself and Isabella. Like I said before, I just don’t get the motivation behind that part of the conclusion, and it seems to just come out of nowhere.
There’s not a lot of strong lines or verse in the play, although there are a few. It’s definitely not one of his more quote worthy plays, although there is at least one famous quote I recognized in these pages. There was also a few overly long speeches in the early half, but nothing near as bad as was seen in “Troilus and Cressida”.
Closing Comments
I would say that this play won it for the problem plays, in that I enjoyed two of them and despised the other one. Still, if “All’s Well that Ends Well” and “Measure for Measure” were simply left as comedies and “Troilus and Cressida” was placed amongst the tragedies then I’d consider the “problem” resolved in my eyes. Yes, these last two plays were less formulaic, but they still worked and still fit the comedies section reasonably well.
Speaking of the comedy section though, this brings me to its end. With next weeks play I will be delving in to the histories, and I certainly hope they’re not as boring as some people say they are. I’m not expecting anything like the comedies from the histories, but I am still hoping they’re interesting and worth the read. Some people say they’re great, while others say the opposite. Either way I’ll be reading them, and I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
© 2010, Keonyn. All rights reserved.
Tags: Barnes and Noble, Comedy, Shakespeare, The Yale Shakespeare, William Shakespeare
