Pericles, Prince of Tyre

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that most people are capable of revelatory thoughts while bathing.  A few weeks ago, I was musing on the nature of Shakespeare’s romances while washing my hair.  I mean, who doesn’t do that on the regular?  I started to make connections between the three I’ve covered for this project already and the concept of forgiveness that pervades the romances.  But of course, my fledgling idea could be stronger if I actually read the other two romances to see if there are further connections.  So here we are, jumping right in!

Pericles is certainly a strange little fairy tale.  I loved the steadfast Marina, how she works at retaining her innocence despite all the evil circumstances that are thrown her way.  She still seeks to be good and to find and promote goodness in others.  This play got me wondering: is forgiveness a part of the process when we keep someone from doing us harm…and something that we know they’ll later regret?  We all need a conscience, after all.

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Titus Andronicus

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I originally planned on covering this play last October – something fitting about reading Shakespeare’s bloodiest play during the Halloween season.  I read one act and then abandoned it.  The US presidential election happened in the middle of my reading.  My news feed, my friends, my own head, were all filled with such dread, quoting so many voices of violence and anger as well as despair…I just couldn’t take the evil revenge fantasy of this play at the same time (I picked up a copy of the sonnets instead). 

Ugh, this play, y’all.  Titus Andronicus can be pretty revolting (it’s especially hard to watch/read Lavinia’s arc), even for a lover of horror films like me. Not to mention, it’s downright clunky.  It is considered one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, one that tends to be viewed through a lens of knowledge on his later plays.  The younger Shakespeare gives us a shocking, gory, thrill-ride plot with juvenile characters that focus on action rather than self-analysis.  The mature playwright dove inward with his characters as his writing progressed, sometimes to the degree that analysis outweighed action.  It makes sense that his writing would grow and become more refined and nuanced as the man himself sharpened his skills…and just grew older and lived more life.  As we all get older and gain more experience, don’t we do the exact same thing?

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Henry VI, Part III

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This play (and this episode) is squarely centered on the concept of revenge.  Most of the players are less motivated by which monarch they feel is truly ordained by God, and more by getting vengeance for any deceased or disgraced relatives who are collateral in the Wars of Roses.  Getting even at any cost is upheld as the marker of honor.  Any time Henry does the opposite and refuses to act out against his enemies, his supporters and family rebuff him.  Retaliation doesn’t lead to anything good in this play, only death and civil war.  It’s hard to feel righteous about fighting back if your head is displayed on a pike, you know?  Our own acts of retribution for the hurts and wrongs we have suffered tend to be less extreme today (less vigilante king-crowning and murdering), but I wonder if they really do make us feel any better.  When is it best to blaze up in righteous indignation, and when is it best to attempt to forgive and forget?

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Cymbeline

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Why This Play?:

If I’m being honest, I read it because this was the next DVD that came up in my Netflix queue.  So let’s continue on the late romance trend!

Cymbeline is known as the single play that includes all of Shakespeare's greatest hits -- a woman disguised as a man, a villain who incites jealousy without cause, reunion of family members, war.  And that's just to name a few.  There's a theme that takes over the entire final scene, with more examples than I've ever seen in any other Bard play -- forgiveness.  Repentance/forgiveness happens in many other works (Hero forgives Claudio, Othello is devastated by his actions, etc).  But in Cymbeline, we see it in spades.  Nearly all the characters get into the game of apologizing and showing mercy.  Which of course, gets me thinking about forgiveness in our own lives.  Is there some secret formula to letting go of past issues and moving on without malice?

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Macbeth

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Why This Play?:

I just finished this week’s FutureLearn lesson on Macbeth.  It was easily the most interesting yet.  We examined Elizabethean attitudes about witchcraft, the idea of frenzy versus actual madness, and medical practices of the time.  We asked ourselves about the nature of evil and Shakespeare’s radical idea that in Macbeth, evil comes from within a man himself rather than through divine/demonic intervention. 

We all see glimpses of evil every day.  Simply turn on your phone, scroll through some daily headlines, and read about horrible things that people do to each other.  I thought upon reading this play that I’d probably end up writing about the supernatural (it’s fun and interesting!) in this post.  Last weekend’s news out of Lebanon and France shifted my thoughts to this question: how do we deal with everyday evil?

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