The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Like most general readers of Victorian literature, my exposure to the works of the Bronte sisters has been limited to Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and I am guessing my reaction was similar to most general readers.  I found the former to be extremely weird and enjoyed the latter, although in my case I didn't enjoy it as much as many other people have.  I was certainly aware of the "other" sister, Anne, and her two novels, but it was a post by Elaine over at Random Jottings that motivated me to get The Tenant of Wildfell Hall out of the local library. 

I don't know what I expected, but I certainly didn't think expect to be blown away by it the way I was.  It was literally one of those books that I couldn't put down while waiting with great suspense to find out how it ended.  I am not going to reveal the ending, but given what I knew about the Bronte sisters and their life experience, I wasn't at all confident that I could predict how it would all work out so it was only in the last few pages that the drama ended, at least for me.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the story of Helen, the tenant of the title who at various stages in the book is Helen Lawrence, Helen Huntingdon and Helen Graham.  As the young Helen Lawrence she marries Arthur Huntingdon, knowing full well the risks she is taking and having been advised against the idea by her aunt.  Although recognizing her future husband's weaknesses, she naively believes that she will be able to reform him.  Of course the marriage goes horribly wrong and given the almost non-existent legal standing of women in England in the 1820's, Helen has few, if any, options.  A strong person in spite of her poor judgement about the marriage, Helen has the courage to take decisive action regardless of the consequences.

In reading the preface to the Penguin edition, I learned that the book was criticized at the time of publication because of what is called an almost universal condemnation of men.  Considering that the book seems clearly to be an effort to protest against all of the injustices that married women were subject to at the time, it isn't surprising that the men in the book aren't that attractive.  But at the same time, at least two of them are capable of reform and Gilbert Markam, the farmer who become intrigued with the mysterious tenant, is a character who is capable of real growth and grows in maturity and responsibility throughout the book.  I think the author's purpose of speaking up for women's rights is advanced considerably by creating male characters who are real people not just stereotypes.

Pencil Drawing of Anne Bronte

I am most likely not explaining adequately why I liked this book so much, but it was the drama (how would it all come out), the characters (well developed and fully human) and the realism of the story that made this one of the best novels I have ever read.  This is probably heresy, but I enjoyed it not only more than d the other two works by the Bronte sisters, but more than any of Jane Austen's novels including Pride and Prejudice.  I found myself wondering why The Tenant of Wildfell Hall isn't a staple of high school English classes.  I wish I had read it a lot sooner, but one thing's for sure I am not going to make the same mistake with Anne Bronte's other novel, Agnes Grey.

Setting the Murderous Machiavel to School

I just finished reading David Frey's "The First Tetraology: Shakespeare's Scrutiny of the Tudor Myth" which was written in 1976.  Written while E.M. Tillyard's theory of the Tudor Myth was still widely accepted, the author argues against the idea that the Henry VI plays plus Richard III are based on the premise that the horrors depicted in these plays are God's punishment for the deposition and murder of Richard II.  According to this theory it is only when Richmond leads the revolt against the wicked Richard and wins the crown at Bosworth Field that the curse is lifted. 

Frey focuses his attention on Henry VI, Richard III and Richmond to argue that Shakespeare is about something else in these plays, not supporting the Tudor myth.  Among other things his arguments are based on an interpretation of Henry VI much different and much more favorable than I have seen before.  I want to re-read that section of the book before writing about it, but it seemed well argued to me. 

Frey also cites a number of different points to claim that Shakespeare's portrayal of Richmond is both brief and not at all that of a divine saviour.  He notes something that I picked up on a long time ago.  At the very end of the battle at Bosworth, Richard says, "I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five, have I slain today instead of him."  This seems to suggest that Richmond has others dressed in his colors for additional protection for himself.  Hardly what one would expect of a great warrior.

It's Frey's comments about Richard III, however, that interest me for this post.  Frey spends a lot of time on Richard as being the ultimate "Machiavel," putting Nicholas Machiavelli's theories into practice.  This certainly wasn't new to me, Richard himself clearly says it during his long speech in 3 Henry VI as noted in the title of this post.  For some reason though it reminded me of a discussion in a graduate class in the history plays where the professor was trying to lead me to the conclusion that Hal or Henry V was also a practitioner of Machiavelli's ideas.  As I remember this was to some degree based on Hal's speech at the opening of 1 Henry IV when he tells the audience, but no one else that he is not the wastrel prince he appears to be.

Thinking about that now it seems to me that Shakespeare creates a Hal who manages to get almost everyone he encounters to take him for granted.  Whether it is Hotspur, Henry IV or the Chief Justice, they don't see Hal as someone with ability, integrity or a sense of responsibility.  The same thing happens throughout Henry V where the French, even though they are constantly warned otherwise, don't take the young king seriously until it is far too late.  Is this Machiavellian - to get others to underestimate your abilities?  To me it sounds like a pretty good strategy, much like what a smart football or basketball coach will do - underplay your own team while building up the opposition.  Those who buy this line do so at their own risk - in baseball at least there are stories like this going back to the 1860's.  Far better it seems to me to be overly modest rather than the opposite which more often than not leads to far greater problems. 

Even though its over 30 years old, I am grateful to Mr. Frey for his work.  I want to spend more time thinking about Henry V and Machiavelli and the vehicle of Richard III is a helpful one.

To Conflate or Not to Conflate?

While I am an unapologetic fan of the history plays and love to see them performed, I am aware of the difficulties that they present for directors and producers.  Unlike the rest of Shakespeare appreciation requires some level of understanding of 15th English history which is further complicated by the inter-connectedness of the stories.  The latter issue is probably of less importance for Richard II, Henry V and Richard III, but is a real concern when it comes to the multiple part Henry IV and Henry VI plays.  The choices usually come down to doing each of the plays or some form of conflation - that is consolidating the multiple parts into one play.  Like anything else conflating can be done well or poorly.  The 2003 Lincoln Center conflation of the two Henry IV plays was a masterpiece, probably the best Shakespeare I have ever seen.  On the other hand the 2007 New Jersey Shakespeare Theater's conflation of the Henry VI plays into one play tried to cram too much into one performance thereby diluting (in my opinion) the quality.

Clearly there are risks in both approaches, risks that we saw very clearly in our trips to the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia and the Actors Shakespeare Project in Boston.  In Virginia we saw a stand alone performance of 2 Henry IV which is part of their doing both tetralogies over a four period.  In the program Jim Warren, Artistic Director and Co-founder, wrote that  "I now have no interest in conflating Shakespeare's amazing history plays" because "I believe each of these magnificent plays provides more entertainment when stage separately."  Amen, I couldn't agree more.  There is, however, a risk to this approach a risk at the box office.  The night that we were there, the total audience couldn't have been more than 25-30 and listening to a tape of a talk given before another performance, it was noted that they expected only about 35 people that night.  Part of it may be as Ralph Cohen, Director of Mission and Co-founder noted the title "is box office poison."  Apparently ASC has sufficient funding from other sources to manage and thank God for that.

At the Midway Studios in Boston where we saw the Actors Shakespeare Project separate productions of both Henry IV plays, they tried to take conflation to a new level by trying to incorporate parts of the whole second tetralogy into two plays.  1 Henry IV began with a prologue from Richard II which took about 25 minutes and included portions of Bolingbroke's confrontation with Richard after the former returned from exile, the deposition scene and the last scene where Henry learns of Richard's murder.  2 Henry IV on the other hand ended with an epilogue from Henry V which included parts of scene 1, then jumped ahead to Act 2 to portray the death of Falstaff and then jumped back to Henry's tennis ball speech.  This was then followed by the epilogue from the end of the play and another brief epilogue apparently written for this production.  For the life of me I couldn't understand why they included the Henry V epilogue if they intended to include their own epilogue written specifically for this performance.

I guess I can appreciate what they were trying to do, but I think that the same thing could have been accomplished with a little less from the other two plays.  I also think that the written background that usually accompanies productions of these plays can accomplish the same thing.  In spite of all this added material, however, each performance came in between 2:30 and 2:45 which means, of course, that there were cuts from the two Henry IV plays.  I think this may be one of the major risks of too much conflation.  To take just one example, the Gads Hill scene was cut almost entirely to some visual action on the stage which really didn't capture Falstaff's cowardice at the decisive moment and the entire scene with Hal and Francis was eliminated.  Then when they got to the great tavern scene, as far as I could tell, there was very little reaction much less laughter to what I think is one of the funniest things I have ever seen which usually produces gales of laughter in the theater.  Shakespeare, no doubt, had his reasons for how he both wrote and organized his material - it may be that too much tinkering or conflation may invoke the law of unintended consequences.  Always better, I think to let Shakespeare speak for himself!

Random Thoughts on 2 Henry IV

This past Saturday while Carol and I were waiting for the doors to open for the Actors Shakespeare Project's production of 2 Henry IV at the Midway Studios in South Boston I heard a woman say that she wanted to see the play because it isn't performed that much.  That's probably true on a relative basis, but we were actually seeing it for the second time in 10 days.  This after seeing it twice in 2008, once in Stratford-upon-Avon and once in New York City.  In addition to the Boston venue (which was part of a visit to our son and daughter-in-law) the last week in October we made a six hour car ride to Staunton, Virginia for our second visit to the American Shakespeare Center.  While I plan to write about different aspects of both visits what follows are some random thoughts about the play based on seeing it twice in such a short period of time:

1. When we saw the RSC's 2008 production what hit me was how small a part Henry IV has in the second of the the plays to bear his name (which I am sure is no revelation).  What struck me this time is that the same can be said of Hal.  Basically Henry IV comes on the stage midway through the play to give his famous "Uneasy lies the head" monologue and then appears to the death scenes.  Hal also doesn't have a much larger role at least until the end when he takes part in the death bed scene and then the two scenes after becoming king.  Among other things I guess what that does is to make the role of Falstaff more prominent and thereby makes the casting of that part even more crucial to the play's success.

2. To me both productions demonstrated the temptation and the danger of going too far with how the two justices, Shallow and Silence, are portrayed.  In both Virginia and Boston the two men were made out to be so old and feeble that I had a hard time hearing what they were saying (part of that may be my own hearing issues).  This is sharp contrast to how the part was portrayed at the RSC in 2008 especially with Geoffrey Freshwater as Shallow.  While not neglecting their age, both men had a lot more energy, similar to that of Falstaff so that they could be more easily seen as his contemporaries, many years later.

3. As is well known one of the most important scenes in the play is when the new king rejects his old friend.  I read somewhere that for many people this scene alone determines their opinion of Hal/Henry V.  One thing that most of the criticism that I have read seems to omit is that Henry doesn't completely abandon Falstaff.  While forbidding from coming within 10 miles,  Henry does commit to provide for Falstaff's well being and also offers him the opportunity of future access if he reforms in just the same way that Hal himself has reformed.  My point is simply that the rejection is not as total, cold and/or necessarily final as much of the criticism seems to suggest.

4. It's also interesting while there is much commentary on Henry's rejection of Falstaff, there is far less discussion of the new king's treatment of his former adversary the Chief Justice.  There is a high level of integrity in both men's actions, the Chief Justice not just for administering the law without favor, but also for standing behind his decisions when he is completely at the new king's mercy.  There is also much integrity in how Henry handles the situation - the first real test of his reign.  Will he give into what would seem to be the more typical and, at some levels, understandable human reaction to the opportunity to get back at someone or will he take the higher road.  To his credit, Henry does the latter, a positive beginning.

Again some random thoughts with no special conclusion - more to come about the plays, the performances and the venues.

Changing Venues

In a stroke of good fortune, I am going to be a contributor to the on-line magazine - MadShakespeare beginning on May 6th with a brief bio of Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester.  This will be followed by similar bios on other characters in the first tetralogy and perhaps some other articles as well.  For the time being I am going to focus on that and will most likely not be posting much to this blog.  I do plan to keep posting on Books Written and Read

Witches Are Definitely Not To Be Trusted - 2 Henry VI, 1. 4

As we saw in her brief appearance in scene 2, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester definitely does not have her husband and/or her country's best interest in mind.  In scene 4 her bad intentions turn into bad actions thereby completing a huge amount of destruction in relatively little stage time.  As requested Hume has arranged for a witch and some conjurors to answer her questions about the future.  To us today the whole mention of witches introduces a sort of fairy tale element into what thus far has been serious drama, but that is not how Shakesepeare's audiences would have looked at it.  That society believed in witchcraft sufficiently not only to pass laws against it, but also to use those laws to prosecute and punish those suspected of such behavior. 

Interestingly just as treason was hard to prove so was witchcraft since it was hard to catch the person (read woman) in the act.  That was not, however, a problem in this scene since not only is the whole thing being watched, but the criminals are foolish enough to write down the Eleanor's questions and the answers - talk about doing the prosecution's work for them.  It will be no wonder a few scenes later that even Henry doesn't need any advice on how to proceed in this case.

One thing that stands out about Eleanor and the questions or prophecies is some similarities between this early play and the later more well known tragedy of Macbeth.  Like Lady Macbeth, Eleanor is ambitous for her husband to become king, but unlike that situation (happily), her husband wants no part of it and Eleanor herself is no where near as effective as the Scotchwoman. 

The other similarity is with regard to the prophecies as in Macbeth, the evil spirits make predictions about the future which appear to be straightforward, but, in fact, will prove to have different meanings.  This is especially true with the second and third prophecies warning Suffolk to beware water and Somerset to avoid castles.  If the two dukes took these things literally, they could reasonably have expected to be safe or at least more safe by following this advice, but it doesn't work out that way.  This is a far narrower kind of protection than that apparently offered Macbeth when he is told he doesn't have to worry until a forest moves and/or he meets a man who wasn't born of woman.

Yet Macbeth finds out and to his cost that such predictions can be just as deadly without being literally true.  Perhaps that is what happens when one becomes involved with evil - there is hoped for comfort in a false sense of security offered by evil - a security that is a house built on sand if there ever was one.  It demonstrates  how people can be seduced into believing that they can do evil and/or be evil without getting burned themselves.  Another example of this is Hume who at the end of scene 2 thought that regardless of what happened he would have gold - well he may have gotten the gold, little good it will do him where he is going.  I recall seeing one version of this scene where after the arrests, Hume acts like he is just going to walk away and is then shocked to be carted off to prison with the rest.  No one in this play touches evil and comes away unscathed.

Act I, Scene 3 - Leadership and Wisdom

The last part of scene 3 brings the whole court back to the stage, just as they were at the beginning of the first scene.  This time, however, the factionalism that is dividing the court and, therefore, the country is out in the open for everyone to see.  The issue at hand is whether York or Somerset should be the regent in France. Henry gets this off to a horrible start by saying it doesn't matter to him one way or another.  As the Arden footnotes rightly notice this is one time where Henry's inability to rule is not hidden in religious overtones, he simply doesn't seem to care or doesn't want to make a decision which will certainly offend one or other other of the claimants.

At the same time there was another alternative which doesn't seem to have occurred to the young king - ask his Uncle who still serves as Lord Protector.  It's hard to understand or explain why the option doesn't occur to the Henry because he does fall back on it later in the scene.  Before, however, things can get that far, Gloucester's first words in the scene are the signal for the others to open up on Gloucester charging him with all everything under the sun from the losses in France to cruelty at home.

Humphrey's way of responding is understated and may not be appropriately appreciated.  After responding to Margaret's original volly, he then listens without comment to multiple other charges and then simply leaves the stage without a word.  When he does return about 15 lines later, he says that since he has dealt with his "choler" or anger, he is ready to talk about the affairs of state.  This is similar to his behavior in the first scene where he leaves the stage rather than reopen his "bicker" with Beaufort.  I don't think the importance of this cooling off before speaking can be over emphasized and I say that as someone who has struggled with a temper his whole life.  There is a line in For Whom the Bell Tolls which is repeated over and over again to the effect that "anger is a form of weakness."  To me that means that when we give into anger in our actions and speech, we are seldom as effective as we would otherwise be and, therefore, will be less successful in achieving our objectives.

We can see the truth of this in the way Humphrey responds to the charges both before and after leaving the room to cool down.  When Margaret tells him the king has no need of a Protector, he simply says that's up to the king, to all the other charges he simply says prove it.  In each case he stops the charges in their tracks by not debating their points, but challenging them to do what they can't do or won't do or at least not yet.  It is far better to do something like that than to try to debate them or speak out of anger, no matter how tempting that might be.  I think there is a tendency to laugh at the idea of counting to 10 or going outside to calm down even metaphorically, but I think it has some real value.

Once he has thus disarmed his opponents, Gloucester advises appointing York as regent until Suffolk introduces Peter's claim of treason against Horner.  A totally befuddled Henry asks Gloucester what they should do and Humphrey prudently changes his position since York is under a cloud and further says that the law calls for trial by combat for the two men.  At first I thought this sounded a cruel method of proceeding, but I have since read that it was the standard approach for claims of treason where there were no witnesses.  Based on common sense and common law, Humphrey gives good advice, something that is at a premium in this court.