Today was
the Shakespeare Club of WA's Annual General Meeting. Now, we all know that most
people avoid AGM’s as if they expected to be offered poisonous cookies, or at
least given some kind of job for the year. But this one is always well-attended
because after the formal meeting we choose the plays to be read over the next
ten months – and we all want a say in the decision-making process.
I was
tickled pink when my three picks all ‘got a guernsey’ as we say in Australia.
(That’s a saying from the national game of Aussie Rules Football. The players
wear shirts called ‘guernseys’, and if you ‘get a guernsey’ it means you got a
place on the team.) So the three plays I nominated must’ve been general
favourites, because they were the selected works for 2016. They are All Well that Ends Well, Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Like many
other Shakespeare enthusiasts, I love the middle-period comedies best of all,
so I was really happy to see two of them win a spot. Normally, we try to
include a comedy, a tragedy and history in the works to be studied, but this
time Julius Caesar serves as both
history and tragedy.
Here are
quick summaries of the plays, largely by courtesy of our friends at Wikipedia –
All’s Well that Ends Well:
Helena, the
low-born ward of a Spanish countess, is in love with the countess's son Bertram,
who is indifferent to her. Bertram goes to Paris to replace his late father as
attendant to the ailing King of France. Helena, the daughter of a recently
deceased doctor, follows Bertram, ostensibly to offer the King her services as
a healer. The King is sceptical, and she guarantees the cure with her life: if
he dies, she will be put to death, but if he lives, she may choose a husband
from the court. The King is cured and Helena chooses Bertram, who rejects her,
owing to her poverty and low status. The King forces him to marry her, but
after the ceremony Bertram immediately goes to war in Italy without so much as
a goodbye kiss. He says that he will only marry her after she has borne his
child and wears his family ring. In Italy, Bertram is a successful warrior and
also a successful seducer of local virgins. Helena follows him to Italy,
befriends Diana, a virgin with whom Bertram is infatuated, and they arrange for
Helena to take Diana’s place in bed. Diana obtains Bertram’s ring in exchange
for one of Helena’s. In this way Helena, without Bertram’s knowledge,
consummates their marriage and wears his ring. Helena returns to the Spanish
countess, who is horrified at what her son has done, and claims Helena as her
child in Bertram’s place. Helena fakes her death, and Bertram, thinking he is
free of her, comes home. He tries to marry a local lord’s daughter, but Diana
shows up and breaks up the engagement. Helena appears and explains the ring
swap, announcing that she has fulfilled Bertram’s challenge; Bertram, impressed
by all she has done to win him, swears his love to her. Thus all ends well.
There is a subplot about Parolles, a disloyal associate of Bertram’s. A
recurring theme throughout the play is the similarity between love and war.
Julius Caesar is certainly historically-based,
but it is less about Roman politics than the character of the man most
responsible for Caesar’s downfall, Brutus. The play is an excellent specimen of
what today we call ‘psychological drama’ in its depiction of Brutus's struggle with
the conflicting demands of honour, patriotism and friendship. I studied this one
in high school and always love to revisit it.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is another one with high school
memories for many of us. It’s one of the most accessible of Shakespeare’s
plays, yet one can read it see it again and again and find further nuances
every time.
The play
consists of four interconnecting plots, connected by a celebration of the
wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, which is set simultaneously in the
woodland and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of
the moon.[1]
The play
opens with Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, on
wanting to submit to her father Egeus' demand that she wed Demetrius,
whom he has arranged for her to marry. Helena
meanwhile pines unrequitedly for Demetrius. Enraged, Egeus invokes an ancient
Athenian law before Duke Theseus, whereby a daughter must marry the suitor
chosen by her father, or else face death. Theseus offers her another choice:
lifelong chastity while worshiping the goddess Artemis as a nun.
Peter Quince and his fellow players plan to put
on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen, "the most lamentable
comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe".[2] Quince reads the names of characters
and bestows them to the players. Nick Bottom, who is playing the main role of
Pyramus, is over-enthusiastic and wants to dominate others by suggesting
himself for the characters of Thisbe, the Lion, and Pyramus at the same time.
He would also rather be a tyrant and recites some lines of Ercles. Quince ends the meeting with "at the
Duke's oak we meet".
(Below)
The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by
Joseph Noel Paton
In a parallel plot line, Oberon, king of the fairies,
and Titania, his queen, have come to the forest
outside Athens. Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until she has
attended Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged
because Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his
"knight" or "henchman", since the child's mother was one of
Titania's worshipers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania's disobedience. He calls
upon Robin "Puck"
Goodfellow, his "shrewd and knavish sprite",[3] to help him concoct a magical juice
derived from a flower called "love-in-idleness", which turns from white to
purple when struck by Cupid's arrow. When the concoction is applied to the
eyelids of a sleeping person, that person, upon waking, falls in love with the
first living thing they perceive. He instructs Puck to retrieve the flower with
the hope that he might make Titania fall in love with an animal of the forest
and thereby shame her into giving up the little Indian boy. He says, "And
ere I take this charm from off her sight,/As I can take it with another
herb,/I'll make her render up her page to me."[4]
Hermia and
Lysander have escaped to the same forest in hopes of eloping. Helena, desperate
to reclaim Demetrius's love, tells Demetrius about the plan and he follows them
in hopes of killing Lysander. Helena continually makes advances towards
Demetrius, promising to love him more than Hermia. However, he rebuffs her with
cruel insults against her. Observing this, Oberon orders Puck to spread some of
the magical juice from the flower on the eyelids of the young Athenian man.
Instead, Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, not having actually seen either
before, and administers the juice to the sleeping Lysander. Helena, coming
across him, wakes him while attempting to determine whether he is dead or
asleep. Upon this happening, Lysander immediately falls in love with Helena.
Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia and is enraged. When Demetrius
goes to sleep, Oberon sends Puck to get Helena while he charms Demetrius' eyes.
Upon waking up, he sees Helena. Now, both men are in pursuit of Helena.
However, she is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her, as neither
loved her originally. Hermia is at a loss to see why her lover has abandoned
her, and accuses Helena of stealing Lysander away from her. The four quarrel
with each other until Lysander and Demetrius become so enraged that they seek a
place to duel to prove whose love for Helena is the greater. Oberon orders Puck
to keep Lysander and Demetrius from catching up with one another and to remove
the charm from Lysander. Lysander returns to loving Hermia, while Demetrius
continues to love Helena.
(Below) A Midsummer Night's Dream by Charles
A. Buchel
Meanwhile, Quince and his band of six labourers
("rude mechanicals",
as they are described by Puck) have arranged to perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe
for Theseus' wedding and venture into the forest, near Titania's bower, for their rehearsal. Bottom is spotted by
Puck, who (taking his name to be another word for a jackass) transforms his head into that of a donkey. When Bottom returns for his next lines,
the other workmen run screaming in terror, much to Bottom's confusion, since he
has no idea what has happened. Determined to await his friends, he begins to
sing to himself. Titania, having received the love-potion, is awakened by
Bottom's singing and immediately falls in love with him. She lavishes him with
attention and presumably makes love to him. While she is in this state of
devotion, Oberon takes the changeling. Having achieved his goals, Oberon
releases Titania, orders Puck to remove the donkey's head from Bottom, and
arranges everything so Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander will all believe
they have been dreaming when they awaken. Puck distracts Lysander and Demetrius
from fighting over Helena's love by mimicking their voices and leading them
apart. Eventually, all four find themselves separately falling asleep in the
glade. Once they fall asleep, Puck administers the love potion to Lysander
again, claiming all will be well in the morning.
The fairies
then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during an early
morning hunt. They wake the lovers and, since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia,
Theseus overrules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers
decide that the night's events must have been a dream. After they exit, Bottom
awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the
wit of man". In Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the six
workmen perform Pyramus and Thisbe. The performers are so terrible
playing their roles that the guests laugh as if it were meant to be a comedy,
and everyone retires to bed. Afterwards, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and other
fairies enter, and bless the house and its occupants with good fortune. After
all the other characters leave, Puck "restores amends" and suggests
to the audience that what they just experienced might be nothing more than a
dream.
So, we
embark on another Shakespearean journey! If you live in Perth, why not come and
join us in our odyssey?
No comments:
Post a Comment