Fascination with the Fringes: Falstaff and Willmore in Shakespeare and Behn - Book Report/Review Example

Running Header: FASCINATION WITH THE FRINGES Fascination with the Fringes: Falstaff and Willmore in Shakespeare and Behn Your Professor Your Class Date of Submission Both William Shakespeare and Aphra Behn, in their own ways, pushed boundaries of existing social mores in their plays. Some view the anti-Semitic way in which Shylock is treated in A Merchant of Venice as a damning look at the way Jews were treated in Shakespeare's London, and some view the way in which Othello was so easily given military leadership, and yet so unwillingly given a white bride, as a condemnation of racism at the time. Aphra Behn, the first female playwright in the English language who was able to support herself with her writing, has garnered this tribute from Virginia Woolf: All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. (A Room of One's Own) Behn's drama represents the burgeoning feminism that asserted itself fairly early in the British tradition, and her plays represent a considerable number of marginal characters and the problems that they face. Henry V is one of Shakespeare's historical plays, one of the series detailing the lengthy travails of the Wars of the Roses, and the conflicts between England and France. The story begins in a tense political situation: Henry IV has just passed away, and the young prince Hal has assumed the throne. The Wars of the Roses have left the populace discontented, and the new Henry V must gain the respect of a court and country that have been regaled with tales of his wild living, particularly the company he kept with drunks and thieves in the Boar's Head Tavern. And so, based on some distant roots in his family tree that connect with the French royal family, Henry lays claim to certain portions of France. The Dauphin, or crown prince, of France, is fairly rude in his reply to Henry's claims, and so Henry decides to invade France. The English nobility and clergy (not so different from the U.S. Congress and the American religious right in the initial stages of the Iraq quagmire) eagerly support the war, and so Henry makes his preparations. However, this war affects Henry's former drinking pals, whom he had to leave behind when he became king, including Bardolph, whose portrayal says much about the idealized way in which many of the members of the lowest classes were portrayed when called to duty by those above them. The Rover is an example of a Restoration love-comedy, and indeed takes much of its plot from Thomaso, or the Wanderer, which was written by Behn's friend Thomas Killigrew. Rather than class and war, love and marriage are the themes undertaken in this play. The action takes place during Carnival in Naples, which would give an English audience a definite sense of the exotic as things got underway. In this particular play, the love-games involve Florinda, who will either marry her brother's friend, or an older rich man; Belville, the young man who rescues her from this predicament and wins her love; Hellena, Florinda's sister and a former whore who is headed for the convent; and Willmore, a young ne'er-do-well who falls in love with Hellena. While Florinda's brother is present in the play as a reluctant chaperone, there are no adults to supervise these young people, and, as one might expect, the women in the play pretty much get what they want. However, the women are the marginal characters as well, because in Behn's time, it is the women who had no choices. Their fathers, or husbands, or male guardians, provided all of their sustenance, and made all of their decisions. Bardolph is one of the crowd at the Boar's Head that initially takes umbrage at Hal's departure for the demands of royal place. However, for Hal to become Henry V, he has to distance himself from the rough crowd with which he spends time, so that he can properly rule the country. At the beginning of Act II, when the country is bracing itself for war, Bardolph, Nym and Pistol all appear together, headed to fight. As in many of Shakespeare's plays, the men of the lower class are sometimes portrayed as bumbling fools, lapsing into malapropisms and misunderstandings to make the crowd laugh. The numerous "threats" that Bardolph makes, only to Pistol and Nym's bemusement (and the crowd's amusement), suggests a mental dimness that, whether or not Shakespeare himself believed it, served to fulfill noble prejudices about the lower class, and to amuse the commoners standing in front of the stage. Bardolph comes to, perhaps, the most ironic of possible ends: the former carousing (and, one might infer, prank-playing) buddy of Prince Hal ends up being hanged for looting, at the order of King Henry V. Before this unpleasant episode, though, comes another interesting portrayal of the common soldier: Henry disguises himself as a common soldier to mix and mingle amongst his fighting men the night before the Battle of Agincourt, to hear what they really think about the impending conflict. The ostensible and actual distances between a king and his men come into clear focus during this scene. The Kenneth Branagh film adaptation of this play pays clear homage to the common soldier, and to the common person, in every aspect of its design. As Vincent Canby noted in his review, there is "little pageantry and less pomp. No fancy sets." He goes on further to describe how war, so often depicted in film with glory, here has no "spectacle" to it. The mud of the fields covers everything, blurring the lines between French and English and merely showing how wearying warring can be. The bows and arrows that history records as the decisive factor in the Battle of Agincourt are mostly absent here, making it seem that Providence really did favor England. As Canby asserts, the "battle scenes, seen in a succession of close-ups, are chaotic and so exhausting that as the film slips into slow motion it seems to be sympathetic fatigue." In other words, war makes every one of us into marginal participants in society, as Henry's bewilderment at the end of the day - asking a French messenger how the battle went - demonstrates so vividly. The Rover is a more introspective piece of theater. While Henry V does take on the nature of war, The Rover is more about the nature of drama itself. Florinda and Hellena are radical departures from the existing paradigm for the female character in English drama, because of the dark world in which they are purported to move, with the threat of sexual violation always lurking in the background ("Game of Love"). Other playwrights of the time period made society seem a much less dangerous place for women. And the women themselves take umbrage at the cavalier way in which their men sometimes treat them. Take, for example, the case of Angelica Bianca. Willmore, the irrepressible rake, has pledged his love to her, but instead falls in love with Hellena. Instead of wilting, as does Hero in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Angelica Bianca breaks out a pistol and threatens to shoot Willmore. Ever the cool customer, though, Willmore merely shrugs it off, by saying, "Broke my vows Why, where hast thou lived Amongst the gods! For I never heard of mortal man who has not broke a thousand vows" ("Game of Love"). Willmore is the archetype of the "callous gallant of the Restoration," who gallivants about interesting in pleasing his own desires, not stopping to notice whose hearts he breaks along the way ("Game of Love"). However, as Vladimir Zelevinsky notes in his review of The Rover, Behn takes such pains to make her marginal characters (the women) appear so lively and vibrant that the men by them turn into indistinguishable caricatures by comparison. Zelevinsky praises the metaphor of theater, with the complex plot strands that connect, at some points, as many as five couples who are romantically interested in one another. However, as he also notes, the men are interchangeable. While each of them has his own unique adventure to pursue, the entry into that adventure is the same: enrapturement and subsequent pursuit of a woman ("Men vs. Women"). In this particular production, Zelevinsky notes the "distinct voice and personality" given to even the smaller female roles, including the "sarcastic Moretta" and the "scheming Valeria." ("Men vs. Women"). As with any form of writing, the author's particular bents will drive the characterization and plot. One of Aphra Behn's primary agendas is to reverse the trend of marginalizing female roles in drama and society, and so her female characters are unusually vibrant and powerful, but she has left no energy to the male characters, and so they assume the underdramatized roles that Behn has apparently hated for women in her prior experiences in the theater. In contrast, Shakespeare takes a more conventional perspective on the marginal members of his cast, portraying them as, in large part, the buffoons that English society expected them to be. And so while they may be briefly permitted some righteous indignation at Hal's departure for the throne, they quickly dissolve into silliness - even Falstaff, who appears in the Henry IV plays as a fellow drunkard who is Hal's mentor in many ways during his youth, is ultimately seen as a ridiculous fellow, not fit company for the lord of the realm. As drama has shown, and will continue to show, though, it is the socially unacceptable, those dwelling in the margins of propriety, who will continue to occupy the interests of audiences. Works Cited Canby, Vincent. "A down-to-earth Henry V discards spectacle and pomp." New York Times 8 November 1989. "Game of Love: The Restoration Comedy." Accessed 10 April 2007 online at http://classiclit.about.com/library/weekly/aa020600e.htm. Shakespeare, William. Henry V. Accessed 10 April 2007 online at http://www.william-shakespeare.info/script-text-henry-v.htm. Zelevinsky, Vladimir. "Men vs. Women." The Tech Volume 121, Issue 13, 20 March 2001. 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