Measure for Measure

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I do think that Shakespeare here abandons some of the ambiguity that is a signature of his work. It’s just very difficult to take the conniving and duplicitous duke seriously as a force for moral and political instruction. His enthusiasm for manipulation tips the scales of sympathy against him, and it’s very clear how his whims have made a mockery of the laws of Vienna. The way he twists a tragic situation towards a comic resolution offends all sense of justice, and pushes the play towards satire. One wonders what James I would have thought of it. This may be Shakespeare at his most rancid and disillusioned, and it’s one of his finest statements on political decay and corruption.

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Love's Labour's Lost

Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This probably works really well on stage but I found it a bit of a slog to read – it felt like an awful long time for love's labours to get lost. The feel of the play is close to The Importance of Being Earnest via Jane Austen – gentility trading witty barbs and wasting time on dressing up and playing silly games. Woudhuysen's introduction in the Arden third edition provides a comprehensive guide to the way the jokes comment on the instability inherent to the use of language. Shakespeare is poking fun at booksmart narcissists, and engineers an ending that defers the marriages and undermines the expectations of the comic genre. Death and reality gatecrash the party and leave conclusions open. It should feel like a more radical break than it does, maybe because all the characters are so unserious that you can't invest much in their fates. The problem plays this gestures towards have higher stakes and are more effective in discomforting the audience.

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Pericles

Pericles by William Shakespeare
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was wildly popular when it came out – audiences really responded to the divinely-assisted reversal of fortune in the back half. The play feels quite flat to me – Pericles is a bit of a heroic non-entity who does the right thing and is eventually rewarded with the restoration of his family. Bearing misfortune nobly, and resisting the temptations of the world, may have resonated more strongly in a religious age where random ‘acts of god’ regularly ruined lives.

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The Two Noble Kinsmen

The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A play more Fletcher’s than Shakespeare’s and the Fletcher bits are great. I had a wonderful time with this. The scene where two good friends politely prepare to fight each other to the death is superb black comedy. The Jailer’s Daughter being driven literally mad with lust is dramatic and absurd. The tone is complex throughout – starting and ending with the concurrent evocation of nuptial and funeral rites. It is subtle and strange and very involving. An underrated gem and a play that should be performed more often.

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Arden of Faversham

Arden of Faversham by Anonymous
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An Elizabethan erotic thriller, made extra spicy because based on a true story of a wife murdering her husband. A Coen Brothers element comes in through the excellently named ruffians Shakebag and Black Will, who spend the majority of the runtime comically trying and failing to do the deed. That is intercut with the quarrels between Alice and her lover Mosby, as they waver over their devotion to each other and their commitment to the murder plot. That is the play at its most psychologically acute, providing an interesting insight into contemporary expectations of marriage, gender roles and social class.

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All's Well That Ends Well

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The depiction of Helen and Bertram is emblematic of Shakespeare’s show not tell approach to drama. We don’t really know why Helen loves Bertram, neither is it very clear why Bertram rejects Helen. Motivation is left open to interpretation, something that actors can define in performance. Despite that openness, this is not a much-loved play. Bertram’s caddishness makes him clearly unsatisfactory as an aspirational love-interest for the intrepid Helen. The resolution of the “comedy” is distinctly uncomfortable and provisional – an explicit rejection of the harmony demanded by endings in the genre. Is a marriage cobbled together by underhand means a justified end? As usual, Shakespeare leaves the question hanging and refuses to provide an answer.

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The Shoemakers' Holiday

The shoemaker's holiday by Thomas Dekker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A feel good fantasy of feasting and upward social mobility, written at a time of poor harvests and high food prices to serve as a welcome bit of escapism. The central figure is the rambunctious shoemaker Simon Eyre, whose lines boom out of the page, and whose casting would make or break a performance. There is darkness at the edge of the play – including a war with France that must resume when the holiday is over – but it hardly balances out its overwhelmingly cheerful tone. A fun time.

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The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of Shakespeare's shortest plays. It forgoes his talents for characterisation to focus on a very knotty plot majoring on confused identity. That perhaps is the point – the characters aren't stable individuals but are defined by external appearances and expectations. That's fine, but it's also not very funny. It is also particularly unkind towards the servant characters, who are constantly beaten, and Adriana, who has to cope with her husband's obvious infidelities.

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Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Better than its reputation suggests, but still not great. The intriguing contrast for me is between Titus, who has buried 20 children and will kill a few more during the events of the play, and Tamora and Aaron, who despite their villainy feel protective over their offspring. That complicates the presentation of Titus as a tragic hero – it is a lack of pity and familial affection that heaps horrors on his head. Aaron is an enjoyably Marlovian devil, but still has enough humanity to want to preserve his son.

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